Ventriloquists by David Mathew Read Free Book Online

broad in the beam. The look of a man who was serious when he arrived at the gym. A ratty face: something rodent about the small nose. He was wearing a navy tracksuit and a pair of formerly white trainers, now stained beige by mud or puddles.
    Bernadette had no way of knowing it, but these two men were about to change her life for the worse.
    Behind her, Chris snuffled in his sleep. Bernadette turned to watch him, to calm him; she believed that a loving unbroken gaze could soothe him when he suffered the nightfears, and on this occasion it worked too. If Chris had been worming his way up out of cover, Bernadette’s patient attention – her bedside manner no less – coaxed him back down again. Simultaneously his mouth and his rectum emitted proximate noises. Then he settled, and Bernadette returned to the scene on the road below.
    Then Chelsea started barking downstairs.
    Then the doorbell rang.
    Chris lifted his head from the pillow. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘I’ll get it.’ Bernadette wanted this first hand, not reported back to her. She’d be safe enough: Chelsea had always been a good guard dog. Hadn’t tonight’s events, and Chelsea’s performance therein, proved as much?
    All the same, Bernadette took the phone from the charger cradle on the bedside table. She thumbed 999. All it would take was a thumb on the green button to send the alarm. With the phone in her hand she pulled on her dressing gown as Chris sat up in bed.
    ‘Hell’s that at this time of night?’ Chris demanded, his voice slurred with half-dissolved sleep.
    ‘It’s nothing. Probably someone lost.’ Bernadette stepped onto the landing (the floorboards creaked reliably) and skipped down the flight, to where she saw Chelsea fronting up to the door. ‘It’s all right, girl.’
    The dog turned. This was better, the eyes seemed to say as they watched Mistress descend. The bark altered: something friendlier now; something less territorial.
    Aware that Chris was behind her – at the top of the stairs, in his dressing gown – Bernadette took a breath and opened the door.
    8.
    A matter of minutes later, and Dorman and Connors were on their way down the road to Number 11. ‘That weren’t too tricky,’ Connors conceded.
    ‘Told you. Now comes the hard part. They might be back from the funeral by now.’
    ‘In which case...’
    ‘In which case we might need to rethink. But let’s look on the bright side, eh?’
    ‘There’s a bright side?’ Connors asked.
    Aside from some differences in external decorative styles, Number 11 appeared much the same as Number 77. There were no lights on inside.
    ‘Did you notice,’ the younger man continued, ‘she didn’t even seem flustered. She’s had her home broken into and you’re showing her a bite on your bum – and she’s not lifted an eyebrow.’
    ‘Your point being?’ Dorman enquired.
    ‘They’re hiding something.’
    ‘Well I know that . Stands to reason, mate! But what they do in the privacy of their own house is none of our business tonight. Are you focused?’
    ‘Course I’m focused.’
    ‘Good.’ Dorman opened his jacket: the tools of his trade were neatly contained in a strap that he wore aslant his chest. He removed a set of picks on a ring. ‘Round the back again,’ he decided, and he set off across the front lawn to address the gate that would lead to the garden at the rear. The gate was made of wrought iron, the pieces in floral shapes. A padlock held the gate in place, and wordlessly Dorman set to the padlock with one of the picks. Just as Connors was about to tell him that it would be simplicity itself to climb over the gate, the lock sprung and Dorman pushed the gate wide. The two of them followed the path; it was bordered with brown pots of various flowers that meant nothing to either man. The back garden was tidy and trimmed. The homeowners had left the lawnmower out (Connors wondered parenthetically if this could be what Massimo was so desperate to receive, and