He’d spent most of the day lying on his bed, alternating between sulking and playing on his PS3.
‘You OK?’ Fahim asked. ‘You were amazing yesterday afternoon.’
Jake smiled. ‘It was nothing,’ he said casually. ‘I should be OK for school tomorrow.’
But his smile melted the instant he saw Lauren. He was terrified that Lauren might have told Bethany about him crying the night before.
‘Mind you,’ Fahim added, ‘Lauren saved your butt. Another two minutes and those guys would have killed you.’
‘Was there any trouble over the punch-up at school?’ Jake asked.
‘Rumours flying about that Alom’s mob got their arses kicked,’ Lauren said. ‘There was an appeal for witnesses in morning assembly and a few kids who knew the score hassled me, but I just told everyone to mind their own.’
‘But we’re not in trouble?’ Jake asked.
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Lauren said. ‘I saw Alom in the corridor and he cacked himself and legged it.’
‘We’re lucky it was outside of school,’ Fahim added. ‘If I got suspended I’d be screwed.’
By this time they were up to the gates. Mac lowered the tinted window of the BMW across the street and gave Lauren a nod, indicating that it was OK to move in.
The tall metal gates led on to thirty metres of brick driveway, but Fahim had a key for the metal door built into the brick pillar alongside them.
‘I’m home,’ Fahim shouted, as he came through the front door into the marble hallway. ‘Anyone in?’
Lauren was intimidated by the echoing marble hallway and the abstract paintings on the walls. It felt more like a museum than a home.
‘Check all the rooms quickly,’ Lauren said. ‘Then we’ll take out the CCTV so that we can bring the van up the drive.’
Fahim was sure nobody was in, but checked every room in the house and the office annexe just in case. After the survey he found a key in a kitchen drawer and opened up a panel built into the wall under the curved staircase. The four VCRs stacked inside were linked to the security cameras outside the house.
‘Do you know anything about how it works?’ Lauren asked.
‘I’m not supposed to touch it,’ Fahim said. ‘But it’s just like using a normal video, except that the tapes go for seventy-two hours.’
Lauren looked inside the cupboard, while Jake pulled one of the VCRs out gently and turned it sideways to look at the leads plugged in the back.
‘Just phono cables running from the video cameras,’ Jake said. ‘Nothing special.’
Lauren flipped her phone open and called Mac. ‘I’m in front of the CCTV system. It looks pretty basic, but I want an OK from you before I disconnect it.’
Mac sounded confident. ‘There’s a direct debit going out of Hassam’s bank account to the security company for thirty pounds a month. I called them up pretending to be a customer and that’s the fee for their standard call-out package. They’ll come out if the burglar alarm goes off, but there’s no remote video surveillance or anything like that.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Lauren said.
She went down the row of VCRs and stopped each tape from recording.
‘There will be a gap in the recorded footage, but that doesn’t prove anything,’ Lauren explained to Fahim. ‘In the unlikely event that your dad does decide to play it back, just deny everything.’
Two minutes later, Fahim opened the gate and McEwen drove the Volkswagen people carrier up the driveway. Bethany dashed inside, while Dave opened the back and took out a pair of laptop computers and a cricket bag filled with surveillance equipment.
‘OK,’ McEwen said, as the team gathered around the equipment in the hallway. ‘Dave and I will take the laptops around and clone every hard drive we can get our hands on. Jake, I want listening devices in every room. Bethany and Lauren, there’s a pair of high-speed document copiers in the back of the car. Go to the office and duplicate anything you find interesting.’
‘Can I help?’ Fahim asked.
McEwen sounded unfriendly. ‘Are sure you’ve told Mac where all the computers are?’
‘Definitely,’ Fahim said. ‘My dad’s no computer whiz. I have to install the software and sort out his internet whenever it crashes.’
‘Right,’ McEwen said. ‘And you gave us the combination of the safe, so the best thing you can do is sit on your can and let us do our jobs.’
As Bethany and Lauren ran outside to get the copiers, Jake unzipped the giant equipment bag Dave had brought in and pulled out a device that looked like a staple