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along.
    Mandy would invite Julie round to her house now and then to work on some projects for school or just to do girly stuff. Julie on the other hand was embarrassed to invite Mandy to hers as she didn’t want her to bump into her dad who would quite often walk around the house in his night attire which embarrassed her so much.
    Because they lived not far from each other Julie would cycle round to Mandy’s. Mandy’s mum and dad always made her feel welcome and would invite her to stay and eat with them. In return Julie would help Mandy to do her homework for although they came from different backgrounds Julie seemed to be able to grasp most subjects much quicker than Mandy.
    Because Julie had to make do with cheaper clothing to make up her uniform she was teased by some of the other girls in the school. Whenever this happened Mandy would always be there to stick up for Julie. Mandy could never stand bullies and would report any she knew of.
    The time that Mandy had been on holiday seemed like an eternity to Julie and she couldn’t wait for her friend to return. They would have loads to talk about. Before Mandy went away both girls had decided to do a spot of detective work of their own in an effort to solve the increasing number of break-in’s that the police had failed to solve so far. Some of the preliminaries had been done, such as mapping the streets of the town and the villages close by that had been targets of the burglaries and the dates on when they had happened.
    Julie was going to update the map when Mandy returned and to tell her of the robbery at the house just up the road from where she lived that had happened while she was away.
    When they parted after their meeting in town just before Mandy was due to go on her holiday, they had made arrangements to meet up on the Saturday after she returned. This wouldn’t be long now as today was Tuesday.
          “Mum is it OK for me to meet Julie on Saturday? She will be back off her holiday by then and I did say I would”, she asked.
          “Of course you can”, replied her mother. She approved of Mandy as Julie’s friend unlike some of the other girls she sometimes hung around with.
    Julie went upstairs to write the entry in her diary. “That’s funny” she thought to herself, “I’m sure I didn’t leave my diary open”. She noticed it was open at Mandy’s address. “Maybe it was Rachel that had looked in it”, she surmised. She was not going to make an issue of it just now but she would tackle her sister tonight after they were in bed.

Chapter 3  
    A Change of Plan 
    Roger drove to the block of flats where one of his mates lived. The news he was about to divulge would change the plans that had already been made for tonight. Taking the lift to the sixth floor he alighted and proceeded down the corridor.  This corridor had doors on the left and rows of windows on the right.
    This was the only block of flats in the village and was council owned. Before he reached ‘113 The Towers’, he glanced out of the window which overlooked a row of garages. One of these he knew was rented to a Mick Russell, the man he was about to see. He knocked on the door and waited. The door opened slightly and the chain rattled as the man peered through the partly opened door.
    “Are you expecting someone to burgle you”, inquired Roger jokingly as he smiled at the unshaven face that looked out at him.
    “You can never be too careful these days, there’s some real crooks about you know”, he chuckled, as he took the chain off the catch.
    He greeted Roger with a shake of the hand and a puzzled expression on his face.
    “I thought we weren’t meeting until tonight”, he inquired as he walked in front of Roger down the hall into the living room.
    The flat was strewn with dirty clothes and the coffee table top could hardly be seen for the number of empty beer cans on it. The parts of the table you could see were covered in cigarette burns where the butts