Page 31 of Not That Impossible

I trudged back the way I’d come.

There was more than one way to get to where the action was.

I leaned against my car and contemplated the houses in front of me, calculating roughly where they were in relation to where I’d seen the police cars and vans.

Hmm.

Ray’s house was four, maybe five houses down from where I stood. If I were to do something sneaky like, oh, hop over someone’s garden fence, cut across their lawn and down the side of their house, I’d pop out right opposite Ray’s.

A risk-everything, story-hunting journalist would be halfway there by now.

Unfortunately, I was dithering somewhat at the idea of committing trespass in broad daylight and, if anyone happened to be looking when I emerged onto Sycamore Close, literally in front of the police.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, making me flinch. I pulled it out, saw Ralph’s name, and grimaced as I answered.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m on—”

“I don’t care where you are, you're taking too long. I need something on the website within the hour. I sent Karen Strickland over there. I’ll have to fucking pay her ten times as much as I’d pay you, but it’s that or lose the story. It’s already on Twitter and Facebook. TheOxford Mailwill have it next. Be on fucking TikTok in a minute.”

I sucked in a breath. Mrs Strickland. My fifty-something ex-English teacher, who’d retired a year after I left school, and was now my arch-rival at theInquirer. “I am right here!” I said. “I’ll write you something to post if you just give me a second!”

“You’re too slow, Jasper. You don’t have the killer instinct. You don’t have the bloodlust. I need a terrier. I need a hunter. That’s not you. I gave you a chance, but it’s too late. She’s on the job.”

I clenched my jaw. “Ralph, I will get you that story. I am twenty feet away from the action.”

“Yeah? So’s Karen.”

“She’s lying. If she was here, I’d have seen her—”

I cut off as a small green VW Beetle with a pink flower decal drew up behind my car and parked an inch from my back bumper.

The door opened and Mrs Strickland got out.

“I’ll call you when I’ve got the story,” I said, and hung up. “Mrs Strickland.”

“Jasper.”

We glared at each other.

Okay, I glared at her as she cocked a brow at me, smirked, and strode across the road.

Goddammit. She was stealing my move.

Kind of. The house she’d chosen had a low stone wall with a small gate set in it. She let herself in though the gate, walked up to the back door, and banged on it briskly.

I didn’t waste any time. I bolted over the road to the next house down and vaulted the tall, larch-lap fence.

I landed in a crouch on damp grass and straightened. The garden was mostly lawn, with tidy flowerbeds along the edges and a small patio by a French window at the back.

I ran over the lawn, down the side of the house, and came up against a tall wrought-iron gate.

I tried the handle. It was padlocked.

Well. Trespassing wasn’t a hobby of mine or anything, but this wasn’t my first time, either, so. Up and over it was.

Getting over the gate wasn’t quite as easy as vaulting the fence, but I had the upper body strength of a Royal Marine commando. It wasn’t hard.

Maybe I didn’t quite have the skill of a Royal Marine commando, though.

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