Free Rainstone Fall by Peter Helton Page A

strongbox again. He missed it. He missed the frisson, the challenge of pitting his wits and gadgets against a safe. No gas axe or Semtex for Tim. He looked more interested already.
    I walked to the map by the side of the door. The other two followed and I pointed to roughly where I remembered the house to be. ‘Big place somewhere round here, overlooking Charlcombe Valley.’
    ‘Okay, what are we waiting for then?’ Tim pulled me away by the sleeve. ‘Get your binoculars and take me there.’
    Despite the obvious dangers of the project I couldn’t help feeling the current of excitement that crackled inside Tim’s car as he slowly drove his Audi TT along the narrow Charlcombe Lane. Annis had chosen the back seat and had an elbow each on the backrests of our seats. She was humming to herself. I was cradling the big binoculars and Tim was happily twiddling buttons on his modified dashboard. From the outside Tim’s car appeared like any other black Audi TT but inside it had acquired a lot more dials and gadgets than were strictly necessary for the purpose of locomotion. The thing looked like it had been kitted out by Q and vertical take-off wouldn’t have surprised me much.
    ‘Stop here,’ I told him as we came to a row of low white cottages on our left. We had come up the lane from the Larkhall side and just beyond the last cottage the view opened up across the little valley. Tim pulled into the drive of the deserted-looking place and we got out. I handed him the bins and pointed up at the hill on the opposite side.
    ‘See the large cuboid thing high above Charlcombe Manor? That’s it.’
    He trained the binoculars at the hillside. ‘Ehm . . . quite . . . gloomy over there.’
    I reached up and took the plastic lens caps off for him.
    ‘Ah, much clearer like that,’ he agreed. ‘Oh yeah, got it. Ugly place. Mostly glass and concrete. Big, though, and the garden is massive . . . high hedges all around . . . one hell of a slope. No immediate neighbours. What’s it like on the other side?’
    ‘Much the same,’ I said. ‘A private little road, maybe a couple of hundred yards long between hedgerows. I’ve driven past the turn-off but have never been near the actual place.’
    ‘Definitely a night job. Look at all that glass, they’d have to be blind not to see us coming. That’s probably why they bought the place.’ He checked his watch. ‘Dark soon, we’ll go and have a closer look then.’
    Annis took her turn at the binoculars. ‘Best way is up through the fields, I reckon. We’ll have to find out what the routine is up at the house.’ She handed the bins to me. ‘Did you mention something about Thursday?’
    ‘Yes, the voice said he’s playing cards at the Blathwayt Arms, the pub by the race course.’ I put the glasses to my eyes and had a good look at the Telfer house. Tim was right, there was an awful lot of glass, all along the ground floor, facing the garden, then the wrap-around terrace on the first floor was backed by enormous picture windows set between strips of concrete. With all that glass, how difficult could it be to get in there? The garden was very large, giving ample space around the house. There were trees and island beds and ponds, lots of places to hide but also a lot of ground to cover before you got anywhere near the house proper.
    ‘Okay, if Thursday is a good day we’ll do it Thursday. It’s Sunday now, that gives us three days to get ourselves organized,’ Tim suggested.
    I let the glasses wander downhill from the property. A long line of hedgerow, a couple of solitary oaks, a few fences, three grey horses and a man with binoculars. Looking straight at me. A man wearing some kind of hat and a waxed jacket. Could have been a bird watcher. Could have been that the menace of this solitary figure, which transmitted itself right across the valley, was all in my mind. Yet it sent my heart hammering with sudden anxiety. I took the glasses away from my eyes to get the context.