Ventriloquists by David Mathew Read Free Book Online Page A

what might be the best way to move it quietly back down the street to the van without its rattling waking up all of the neighbours) but Dorman paid it no mind. ‘Conservatory,’ he muttered; ‘nice job.’ With which he started work with a different sized pick.
    Connors leaned towards the conservatory’s glass. Not too close, of course – he had heard of burglars being convicted on the basis of a nose-print on glass, and although he didn’t know this to be true he was not willing to take any chances – but close enough to see what was inside. The conservatory was obviously a chill-out area. An upright piano; some up-market loungers; a small bookcase filled with volumes whose titles Connors could not read in the darkness and which would have meant little to him, even if he had been able to see them clearly.
    Dorman swore under his breath. ‘New locks,’ he explained elliptically. The more modern the door, it seemed, the more difficult life was for honest professionals in the burgling game. Why, Dorman thought from time to time, it was almost as if no one wanted to be burgled anymore! What was the bloody world coming to?
    ‘...Hell’s that noise?’ Connors asked quietly.
    ‘Ssshhh.’ Dorman removed his glass-cutter from the same belt, taking care to replace the picks in their original place.
    ‘Seriously, Dorman. Can’t you hear it? It’s inside...’
    Either prompted by the questions or because the information had filtered through his determination and work ethic anyway, Dorman said, his voice similarly low, ‘Sounds like water.’
    Indeed it did: like water, not merely running (it was no babbling brook somewhere close, the acoustics distorted by the pristine silence of the early hours) but surging . Water pounding . But against what? And from where?
    Connors said, ‘I don’t like this...’
    Dorman didn’t like it either, but he didn’t like the notion of failing Massimo even more. By applying the glass-cutter to the area around the conservatory door lock he hoped to blot out what the two of them could hear. Then something unignorable caught his eye. He looked up.
    The two of them watched spellbound and speechless as the wave approached them. The conservatory was a vast TV screen, but this show would only be a few seconds long.
    The wave had smashed through the house and was now going to tear its way through the conservatory. Dorman stared into the glass as if it had just asked him to dance.
    Connors started to back away, stumbling deeper into the garden. ‘Dorman, move !’ he shouted as the tsunami inside the house – inside the house ! – made contact with the front of the glass shell, pushing out with tons of force. Dorman was hypnotised; he was skewered to his spot on the patio paving, a glass-cutter in his hand and something imbecilic on his face.
    The noise was astounding. As the wave smashed through the glass, the sound was close to deafening; on currents of sound shards and sheets of the broken glass exploded outwards.
    Moving in a mixed choreography of backward stomping and crab-walk, Connors had made it to a spot nearly ten metres away before he dared to look again past the forearm he was using to shield his face instinctively. Although his brain registered the presence of flying glass in the air, his full attention was claimed by his work partner. Dorman hadn’t shifted his position one iota: but he did now. No choice in the matter: the ceiling-high wall of water had caught him full frontal; he was lifted off his feet in time for his face to meet the hypotenuse of a perfectly right-angled slice of glass, approximately the size of a trumpet. Through the water Connors was able to see the glass slice into Dorman’s face. The top of the man’s head was sheared off as neatly as the top of a boiled egg, and his scalp, forehead, eyes and the bridge of his nose landed in a wet red parcel in a raised bed of courgettes that were being grown. Dorman’s body sailed the sea for a few more metres,