the missus: a painted face beneath a sweatshirt hood.
God, this was living! This was the best! If the haul proved to be sterling stuff, he'd be a few hundred quid richer come Friday morning. Did it get better than this? Did it? Kimmo didn't think so. So what that he'd said he'd go straight for a while. He couldn't throw away the time he'd already spent putting this job together. He'd be thick to do that, and the one thing Kimmo Thorne was not was thick. Not a bit of that. No way, Hoe-say.
He was pedaling along perhaps a mile from his break-in when he became aware of being followed. There was other traffic about on the streets-when wasn't there traffic in London?-and several cars had honked as they'd passed him. He first thought they were honking at him the way vehicles do to a cyclist they wish to get out of their way, but he soon came to realise that they were honking at a slow-moving vehicle close behind him, one that refused to pass him by.
He felt a little unnerved by this, wondering if Ronald had somehow managed to get it together and track him down. He turned down a side street to make sure he wasn't mistaken in his belief in being tailed, and sure enough, the headlights directly behind him turned as well. He was about to shoot off in a fury of pedaling when he heard the rumble of an engine coming up next to him and then his name spoken in a friendly voice.
"Kimmo? That you? What're you doing in this part of town?"
Kimmo coasted. He slowed. He turned to see who was speaking to him. He smiled when he realised who the driver was, and he said, "Never mind me. What're you doing here?"
The other smiled back. "Looks like I'm cruising round for you. Need a lift somewhere?"
It would be convenient, Kimmo thought, if Ronald had seen him take off on the bike and if the cops were quicker to respond than they normally were. He didn't really want to be out on the street. He still had a couple more miles to go, and it was cold as Antarctica, anyway. He said, "I got the bike with me, though."
The other chuckled. "Well, that's no problem if you don't want it to be."
CHAPTER ONE
DETECTIVE CONSTABLE BARBARA HAVERS CONSIDERED herself one lucky bird: The drive was empty. She'd elected to do her weekly shop by car rather than on foot, and this was always a risky business in an area of town where anyone fortunate enough to find a parking space near their home clung to it with the devotion of the newly redeemed to the source of his redemption. But knowing she had much to purchase and shuddering at the thought of trudging in the cold back from the local grocery, she'd opted for transport and hoped for the best. So when she pulled up in front of the yellow Edwardian house behind which her tiny bungalow stood, she took the space in the drive without compunction. She listened to the coughing and gagging of her Mini's engine as she turned it off, and she made her fifteenth mental note of the month to have the car looked at by a mechanic who-one prayed-would not ask an arm, a leg, and one's firstborn child to repair whatever was causing it to belch like a dyspeptic pensioner.
She climbed out and flipped the seat forward to gather up the first of the plastic carrier bags. She'd linked four of them over her arms and was dragging them out of the car when she heard her name called.
Someone sang it out. "Barbara! Barbara! Look what I've found in the cupboard."
Barbara straightened and glanced in the direction from which the voice had chimed. She saw the young daughter of her neighbour sitting on the weathered wooden bench in front of the ground-floor flat of the old converted building. She'd removed her shoes and was in the process of struggling into a pair of inline skates. Far too large by the look of them, Barbara thought. Hadiyyah was only eight years old and the skates were clearly meant for an adult.
"These're Mummy's," Hadiyyah informed her, as if reading her mind. "I found them in a cupboard, like I said. I've never skated on them before. I expect they're going to be big on me, but I've stuffed them with kitchen towels. Dad doesn't know."