A torch beam shone out of the darkness into my eyes.
I'd been asleep and had been woken up by a noise from my kitchen. Thinking it was Mitzi coming back from one of her nocturnal excursions, hungry, thirsty and tired, I got up to welcome her home by giving her a bowl of her favourite food and a saucer of milk. I slipped my dressing gown on and went out onto the landing. I switched the light on and looked at my watch. Three-eighteen. I made my way down the stairs and entered the kitchen, flicking the light switch and filling the kitchen with the harsh glare of the fluorescent tube.
I looked around, but there was no sign of Mitzi.
She's gone into the living room, I told myself. She's in my armchair, curled up, probably already nodding off. I decided to leave her and go back to bed. I turned the kitchen light off and walked to the foot of the stairs. There was a sudden noise from my living room, the air movement too big to be Mitzi and I froze, my heart pumping wildly. I was just about to reach into the room and put the overhead light on when a man holding a sawn-off shotgun stepped out of the darkness.
“Get in there!” he ordered harshly, indicating the living room.
I have to admit that at that moment, had I had a full stomach, I believe I would have emptied my bowels into my pyjama trousers. Instead, my sphincter tightened and my stomach churned, but other than that, there was no outward sign of my distress. Of course, I complied quickly with the man's order.
“Sit on a wooden chair - and sit on your hands,” he said, the harshness gone from his tone.
Now he was simply matter-of-fact. Perhaps my age, my physical stature - my initial impression of him was that he was a foot taller than I, and a little broader - and my obvious fear due to the presence of the shotgun had given him enough confidence to feel he had no need for further aggression.
I sat on my hands on one of my hard-backed dining chairs.
Leaving the light off, the intruder followed behind me, no doubt keeping me covered with the shotgun. Very quickly, he walked around me, wrapping tape around my body and around the chair. As a restraint, I found it to be more than effective.
Suddenly, the whole thing seemed bizarre. Here I was, in my living room, secured by packing tape to one of my hard-backed dining chairs, about to be robbed.
A torch beam shone out of the darkness into my eyes. I closed them against the harsh glare.
“I could gag you,” the intruder said from somewhere in my living room, “but how about we make a deal? - If you shout, I'll kill you. If you understand, say you understand.”
“I understand,” I said.
And I did. I was being burgled. Robbed. Attacked in my own home and taped to one of my own chairs. Despite my sudden surge of anger and my indignation, I felt remarkably unafraid. It was almost as though the whole incident was being perpetrated against someone other than myself.
“Good,” the voice said. Then the room flooded with light.
I blinked and waited until my eyes had become accustomed to the brightness, then I looked at the housebreaker.
My first, hurried, impression had been accurate. He was tall and slim, dressed in brown boots, green trousers, a black leather jacket and gloves. He had a black hat on his head, covering his hair and pulled down to just above his eyes. There was a red bandanna covering his face from just below his eyes. I'd never be able to give an accurate description of him to the police. The one thing I had got wrong - which was an immense relief - was the shotgun. It was half of a black snooker cue. Even so, had I known that, I doubt I would have attempted to tackle him.
He was looking around the room.
“Not bad,” he said, sizing up the value of my possessions.
The items he seemed interested in were my antiques and my paintings. During the entire robbery he never mentioned money, credit cards or chequebooks. It was as if he had specific items in mind. A professional art thief.
He leaned the cue against the doorframe and started moving around the room, taking paintings off the wall and placing them in the centre of the living room floor. I watched as he stacked Thomson's Sunflowers, Namsoo's Blue Vase, Whiting's West Pier, Hale's Strelitszais, Jackson's The Invisible Worm, and three untitled works by Tabacek, Parker and Turner. He examined Embden's Chalk Path II, then, after a moment of what I took to be hesitation, left it on the wall.
