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Jesse took a breath, lowered the driver’s window and buzzed the intercom.
“Yes?” came the crackling reply.
“Security contractors here to check the surveillance system.” Jesse was pleased his voice was steady. He watched the camera over the gate move to focus on the van.
“We don’t use external contractors,” the voice eventually replied.
“I don’t know what to tell you, mate. You’re on my call sheet. Check with Kingston.”
“Wait one moment, please.”
Jesse tapped his phone and launched his radio intercept program. There was a nerve-wracking moment of silence in which Trixy clenched her fists but then, finally, it crackled to life.
“Mr. Kingston, sir?” the same voice from the intercom came through the app.
Jesse swallowed and tapped play on his queued recording. “What?” snapped an irritable, rasping voice.
A pause. “Uh, is that you, sir?”
Jesse fumbled for another recording. “What do you want?”
“Sorry, sir,” replied the first voice. “We’ve got someone at the back gate. Says he’s here to check the security system. I’ve found them on the works schedule all right but wanted to check—”
Jesses queued his last recording and sent up a prayer.
“If it’s on the fucking schedule, it’s on the schedule. I’m busy.”
A burst of static then silence.
Trixy gnawed her lip. Jesse clutched the steering wheel. Finally, the gate clicked and began rolling open.
“Fuck yeah.” Trixy grinned as they entered. “How did you even do that?”
“Downloaded audio samples of the security chief from online videos,” Jesse said as he steered through the snow-covered grounds.
“He sounds charming.”
“That was some of his milder stuff,” Jesse said.
“Sounds like your type. Perhaps you should ask him out when this is over.” Jesse gave her a look, but she was staring out of the windshield. “Whoa,” she breathed. They had crested a rise and the back of Oswald House rose into view. “Fuck me. How the other half lives.”
“A good lot less than half, I think,” Jesse muttered as he stared at the three-story mansion. He parked in a space between other work vehicles lined beside a long outbuilding and climbed out. The sounds of horses stamping and the smell of hay and manure filtered through the open doors. The house rose up beyond, its walls broken by floor-to-ceiling windows, all obscured by heavy blinds. The roof was shining slate, covered with solar panels, steam gently rising as the snow melted from them. A wide patio area could be glimpsed down the side, punctuated with red-brick fire pits and covered garden furniture.
A woman on a quad bike braked to a halt at the edge of the lawn to their right, looking at them through the blank glass of snow goggles as Jesse retrieved his bag from the back of the van. Jesse looked away and closed the van then made straight for the large man with a very obvious bulge under his coat who stood at the service entrance.
He continued to survey them for a long time after they’d reached him.
“ID?”
Jesse produced his fake laminated card. Trixy did the same. The man examined them closely, turning them over in his hands and checking both sides. Then he took out his phone and photographed both the cards before handing them back.
“They’re expecting you in the security room,” he muttered, swiped a card and typed a code into the keypad. The doors clicked and he pushed them open.
Jesse moved inside, trying not to hurry, Trixy following.
It was very dim inside, lit only by a thin strip of LEDs in the ceiling.
“Dummy footage should be rolling…now,” Jesse murmured, glancing up at the camera over the door and double-checking the feed on his phone. It showed the corridor they were in, completely empty. “We got about twenty minutes before they start wondering why we didn’t go to the security room.”
