No Alarms Read Free Page B

looking round. ‘Have a look at this then.’
    ‘I don’t want to look at that shit, said already.’
    ‘Don’t say I didn’t offer then.’ Justin shrugged and then she clicked.
    On the screen was a map, all the street names written in, and when he moved the mouse the streets all changed, new houses, new suburbs maybe, like you were flying high above them. Another click and the view swooped in close, so you could make out the borders of individual properties, all drawn as the same unlikely rectangle, and some of them coloured in red, yellow or green.
    ‘What is it?’ Sharon asked.
    ‘It’s a map,’ Justin replied.
    ‘I’m not stupid.’
    ‘What of then?’
    Sharon looked again, scanned the street names. Russell Ave. She’d been there. She knew where this was. Of course.
    ‘It’s places you’ve cased.’ Made sense. Easiest crime there was, burglary. Cops only caught the stupid ones, the others weren’t worth the effort.
    ‘Well done.’
    ‘So what’s the colours then?’ Sharon asked.
    ‘You tell any one you’ve seen this, you’ll never ever have anything to do with this. Understand?’
    Sharon nodded. Of course she did.
    ‘Okay, green’s places where no one’s home during the day. Yellow’s a place with green either side. Safe you see. Understand?’
    Sharon nodded.
    ‘What’s red?’
    ‘Places we’ve done.’ He was showing off now. Not that he had to, she’d seen the stuff they could afford. ‘Here, where do you live? Hardy Street isn’t it?’ He clicked through the screens till she was looking down on her own place. You’d have to be crazy, she thought, to bother with a street like that. You’d pay, if they ever caught you. They had though, three reds.
    ‘Hey, that’s our house. It was you took our stereo!’
    ‘Sorry, didn’t know.’ Justin shrugged.
    ‘Give it back.’
    ‘Can’t can I? It’s sold.’
    ‘Bastard.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Can I help then?’ He had to say yes. It would be the best, like something off a movie. A chance to show them all, all the people who thought she couldn’t do anything useful. She’d buy stuff for Zinny too.
    Sharon looked at Justin but he refused to take his eyes off the screen.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘It’s not that simple.’
    ‘Course it is. Come on. This one here, it’s yellow. Let’s go and do it, right now. Here, no, don’t even need you. I’ll do it myself. Prove I can.’
    ‘It’s not like that,’ Justin said, talking slowly like he was a teacher and she was back to being thick. Fuck you, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t, because she could tell there was still a chance of him letting her in.
    ‘Most people doing this don’t make so much, or they blowit all and get caught when they’re desperate to make some more. Simon’s cleverer than that. A lot of the time we only take little stuff, a camera or some cash. So people don’t even know they’ve been hit. Or we steal to order. Single item, straight in straight out. It’s like Physics or something. There’s a set order you do things and as long as you don’t mess with it it seems to work out.’
    ‘I could still help,’ Sharon insisted, knowing how bad it would be to have to let this go. ‘Next time, when you’ve got something on, I’ll help you out.’
    ‘That’d depend on Simon.’
    ‘Ask him.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘You’re the best.’ Sharon flung her arms around his body and felt it tense with the surprise. She planted a huge kiss on his cheek, the big slobbery kind like Zinny always gave.
    • • •
    That night Sharon tried to cook something different, the sort of thing Justin might cook, in his flash kitchen with all its flash colours and tastes. Only there wasn’t much in the cupboards and all that was left in the fridge were some carrots and a lettuce that had started to slime. The freezer was full though. Theirs was a freezer household. Pies, pizza, frozen veges, ready to microwave into an instant munch, although that was dodgy now the plate thing