Dave clicked it into place, then pulled the Palm Pilot out of his pocket and scanned quickly through the five transmission frequencies. They were all back at full strength.
He crawled towards the dustbin to get down, but as he did he noticed Pete getting out of the passenger door of his uncle’s Jaguar to open the gate. There was no way he’d be able to clamber down before being seen.
09:07
John was delighted to see the signal graphs from the bugs on Tarasov’s car lot shoot back into the green.
‘Looks like he’s fixed it,’ John said to Chloe. ‘Good lad.’
Michael Patel had been on hold for nine minutes, getting more and more ratty as the calling system repeated its loop. Chloe finally decided to put him out of his misery and grabbed a telephone handset, which was rigged up to the computer in front of her.
‘Good morning, this is Chloe speaking. Auto Club would like to apologise for the delay in answering your call this morning. Can I have your name and membership number please?’
While Chloe took down the details of the problem with Michael’s car, John had moved into the bedroom. He unbuttoned his shirt, stepped out of his trousers and grabbed a yellow and blue Auto Club uniform out of his wardrobe.
32. PICKLE
09:11
Dave lay flat against the corrugated rooftop, with his nose uncomfortably close to a fresh splat of birdlime. Pete and Leon stood by the gate looking up and down the street.
‘Dave must have unlocked,’ Leon said angrily. ‘Nobody else has keys. But where’s the little idiot legged it to?’
Dave heard the conversation continue as Pete followed his uncle into the cabin.
‘Look,’ Leon said. ‘The kettle’s hot.’
‘I checked in the toilet,’ Pete said.
Dave couldn’t climb down on to the bin without being seen through the cabin window. He realised his only chance was to drop off the back of the roof into the derelict builders’ yard next door. He crawled furtively, knowing that he was only separated from Leon and Pete’s heads by forty centimetres and a sheet of wobbly metal that amplified every noise he made.
When he got to the rear edge, Dave slid his legs over the side before dropping down into a tangle of weeds. He narrowly missed clattering into a set of rusted paint cans as he stumbled forwards, then swept most of the dirt off his clothes. He set off towards the street, keeping low to avoid being spotted through the wire by Leon or Pete.
There were a couple of missing planks in the wooden fence along the front of the yard. After checking that nobody was coming, he trampled down some stinging nettles, pulled in his stomach and squeezed through the gap on to the street. Dave realised he needed an excuse for leaving, so instead of heading straight back he ducked into the newsagents and caught his breath as he queued up to buy a newspaper and a pint of milk.
He strolled on to the lot a couple of minutes later, trying to look innocent as Leon exploded out of the door of his cabin.
‘Morning, boss,’ Dave said.
‘What sort of prick are you?’ Leon yelled as stood in the doorway. ‘Get in here.’
Dave acted dumb as he stepped into the cabin. ‘What?’
Leon slammed the door. ‘What? What? I drive in here and I find that everywhere’s unlocked and you’ve legged it, that’s what. There’s over a hundred grand’s worth of cars here. Are you off your head or something?’
Dave jiggled the pint of milk. ‘I thought we might run out later in the day.’
‘You mean to say we haven’t even run out?’ Leon shouted. ‘Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby or something? Give me your keys back, right now.’
‘Come on Leon. I just got chatting to Mr Singh in the newsagents and lost track of time. The car keys were all locked in your safe and I was only gone for five minutes.’
‘Keys,’ Leon repeated.
Dave got the keys out of his shorts and dangled them in front of Leon. ‘I’m really sorry, boss.’
‘Count yourself lucky,’ Leon said, as he snatched them. ‘You do something as dumb as that again and you’ll be out of a job.’
‘You’ve been really good to me, Leon. I swear it won’t happen again.’
Leon flicked Dave away with his hand. ‘You’d better get out there and make yourself look busy before I really lose my temper. Start off with the Mini. That time-waster had his kids in the back