George and Spider Part Two - The Rob

'You got details for me then?' George said, putting his head down and speaking very quietly.
'I gave you the address,'Kelly whispered at him, rather harshly. 'Don't bother poking around the place, it's barren, just go straight to the master bedroom, across the landing. There's a big jewellery case on the dressing table, you can't miss it.'
George nodded slowly. He felt the pressure of the customers at the bar, tutting and staring as they waited to be served.'Are you sure about the alarm?' he said.
'Dead sure. They never set it, they've got cats.'
'And where's the best access?'
Kelly began to edge away from him now. 'Top bathroom window at the back. They leave it open a little - for air,' she said winking, then grinned at her next customer as she began to pull his pint.
George twisted upon his feet, turning in a sudden and affected manner to face the door, then he placed his hands into his pockets and exited The Comet's Tail. Spider, who had quietly observed the whole thing, swigged the remainder of his friend's beer and followed a few seconds behind.
They convened on the pavement outside. The air in the suburbs was mild and gentle, a quiet stealth of rain fell from the low cloud above, making the tarmac wet enough to reflect the horrid orange light which shone dimly from the street lamps. Urban worms, tempted by the delicious wet conditions into dangerous journeys, were stretched across the pavement, all puffy and pink, their vulnerable forms half perished on the punishing surface of the aggregate.
The night seemed to welcome the two young men. They were naturally nocturnal and very comfortable with the darkness. Their senses sharpened sufficiently to enable them to glide through the thick dark air and silence. It was the daylight that resisted them. Somehow they just didn't seem destined to succeed within the conventional setting of the sunlit world. They'd tried since their school days to be normal, to succeed, to read and work and talk, but the sunlight had only retarded them.
Both men were small and slender in stature. George had a pleasant face and was upholstered with a layer of firm muscle. He liked, or rather, he was compelled, to do sets of push-ups, sit-ups and various other repetitive exercises. Spider, in contrast, was rather idle and suffered from a poor appetite. His frame was even smaller than George's, he was gossamer thin and difficult to see from the side. He had a distinctive face, small black, deep set eyes and ears which were slightly pointed at the top. It was the sort of face which, if you were unfortunate enough to see it, you wouldn't ever forget it.
They walked with a similar gait, it involved bouncing up from the ball of each foot between what seemed like impossibly long strides for men so short. It had the effect of making them appear taller, plus, all that bouncing motion blurred their faces from clear view. Being observed was something they were keen to avoid.
George and Spider had been friends since the beginning of secondary school. They met when they were both placed in special needs classes due to an apparent lack of intellect. Spider had been a poor deprived child, traumatised and never keen to utter a word, let alone show anyone that he was in fact in possession of a finely tuned, high functioning brain. George had decided very early on that scholarly education was a complete waste of time and refused to be directed by anyone calling themselves a teacher.
George was a dreamer; he dreamt when he was awake, he dreamt when he was asleep. He thought in layers and gave the least of his energy to the upper layer, the one which connected him with the world as we know it. It was mostly his dreams which held him back in life. Over many years he'd honed the ability to remember his dreams and to overlap different layers of consciousness. Lucid dreaming was part of his life but it distanced him from the waking world. He could create anything in his dreams, do anything, he had talents beyond anyone else and his perception of these talents seeped into every aspect of his consciousness and gave him a false sense of superiority. Being a quiet man he kept this to himself; privately George knew he was better than anyone. There was nothing he could have learned from dowdy middle-aged teachers with fear in their eyes and a thousand negative assumptions about their pupils.
He glanced across at Spider and said, 'Your mind's on the job yeah, not the snake?'
Spider opened his mouth and a cloud of condensation floated from his tight, dark lips. 'Course. It's good weather for it now George. It was clear earlier, I even checked my diary for astronomical events.'
'Were there any?'
'No - but we're all hurtling.'
They walked on in silence for a few minutes, then George remembered the snake and became curious. 'Which one was it?' he said.
Spider frowned briefly, but the two men had such a close mental connection that he was very quick to work out what George was referring to. 'Jim'll, the little white one, the albino.'
'Jim'll?'
'T's what I said. I took him into the bathroom with me, while I was having, yer know, me shower, he loves the steam and all that. But after I was dressed I couldn't find him anywhere. Reckon he went down the back of the sink.'
'There'll be warm pipes down there mate.'
George looked forlorn and released a sort of sad little sigh.
'Here it is now Spider mate, coming up on the left. Laughing Water, there!' George pointed with his neat little head towards their target property.
'Laughing - who?
George kept silent as they passed by a huge property. It was a modern build, a hulking oversized lump with black railings and high gates separating it from the world of the common man; the tired, sweaty, struggling homosapien. The faint trickling of a sad little man-made waterfall could be heard coming from the front garden.
'It's the name of the house, Laughing Water,' said George, 'Just keep walking until we find a place - a place where we can loiter, loiter with intent.'
They continued along the pavement. The road was dark and quiet, there were 'sleeping policemen' to slow down passing vehicles, enabling the men to step into the shadows unseen whenever cars approached. Eventually they reached the shelter of the large laurels at the edge of a pristine golf course. It was a piece of land they knew well, but only after dark. For George and Spider, that gold course served as one very large bolt-hole. They stopped and rested for a moment, listening to the air. All was silent except for the odd drip of rain and the droning of cars on a distant main road.
'Does it have its own stream or what?' whispered Spider.
'No,' George laughed, 'What d'you think this is, The Alps? There's just this silly garden makeover job in the front. It's a statue of a lady holding a clay pot, a trickle of water comes out onto some slimy green stones. I came and checked the place out the other day. It's tacky, horrible. They've got stuff though, valuable stuff. Kelly cleans for them, says the woman's got loads of rocks, hopefully they're the real thing. There's good fakes about now - and people have no shame.'
'I could be a gardener you know George-'
'You're not strong enough mate. Come on let's go.'
Laughing Water, like many of the houses on the estate, backed directly onto the golf course. The properties were widely spaced, neighbours were set apart at a distance deemed to be socially hygienic. The payback for this sterile level of privacy was the way in which potential intruders were unlikely to be observed by neighbours.
The men travelled silently through the rough, raising up their knees to prevent parting the grass too much thus leaving an obvious trail behind. When they reached the rear of the garden fence they bent a little and scrambled along in starts between the shrubbery. Close to the fence of their target property was a grouping of large rhododendrons with smooth red branches opening up to an umbrella of thick green leaves. As the men stepped into this natural shelter, they disturbed some of the branches and large drips of rain fell down onto their heads, dripping down their faces. Spider cursed and wiped his face with his sleeve. His demeanour had changed now into one of serious, business-like concentration. Moving swiftly he removed his black satin bomber jacket and handed it to George, then he undid his trainers and stepped out of them, revealing the black slip-on plimsolls which he was wearing underneath.