Tom Gray turned to his array of monitors and checked that each was functioning properly.  All twelve screens returned a full colour image and he toggled each between visible light and infra-red.  Once he was satisfied that they were all working as required he turned his attention to the motion sensor display.  All thirty sensors in and around the perimeter were listed and each had a green tick next to their designation to signify that a test signal was being sent and received every second.  Should one sensor not respond to a sent signal, a red cross would appear and an audible warning would alert him.

With the equipment in working order he figured he had at least an hour before anyone turned up at his location, and his warning to Andrew Harvey would prevent them rushing in.  With time to kill, he turned his attention to feeding the prisoners. This was done by wheeling a trolley up to each boy’s chest so that they could reach the food by craning their neck. He could have released one of their hands to let them eat properly, but he’d decided that if they had chosen to behave like animals, they could eat like animals, too.  The food was basic; tinned potatoes and Spam, neither of which he had bothered to heat through.

He pushed the trolley up to the first of the boys, Simon Arkin, and removed the tape over his mouth.

“Eat.” He ordered.

“Why’re you doing this?” Arkin asked, more than a touch of anxiety in his voice.  “What have I ever done to you?”

“Nothing.  You did nothing to me.  But that’s only because I don’t live near you.  I’m sure that if I lived within five miles of you, you would have had no hesitation in nicking my car or breaking into my house.”  Gray studied him for a moment.  “How many houses did you burgle?”

Arkin averted his eyes as he calculated his answer.  “Twenty eight,” he eventually said.

“You see, that’s the problem, Simon.  You tell me it’s twenty eight, but that’s how many convictions you have for burglary.  That means you either just lied to me, or you got caught every time you burgled a house.  And if you got caught every time, it would have sunk in after the first three or four and you wouldn’t have bothered with the other twenty odd, would you?”

Arkin kept his head bowed, taking it as a rhetorical question.

“So what is it?  Were you lying to me about the number of burglaries, or are you really so stupid that you got caught every time and yet kept doing it?”

“About three hundred.” Arkin finally admitted.  “But it wasn’t just me.”

“I know, I read your record.  So why didn’t you give the others up when you got caught?  The police knew you weren’t acting alone, but they were unable to force you to give up the names of the people who were with you.  That’s what I am going to change.