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tugged at the corner of an MDF panel and a rotten chunk broke off into his hand. This would too easy and offered him nothing.
    The windows were dark. He did a quick reorientation: he had passed this house many times and seen a ‘For Sale’ sign nailed to the gatepost. He recalled that an old man lived here. He did not fit Jack’s profile; he didn’t offer him a home or look like a murderer. And now perhaps he had died or gone into a home. Jack was losing his touch.
    He continued down the passage.
‘When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?’
    Someone with a window open might catch his lilting tones on the night breeze.
    A break in a pyracantha hedge was the challenge he craved. The hedge was planted to curb the likes of him. Through spiky branches he saw an outbuilding.
    White light drenched the scene. A security lamp. He kept still and dropped his singing to a low whistle. After a while the light went out. When the yellow blob faded from his retina Jack made out the lamp fixed to guttering above French doors. He noted every detail: the outbuilding, the garden laid to lawn. The doors were ajar. It was a cold night and they were open? A sign; certainly an invitation. No gravel to give away his approach. Perfect.
    He pulled his coat over his head and, keeping low, pushed through the branches and stepped on to the lawn. The light came on. He crouched in a ball but, as he expected, no one came out. People got blasé and assumed an animal had triggered the light. He dressed in black to merge with the night.
    Again the light went out and, coat flying, head down, Jack skimmed along the edge of the lawn and flattened himself against the house wall. The security lamp did not cover the patio. How often had he observed expensive alarm systems not activated, top-of-the-range locks on the latch while their owners popped out to water plants or fetch shopping from the car? This one was asking for him.
    Tonight there was no moonlight; Jack had consulted the application on his phone in readiness. Yet in London it was never truly dark. Glistening leaves of the cherry laurel hedge were etched by a silver sheen from the street-lit sky. He edged up to the doors and peered in. A sitting room was brightly lit, the décor muted and bland. It reminded him of Stella Darnell’s flat. There the similarity ended. Stella was regimentally tidy, while here papers and files were spread out on a coffee table, on a sofa facing the garden and over a dining table with document boxes stacked on chairs. The only place free of stuff was a wide-screen television, the centrepiece of a glossy black console that also housed a DVD and a hi-fi system.
    Jack felt a burst of euphoria and stopped himself singing. In films and books, villains disguised by balaclavas spied through windows or plied doors with long blades and sneaked inside. No one believed it would happen to them. Until it did. This had been handed to him on a plate.
    He gave a start. A woman was sitting feet from him. She was looking straight at him. Jack ducked back against the stuccoed wall. He counted to ten and then inched around. The woman was still staring, but not at him. Light from the room would blot out the garden; she could not see him. She must have become aware of her own reflection because she put her hand to her face and brushed back a strand of hair, patting it into place. She was at a desk and now began leafing through papers strewn there, occasionally jotting something down in a notebook.
    Keeping below the sightline of the security lamp, he flitted to the other side of the doors, truly excited now. An ample marble mantelpiece below which flickered the flames of a fire. He sighed; he could sit cross-legged on the rug in front of the hearth and make himself at home. His attention was drawn to a picture above the mantelpiece: a middle-aged man with unruly grey hair in a matching grey suit. The modern image, a scan of a