Free Safe House by Chris Ewan Page B

sunglasses were tucked inside my sling and I was clenching the mobile phone in my hand. The casing of the mobile was damp and coated in mud and pine needles. I was afraid it would buzz again before I got to Rebecca and I didn’t know how to react if it did.
    I was sure the sunglasses and the phone belonged to Mr Shades. The sunglasses were distinctive enough for me to remember and the phone looked a lot like the one I’d seen him with. It had a colour screen and a full Qwerty keypad. Laura had owned a phone just like it.
    I was at the edge of the garden by now. Rocky had streaked ahead of me and around the front of the cottage, but I waded through the undergrowth towards the kitchen windows. I pressed my face to the dirt-streaked glass. Rebecca was standing on a chair, reaching up to the light-fitting in the middle of the ceiling. She had a pocket knife in her hand. She stretched high, rising up on her toes inside the blue plastic overshoes, the hem of her T-shirt hitching up. I waited until she’d pulled the knife clear and regained her balance before knocking.
    She swung around sharply, then placed a gloved hand over her chest when she saw it was me. She stepped down from the chair and opened the kitchen door, and I explained about the sunglasses and the phone. Rebecca took them from me and turned them in her hands, her lips twisted in thought.
    ‘Why didn’t you come and get me?’ she asked.
    ‘I didn’t want to forget where they were.’
    ‘You touched these with your bare hands.’
    It was a statement, not a question. I felt myself shrink.
    She shook her head, then pressed a button with her gloved thumb, cycling through the lighted display. ‘The only thing stored on this phone are the missed calls. All of them came from a withheld number.’ She hummed. Smiled flatly. ‘Someone’s very keen to get in touch with the owner of this phone.’
    ‘And you wouldn’t leave something like that behind, right?’ I said. ‘And if you were heading away from this place, you wouldn’t go in that direction. It just takes you deeper into the woods.’
    ‘Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted.’
    I met her eyes. Blinked. I was about to say something more when Rocky flew past my legs and blitzed by Rebecca into the kitchen. She turned and yelled at him to get out. He considered her for a moment, head on an angle, then danced left, jinked right, and dashed around to the end of the table.
    ‘Rocky,’ I said. ‘Come here. That’s bad. You’re a bad boy.’
    He smiled his goofy smile. Wagged his tail.
    ‘Well trained,’ Rebecca said bitterly.
    ‘It’s not his fault.’
    ‘No. You’re right.’ She glared at me, then seemed to lose interest in it. Her shoulders sagged and she pushed the door open wider. ‘You might as well come in, too. I’ve stuck my head in every room and the place is definitely unoccupied. But there’s something you should see.’
    Her plastic overshoes crinkled as she led me towards the pine kitchen table. Several items were collected together on the scarred wooden surface. Electrical wires and hunks of plastic. A flexible, transparent cable with a bead of glass at one end. A tiny microphone bud. The pocket knife I’d seen her using, with one blade folded out.
    ‘This place is bugged,’ she said.
    ‘You’re kidding.’
    She set the mobile phone and the sunglasses down on the table and picked up the bendy cable. ‘I found this in the housing for the smoke alarm. It’s a surveillance camera. The microphone was behind the clock on the wall over there.’ She pointed at the clock in question. ‘I think there’s another behind the light fitting.’
    I swallowed. Lowered my voice. ‘Are we being listened to now?’
    ‘I doubt it.’
    My skull was tingling. It felt like there were eyes on me. Watching us.
    ‘Who would have put this stuff here?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t know for sure. But they were professionals. So far, I’ve only checked this room and the garage and I’ve found at