INSIDE JOB

Raymond Keene on the perils of leaving your house with

someone you trust

THE most gut-wrenching moments can be announced by an impersonal note. Thirty years ago a college porter left a message for me in my rooms at Cambridge. 'Please ring home at once,' it read. That was the first intimation I had of the death of my mother. Since then, any unexpected message has always left me feeling apprehensive.

At the start of September I had just fin- ished organising the third Mind Sports Olympiad. This, as readers of my chess column in The Spectator will know, is a competition for thinking games and pur- suits. This year it attracted 4,000 competi- tors in chess, memory, draughts, speed-reading, IQ and creativity to Olympia in London. Once it was over, I and my family even more so — needed a holiday. It was short notice: where to go before the school term started? We chose San Sebastian in the Basque country. The food was said to be superb, and being there would give me the chance to research the great chess tournaments of 1911 and 1912 where the immortals them- selves had played — Capablanca, Rubin- stein, Nimzowitsch, Tarrask,

Before leaving our home, operation Fort Knox was put into action: window and Mortise locks were checked, the burglar alarm tested, all valuable items crammed Into our safe. Then, following 'Your prac- tical guide to crime prevention', published by the Home Office Communications Dir- ectorate, we got 'a friend or neighbour' to look after our home while we were away. The house-sitter we chose was my part- time secretary and assistant. She had been working with me for three years and had house-sat before. I had also deemed her sufficiently mature, at the age of around 26, to baby-sit our eight-year-old — who adored her — on previous occasions. I first met her in 1995 at the Festival of the Mind at the Royal Albert Hall. She was the girlfriend of an old associate who had been my chief of staff for the 1986 world chess championship. She was not one of nature's Einsteins, but I took her on because she was willing to work long and unorthodox hours and seemed intent on improving her financial and educational situation in life. She was always prepared to make herself available for tedious filing work, decoding e-mails, typing reams of letters, and so on.

Before we left for Spain, I gave her strict instructions that there were to be no wild parties. That did not seem to be much of a danger, however, as she had just broken up with her boyfriend — or so she had told me. House-sitting ought therefore to have provided her with an ideal opportunity to consider her future in peace and quiet.

We set off for the Hotel Maria Cristina feeling secure. The feeling did not last long.

'Please ring home at once.' The hotel envelope was lurking on the floor of the lobby of our room when we returned from a day-trip to Biarritz with the chess colum- nist of El Pais. I rang home. The girl to whom we had entrusted our house, the girl 'without the boyfriend', answered.

'Are you sitting down?' she asked. 'You have been burgled. I was such a plonker I went out and forgot to put on the burglar alarm.'

'When did it happen?' I asked.

Were dinosaurs gay? 'Saturday evening. We went out for a couple of hours and forgot to set the alarm.' We? I now learned that the man with whom she had said she had broken up had arrived and taken up residence in our house within hours of our leaving for Spain. Later I discovered that he had a criminal record.

'How did you notice the crime?'

'On Sunday morning I spotted that the light was on in the cellar, which seemed suspicious. When I checked I found a destroyed safe.'

Our safe had evidently been dragged from the top of the house to the cellar to muffle the noise that would be made when the burglars prised it open with power tools. Hardly the task for a couple of hours. The safe had contained my OBE insignia, presented by the Queen in 1985, my chess grandmaster medal — sadly no longer manufactured — my wife's jewellery and her mother's, as well as an English gold-coin collection dating back to the 14th century. All in all £17,000 worth of theft, including numerous sentimental items. We spoke to the police and returned home immediately. The journey was a nightmare — torrential rain and a nagging fear that all was not as it seemed.

Our trepidation was justified. Apart from the fact that my secretary had by now com- pletely changed her story ('We went out in the afternoon. I set the alarm in the evening') there was absolutely no sign of a break-in. The alarm system may have been dormant, but to force entry into our house would still have required some evidence of violence. There was nothing. We knew by now (from a helpful ex-boyfriend, whose call might have more usefully come a day or so

before we left) that boyfriend mark II was on

drugs, probably sold them, too, and that my assistant was also using illegal substances.

Strange absences, such as the complete dis- appearance of our kitchen tinfoil confirmed the suspicion. It was obviously an inside job.

Without admitting anything about the crime, my assistant gradually sobbed that she had been taking drugs for months — crack cocaine as it turned out. All became sudden- ly and horrifically clear. Our family heir- looms, items of value and our trust in her had all been sacrificed on the altar of her addiction. She explained tearfully that she would now try to stay away from her friends, but that once the craving came upon her she did not know to what depths of betrayal she might sink to acquire funds to fuel her habit. Then she left, and I have not seen her since.

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerily seek how to redress their harms.

We live in hope that the insurance com- pany may one day respond. (Warning to CGU: you have had three weeks now and not a peep.) But, although the police have made an arrest, the property has gone, probably for ever; and a conviction, based largely on weighty but circumstantial evi- dence, may be elusive.