(Vegetables) Chapter Twenty Three: Breaking And Entering (Without A Carrot This Time)

The main door of the Weekly Bugle building was locked by an electronic card reader, and was brightly lit. It also had far too many people walking past it to be worth a breaking and entering attempt. That’s why the two women found themselves ducking under the car park barrier at the back, and wandering around a mostly empty car park, looking for open ground floor windows, or conveniently ajar doors⁶³.

The back of the building was built out of more prosaic brick, with the usual building accoutrements of drains and downpipes. It didn’t look as shiny, but it certainly looked more functional. There was a back door, but it too was locked, with the little black box of a key card reader next to it.

Morwen was looking around nervously.

“Well, I can’t see any CCTV cameras,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there…”

Felindre was scanning the building façade with a fierce intensity.

“There!” she said in satisfaction, and pointed to an open window on the second floor.

“How on earth are you going to get up there?” Morwen asked.

“Watch me,” she said, kicked off her boots and slung her bag across her back.

Morwen watched in amazement as Felindre took a run up, jumped and caught a drainpipe and started climbing up the wall, straight for the open window. She clung to the brickwork like a spider.

“Bloody hell,” she said to herself in amazement.

A human figure appeared silhouetted against the glass of the back door. Thinking quickly, Morwen grabbed Felindre’s boots and hurried toward the door, rummaging in her bag.

“Oh thank God,” she said, to the surprised looking cleaning lady who came through the door, cigarette in hand.

“I’ve only gone and left my house keys and my pass on my desk!” Morwen wailed at the cleaning lady. “You couldn’t let me in, could you?”

The cleaning lady blinked bemusedly a couple of times, then swiped the door open.

Morwen ducked through it quickly, thanking the woman profusely. Once inside she ran up the stairs to the second floor, peeking through the office door windows, looking for Felindre. Thankfully there was no one else around.

It took several long, scary minutes for Morwen to locate the office with the open window, and several more, even longer and scarier minutes before she saw Felindre’s head pop over the window ledge.

“It’s ok, it’s me,” she hissed at Felindre.

“Hellfire and damnation!” swore Felindre, also in a whisper. “You nearly gave me heart failure!!”

“Sorry!”

“Stop apologising and open the bloody window wider!”

There were another few minutes of muffled effort and then Felindre was sitting on the floor underneath the open window, breathing heavily. When she’d got her breath back, and put her boots back on, she fixed Morwen with a glare.

“How the hell did you get up here before I did?”

“Cleaning lady, and social engineering,” replied Morwen, shrugging. “Come on, let’s find Rosa and get out of here before someone who knows proper security procedures comes along.”




They found Rosa’s office, desk and mobile phone fairly easily. Sure, there was one hairy moment when they had to duck into a deserted office to avoid the cleaning lady.

“Oh God, I’m sure she’s heard us!” whispered Morwen, as the cleaning lady, plus her trolley, progressed slowly down the corridor towards them.

Neither woman dared breathe until she’d passed, then Felindre laughed out loud.

“Shhhhhh!” hissed Morwen. “She’ll definitely hear us!”

“She’s got earphones in,” said Felindre, quietly, but not whispering. “And the volume she’s playing her music, she’d not going to hear anything short of the fire alarm.”

Sure enough, now Morwen was listening for it, she could hear the tinny thump of music leaking out of the cleaning lady’s earphones.

Rosa’s office was large, and open plan, and entirely unremarkable, featuring, as most open plan offices do, large banks of filing cabinets, computers on each desk, and random piles of paper. There was a sad looking yucca plant on one desk. Morwen tutted in disapproval when she saw it.

“Dry as a bone,” she said, having tested the soil in the plant pot with her finger. “Back in a mo.”

She snagged a coffee cup⁶⁴ off a nearby table, nipped over to the water cooler to fill it up, and used the cup to water the poor, wilting plant.

“There,” she said in satisfaction. “I’ll have words with Rosa about it, when we find her. Any sign?”

Felindre had been roaming around the office, looking in all sorted of odd places.

“No, but I have found biscuits,” whispered Felindre, opening a large spotted tin. “Chocolate chip too – win!” Quietly she helped herself to a couple.

Morwen gave her a look.

“What?” mumbled Felindre around a mouthful of cookie.

“We’re supposed to be finding Rosa, not stealing biscuits!”

“Or watering plants,” riposted Felindre. “This is her office. There’s her desk. There’s her scale model of the Eiffel tower made out of paper clips. There’s her phone. She’s here somewhere.”

Morwen picked up Rosa’s phone and put it in her bag. She then spotted a framed photo of Rosa, Felindre and her on Rosa’s desk.

“Aw, look,” she said, passing it to Felindre.

As soon as Felindre’s hand touched the photo to take it off Morwen, the two gasped, and dropped the picture. It landed with a thud on the office carpet, but amazingly, given the aforementioned laws of narrative, the glass in the frame didn’t smash into several pieces with an accompanying crash.

Morwen looked at Felindre, who looked back at her.

“You felt that too,” said Morwen. It was a statement, not a question.

Felindre nodded, looking worried.

Without any further conversation, the two turned as one, and headed out the door of the office, heading for the stairs.
___
⁶³ There weren’t any.
⁶⁴ Featuring the time honoured slogan of “You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps!”