The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan Page B

my way inside so I stuck with that method of
snooping. But I remembered what I’d learned.
    And then the Easter holidays came around and I found myself at
home again in Clifton. Home with my parent’s place to myself for
much of the day and too much time on my hands. And one morning,
bored out of my skull, I got a familiar itch in my fingers and
dragged my school trunk out from beneath my bed and rooted around
in it until I found my screwdriver and my pick. Then I went
downstairs and tackled the Yale lock on my parent’s front door. To
my surprise, the Yale lock worked on much the same principles as
the drawer locks at school and it proved only a little harder to
open. I locked and unlocked the door a few times and then I decided
to take things up a level.
    Our neighbours, the Baileys, were away at their holiday villa in
Spain. I’d been in their house on a couple of occasions before but
never by myself and I decided that was going to change. After a
quick recce, I flicked back the snap lock on their back door with
one of my parents’ cheque guarantee cards, then spent around an
hour familiarising myself with their dead-bolt. It snuck back,
eventually, as something inside me had known it would, and after
that I had only to turn the handle and walk inside.
    Inside to a place that made me feel two hundred feet tall – a
space where I made my own rules. I went to their bedroom first,
naturally, since I was of an age where bedroom cabinets usually
delivered some kind of titillation. Those particular cabinets
didn’t disappoint. At the back of one of them was a large rubber
dildo, along with some lube. I examined the dildo for a while and
then I returned it and took a tour of the rest of the house – the
avocado bathroom suite, the chintzy spare bedrooms, Mr. Bailey’s
study, Mrs. Bailey’s exercise room, downstairs to the
kitchen-diner, the lounge and the cloakroom. Pretty soon, I found I
was hungry and returned to the kitchen to see if there was
something I could snack on. I stuck my hand in the biscuit tin and
discovered almost fifty pounds in cash. I put the money back,
helped myself to a packet of salt and vinegar crisps from a nearby
cupboard and then I left, re-engaging the snap lock behind me.
    Over the following week or so I broke into a number of our
neighbours’ homes, always through the back door, where there was
often just a single snap lock that never tended to delay me. Few of
the homes held anything of special interest – just being inside
them was more than enough to give me the thrill I was after. But I
did get into the habit of always taking something to eat, even if I
wasn’t especially peckish, and on one or two occasions, when I
heard a noise out on the street and had to wait nervously for it to
pass, or when a fridge shuddered or a water pipe knocked, I found I
had an urge to find someplace to hide and, once, had to make
immediate use of the toilet facilities.
    At nights, I replayed my adventures over in my mind, carrying
out an inventory of all the rooms and the possessions I’d seen, of
the locks I’d opened and the private places I’d accessed. Before
long, my thoughts turned back to that fifty pounds in the Baileys’
biscuit jar. It was just sat there, no use to anyone until the
Baileys returned from Spain, and if it was gone by the time they
got back, they might not even notice, might very well just assume
that they’d spent it before they left. I became convinced that had
to be right and so one Saturday morning not too long afterwards I
found myself flicking back the snap lock on their back door,
helping myself to another packet of salt and vinegar crisps and
pocketing the cash from the biscuit tin. This time, I primed both
locks when I left since I had no intention of returning, but
instead of going home, I walked a couple of streets away to the
nearest council estate. It took me a little while, walking along
the thin, litter-strewn back alleys, to find the kind of place I
was looking