Page 79 of Hang on St. Christopher

No, it bloody couldn’t. And there were no bite marks.

I went next door and rang the doorbell.

Mrs. Campbell answering it in a housecoat with rollers in her hair.

“Oh, Mr. Duffy! I had no idea it was going to be you,” she said, alarmed. “I’m not decent.”

“You look lovely, Mrs. C. Look, I was wondering, you weren’t over at the house today, were you?”

“No, not I. Why, has someone been in there? Is it the Gypsies? There’s a group of Gypsies going ’round, stealing stuff. When you’re out at the rag-and-bone cart, their wee boy comes down your chimney and makes off with your TV.”

“How do they get the TV up the ch... Never mind. So you weren’t over today, were you?”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you.”

I jumped over the fence.

“They have ropes and a pulley, Mr. Duffy. It happened to old Mrs. Anderson at the?—”

“See you, Mrs. C,” I said. Then I closed the front door, took the Glock out of the shoulder holster, and held it two-handed in front of me while I checked the downstairs rooms. Living room, dining room, kitchen, washhouse... all clear.

I went upstairs and checked the bedrooms. Those were clear too. I went into the back bedroom, which served as my office. I looked at the papers on the desk.

Apple PowerBook. Printer. The novel I’d been reading (Oscar and Lucinda) upside down next to the computer. From the patterns of dust on the table, it was evident that it had all been moved and then put meticulously (but not 100 percent faithfully) back.

I thought about that skinhead eejit. No, if he had come over to my house to fuck with me, he’d have smashed everything up. Shat on the living room table—that was their style.

I opened the drawer next to the desk. Someone had been through that too.

I stood up and walked away from the desk.

It was the Gene Hackman crapping himself in his apartment moment fromThe Conversation.

Someone had been in here, had gone through all my stuff, and had tried to leave as light a step as possible—and would have succeeded were I not a paranoid git. They were pros, not the usual clumsy, inept local hoods. If I hadn’t been looking, I wouldn’t have seen hide or hair of them.

Who were they, and what did they want?

Was it related to the case I was working on right now?

Breaking into my house had been a hell of a thing to do.

Over the back fence and in through the back door when it was obvious I wasn’t coming home.

Hmmm.

Ballsy.

What would be their next move?

You wouldn’t go through my stuff, read the files on my computer, look through my books and records, and then just leave, would you? No, you wouldn’t do that if you were a professional. No, you’d leave a bug, wouldn’t you? Possibly on the computer or in the telephone. The computer, I’d be clueless to figure out. If he had introduced a new piece of hardware or a malicious piece of code, I’d never be able to sort that. But the phone was a different matter.

I walked downstairs and unscrewed the plastic mouthpiece from the phone. I pulled out the microphone, and there between the copper wires was a shiny new transmitter the size of a AAA battery.

A bug.

I stared at it for a while, wondering what to do.

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