‘Come in,’ she replied.
‘Oh, that’s so got to be our man,’ said Jack. He and James were walking briskly, side by side, along the pavement from the space where they’d left the SUV. Over a box hedge, they could see a young, suited man chatting to a homeowner in a front doorway.
‘What do we do?’ asked James.
‘Ruin his day and queer his pitch,’ replied Jack. They arrived at the gate. ‘Excuse me,’ Jack called pleasantly.
The woman in the doorway squinted at them from her doorway. The young man in the suit who had been talking to her turned slowly. He eyed Jack and James warily.
‘I don’t want to cause a scene,’ said Jack, ‘but could we have a quiet word?’
‘A quiet word?’ asked the woman.
‘With your friend here?’ Jack indicated.
The young man looked from James to Jack quickly, weighed his options, and then bolted. He vaulted the front garden wall and began to run away down the street.
‘Oi!’ cried the woman.
‘Sorry to trouble you!’ Jack called back to her as he and James gave chase. The young man in the suit was really moving. Head back, arms pumping, sprinting like a maniac.
James was leading Jack by three or four yards. ‘Go left!’ he yelled as they passed the turning to some backyard garages.
Coat flying, Jack broke left up the unmade track. James kept on, flying after their quarry. Left at the next corner, James willed, just turn left and you’ll run smack into Jack.
The young man in the suit turned right and took off across the road.
‘Damn!’ James barked, and continued to pound after him, crossing the street diagonally behind a slow-moving car. He was force to halt sharply in the middle of the road to let another car go by the other way. By the time James had reached the far side and begun to pick up speed again, the young man in the suit was leaving him behind. James tried to up his pace, but the young man was putting increasing distance between them.
Jack ran out of the garage standing and back onto the street at the top. No sign of their quarry. Still running, he turned right and, in a moment or two, caught sight of James up head of him, running flat out away from him down the tree-lined avenue.
‘James!’
James didn’t appear to hear him. Much further away, with a good thirty-yard lead on James already, Jack could see the young man in the suit, leaning as he turned left again.
Jack crossed the road, edging between the cars parked under the trees, his feet slipping on wet leaves, and set off down a left-hand street running parallel to their target’s flight path. If the young man in the suit doubled back, Jack would nab him around the next corner.
A man walking a dog frowned at Jack as Jack bombed past.
‘Afternoon!’ Jack called. Twenty yards to the corner, then right. He jinked around two men carrying an old bath out to a skip. He reached the corner, and skidded around it.
Jack’s intercept prediction had almost been bang on. Left to his own devices, the young man in the suit would have doubled back again, and run headlong into Jack coming the other way.
But the young man in the suit hadn’t made it that far. A few yards in from the opposite street corner, James had him pressed against the wall in an arm-lock.
Jack trotted up, breathing hard. The young man was struggling and mouthing off.
‘Be still!’ James told him. He looked around at Jack. ‘Got him,’ he said.
‘How?’ asked Jack
‘I ran like a bastard and caught up with him,’ said James. ‘How do you think? Be still, I said!’
‘Last time I saw you pair, he had thirty yards on you,’ said Jack, panting.
‘All in the finish,’ James replied. ‘He went off too early. Soon as he began to flag, I had him. It’s pacing, Jack, pacing.’
‘My ass it is. He was flying.’
‘Are you going to help?’ James asked. The young man in the suit was struggling harder.
‘Get your hands off me! Get your filthy hands off me! I know my rights! Police brutality!’
‘Turn him round,’ Jack instructed. James manhandled the wriggling young man around to face him. The young man was sweaty and flushed, sucking painful breaths in after his exertions.
‘You think we’re police?’ Jack asked him.
‘Get your hands off me!’ the young man replied.
‘Do you think we’re the police?’ Jack asked him again, more slowly and deliberately this time.
‘Y-yes?’
‘Boy,’ smiled Jack. ‘This is going to be fun.’
They walked back to the SUV.
‘OK,’ Jack admitted. ‘Not so much fun as I’d hoped. Or success.’
‘You sure we should have let him go?’ asked James.
‘I’m telling you, that wasn’t our guy.’
James pursed his lips. ‘Unless, of course, he was, and he just hypnotised us the way he hypnotises his other victims, and we fell for it. Did you consider that?’
‘Come on, that moron couldn’t have hypnotised a… a…’
‘A what?’
‘Something that gets hypnotised very easily,’ Jack replied, fishing the carkeys out of his coat.
‘So you’re certain it wasn’t the man we’re looking for?’
‘You saw him as well as I did,’ said Jack, slightly plaintively, ‘You heard him. He was just a chancer, trying to case likely-looking homes by pretending to be doing a consumer survey. No cover story is that believably lame.’
‘I suppose. He did seem scared.’
‘Too right he was scared. Petty housebreaker, messing with me. Shame though, I thought he was the one.’ Jack blip-blipped the key fob to unlock the SUV and they got in.
‘Did he hit you?’ Jack asked.
‘What?’
‘While he was struggling? Did he catch you?’
‘What? Why?’ James replied.
‘Your nose is bleeding a little there.’
‘Huh? Oh, yeah, I think he did.’
It wasn’t yet three o’clock. Even with the secret, that was good going. Once you had them, you had to ease them in the direction you wanted them to go in, very gently. Some visits, that was slow going. Dean imagined it was a bit like steering a punt, although he’d never actually done that. He’d seen it on telly, however. Some fly-on-the-wall about arsehole toffs, punting.
Sometimes, during a visit, they resisted, due to inhibitions he didn’t yet understand. Sometimes, he had to apply quite a lot of effort to get them moving the way he wanted them to go. Occasionally, there was nothing to get a purchase on, nothing but soft mud when he sank his punting pole in, so to speak.
Dean thought he ought to write a seminar. He could train people to use the secret, and he’d heard there was really big money in sales training. Not that he was about to give the secret away to anyone, of course. It was his.
Dean came out of number eight, and said goodbye to Mrs Menzies. She seemed very pleased with her imaginary loft insulation and replacement windows. Dean was certainly very pleased with the eight hundred and sixty-six not-imaginary-at-all pounds he’d been given by Mrs Menzies. He’d made sure to collect up all his bits of paper, all the forms he’d had her sign, here and here and here. They were only mail-away coupons and inserts from magazines, but the client always saw pukka, press-hard-you’re-making-four-copies contract blanks. He tried not to ever leave any behind, but if he did, no one would give them a second look.
He walked down the street, whistling. He waited to cross back to his vehicle, and allowed some traffic to go by. A couple of saloon cars, a hatchback, then a monster black 4x4, a Porsche Cayenne or a Range Rover. It had gone past before he’d got a proper eyeful. Tasty. That’s what he wanted next. A really nice ride like that. Yes sir.