Chapter 18

 

 

Billy rang the doorbell. The ring sounded loud inside the massive white house, even behind the heavy, pastel pink painted door. Billy had slipped in unobserved - the estate was named Gormwell, and it was surrounded by a low drystone wall - for the sleepy, bucolic fields and villages of Big Cidering were hardly ever troubled by interlopers of any kind. Clearly, Billy had not understood what was expected of him when Bumford had asked him to ‘case the joint’.

When Baden opened the door and found a surly, straggly, unkempt rat of a man who he recognised but could not exactly place, he failed to hide his shock. Normally, Baden epitomised what it meant to be nonplussed, but his mouth popped open in an ‘O’ shape, his eyes widened so that the grey-blue irises, surrounded with watery, milky white sclera bulged as the spat word, ‘What!’ forced itself through lips not quite prepared to utter it. Composing himself he continued, outraged, ‘What the bloody devil do you think you a