Dangerous Games by Sally Spencer Page A

for a while had improved the flavour no end.
    What he didn’t realize – but very soon would – was that in so many ways, he was like a prisoner already kneeling before the execution block, yet still convinced that a last-minute reprieve would come through. And when the axe fell – as it was about to – it would come as a complete surprise.

Ten
    T he building site was on the corner where the road into town and the road to Preston intersected. It had been a large, old-fashioned cinema, which in its heyday had shown the biggest and best of the Hollywood epics, but in its later years had survived mainly by screening ‘naturist’ films for the delectation of sniggering schoolboys and dirty old men. And when even this had failed – when, some evenings, the staff outnumbered the customers – the owners had finally decided that they could no longer compete with that evil little monster, the television set, and had sold up.
    The space had been bought – much to the consternation of several local small businesses – by a large retail chain. Soon, in place of the old decrepit cinema, there would be a brand spanking new supermarket, offering cut prices, trading stamps and free gifts. For the moment, however, there was little more than a steel skeleton, surrounded by a chain-link fence and guarded, at night, by Harry ‘Bone Crusher’ Turner, who had once been the most formidable prop forward ever to have played for Whitebridge Rugby Football Club.
    If Harry – who time had turned into a somewhat cantankerous old-age pensioner – had had a dog with him as he went on his rounds, that particular site would probably never have been chosen for the events of the evening.
    But he hadn’t – and it was.
    Turner had, in fact, asked for a dog on his first day on the job, and had gone into a second-childhood sulk when his request had been immediately – and somewhat ungraciously – turned down.
    â€˜But I
need
a dog, if I’m to do the job properly,’ he’d protested to the young site manager, who went by the name of Wickshaw.
    â€˜It’s not the crown jewels you’re guarding here, you know, Harry,’ the site manager had replied. ‘There’s no gang of international building material thieves planning to swoop down on the site in the dead of night, and make off with a couple of thousand Accrington bricks.’
    â€˜I know that, but …’
    â€˜The Secret Cement Cartel isn’t just waiting for our guard to be down before they have it away with a dozen bags of Portland Finest.’
    The site manager was too much of a smart-alec for his own good, the night-watchman thought. He was little more than a lad, still wet behind the ears – but because he had his City and Guilds Certificate, he thought he knew everything there was to know.
    â€˜What about the machinery?’ Turner had grumbled. ‘It’s very valuable, is that machinery, Mr Wickshaw.’
    â€˜So it is,’ the site manager had agreed. ‘But it’s also virtually impossible to nick.’
    â€˜I’m not so sure about that.’
    â€˜You’re not? So tell me, how’s anybody going to steal a crane or a digger? Drive it away?’
    â€˜They could.’
    â€˜Talk sense, Harry! Heavy plant’s not exactly built with a speedy getaway in mind, you know. A bobby on a push-bike could catch up with it, if he pedalled hard enough.’
    â€˜So if there’s no risk of anythin’ valuable bein’ stolen, what am I goin’ to be doin’ here, night after night?’ the watchman had wondered.
    â€˜I’ll tell what you’re doing here, Harry,’ the site manager had said, his patience almost at an end. ‘You’re here so that some chap living just down the road – who happens to be in need of a couple of concrete flag-stones – won’t be tempted to just walk in and help