Picking your mark is important. This is no smash and grab. This is no crime of opportunity. This is tradecraft.

You look for sloppiness, for laziness. Expensive bikes left in back gardens. Hopper windows ajar. Packages left hanging from letterboxes. Easy pickings.

You look for signs of opulence, of wealth. How expensive are a person’s drapes? What car is parked in their driveway? Does security lighting protect their wealth?

Lastly, you look for patterns. When do they leave in the morning? Are their hours regular? Are there neighbours twitching at drapes?

The house on the mountain. It was as good a name as any.

There was a path, such as it was, cutback atop cutback, gouged into the loose soil and the scree on the side of the rockface. The sun spooled out over the mountain face within which the house was crammed for only a few hours every day, fewer in winter. When the pale warmth hit the face, the ice thawed and rocks fell like teeth from blasted gums, hurtling down to threaten anyone foolish enough to be climbing. In the summer, meltwater eddied and gushed from on high, thrumming down and beating upon the weathered rock. What stone and stream did not deter, terrain made fools of. Air and wind yawned around the bare faces; only trembling wildflowers and feather-bustled birds were brave enough to cling on.