No wonder he looked scared, Sweeting thought, stroking Leo’s silky head with the tip of a grubby finger. This should be easy: nothing more simple when they have had a good fright. This could be the most profitable job he had ever pulled off.
He watched Ken walk up the path to a small bungalow and pause to speak to a fat old woman who bobbed up from behind the next-door hedge. Then when he had gone into the bungalow, Sweeting crossed the road to a bench seat under the trees from where he had a good view of the bungalow and sat down.
There was no hurry, he told himself, setting Leo on the seat at his side. He removed his hat and wiped his glistening forehead. The next move was to find out who the young fellow was, and more important still, if he was married and had children.
A wife and children were very useful levers in the game Sweeting played.
He crossed one fat leg over the other, and sighed contentedly. He would watch the bungalow for an hour or so. It was a pleasant evening now, and with any luck the wife, if there was a wife, might come out into the garden.
Sweeting had infinite patience. All his life he had been content to wait for things to come to him, never attempting to make an effort himself, and he sat in the evening sunshine, his mind cloudy, his fat, dirty fingers gently stroking Leo’s silky coat while he waited.
Then, after perhaps a quarter of an hour, he saw a car swing around the corner and come down the road fast.
Immediately he stiffened to attention when he recognized the driver.
The police!
He hurriedly opened his newspaper and concealed himself behind it.