The meanest Flood

opening and the slight but erect figure of the magician emerging.
    It was late, well after midnight. He locked the vehicle and walked along the street, a thirty-five-year-old man wearing a neat black overcoat, a soft hat with a brim and polished shoes. He walked with his head erect and it was only when he passed those junctions with closed-circuit cameras in operation that he pulled the brim over his eyes and let his shoulders slump forward to hide his features.
    He had taken this path several times before. He knew everything there was to know about it. Magic needs to be rehearsed. It involves manipulating and controlling the environment. When it is completely successful nothing has been left to chance.
    This is how gods work. The magician was not a god but that didn’t mean he couldn’t emulate one. Magic is available to some people. Handed down through the centuries, through the long ages of man’s journey. Before the Magus and beyond Houdini the brotherhood extends over the furthest stretches of the universe.
    As he walked Diamond Danny pulled on two pairs of latex gloves.
    God encourages the things that please Him, and those that He doesn’t favour He destroys. This is how He is. Remember the flood? The magician had little time for people who believe that God is kindness and light. God is a planner and an engineer; He is an ambitious magician and He doesn’t mind too much if some of His tricks go wrong. He can rest on His laurels for a while, on His reputation. He was in the right place at the right time and He managed to pull off a few stunning illusions. But you must have heard?
    The house was nothing, a between-the-wars construction of red brick. Since it was built all the woodwork had been replaced at least once. It had single-glazed windows and no damp-course to ensure that it met the English standard of cold and draughts and a tendency to mould around the skirting boards.
    The front door was painted red and the upper half was a single pane of glass. But at the rear of the house it was dark and whoever wanted to enter could do so undetected by one of the neighbourhood insomniacs.
    The magician, of course, knew this already. He had been at the back door of this building twice before. Once during the day and once at the dead of night. There was a simple lever lock which the magician could open with a matchstick in a few seconds. There were bolts on the inside of the door, at top and bottom, but both of them were stiff from lack of use and a couple of attempts to paint them out of existence.
    The occupant of this house had no worries. She didn’t imagine that someone would wish to enter her home and harm her. She slept soundly. She slept as soundly at night as she did during the day. Her life was a dream.
    We are all magicians now. Even the plodding policeman is a sorcerer these days. Recently Danny had seen on the news that a twelve-year-old rape case had been solved through the extraction of DNA from a speck of dandruff. Truly amazing. The perpetrator of the rape was now a fifty-year-old grandfather, but at the time of his crime he was only thirty-eight. For the years between he was a card hidden in the pack until - hey, presto - the conjurors of the forensic department found him curled up in a test tube.
    The magician was not particularly interested in this woman. The female in the house, sleeping in the front bedroom. She was not the trick, only a component of it. He needed her but she was not an end in herself. She was neither the rabbit nor the top hat. She contributed to the illusion by the way she distracted the eye. She was a cipher who only took on the appearance of reality when she was removed from it.
    The streetlights sent a pale glow through the windows of the house. The magician had a torch but he didn’t need to use it. The kitchen was neat and tidy, all the surfaces had been wiped clean and there was a suggestion of pine disinfectant in the air. The living room had a fitted carpet and floral curtains that were closed against the night. There was still enough residual light to see the photographs on the mantelpiece: a studio portrait of an old couple, probably her parents, and one of the old woman alone, taken some time later with an Italian mountain in the background. There was another of a small girl with pigtails, something old-fashioned about it, perhaps the silver frame.
    The magician removed his overcoat and laid it on the worn Chesterfield. He slid his weapon from the inside pocket