The Falcon's Malteser Read online

  For Dursley McLinden

  29.5.65–7.8.95

  who played Tim Diamond in the film

  and in the TV series

  CONTENTS

  1 The Package

  2 Tim Diamond Inc

  3 The Fat Man

  4 Opening Time

  5 D for Dwarf

  6 The Falcon

  7 Grannies

  8 The Casablanca Club

  9 “Nice day for a funeral”

  10 Crocodile Tears

  11 Killer in the Rain

  12 The Professor

  13 Fairy Cakes

  14 The Last Chord

  15 Selfridges

  16 Information

  17 In the Fog

  18 In the Bath

  19 The Shining Light

  20 The Falcon’s Malteser

  TIM DIAMOND INC.

  23 THE CUTTING, CAMDEN TOWN, NW1

  Dear Reader,

  My name is Tim Diamond, but I don’t know why I’m telling you that because the one thing I don’t need right now is an introduction. The last time I introduced myself, I took two bullets in the chest. It’s lucky I was hiding behind the chest at the time or I could have got hurt. Getting shot at is all in a day’s work for me and I’m glad I don’t do overtime. The streets where I live are pretty mean. And I mean mean. And not at all pretty. You’d be surprised how many people knock on my door, come into my office and try to kill me. Some of them don’t even knock. But that’s the sort of business I’m in. I’m a private eye and a lot of the people I meet like to keep their finger on the trigger – even the ones who can’t afford the whole gun.

  My guess is that you’ll have heard of me. At the very least, you’ll have seen my advertisement in the Yellow Pages. TIM DIAMOND, PRIVATE DETECTIVE: THE BEST IN THE .I’d have liked to say more but they were charging by the word. Anyway, this book will tell you just about everything you need to know about me except my shoe size – and in case you’re wondering, it’s ten and a half. Eleven in wet weather.

  So why am I writing this?

  Well, the publishers – Walker Books – are re-launching “The Falcon’s Malteser” with a new cover and, of course, a new price-tag. You see that picture on the front? It took their team of designers sixteen weeks working night and day to come up with it. Maybe it would have been easier if they’d read the book first. But that’s the thing about publishers. I’ve met livelier people in a cemetery. They’re paid almost nothing and they’re worth every penny of it.

  In case you’re wondering (and I can’t imagine why you would be), Walker Books is based in south London, right next to the River Thames … and if something goes splash in the night, it’s probably the managing director. He never used to be suicidal – not until he looked at his sales figures.

  They work in a building which is old and crumbling and desperately in need of a face-lift … a bit like my editor. Actually, she’s had so much plastic surgery they’ve run out of plastic, and the last time she sneezed she turned into someone else. It’s scary what people will do to keep themselves looking good – and she wasn’t great when she started. Anyway, Walker Books needs your pocket money. They’re so desperate, they’ll even take your pocket. Remember that book token you got for Christmas that’s been in your bottom drawer ever since? They want it. To you it may be another crummy paperback but to them it’s lunch.

  And that’s why they asked me to write this introduction. I got a call from my editor at the start of the month. Her name is Jane Winterton and on top of all the cosmetic surgery she has a voice that sounds like fingers being scratched down a blackboard, or maybe an animal in pain.

  Talk to her for too long and you want to throw yourself onto the nearest train. Or under it.

  “Tim,” she said. “We need your help.”

  “Who’s been killed?” I asked. “And it had better not be the accountant.”

  “Oh, no,” she simpered. “Mr Lloyd is fit and bouncing.”

  “Yeah. Like his cheques.”

  “What we need is one thousand, five hundred words for the new edition of “The Falcon’s Malteser.” We’ll pay you fifty pounds.”

  “Fifty pounds?” I tried to work out the rate per word but I quickly gave up. I didn’t have a pocket calculator small enough. “What’s the idea?” I demanded.

  “Well, obviously your brother Nick is the one who actually writes the books. But we thought it might be fun to hear something from you. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

  She was the one calling me the horse. What a laugh! You should have seen her teeth.

  “What if I’m busy?” I growled.

  “Are you?”

  I glanced around the empty office. It was true that right now I was between cases. My last client had asked me to find out who was stealing supplies from his glue factory, but he’d disappeared and I was beginning to think he must have come to a sticky end.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “We’d like something by the end of the week.”

  “I’m not sure about that. How about Friday?”

  “See what you can do …” She rang off.

  So that’s the introduction to the introduction. Here’s the introduction. If you keep reading you might even get to the book.

  I never dreamed when I set up as a private detective that I’d end up living with my kid brother, Nick – and if I’d thought I was going to dream it, I wouldn’t have bothered going to sleep. Look at it from my point of view. I was twenty-five. He was thirteen. The day he walked through the door, his voice hadn’t even broken – which is more than you could say for the door. The whole office was falling apart. The trouble was that business had been a bit slow … in fact it could have been overtaken by a one-legged tortoise with a twenty-a-day cigarette habit. I had no money. No clients. And suddenly there was an extra mouth to feed. Worse still, that mouth was connected to an extra stomach.

  The thing is, Nick was meant to have moved to Australia with our parents. I thought I’d seen the last of him when I waved goodbye at Heathrow Airport, but it turned out he had other ideas because by the time I got back to the flat he was already there.

  The strange thing is that in a way I’m glad he never did make it to Australia. “The Falcon’s Malteser” was our first case together and there were moments now and then when it was good to have someone around. I mean, from the moment Johnny Naples walked into my office, I knew this was no ordinary case. What was he doing with a box of Maltesers? Why did he need me to look after it? And why was the Fat Man so desperate to get his hands on it? The fact of the matter was that I needed someone to talk to.

  “Two brains are better than one,” I said to Nick.

  “Sure, Tim,” he replied. “But I guess we’ll just have to manage with one between us.”

  I’m not sure what he meant by that. Nick has a strange sense of humour.

  You might like to know that there are other books written about me: “Public Enemy Number Two”, “South by South East”, “The French Confection”, “I Know What You Did Last Wednesday” and “The Blurred Man.” Personally I haven’t read them, because I was too busy being in them. Oh – and you may be wondering, who’s this guy Anthony Horowitz whose name appears on the covers? He also works for Walker Books: they pay him to knock the books into shape after Nick has finished. I’ve never met him and they tell me I haven’t missed much. Apparently he writes his own stuff too, and a lot of people have compared him to JK Rowling – but without the money or the good looks. What that man doesn’t know about writing would fill a book … and nobody would read that one either.

  So here it is. “The Falcon’s Malteser.” Teachers say that reading books is good for you, so get stuck int
o this one and prove them wrong.

  13 February 2007

  THE PACKAGE

  There’s not much call for private detectives in Fulham.

  The day it all started was a bad one. Business was so slack it was falling down all around us. The gas had been disconnected that morning, one of the coldest mornings for twenty years, and it could only be a matter of time before the electricity followed. We’d run out of food and the people in the supermarket downstairs had all fallen about laughing when I suggested credit. We had just £2.37 and about three teaspoons of instant coffee to last us the weekend. The wallpaper was peeling, the carpets were fraying and the curtains … well, whichever way you looked at it, it was curtains for us. Even the cockroaches were walking out.

  I was just wondering whether the time hadn’t finally come to do something constructive – like packing my bags and going back to Mum – when the door opened and the dwarf walked in.

  OK – maybe you’re not supposed to call them dwarves these days. Vertically challenged … that’s what it says in the book. But not this book. The truth is, this guy was as challenged as they come. I was only thirteen but already I had six inches on him and the way he looked at me with cold, unforgiving eyes – he knew it and wasn’t going to forget it.

  He was in his mid forties, I guessed. It was hard to say with someone that size. A short, dark stranger with brown eyes and a snub nose. He was wearing a three-piece suit, only the pieces all belonged to different suits like he’d got dressed in a hurry. His socks didn’t match either. A neat moustache crowned his upper lip and his black hair was slicked back with enough oil to interest an Arab. A spotted bow tie and a flashy gold ring completed the picture. It was a weird picture.

  “Do come in, Mr …” my brother began.

  “Naples,” the dwarf, who already was in, said. His name might have come out of Italy but he spoke with a South American accent. “Johnny Naples. You are Tim Diamond?”

  “That’s me,” my brother lied. His real name was Herbert Timothy Simple, but he called himself Tim Diamond. He thought it suited his image. “And what can I do for you, Mr Venice?”

  “Naples,” the dwarf corrected him. He climbed on to a chair and sat down opposite my brother. His nose just reached the level of the desk. Herbert slid a paper-weight out of the way to give his new client a clear view. The dwarf was about to speak but then he paused. The nose was turned on me. “Who is he?” he demanded, the two h’s scratching at the back of his throat.

  “Him?” Tim smiled. “He’s just my kid brother. Don’t worry about him, Mr Navels. Just tell me how I can help you.”

  Naples laid a carefully manicured hand on the desk. His initials – JN – were cut into the ring. There was so much gold around that third finger he could have added his name and address too. “I want to deposit something with you,” he said.

  “Deposit?” Herbert repeated quite unnecessarily. The dwarf might have had a thick accent, but it certainly wasn’t as thick as my brother. “You mean … like in a bank?” he continued, brilliantly.

  The dwarf raised his eyes to the ceiling, took in the crack in the plaster and then, with a sigh, lowered them on to Herbert. “I want to leave a package with you,” he said, briskly. “It’s much important you look after it. But you must not open it. Just keep it here and keep it safe.”

  “For how long?”

  Now the dwarf’s eyes darted across to the window. He swallowed hard and loosened his bow tie. I could see that he was scared of something or somebody in the street outside. Either that or he had a thing about double glazing.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “About a week maybe. I’ll come back and collect it … when I can. You give it to nobody else except for me. You understand?”

  Naples pulled out a packet of Turkish cigarettes and lit one. The smoke curled upwards, a lurid blue in the chill morning air. My brother flicked a piece of chewing-gum towards his mouth. It missed and disappeared over his shoulder.

  “What’s in the package?” he asked.

  “That’s my business,” the dwarf said.

  “OK. Let’s talk about my business then.” Herbert treated his client to one of his “Don’t mess with me” smiles. It made him look about as menacing as a cow with stomachache. “I’m not cheap,” he went on. “If you want a cheap private dick, try looking in the cemetery. You want me to look after your package? It’ll cost you.”

  The dwarf reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the first good thing I’d seen that week: twenty portraits of Her Majesty the Queen, each one printed in brown. In other words, a bundle of ten-pound notes, brand new and crisp. “There’s two hundred pounds here,” he said.

  “Two hundred?” Herbert squeaked.

  “There will be another hundred when I return and pick up the package. I take it that is sufficient?”

  My brother nodded his head, an insane grin on his face. Put him in the back of a car and who’d need a plastic dog?

  “Good.” The dwarf stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and slid off the chair. Then he removed a plain brown envelope from another pocket. It was quite thick with something vaguely rectangular bulging in the centre. It rattled faintly as he put it on the desk. “Here is the package,” he said. “Once again, look after it, Mr Diamond. With your life. And whatever you do, don’t open it.”

  “You can trust me, Mr Nipples,” my brother muttered. “Your package is in safe hands.” He waved one of the safe hands to illustrate the point, sending a mug of coffee flying. “What happens if I need to get in touch with you?” he asked as an afterthought.

  “You don’t,” Naples snapped. “I get in touch with you.”

  “Well there’s no need to be touchy,” Herbert said.

  It was then that a car in the street backfired. The dwarf seemed to evaporate. One moment he was standing beside the desk. The next he was crouching beneath it, one hand inside his jacket. And somehow I knew that his finger wasn’t wrapped round another bundle of money. For about thirty seconds nobody moved. Then Naples slid across to the window, standing to one side so that he could look out without being seen. He had to stand on tip-toe to do it, his hands perched on the sill, the side of his face pressed against the glass. When he turned round, he left a damp circle on the window. Hair oil and sweat.

  “I’ll see you again in a week,” he said. He made for the door as fast as his legs could carry him. With his legs, that wasn’t too fast. “Look after that package with your life, Mr Diamond,” he repeated. “And I mean … your life.”

  And then he was gone.

  My brother was jubilant. “Two hundred pounds just for looking after an envelope,” he crowed. “This is my lucky day. This is the best thing that’s happened to me this year.” He glanced at the package. “I wonder what’s in it?” he murmured. “Still, that needn’t worry us. As far as we’re concerned, there’s no problem.”

  That’s what Herbert thought. But right from the start I wasn’t so sure. I mean, two hundred pounds is two hundred pounds, and when you’re throwing that sort of money around there’s got to be a good reason. And I remembered the dwarf’s face when the car backfired. He may have been a small guy, but he seemed to be expecting big trouble.

  Just how big I was to find out soon enough.

  TIM DIAMOND INC

  The two hundred pounds lasted about half a day. But it was a good half-day.

  It began with a blow-out at a café round the corner. Double eggs, double sausage, double chips and fried bread but no beans. We’d been living on beans for the best part of a week. It had got so bad I’d been having nightmares about them with giant Heinz cans chasing me down the High Street.

  After that, Herbert put an ad in the local newsagent for a cleaning lady. That was crazy, really. There was no way we could afford a cleaner – but on the other hand, if you’d seen the state of our place, maybe you’d have understood. Dust everywhere, dirty plates piled high in the sink and old socks sprawled across the carpet from the bedroom to the front doo
r as if they were trying to get to the launderette under their own steam. Then we took a bus into the West End. Herbert bought me a new jacket for the next term at school and bought himself some new thermal underwear and a hot-water bottle. That left just about enough money to get two tickets for a film. We went to see 101 Dalmations. Herbert cried all the way through. He even cried in the commercials. That’s what sort of guy he is.

  I suppose it was pretty strange, the two of us living together the way we did. It had all happened about two years back when my parents suddenly decided to emigrate to Australia. Herbert was twenty-eight then. I’d just turned eleven.

  We were living in a comfortable house in a nice part of London. I still remember the address: 1, Wiernotta Mews. My dad worked as a door-to-door salesman. Doors was what he sold; fancy French sliding doors and traditional English doors, pure mahogany, made in Korea. He really loved doors. Ours was the only house in the street with seventeen ways in. As for my mum, she had a part-time job in a pet shop. It was after she got bitten by a rabid parrot that they decided to emigrate. I wasn’t exactly wild about the idea but of course nobody asked me. You know how some parents think they own their kids? Well, I couldn’t even sneeze without written permission signed in duplicate.

  Neither Herbert nor I really got on with our parents. That was one thing we had in common. Oh yeah … and we didn’t get on with each other. That was the second thing. He’d just joined the police force (this was one week before the Hendon Police Training Centre burnt down) and could more or less look after himself, but of course I had as much independence as the coffee table.

  “You’ll love Australia,” my dad said. “It’s got kangaroos.”

  “And boomerangs,” my mum added.

  “And wonderful, maple-wood doors …”

  “And koalas.”

  “I’m not coming!” I said.

  “You are!” they screamed.

  So much for reasoned argument.

  I got as far as Heathrow. But just as the plane to Sydney was about to take off, I slipped out the back door and managed to find my way out of the airport. Then I high-tailed it back to Fulham. I’m told my mum had hysterics about 35,000 feet above Bangkok. But by then it was too late.