The Shadow of Treason Read Online Free PDF Page B

d’you mean?’
    ‘My room. Someone’s been in there. It’s a shambles! Everything’s ripped apart … drawers pulled out … it’s chaos!’
    ‘Good God! Anything valuable gone?’
    ‘I haven’t got anything valuable. And I don’t think anything’s missing.’
    ‘Thank God for that.’
    ‘It’s unbelievable! Why would anyone want to burgle my place?’
    ‘We’ll have to call the police.’
    ‘But that’s a problem! They’re going to ask why I wasn’t in my room.’
    ‘Oh my God!’ Jane was wide awake now, and sitting bolt upright.
    ‘Exactly. We don’t really want your mum to know I spent the night with you, do we?’
    ‘Too right we don’t!’
    ‘I mean, it’s OK for me. The worst she can do is chuck me out. It’s you I’m worried about.’
    ‘We won’t tell her.’
    ‘Then how do I explain my mattress and pillows ripped open? And two drawers smashed? Mark’s holdall’s all pulled apart, by the way. Someone must have been looking for something – God knows what!’
    Jane was trembling. Mrs Hart belonged to a generation with very strict views. Jane loved her mother dearly, and was appalled at the impending embarrassment. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
    ‘It’ll have to look like it happened this morning. After I’d gone to work.’
    ‘Would anyone believe that? What’s the time?’
    ‘Six o’clock, and still dark. I’ll get out quick and catch the 6.40 train. But I’ll say I got the 5.15. This house sleeps till seven. That’s three hours when the break-in could have happened.’
    ‘The police can check what time you got to work.’
    ‘They won’t bother. The police won’t be interested in a burgled room, with nothing taken. Your mum must report it, of course, to get her insurance. But no one’s going to follow it up.’
    ‘So what do I do?’
    ‘Nothing. Just act normally. Get up and go to work at your regular time, everything as usual. I’ll find my room’s been wrecked when I return tonight.’
    ‘D’you think this’ll work?’
    ‘Who’s going to argue? No one’s likely to think I wrecked my own room. And, whatever happens, you’re not involved. You haven’t seen me since we cleared Mark’s room last night. You won’t know anything about this till you get home from the theatre. Now go back to sleep.’
    ‘Not much chance of that.’
    ‘Then read a book or something. You mustn’t get up any earlierthan usual. Don’t do anything different. Now the sooner I get out, the better. I’ll see you when you get back from your show tonight.’
    Adam went swiftly, leaving Jane staring uneasily into the darkness.

    ‘You killed a man at the boarding house?’ The short man spoke with controlled fury.
    ‘We had to, guv,’ said the man with the scar. ‘He knew who we were.’
    ‘Don’t “guv” me, Cregan!’ The short man’s eyes bored into Cregan’s face. ‘It’s “sir” to you. Always.’
    ‘Yeah. Sorry, sir.’
    ‘You were wearing masks?’
    ‘Yeah, of course … sir.’
    ‘So how did he know who you were?’
    Clark’s stomach churned. But his accomplice didn’t let him down.
    ‘I reckon it was our voices. We done a lot of business with this sod, couple of months ago. Shifting Scotch and stuff.’
    ‘Well, you can’t make this one look like a road accident.’
    Clark felt it was his turn to speak. ‘It’s all right, sir, we’re in the clear. We was wearing gloves. Frank finished him off with his cosh, and we’ve scrubbed that clean. No one saw us go in or out. They won’t trace us.’
    ‘They’d better not. And then you went to this other man’s room?’
    Cregan was spokesman again. ‘Yeah. This bloke Webber that Creeper told us about. We took his room apart. But there was no notebook there either.’
    ‘But you still believe he had it?’
    ‘According to Creeper. And he was too scared to lie. He saw it in a drawer early on. When we looked it was gone.’
    ‘So Webber must have took it,’ Clark added helpfully.
    ‘God