Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPQH7W643WECCVC30EKAHQ

The van smelled of stale crisps and ambition. Molly had parked it beneath a sycamore two doors down from number forty-two, where a bouncy castle shaped like a dragon wheezed and shuddered in the back garden like something dying badly. Bill sat in the passenger seat with a clipboard on his knees, a pencil behind his ear, and an expression of profound moral discomfort. "Say it again," he said. "Presents." Molly adjusted the rear-view mirror to watch a woman in a sunhat carry a tray of sausage rolls across the drive. "Eleven children. Average spend, let's say twenty pounds, because these are Kingswood parents and they overcompensate. That's two hundred and twenty quid of merchandise sitting in a pile by the trestle table, unguarded, unlabelled, and nobody's going to open them until four o'clock." "It's a child's birthday." "It's a *logistics opportunity*." Bill wrote something on his clipboard, then crossed it out. He had once helped remove eleven thousand pounds of copper wiring from a decommissioned telephone exchange and slept like a lamb afterwards, but there was something about the dragon castle that had got under his skin. Its face was too friendly. It kept nodding at him. "What's my cover?" he said. "Uncle." "Whose uncle?" "Everyone's. Nobody questions an uncle at a birthday party. Uncles are load-bearing. You'll stand near the crisps looking tired and slightly divorced, and I guarantee you nobody speaks to you for ninety minutes." "And you?" "Entertainer." Molly reached into the back and produced a red nose still faintly tacky with somebody else's makeup. "Bobo. Balloon animals, three card tricks, and a routine involving a rubber chicken that I would describe as *transitional*." Bill looked at the nose for a long moment. "You can't do balloon animals." "I can do a sausage dog and a slightly longer sausage dog." "Children notice things, Molly. Children are extremely observant. They're basically small detectives with sugar in them." "Which is why you're going to be at the crisps. When Bobo begins the rubber chicken sequence, every child in that garden will be facing the wrong way, and you will be walking calmly through the utility room with a bin liner. Not running. Uncles don't run. Uncles amble." She pulled the nose over her face and turned to him. "How do I look?" "Like something that would frighten a horse." "Perfect." They watched the house. A man in an apron came out with tongs and stood over a barbecue in the manner of someone praying at an altar he did not believe in. Somewhere inside, a sound system began playing a song about a baby shark, and the dragon shuddered again, and eleven children screamed with the pure unfiltered joy of the very young and very fed. Bill set down the clipboard. "One condition," he said. "Go on." "We leave one. The birthday kid's. The big one, with the ribbon. We leave that one." Molly was quiet. Through the red plastic, her breathing sounded enormous and faintly ridiculous. "Fine," she said. "Sentimentalist." "Professional," said Bill, and opened the door.