Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

How to catch a thief

I have been purchasing ever-more complex cameras from Amazon and installed them in the trees

issue 18 January 2020

My tech guy Andy appeared on the doorstep in a puff of smoke. I had just texted him to ask if he was still coming and as I typed the words I heard his footsteps outside.

I raced to the door and opened it to find him standing, wizard like, amid a cloud of vapour. I sniffed. Mmm. Blackcurrant. He sucked a big guzzle of it in before stepping inside. He knows to stock up on nicotine ahead of an evening with me.

He is having to service the surveillance cameras I have fixed in the trees at my horses’ field after two burglaries. You may remember the first was a truly baffling affair in which some broken old horse rugs were wheeled away from the barn in an ancient wheelbarrow with a flat tyre. The second incident a week later was a bit jollier, because by then I had affixed my first spy camera to a tree, and caught the thieves on film loading horse feed into a Ford Transit crew van with tinted windows.

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