Stranger Dead

Chapter 19

As Darren had forecast, the drive barely lasted fifteen minutes. He was starting to have doubts concerning their plan. How long would it take for the police to get organised? Would there be time for them to get there before Spikes realised that he had been tricked? Darren would need to stall them as much as possible to allow time for the police to arrive.

As they got out of the car Darren noticed a curtain twitching at a window just across the road from the house they were about to enter. Hopefully whoever it was would call the police and report their suspicions.

The three of them went around to the back of the house, where Darren was able to find an open window. “This is how I got in to hide the diamonds,” he explained to Spikes, thinking on his feet and lending credence to his story. “None of the doors are unlocked so we’ll all have to go in via the window.”

This proved to be no easy task. Darren, being slimmer, could squeeze through quite easily, but the other two only managed to get in with difficulty. It took around ten minutes in all before all three of them were standing on the inside of the window.

“Right,” said Spikes, “where are the diamonds?”

“I hid them under the floorboards in one of the bedrooms,” said Darren.

“Let’s go then, show us where.”

When they got upstairs, Darren appeared unsure as to which bedroom it was that he had used to hide the diamonds. “I’m not sure which bedroom it was. I was in a hurry at the time, but I know it had a double bed in it.”

Unfortunately there were two bedrooms that contained double beds. Pointing to one of them, Darren said “I think it was this one. We’ll need to move the bed to one side to get at the floorboard that I removed.”

Cursing, Spikes and his colleague strained to move the big bed to one side. Darren got down on his knees to search for the floorboard he had supposedly removed, but drew a blank.

“Sorry guys, this must be the wrong bedroom. We’ll need to try the other one.”

Cursing even louder, they moved the other bed over to one side so that Darren could search under it for the loose floorboard.

It was at precisely that moment that Darren’s prayers were answered. There was a shout from downstairs of “Police. You’re all under arrest for housebreaking. No-one move. Stay exactly where you are.” By the time the speaker had finished giving his instructions, the police were entering the bedroom and had grabbed all three of them. 

Within just a few minutes, it was all over and the two men had been arrested and taken to the police station under investigation. Thankfully Sarah’s brother Robert had also turned up at the scene, so he was able to take Darren back over to Spikes’ house to retrieve Sarah and his car.

“I don’t know exactly what you two have been up to, but you’ll both need to attend at the police station later on this morning to make a statement. Until then, I suggest that you both return home and get some sleep. You appear to have had quite an eventful night. I’ll speak to you later Sarah about this.”

Damn, thought Sarah looks like I’m in trouble again.

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The next chapter will be released on Friday. If you want to read the complete book now go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J18SCIO