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Layman turned his head sharply. “Miss Farnsworth was here?”
Yates picked up the change in tone and frowned. “Yes, she and one of her colleagues meet for lunch in Holland Park most days, but the rain forced them to take shelter under the awning. The robbery happened right in front of them.”
“That’s twice in two days,” Layman said.
“Eh?” Yates looked confused.
“Miss Farnsworth and I are . . .” James cleared his throat. “I’m actually . . . stepping out with her. And we were witness to another robbery like this last night. Which is when DI Layman met her.”
“Is that so?” PS Yates looked tickled at the notion. “Well, she’s got a sharp eye and made sure to see which direction the robbers ran off in, so that was a real help.”
“That is helpful,” Layman conceded.
“Her job is to walk the streets of this neighborhood,” Yates said with a shrug. “All my lads know her, she’s got a good head on her shoulders, and she passes on concerns to us all the time.”
Layman had no comeback to that, and James forced himself not to shoot a grateful look Yates’s way.
“So the target was the contents of the van?” James steered the conversation onto safer ground.
Yates nodded. “They grabbed the letter collection from the post office, and ran off with the bags.”
“What does the post office reckon is the value of what they got away with?” Hartridge had wandered over to them.
“At least a couple of thousand,” Yates said. “So not bad for about five minutes of work.”
“And which way did Miss Farnsworth say they went?” Layman asked.
“Down to the corner,” Yates pointed, “and then to the right. I’ve got my lads out and about, asking people what they saw.”
“Probably had a get away car,” James said. “They wouldn’t want to run too far carrying two big postal bags.”
“No.” Layman squinted a little as he looked in the direction Yates had pointed. “We need to know what they were driving, and if the bullet is from the same gun as the other three incidents, then we need to know what in blazes is going on.”
The sounds from the floor below told Sarah that Pete and Robby had returned.
She gathered from the laughing that they had been successful.
She stood by the door at the bottom of the stairs, locked in from the other side, and tried to hear what was happening.
She and Jerry were shut up on the top floor, in the old servants’ quarters from back when this was a grand old house, and that made it hard to hear exactly what was being said. Her room was at the back of the house, looking out into the rear garden, most likely so she couldn’t wave at passersby and attract attention.
Last night she’d recalled that a lot of these old mansions had a narrow servants’ staircase at the back, which allowed servants to access the kitchen and house without being seen on the main staircase, and she’d mentioned it to Jerry.
They had been discretely knocking on walls, looking for it, ever since.
The windows in her room and Jerry’s were small and barred, and any hopes she’d originally had to climb out of one and find a way down to the ground had died when she’d grasped the bars and they hadn’t so much as rattled.
At least they had their own bathroom, although it faced the side of the next door house, and its window was even smaller and set high on the wall.
Robby’s mother reigned supreme on the ground floor, where she had her bedroom, sitting room, and kitchen, as well as the dining room where the three of them ate their meals.
The floor above had been mostly stripped of furniture, and in some cases, walls. Sarah still hadn’t worked out what the original plan had been, but Pete and Robby slept on cot beds in the rooms to the left of the staircase.
They’d set up the plates and machinery for counterfeiting bank notes that they’d taken from her father’s office in what had probably once been two decent sized bedrooms on the right, now completely stripped of walls on all sides except the outer wall of the house. They’d made an effort to conceal it from view, mostly from Robby’s mother who occasionally ventured halfway up the stairs to call them to dinner, by hanging plastic sheeting along the ceiling, and there was some plywood covering the big window facing the street, although the side window was at least uncovered and let in natural light.
She got the sense Robby’s mother thought they were renovating, but didn’t really care how much progress they were making as long as they didn’t require her to pay anything for it or be bothered with the logistics.
Jerry had been given the room next door to hers, also facing the back garden. It was the only other room on their floor beside the bathroom that wasn’t locked. He ventured out, appearing at the top of the stairs, she assumed out of curiosity for what she was doing.
