Thick and Fast Read online

much older now, in great need of repair. Weeds grew out of the roof tiles and had blocked the guttering, so the rain water was forced to spill out and run down the walls leaving dark, streaky stains as if the place had been crying. Some of the window panes were cracked, and the shutters badly needed painting. The late Mrs. Haute would never have let the place run to rot like this.

  Still, the gardens were looking magnificent. They had been designed by some famous landscape gardener, quite an expensive authority at the time though Ambrose couldn't remember his name now, or when it had been initiated, or if this was the original design, or if there had been a remodelling over the years. It had all been explained and discussed in the long summer nights at Haute House, but he had trouble retaining information, especially if it were in the slightest way technical, or historical, or anything that smacked of school subjects. Brendan had been responsible for all that until his retirement. Now it would be Brendan's son. Or grandson, even. They could charge people to come and see this, he thought, there was not a tree or a plant that was not at its best, perfectly pruned and trimmed. The man had been a genius in his own way, he meant Brendan, and it looked like it ran in the family.

  The white painted door with its round brass door knob was locked, so he smashed his elbow through one of the six frosted glass panes of the door. Nothing. This was to be his second pause. If a new alarm had been put in, it may just be that it did not ring there and then, not in the house itself. It had sounded odd to Ambrose, but Spotty had assured him such things existed, and he should know. He had told Ambrose of infra-red rays and heat detectors, amazing technology that could pick up a mouse breathing under the floorboards and work out its weight and average speed, all carried out in perfect silence. The idea was to let the burglar think he was safe, giving time for the cops, or some private security firm, to get over there and catch the poor bastard red-handed. So he now had to go back to the garages and wait, preferably down by the hedge, and see if anybody turned up. Give it ten minutes, have a smoke if you like, care-full-y, he had said. If nothing has happened by then, you're in.

  When George Ork had been asked 'what do you do?', he had always wanted to answer, 'oh, I go for a run on Sundays, and I like to have a little bet on the horses now and then, not too much, just enough to feel a win would be great, but that losing wouldn't be the end of the world. And you?' Instead he said he was an electrician. That information was supposed to help describe him, to give an idea of his worth, of his position in society. It was something he had never got used to. He could never understand why his occupation should be of so much interest, or use, to everyone. In his time he had been a student, an amateur boxer, an insurance salesman, a dishwasher, an apprentice car mechanic-cum-painter, and finally an electrician. His wife Peggy had been a secretary, a housewife, a part-time cleaner. They had ridden up and down the social scale depending on circumstances, receiving either acceptance and congratulations (I'm in insurance and my wife works for a legal firm), or condolences and resignation (I spray-paint bodywork and my wife is a cleaner). So when he had realised that Ambrose would not be taking his place in the hall of fame and fortune, he had decided to teach him a trade so that he would have something to add as an appendage to his surname. From that moment on Ambrose was to accompany him whenever possible, and even if it took forever, the boy was to learn the basics of electricity.

  As suspected the burglar alarm had effectively been neutralised, so he went back to the door, put his hand, carefully, don't leave any DNA, through the smashed glass, and tried to open it from the inside. He had vaguely hoped that whoever was now in charge of such things would have left the key in the lock, just as he used to do when had worked there, but it was not to be; he would have to force his way in after all. He went back to the garage area and snooped around until he found something he hoped would do the trick. With the aid of a large stone and a thick, short piece of metal, by the look of it part of some kind of gardening tool, he managed, not without breaking into a sweat, to gouge open a gash in the woodwork on the inside of the door frame, and then with a huge push he was in.

  At that moment his father would have smiled, sighed, and punched him on the shoulder. 'You see, it's not so difficult after all.' By which he had meant that everything in life was a matter of memorising sequences. If you started at the beginning, then methodically, with full concentration, followed the steps one by one, you could not help but end up with a completed task, a job well done. It was like counting. Start at one, don't skip any numbers, keep going steadily, and you'll get to a hundred in no time. Even Ambrose could do it. Maybe not the first time, maybe not even after god knows how many attempts, maybe not until his father had sworn at him, told him to pay attention, called him a useless, good for nothing idiot, thrown the wire cutters at him, pulled out his hair in exasperation and cursed the day he had been born. But eventually, through patience and the sheer bloody-mindedness of his tutor, Ambrose had been taught the elementary concepts. Now he had broken into a supposedly burglar-proof mansion, was crushing broken glass under his work boots, and the alarm had not gone off. He imagined the experts scratching their heads and saying, with a British, scientific accent, 'remarkable, quite inexplicable'.

  The service area, previously known as the servants' quarters, was where he and Petunia had spent most of their time whilst employed by the Haute family. It was at the back of the house, the part that gave on to the garages and the boiler house, small rooms with little or no view of the grounds, functional and painted entirely in white. But they were cosy in winter, and airy in summer, and had become home after so many years. Either way he preferred them to the cold, stuffy, museum like rooms of the rest of the house, full of uncomfortable furniture and dark oil paintings, glass cabinets full of expensive, tasteless junk, ancient wooden trunks with ingenious metal mechanisms, and shelf after shelf of unread dusty tomes. Everything, no matter how ugly, was worth a fortune in that part of the house, and Señora Luz had been responsible for it all. No item, no matter how apparently insignificant, had escaped her nervous eye, and she had kept her personal inventory up to date and under lock and key. Her life, or at least her livelihood, had depended on it.

  Ambrose scrutinised the kitchen as if he were a potential buyer, running his finger along the marble work surfaces, opening drawers, checking the cupboards. For a second he pretended to be Sydney, the young master of the house, giving his approval to the staff. Well done Pet, a grand job. Keep it up, Bro.

  It was the largest room of the service area, with three perfectly defined parts. There was the original kitchen, with high windows that gave out onto the grounds at the back of the mansion, complete with a wood burning stove and hob, a monumental piece of craftsmanship still used to this day. Ambrose supposed the cooker must have been put in place before they built the kitchen itself, because it would never have fitted through the doors. The double sink, carved out of a single slab of white marble, or so the legend went, was adorned with high bronze taps that reminded Ambrose of coffee pot spouts. There was a central work table, with copper pots and ladles hanging according to size at a height just enough to clear your head whilst still being in reach of short legged cooks and maids, like Pet. But time moves on relentlessly, and space had to be found for more modern fittings such as dishwashers, microwaves, split level ovens and ice machines, so an extension had been added to house what had gradually become the centre of activity. To the left of the antique zone, forming an L, was the staff dining room, where all the different characters and personalities of those who toiled at Haute House would meet in search of an educated, tolerable balance. And watch TV.

  Ambrose had not studied genetics, nor would he have understood it if he had, so he could not know that the DNA of most mammals was virtually identical, and that if an embryo is to produce a chicken wing or a forearm is matter of reading the fine print. He would never have believed it if he had been told that, given the right adjustments, Ambrose himself could have been dismembered and presented on a plastic tray, later
to be converted into a golden nugget. We are little more than intelligent chickens. But we are chickens nonetheless, and a pecking order had to be established and kept, or feathers would be ruffled. Joe Stein was head of staff, both officially and unofficially, and try as he might to create a relaxed, feel-at-home atmosphere, he could not dare to forget, or allow others to forget, his professional status. It had taken him a lifetime to achieve, and it had to be maintained at all costs. So he would joke and chat, and lean back in his chair, generously giving his fellow workers enough rope. But at the smallest hint of irreverence, his darting eyes would almost audibly register the misdemeanour, and the room would fall into a momentary silence. Like a priest, he would wait for penitence, in any form, a nervous cough, a lowering of the eyes, an 'as you well know, Mr. Stein', he did not stand on ceremony, and once that had been received and recognised, he would continue as before. Señora Luz took second place, and expected respect from the other members of the household staff much like a grandmother does