Relentless (Benson Security 2)

“Like an area manager?” Ryan said.

“Exactly. His job is to see that British art and culture is promoted in other countries. It’s a public-relations type job,” Elle said.

“It’s also a great position if you want to build your own collection of illegal artefacts,” Joe pointed out.

“Yeah,” Elle said. “The guy has a serious obsession with building his own collection.”

“I don’t get it.” Joe pointed the camera, zoomed and snapped away. “What’s the point in collecting stuff you can never show anyone because all of it’s stolen?”

“Greed?” There was a snap in his ear, and he got a mental picture of Elle popping gum. “A sense of self-importance? A deflection from other things that are wrong with him, as in ‘my art collection is big enough to make up for the fact I have a really small penis’?”

Ryan almost choked on the bag of chips he was shovelling down.

Joe spotted a white van coming up the empty street. “Got eyes on Ed.”

He watched the van as he wandered along the street. There were no people walking or hanging around. After the crowded chaos of central La Paz, the wealthy suburb of Alto Florida was a little eerie. The houses were huge, if a little close together for Joe’s taste, and there were manicured trees at regular intervals along the sidewalk. Every house was cut off from the street by a high wall or a spike-topped fence, but unlike Lima, there weren’t any guards visible. It seemed the homeowners relied on their walls and security systems to keep the riffraff out.

The van stopped in front of Hayes’ house and Ed climbed out. He was dressed in overalls with a clipboard in his hand. He nodded at Joe and Ryan as though they were strangers, before producing a ladder from the back of the van and propping it against the pole beside the walled house. According to Elle, that pole ran wires for everything from power to internet connection.

Joe and Ryan sauntered past Ed as he attached the disrupter boxes Elle had furnished him with, to the lines leading into Hayes’ house.

“Tell me again why I came with you lot to La Paz?” Ed grumbled.

“You volunteered,” Joe said. “You practically begged. You kept going on about wanting to find the treasure. No one twisted your arm to get you to tag along.”

“That was before I got to play the workman because I’m the only South American in the group,” Ed said in Joe’s ear while he worked. “This is racist bullshit.”

“Be grateful you aren’t a woman,” Patricia said. “If you were a South American woman, we wouldn’t even let you do that much—we’d send you into the house as a maid. So please, don’t talk to me about racial stereotyping.”

Ryan thought that was funny. “Can you even comment on this, Patty? You’re white, upper class and rich. You’re a walking, talking example of privilege.”

“And that means I can’t have an opinion? Th

at I can’t stand up for my fellow woman?” Patricia asked coolly.

“Women of the world unite!” Elle called.

Joe groaned. “Can we focus on the job and start a march for equality later?”

“See?” Patricia said. “The fact you can say something like that as a throwaway statement shows how far we still have to go. Honestly, when I was marching for equality in the seventies, I didn’t think I’d still be fighting for it over forty years later. Do any of you young people realise how pathetic that is? You’re dropping the ball on this issue. You need to make more of an effort to put things right.”

“Done,” Ed said, and Joe almost kissed the man for stopping Patricia’s rant.

“Elle,” Joe said, “you in?”

“Give me a minute, Mr. No-patience.”

Joe glanced back into the van as he passed, and saw Julia and Patricia sitting behind the work equipment. He kept his face blank when he really wanted to start shouting all over again that they shouldn’t be in the field. He’d lost the argument because Patricia had pointed out that she was the only one who knew what the mummy looked like. And Julia had said that where her gran went, she went too. Then Ryan had argued that the mummy would be easy to spot because it was a dried-up dead body, and how many of them could be in the house? At which point Elle ruined that argument by saying, “Thomas Hayes is known to collect them. There could be dozens in there.”

So Joe had lost the argument and the women were back in the field.

“Okay,” Elle said. “I’m in. His security system was good, top of the line, but nothing fancy. He’s only worried about burglars. Not people like us.”

Joe shared a look with Ryan.

“Elle,” Ryan said, “we’re here to steal something, what does that make us?”

“Huh,” Elle said, and then there was silence.