Harry’s Game

Crime Fiction by David Mulry

“It’s a peach,” Harry said to himself, “an absolute peach!” He muttered the words to no one in particular and reached for the cup.

The little café was quiet. Sometimes Polish workers came in between shifts, babbling incomprehensibly. Every now and then a tourist would blunder in, lost. But right now, it was empty just like the street beyond the lightly refracted glass. Harry nodded his head and sipped his tea. It was strong, hot, and sweet.

Not for the first time, he wondered what he should do.

The house was well-situated. It stood in a side street off a busy thoroughfare. There was always a kind of vacuum in those tucked-away places. They were like little eddy spots in a stream, still and quiet. The house was big and old. Once it must have been ostentatious, kind of showy, the sort of place that had servants’ quarters in the top in the old days. Not any more though. Now it was run down. Like him, he thought with grin. It suited him down to the ground and he could picture the owner down to the last detail.  The owner, he had never met him, of course, but then he didn’t need to, the owner had money and taste, and he liked to show them both off. He had a lot of money. Silly money, Harry called it. It was all on display in those windows. Harry liked that.

It was as if the house dared someone to rob it. He snorted into the bowl of his teacup—this was how it felt in the old days. Houses just begging for it.

As run down as the exterior looked, the interior of the house was immaculate; it was a showcase. Oak furniture. Persian rug. A splash of something original on the wall—no prints here. A refreshing disregard for techno-trash.

Harry knew his type.

Harry knew him down to his old gold—because it never goes out of fashion—his Rolex—because you can’t be too ostentatious, and his diamond tie-pin—because rocks were pure class. It would be a proper pleasure to steal his stuff. He had gambled on this area because it was still cheap, but waiting to be sucked into the expanding metroplex of the Big Smoke. It was just a matter of time. The area was already on the move. Even the café would be gone soon. It would be a Costa, or a Pret, or a bloody Nandos, or something just as awful.

Punters with a bit of class and some ready cash always recognized the good deals. They knew anywhere could become Kensington or Hampstead in an urban flash. This chap was waiting for the Hiroshima blast of urban renewal. And it was coming.

What pleased Harry most about the house was that if the owner could have known who Harry was—God forbid—he probably would have been a bit pleased. Well, maybe after a bit, upon mature reflection anyway. Not right away when he saw that stuff had been nicked. But later.

It was funny, as much as everything was changing, some things stayed just the same. This bloke was the sort of person who could value the craftsmanship of Harry’s line of work. You almost got the impression that he wanted someone to take up the challenge—do him over proper-like, like it would somehow validate his owning so much lovely gear to have a bloody great big wodge of it stolen.

The best bit was, if Harry read the signs right, the house just wasn’t secure. Harry could tell as though he had been in and out of it a dozen times, though in truth he had only watched the house carefully from the outside. For an old hand like him that was enough.

He had been in the game for a long, long time. He knew. Call it intuition, or familiarity, or whatever you like. Harry knew the place would open up and hug him. Quietly, of course. No excessive show of emotion.

Harry sipped his tea. But another job? He’d been in the game a long time, and he could feel the world shifting underneath him. The up-and-comers all had their own little gizmos now, zap this lock, wipe out that alarm, spoof the bio-code, oscillating scanners…oscillating bloody scanners! Where was the craft? Even cabbies had the “Knowledge.” Harry knew that with his lot any more it was just circuit boards, chips, and a mountain of rechargeable bloody batteries, with the odd crowbar, if all the gear didn’t work. If he saw one more USB-C he’d scream.

Harry didn’t even have his phone on him when he was working. He didn’t want to show up on the cell-towers just in case someone clever wanted to pull the records.

Harry took another sip. He liked this café because it was old school. No frothy coffee. They had the big silver urn on the go all day and just added tea and water. No let’s brew a fresh pot. You could scrape the tannins off the side of that urn with a thumb nail and probably have enough to make another cup.

Harry savored the sweetness and closed his eyes.

He had recently thought of retiring. Seriously, he thought he had had enough. He didn’t exactly need the money; his accountant had assured him of that. He had enough tucked away in a diverse portfolio to keep him ticking over comfortably till he kicked it. But what was he supposed to do? Ham and eggs in Benidorm? Not bloody likely.

His teacup went down with a clatter. The very idea struck him like a blow. What next?

Play the stock market? Relax? His accountant, Jerry the Book, suggested property speculation overseas. Some sweet spots in the south of somewhere on the Costa Del Cash in some up and comer. Maybe Croatia. Maybe Bulgaria. Lithu-bloody-ania.

It would get him out and about, Jerry said. Mooch with the expats. Find a spot. Move the money out gradually! Maybe that was the problem. It was a dirty business moving your money abroad. Harry loved his country. He was a patriot though and through, down to his old bones. He even listened to the young King’s speech on Christmas day and that took some fortitude.

Harry almost turned the table over as he got up and the teacup clattered in its saucer.

“You alright, love?” the waitress said without looking up. She only had eyes for her phone.

He fumbled some notes on the table to keep her sweet.

 “I’m alright, doll,” he muttered.

He was upset. Thinking about it always upset him. Why should he retire? There was still time for him, and his way. Still time for … one more job. Not the “big one,” that was a mug’s game. Just another one. Easy money.

He knew then he would do the job. With the stuff he had seen in the window, how could he not? He smiled toward the waitress, but she was lost in an endless stream of influencer rage-bait.

He sighed. The light glinted through the window, and prismatic rainbows showered over the cash on the table as he made for the door.

***

 It wasn’t much of a walk.

Outside the house, Harry paused. He took a moment to remember his bit. He wore a blue suit, new, crisp and shiny. It was a knock-off, but it looked like money. Respectability was the key. That’s what the youngsters never realized. Harry had tried to tell one lad. He had met him through a mutual friend, a fence Harry used whenever he couldn’t avoid it. There was talk of setting up something, an apprenticeship of sorts. A passing of the torch sort of thing.

Of course, Harry pulled out. But first he took the youngster aside and tried to explain tradition, like it was a secret guild where all the mysteries were passed on quietly from generation to generation. The kid thought he was a nutter. He told him so too, and Harry just nodded and walked away.

Harry looked about discreetly, opened the gate, and walked up the garden path. It was quality. Red brick in a herring bone pattern. But on either side the garden was messy and overrun. There was no sign it had been tended for some time. He had seen that before. Some sorts left the outside to go all to ruin as a sort of smoke screen. Nothing to see here. No ready money. Carry on!

But Harry didn’t care about the outside. He had already seen where all the care and attention had gone. He had seen through those windows.

As he approached the door he glanced inside again. There it was, unchanged. A tight knot of anticipation roiled in his gut. There was some beautiful stuff in there all right. Some of it was no good to him, but there was more than enough to make it worth his while.

There was some crystal worth a mint he would guess, Old Irish maybe. But he couldn’t shift it, and he daren’t keep it, so there was no point. That sort of thing was too distinctive.

Harry had lost count of the friends who had made that little mistake. Very beautiful things left ripples that could trace all the way back to you. Pretty albatrosses that just weighed you down. They weren’t worth the trouble. And Harry was too old to be sent down again.

It had happened just once. Early on. He was like the kids he saw around him now. He knew everything. And, of course, he was charmed. Nothing could happen to him, no matter how stupidly he behaved.

There had been one job—a jeweler’s—in and out. Easy enough. Ah, but the knock at the door back at his. He would never forget that. In walked DI Barry Shadders from the Poplar station, just as pleased as punch to find Harry sitting, slightly winded, on the entire haul like a fucking dragon.

What do you say to get out of something like that?

Well Mr. Shadders…,”

The next few days Harry felt like he was in a plunging lift just waiting for the drop to stop! Crack! Poor young Harry the Fool, proper shafted when all was said and done.

Of course, it didn’t happen like that in the end. Not exactly. He got used to the idea long before he came to court. Four years was a shock, but it soon passed. Like marriage or having a tooth out—the shock fades after the first bit.

But Harry learned his lessons well and he got to meet some special blokes inside, like Pete “Keys” and Micky the Bag Man. Old mates, long gone now. He learned his lesson. And he even learned some of their lessons too. After that he didn’t take chances. He couldn’t afford to be stupid. Harry only took what he could get rid of easily and quickly. He avoided electronics; none of it kept its value worth a damn.

Now gold, that was something else. Precious metals, precious stones. And cash, of course. Some things keep their prices, no matter what the world does. Anything that could be broken down and sold quickly was Harry’s game. It had to be right though. Sometimes he would break into a place and take nothing. It was like shopping for a choosy missus.

Harry could feel himself getting old. Time after time he found somewhere that looked promising only to discover that instead of diamonds there were tellies the size of a bloody bed and not much else. Try slipping one of them under your jacket on a rainy Tuesday afternoon and disappearing into a crowd.

In the old days there had been real stuff, heavy stuff, proper stuff to steal. Now it was all E-phemera. But he had nothing to do with any of that. Romance was clearly on its way out. What had happened to all those folk who used to salt away a bit of silver here and there? Krugerrands from a dodgy past, diamonds with a bit of blood in their provenance maybe, or that one time when he opened a desk drawer and found a stack of banker’s drafts. Banker’s drafts! He had nearly wet himself laughing.

You didn’t see that sort of stuff anymore. It was part of the past, just like him.

In his own way Harry was an artist and he’d be the first to say so. He appreciated these small mementoes of excess, success, largesse. “You don’t have to beta test gold,” Mickey the Bag Man always told him like it was his favorite joke, “it’s already passed.”

But then Mickey passed too.

Harry took a breath and leaned against the door jamb. Harry sighed for the world that was slipping away. No doubt people had done it before, he conceded; when moveable type was thought of and the printing press appeared; when steam kicked off with a scream; when the atom was split like a crisp apple, but this was serious, this was for keeps.

Harry let his eyes rove over the treasures beyond the glass. In a cabinet, carelessly open, he could see a collection of coins, prancing springboks in there, for sure, Yank Gold Eagles from the look of it too. Every one of them worth somewhere between a monkey and a couple of grand. That was just melt value. Collectors would pay more. It all glittered in the window looking as sweet as could be, like toffees singing sticky songs to a fat kid.

Harry grinned. He leant against the door as if he belonged to it and pretended to search his right trouser pocket. While he searched, his left hand was busy with the bell, and he inspected the exterior entryway. There were no cameras that he could see. There was always a camera.

A long, unanswered buzz sounded in the hall. Harry had to check.

Once he had walked straight into someone’s infidelity. It had been a mess. Their precautions had defeated even his careful surveillance. And suddenly, he was there in the room while they were having a ding-dong, and he was blushing and mumbling. He blabbed some story about being a private detective who hated his job and wanted to warn them that the husband suspected. He had just fallen in love he said and knew what it was like.

He thought of his Ella, for a minute. What would she have made of it all? She’d tell him to retire. She never liked his job. If she were still about he might have thought about it.

There they were, all hot and bothered, all fragrantly delectable, or whatever the saying was, and Harry talking like it was going out of fashion, not knowing where to look. Ella had laughed when he told her. Naturally, they were awkward and angry, but they seemed to believe him. Harry had discovered that people will believe almost anything you tell them if they think it’s in their own best interest.

Since then, he had rung the bell and carried carpet tiles, just in case.

As he suspected, there was no-one home. He had watched the house for three days and had seen no one leave or enter. There was no post, no newspaper, no lights in the evening — in fact, there was nothing at all. It was the perfect set-up.

All of Harry’s actions were fluid and unhurried. You had to look as if you belonged. That was a big part of it. From his trouser pocket he took a large bunch of keys. They were curious shapes and sizes, long shanks of twisted metal and for each one, a memory, a particular lock, a final tumbler falling with a dull, satisfying, almost imperceptible click.

Before he tried the lock, he pushed a black cylinder through the letter box. It was like a snug periscope, but it had a special filter over the lens for infra-red. Harry was relieved, and a little surprised to find the hall empty of any laser traps. That stuff was exhausting. A sweeper would tell him in a heartbeat how wired the house was. But he wouldn’t use one. At least, this way he had to use his judgement. It wasn’t just a matter of hearing something beep and running like hell.

Just before he took the periscope away, he hesitated and noticed that the hallway was uncarpeted. It was difficult to see through the infrared, but Harry noticed it. That was what kept him out of so many scrapes. He saw things like that and thought about them.

He hesitated just for a moment. Then he thought of the coins and put the feeling to one side and began to work on the lock. It was a beauty. A heavy mortise lock. It looked fierce – but it had its kittenish side. Harry knew that if you just selected one of these picks and maybe one of those, he chose carefully from the bunch, you might tickle all those tumblers into place, and it would just purr open.

It was funny, for a while he had the devil of a time getting into places, when everyone started switching over to electro-magnets and sensory locks, all that biometrics bollocks, because none of that was his style. It didn’t take long for the clever-buggers to rig up jammers and scammers that made them all useless though, and suddenly everyone was using these old locks again. Heavy and solid and reliable. It gave him hope. Maybe change was in the air.

With a grunt of satisfaction, he felt the lock click, and the door yield. As he entered, he checked the frame for pressure pads (you couldn’t be too careful), but there was nothing.

“Careless,” he muttered, and his cheek dimpled. He let the door swing-to behind him and walked into the hall. Sometimes there were pressure pads under the carpet, it was the kind of danger you couldn’t avoid. The moment you stepped inside the house you triggered an alarm down at the local exchange. Here, there was no carpet, no pad on the wall by the door to disarm anything, and no worries. In fact, there was nothing. He felt the adrenalin kick inside him. He paused and looked the hallway up and down. Nothing. The walls were bare. From the entry, the house looked derelict.

He thought for a moment about doing a runner.

Getting old, he thought, getting nervous.

But the windows, Harry remembered the windows. Perhaps the owner was working his way through the house, one room at a time, he reasoned. It would make sense to leave the hallway — all that through-traffic. He wondered if he really knew him after all. Perhaps the bloke was eccentric, and thought a low-rent, industrial cyber-punk doss-house look was the way to go.

Or maybe the room was just a showcase. Harry shrugged and let the door snick shut behind him. People had stopped surprising him. It got that way when your entire life was spent rifling other people’s drawers, emptying their safes, looking under their mattresses. There were few surprises anymore. He’d just grab the coins and go.

Harry saw the door to the front room, the room he had watched through those windows for three days. The room full of treasures. He hesitated, unsure.

It was a peculiar feeling. Something Harry was quite unused to. Really, he needed a cup of tea, strong and hot, and sweet this time—he needed to think it over some more. His accountant, Jerry the Book, came dimly to mind, wittering on about tax breaks and dirty foreign deals. Harry felt a bead of sweat gathering on his upper lip. Was his nerve going, he wondered? His throat was very dry. He forced a laugh, and the sweat dripped.

“Come on Harry!” he said to himself, kidding himself on. “Come on boy, it’s a proper peach just waiting for the plucking—you saw it in the windows, didn’t you?”

With that, he reached for the door and swung it open. The hinges were oiled and smooth, and the door hit the wall with a crash that shocked the silence of the empty house.

That would mess up the wall, that would. The owner needed to install one of those rubberized stoppers. Harry swore softly and imaginatively even though that wasn’t his way. The room in front of him was almost completely bare, unfurnished like the hallway, ugly, big, empty. Nearly empty.

On the floor in the center of the empty room on a silver platter was a square of paper, but that was all. Despite himself Harry walked across and picked it up. The platter was heavy. Nice bit of sterling. He flipped it. He could see the maker’s mark on the bottom of it. On the other side, under his thumb, was a small envelope.

His fingers were slow, and he fumbled with it. But he was never going to not open it, was he? While he did it, Harry spun around to take in the empty room, bare boards, no wallpaper, no pictures. He looked toward the windows at last, struggling to understand. They were bleary, a little opaque with some kind of prismatic shift in them. He could make out the street though. He could see the road he had walked along. The café was a short walk away. There was the gated park that these houses all enjoyed. These were the same windows. The very same.

And as he looked, he saw other things: ghosts of things he partly recognized, fragmented details, distorted, imprinted in the glass, of all the treasures he had come to steal. Coins and crystal, treasures. In the glass. In the windows.

Harry let the envelope drop, and where it fell, he saw the metal contact plate on the floor where the platter had lain. He looked down at the business card in his hands. He hadn’t moved an inch.

In bold type, he saw inscribed on the card:

                                                       Creative Holographics Ltd.

                                           Fly-Trap Detection Systems: Beta Testing

Underneath there was a logo, a holograph stamp that defied the thin heavy bond card it was imbedded in and jumped improbably into a 3D form. He stared at it with weary eyes. It was a set of measuring scales. He grunted. Justice, he thought, and watched the scales tip precariously from one side to another as the card trembled in his numb fingers—fingers starting to tingle faintly. Harry turned the card over and read aloud the simple message: “You are under arrest.”

Without turning, Harry heard footfalls behind him. His hand dropped to his side and the silver platter slipped out of his grasp. As it did, he felt the floor slip away, and suddenly he was plunging…, plunging…, and thinking vaguely that soon there would come an end.

---

Bio: David Mulry studied at the University of Kent, at Canterbury, and teaches literature at the College of Coastal Georgia. He lives on a few acres where, when he is not writing, he raises sheep, goats, and chickens, and tries not to be stung (too much) by his bees. He is currently working on a novel.

Photo by: pexels/The Glorious Studio

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