2 a.m.
Charlie waits until absolute silence has fallen over the house. Then he slips out from between the borrowed sheets and pads softly to the door. The hinge creaked when he was turning in for the night, but he knows to deaden it with his palm. It pinches, leaves bruised flesh. It's going to be worth it, though.
Part of him wants to berate himself for being so petty. But this is a game of cheating and careful pretence. He's doing the right thing. Nobody would judge him for this.
He creeps down the landing, and leans on the banister at the far side of the stairs; there are fewer creaks there and leaning keeps his steps light.
Unlike some of the others, Charlie needs to get the key. He goes to the safe in the hall and stands thoughtfully in front of it. Jim turned the first tumbler. And six, quite apart from being the maximum dice roll and everything he's wanting today, is his favourite number. Jim doesn't admit to things like that; six must be close to his heart for that to have ever happened. Six.
Moran was second. He'll leave that for a second.
Obviously he knows what his own number was.
And the last was Mies, who had taken her time wandering up the hall, trying to watch the code being set. One. The answer has to be one. 'One' has been stuck in her head ever since she sat praying for Whitechapel, and after all, it's what she wants to be; number one, last one standing.
Moran is the only mystery. And it doesn't take long to let the tumbler tick round through all the numbers until suddenly the safe pops open.
Four. Four? As in the four people who were standing in the hallway at the time?
Note to self, Charlie thinks. Re: Moran. Think physically and simply at all bleeding times.
He takes the key, and goes to the living room. He knows he doesn't have much time. Needs to make a decision what to spend it on.
The folder, the black folder. Knowledge, after all, has always been power.
3 a.m.
Seb lumbers up out of bed. Yawns as loudly as he can, stretches so tall he loses his balance and stumbles. He walks down the landing quietly humming, trots down the stairs with thumping feet and all the creaks, and swings into the kitchen, flicking the lights on. Everyone in the house stirs, and hears him beginning to sing to himself, and then they roll over. The rumble of the kettle relaxes them.
Seb's just having a cup of tea.
The rumble of the kettle also covers the rattle as he crouches down and reaches into the cupboard under the sink. Behind the pipes is a small roll of black cloth; Danielle's spare lockpicks. And under the cover of the kettle he can get down the hall and start the picking and scratching. This is an old house, and the doors here are not beyond his limited skills.
The kettle clicks off as the door swings open.
Charlie left everything pristine. Seb is none the wiser. He wanders in, while everyone thinks he's having a quiet cuppa, and studies the piles of paper money around and about.
The hair over Danielle's pile makes it difficult. He can slide a few notes from the bottom, but that's it, before the hair loses tautness. Charlie has everything set out by denominations and the thin little wads are too precise to touch. Jim's is messy and huge and he robs it carefully blind.
At the last minute, the offshore accounts on the fireplace catch his eye. Who keeps track of what they send away from taxes? Charlie's had bad luck – Grand Caiman is so swollen the flag will hardly stand on top of it. And Jim and Danielle at Switzerland…
Money is power. And Seb was a bit low on money when he went to bed.
4 a.m.
Jim had set a quiet alarm. Now it wakes him. As ever, there's no groggy moment between sleeping and waking. His eyes open, and there he is, perfectly aware, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. Now the only question is whether he can be bothered to get up.
Is he going to do this? Really? Get up now, get the spare key out of the top dresser drawer and go down there. Sneak around like a kid on Christmas Eve to see what delightful little presents they've all left him? Who's been thieving, who's been plotting… It could be fun.
Or is he going to be a good boy and leave all that until the morning? Might make tomorrow more interesting, if he has to be figuring it all out. Just taking the game to the next level for himself; that might be really good fun. He's been playing that board for a long time, and playing these same players.
It's all just beginning to feel like Monopoly used to feel. It all began one long weekend, trapped in the Irish countryside with the power out. Two other fellas he didn't like working with and bored, rich (and, yeah, kidnapped) blonde. Closest thing he ever knew to hell. And rather than put the game away from his life and heart forever, lock it in a cupboard somewhere where it could never get him again, Jim took control of hell. He has made it his own.
But it's been going on for a while now. Charlie hasn't been the explosive addition he'd hoped…
No, maybe he ought to leave himself a few surprises.
In the room next door, there's a low rustle. Just Danielle rolling over, but he shuts his eyes too sharply. Laughs at himself. Rolling over's the best idea he's been given. Jim resets his alarm and wriggles up tighter to the pillow.
They're all idiots; power is power. He's already got that. Jim's going back to sleep.
6.45 a.m.
They're all idiots. All that crap around the door and the key… Silly boys. She'd been smoking at that window on and off all day. Nobody even looked at it before they left the room. So, first thing, when everybody knows she's going out for her morning run anyway, it is no major detour to slip between the rose bushes and slip her favourite fine steel into the undone latch. It moves up easily and she slips inside.
She knows exactly what she's here for, and it won't take long. Dani crosses the room quickly, going to the game box on the sideboard.
Not all of the tokens have been bought. The race car, which cannot be bought and must be won by fair means or foul, is still sitting there. She grabs it swiftly, zips it into the pocket at the back of her waistband. Shuts the window on her way out and goes for her run as usual.
By seven-thirty she's back in the house. The coffee machine is running. Upstairs, there's a shower, and Seb staggering about again. All of them are in different stages of waking up. None of them so much as hears the front door closing behind her. Perfectly normally, she goes to leave her muddy trainers in the cloak room. And, while she's there, she drops the little silver car into Milverton's overcoat pocket.
Because knowledge might be power, or it might be money, or power might be innate. But nothing makes a person feel more powerful than looking at a sworn enemy and seeing his face as if through a gilded gallery frame. And nothing beats having a nice, solid shitstorm up your sleeve for when the afternoon threatens to drag.
