Mirroring him, as she had been doing all evening, copying his exact movements, Jodie leaned across the table towards him. ‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘It is, an amazing coincidence. Sort of meant to be!’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I feel so incredibly comfortable with you. Although these past months we’ve only communicated by email, I feel as if I’ve known you for years.’
‘That’s exactly how I feel about you, too, Rowley,’ she replied.
He leaned back a little.
She leaned back a little.
‘Call me Rollo!’ he said.
‘OK!’ She smiled seductively then added, ‘Rollo!’
‘Have you ever done this dating agency thing before?’ he asked, slightly embarrassed.
‘No, no, I’ve never dared. I’m really a very shy person.’
‘Well, yes, that’s me exactly. I’m immensely shy, too.’
She put her glass down, crossed her arms and leaned forward. Without realizing why, he did exactly the same.
She was leading now and he was following. That was the intention of mirroring. If she bided her time and did it right for long enough, it always worked.
‘I just got so lonely after my husband died,’ she said.
‘Me too, I’ve been very lonely since my wife passed away. We’d moved to Brighton for our retirement, but hardly knew anyone here, other than one close mate who sadly died unexpectedly. A friend of mine convinced me to give internet dating a go. But because of my shyness I couldn’t pluck up the courage to contact any of the people I looked at on the website. Until I saw you. You just looked so warm and friendly in your photo, so I thought, hey, what’s to lose by giving it a go, she can always say no!’
‘That’s exactly what happened with me! A friend convinced me to give it a go. I wasn’t at all sure — and, actually, I didn’t really like the look of anyone who contacted me — until your photo popped up. I thought exactly the same about you! You just looked like someone I could trust. In fact, more than that — I had the most strange feeling — when I looked at your picture I was thinking that you’re a man who would make me feel safe.’ Feigning nervousness, she twiddled with the chain of the silver heart-shaped locket she always wore round her neck.
‘I’m flattered!’
She slipped her hand forward across the table and touched his, gently. ‘I’m glad I plucked up the courage.’
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad. But you know, you wrote in your profile “of a certain age”. I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. I would take a certain age to mean someone in their sixties. You look decades younger than that!’
She grinned. ‘Maybe it’s because I changed my hair! But, hey, I’ve always been attracted to older men,’ she said, and squeezed his hand. ‘So tell me, how did your wife pass away?’
‘Alzheimer’s. She had a particularly brutal strain of it that killed her within five years.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘It was. How about your husband — how did he die?’
‘Cancer. I nursed him for two years. Then he had a bad fall.’
‘A fall. That can be a big setback for elderly or ill people. It can be the thing that precipitates death.’
‘That was exactly the case,’ she replied.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ He shrugged and then gave her a smile that was full of hope. ‘Must have been hard for you. How old was he?’
‘Fifty-two. Started with colon cancer and then it spread everywhere.’
‘Fifty-two? That’s no age.’ He shook his head. ‘You know I’m a lot older than that?’
She smiled. ‘I don’t feel any age difference. And — as I said — there’s something about you, you make me feel secure.’
‘It’s so beautiful that connection I’ve felt through our emails, Jodie. It’s as if I’ve been given a second chance. And now I’ve found you, I would die happy.’
‘Don’t die too soon, please! We’ve only just met.’
‘I’m not planning to,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping to be around for a long time yet!’
She smiled again.
25
Tuesday 24 February
Result! Oh yes, definitely!
Seated in his beat-up Fiat Panda, looking around at his surroundings, at all the flash metal parked in the driveways, Shelby Stonor was suffering serious car envy. He stared longingly at a gleaming Ferrari 488; at a BMW i8; at a white Bentley Continental. His dad, whom he had known only briefly before the bastard had pulped his mother’s face and left home for good, when he was just four years old, had been a car nut. He had named Shelby after one of his idols, the American car designer and racing legend, Carroll Shelby.
Ironic, he thought, that he was now sitting in a vehicle his namesake would not have been seen dead in.
He was dressed in a black anorak and black trousers, over a skin-tight bodysuit and rubber balaclava — something he had learned from watching CSI — to avoid leaving any skin cells or hair that DNA could be obtained from — with black leather gloves and a black beanie. He was parked in the darkness in the street that wound past the secluded mansions of Roedean Crescent with their fine views — in daylight — out across the cliffs to the English Channel.
One of the houses on the most recent Argus Top-20 list was just up to his left. He’d eyed that mansion for over a month, but dismissed it as too difficult. A huge place, lit up by floodlights and protected by electric wrought-iron gates and cameras. A black Range Rover Sport and a matching black Porsche 911 Targa sat ostentatiously on the driveway as if in a further statement of their owners’ wealth. They shouted out, Steal me if you dare! In the hope of getting his five per cent commission, he dutifully texted his mate Dean Warren details of all the cars he had spotted on this prestigious road, including their registrations. Then he turned his focus back to his real reason for being here.
There were several other less swanky but seriously posh houses in this same street. And one in particular was his target for tonight. No. 191. It was set down, below the street, at the end of a short, steep driveway. Mock Tudor, like many of the houses in this city, with leaded-light windows.
He’d been watching its occupant’s movements for some days. She appeared to be a single, rather attractive-looking lady in her mid-thirties, with a nice, almost new dark-blue Mercedes SL500 convertible. He’d texted the registration and address of that car to Dean, also.
The woman hadn’t taken the Merc tonight. She’d left a while ago, looking smart, in a Brighton and Hove Streamline taxi. A nice Skoda Superb. One like he’d be driving soon, if all went to plan! He didn’t know how long she would be gone — but a few hours at least, he presumed.
His years in prison hadn’t all been wasted. He’d picked up a lot of tips and skills from fellow cons. One very valuable bit of information was about the budget cuts to the police service. A decade or so back, response times to burglar alarms could be just a matter of minutes. There was a Languard alarm box prominently on view on the front wall, just below the eaves. These days alarms no longer went through to the police, but instead to call centres which in turn rang keyholders or private security companies rather than the police. Unless you were very unlucky, you could have a good ten to twenty minutes before anyone turned up, and then it was unlikely to be the law — just a security guard. You just had to hold your nerve while the alarm beeped.
But the best tips he’d learned from a fellow con, an old hand at burglary, were to first see what you could learn by sniffing through the letter box, to find an exit route as soon as you were in, and to leave a rear window or door open.