The Switch Page 4

  “My baby!” Doll threw her arms around Tad and burst into tears.

  “Be careful!” Eric muttered. “You’re so fat you’ll smother ’im!”

  Eric and Doll Snarby were so relieved to have their son back with them that later that evening they went out and bought fish-and-chips for him—although Doll Snarby ate most of the chips as she carried them home. That night Tad ate properly for the first time. And when he slept again, it was a normal, healthy sleep.

  With the change in Tad’s health came a change in the weather. The sun shone and the crowds came out, enjoying the first weeks of the summer holidays. When she was sure he wouldn’t collapse on her, Doll Snarby set Tad to work on the Lucky Numbers booth.

  It wasn’t difficult to run. All Tad had to do was to sit in front of the stuffed gorillas holding a big basket of tickets. And as the crowds walked past, he would shout out a patter he had quickly learned from his new father.

  “Come on! Try your luck! Three tickets for a buck. If it ends in a five, you’re a winner! Lots of chances! Come on, sir! See if you can win a nice cuddly toy for the missus!”

  This is what Tad did for the next four days. He felt safe in the booth, sitting on his own, and he even enjoyed the work, sitting out in the sun, watching the crowds go by. There was one thing that puzzled him to begin with. Not one single ticket that he sold actually ended in a five and soon he was surrounded by hundreds of colored scraps of paper—torn up and thrown away by the losers. The gorillas stayed where they were. But it didn’t take him long to work out the answer. There were no fives. No fifty-fives, no sixty-fives, no hundred and fives. They had never even been printed. And the punters had as much chance of winning a cuddly toy for the missus as they did of waking up on the moon.

  But Tad didn’t mind. He didn’t feel a twinge of guilt. Eric Snarby was giving him five cents out of every dollar he made and the money was quickly mounting up. Tad felt better with coins in his pocket. He felt more like his old self.

  Before he knew it, he had settled into a routine. The fair closed just after midnight and Tad shut up the booth and crawled into his bed at the back of the caravan after quickly swallowing down a meal. The Snarbys bought him take-out Chinese, take-out Indian, take-out fish-and-chips. And the cost of each meal they took out of his earnings. Bed was the worst time for him. Lying curled up on the lumpy mattress, he would think back to his life at Snatchmore Hall. He had been away from home for just over a week, but somehow home had already become a distant memory. As he shivered in the damp air, Tad would remember his electric blanket, the chocolate that Mitzy placed on his pillow last thing at night, the Jacuzzi waiting for him in the morning. Could he go back? Tad doubted it. If he turned up at Snatchmore Hall looking the way he did now, talking the way he did, smelling the way he did . . . they wouldn’t even let him through the gate.

  “You are Bob Snarby now—whether you like it or not.”

  That was what Dr. Aftexcludor had told him and Tad believed him. He was Bob Snarby. He had no choice.

  Another week passed and the fairgrounds prepared to close. Eric and Doll Snarby were planning to travel north to join another, larger carnival in Great Yarmouth. Tad had almost laughed when he heard that. Great Yarmouth was only forty miles from Snatchmore Hall. He was actually moving closer to home! But at the same time he knew that it might just as well have been four hundred miles for all the difference it would make.

  He sold almost two hundred tickets on the last day. It was a weekday afternoon and he had been left on his own. Eric and Doll had opened a bottle of wine at lunchtime and had gone back to the caravan to sleep it off. He had watched the caravan shaking on its wheels and had heard their screams of laughter as they chased each other around the bedroom, but now it was silent and he imagined they were asleep. Tad picked up the bucket of tickets and shook them.

  “Come on! Try your luck . . .” he began. Then stopped.

  A man had limped up to the stall and was standing in front of him, looking at him strangely. Tad’s first impression was of a shark in human form; the man had the same black eyes and pale, lifeless flesh. Although he wasn’t physically huge, there was a presence about him, something cold and ugly that seemed to reach out and draw Tad helplessly toward him. The man had gray hair, cut short to match the gray stubble on his chin. He wore a shabby suit and a pair of perfectly round wire-frame spectacles.

  And then he turned his head and Tad gasped. His face was normal on one side, but the other was completely covered by a tattoo. Somebody had cut an immense spiderweb into the man’s white flesh. It stretched from his ear to his forehead to his nose, to the side of his mouth and down to his neck. The tattoo was livid black and—most horrible of all—it seemed to be eating its way into the man’s flesh. Somehow it was almost more alive than the face on which it hung.

  “Try your luck . . . ?” Tad muttered, but the rest of the words refused to come.

  “Hello, Bobby-boy!” The man smiled wickedly, revealing a line of teeth riddled with silver fillings. He had more fillings in his mouth than teeth. “I hope you’re well.”

  “I’m okay.” Tad looked at the stranger warily.

  “I asked if you was well,” he said. “Are you one hundred percent? ‘Okay’ is not good enough!”

  “I’m fine,” Tad answered, mystified.

  “That’s good. Because I hear—I’m reliably informed—that you been ill,” the man said.

  “What about it?” Tad had learned that the ruder he was, the more people would accept that he was Bob.

  The man smiled again. He had been leaning on a black, silver-capped walking stick, but now he leaned it against the stall. “Glue was what I heard,” he murmured.

  “What about it?”

  The man shook his head slowly. “You modern kids,” he said. “When I was your age, you wouldn’t have found me touching stuff like that. No. Gin was good enough for me. A half bottle of gin in my schoolbag, that’s what got me through the day.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “Mind you,” he went on, “gin could be a treacherous friend too. It’s gin I got to thank for this . . .” He tapped the tattoo on the side of his face.

  “What happened?” Tad asked, feeling queasy.

  “I was drunk. Drunk as a lord. And some mates of mine took me down to the tattooist for a laugh. When I woke up, this was what he’d done to me. The web and the spider.” Tad glanced at the tattoo. The man laughed. “One day I’ll tell you where he put the spider,” he said. He blew out smoke. His eyes behind the round lenses were suddenly distant. “Anyway, I had the last laugh, so to speak. I went back to the tattooist and gave ’im what you might call a piece of my mind.”

  “You told him what you thought of him . . .” Tad said.

  “I wrote him what I thought of him. That’s what I did. I tied him to a chair and wrote it all over his body. Used his own needles. Oh yes. I turned that man into a walking dictionary—and not the sort of words you’d want your mother to hear. He went nuts in the end, I understand. He’s in an institute now. An institute for the insane. The other inmates never talk to him. But sometimes they . . . read him.” The man broke off and laughed quietly to himself.

  There was a commotion as the caravan door opened and Eric and Doll Snarby appeared, hurrying across the fairgrounds toward them. Eric was half dressed, his shirt out of his trousers and the sty under his eye throbbing in time with his breath. Doll was also a mess, her lipstick smeared and one earring missing. Tad had never seen them like this. They were, he realized, terrified.

  “Finn!” Doll exploded. “What a pleasure to see you! What a joy!”

  “We wasn’t expecting you till later,” Eric added. “Or naturally we would ’ave bin ’ere to welcome you.”

  “Please, my dear Snarbys!” The man called Finn positively beamed at them. “No need to get your underwear in a twist. I’ve had all the welcome I need, thank you.” He nodded at Tad, and in that moment it was as if a conjuror had waved a silk scarf over the man’s face. Suddenly the smile w
as gone and in its place was a leer of such force and ugliness that Tad shivered. “The boy’s not ’imself,” he snapped. “What have you done to ’im?”

  “We looked after him!” Doll wheezed. “You know how precious he is to us, Finn. He was ill . . .”

  “. . . ’E made ’imself ill!” Eric interjected.

  “What are children coming to?” Doll Snarby trilled. “You beat them senseless and it doesn’t do any good at all! I don’t know . . .”

  “He got at the glue?” Each word was a bullet, fired at the Snarbys.

  “It wasn’t our fault, Finn!” Eric had gone chalk white.

  “Oh Gawd! Please, Finn . . . !” Doll tried to slide herself behind her husband, but he pushed her away.

  Finn thought for a moment. Then he relaxed and his face rippled back to what it had been before. “I’m taking him with me this evening,” he explained in a gentler voice. “A little business engagement. A business enterprise. I need my partner.”

  His partner? Tad heard the word and swallowed.

  “Is he ready?” Finn asked.

  “Of course he’s ready, Finn,” Doll croaked. “We wouldn’t let you down!”

  “That’s settled, then,” Finn said. “I’ll be back for him at nine o’clock.”

  He picked up his stick and used it to unhook one of the gorillas. The gorilla slid down the length of the stick and into his hand. Finn smiled. “My lucky day!” he exclaimed. “It looks like I won!”

  Holding the gorilla, he turned and limped away.

  NIGHTINGALE SQUARE

  There was a full moon that night. As Finn and Tad crossed the empty square, their shadows raced ahead of them as if searching for somewhere to hide. It was a few minutes after midnight. Tad had heard the church bells toll the hour. They had seemed far away, almost in another world. Here, everything was pale and gray, the buildings like paper cutouts against the black night sky.

  Nightingale Square was in Mayfair, one of the trendiest areas of London. Tad had been here before and now recognized the square. Sir Hubert Spencer had friends here and had once brought Tad here for tea. Tad scanned the handsome Georgian houses with growing discomfort. He already had a nasty idea just what sort of “business” Finn had in mind. But what would he do if the chosen house was the very one where he had once been a guest?

  Finn leaned against a metal railing in the middle of the square and raised his stick. “That’s the one,” he whispered. “Number twenty-nine. That’s my lucky number, Bobby-boy. It’s the number of times what I been arrested.”

  Tad glanced at the house. It was tall and narrow with classical white pillars and wide marble steps leading up to the front door. It was on the corner of the square with an alleyway next to it leading, presumably, to a garden at the back. Thick ivy grew up one side of the house. Tad followed it with his eye. The ivy twisted past three windows and a balcony, stopping just short of the roof. At the very top there was a brightly colored box with a name and a telephone number. A burglar alarm.

  “It’s the London home of a real milord,” Finn explained. “A member of the harry stocracy. ’Is name is Lord Roven.”

  At least it wasn’t one of his father’s friends. But Tad still couldn’t relax. He listened with dread as Finn went on.

  “I seen ’im in the papers, Bobby-boy. Lord Roven and his lovely wife, the two of them dripping with diamonds and gold and mink.” Finn’s eyes had gone dark now. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his head. “It’s not fair, is it?” he hissed. “Them so rich and us so poor. I never had no education, Bobby-boy. Okay. It’s true. I did burn down the school. And maybe it was wrong of me to lock all the teachers inside it first. But I never ’ad a chance. Never! And that’s why it’s all right, you see. To break into ’is ’ouse and steal ’is things. Because he’s got everything and we got nothing and stealing is the only way to make things change.”

  Breaking in. Stealing. Tad’s worst fears had been realized. His mouth had gone dry and it took him a few moments to find his voice. “How do you know Lord Roven won’t be in?” he asked.

  “’E always goes out tonight,” Finn replied. “Tonight is ’is bridge night. It’ll be four in the morning before ’e gets home.”

  “And Lady Roven?”

  “In the country.”

  Finn licked his lips, then pointed again with the stick. “There’s the window, Bobby-boy. Up there by the alarm. You can get in there.”

  Now Tad understood why he had been chosen. A man wouldn’t have been able to climb up. The ivy wouldn’t hold him. He needed a boy. “How do you know the window will be open, Finn?” he asked. His mind was desperately searching for a way out of this nightmare.

  “I arranged it.”

  “But what about the alarm . . . ?”

  The stick whistled down, missing Tad’s head by less than an inch. “What’s the matter with you?” Finn demanded.

  “Nothing . . . !”

  “Nuffing, Bobby-boy? Oh yes. There’s something queer all right. Finn can smell a fish. A rotten fish.” Finn rested the stick on Tad’s shoulder and gazed into his eyes. “You been ill,” he continued. “I can respect that. I’ve made lots of people ill myself. But you’re acting like you never been on a job before. What’s happened to you?”

  “I’m all right, Finn. Nothing’s changed.”

  “I wonder.” Finn let the stick slide off Tad’s shoulder. “But you better not let me down, Bobby-boy. Stuffed with nice things this ’ouse is. Nice pictures and candlesticks. Smart jewelry and antiques. And you got to get me in!”

  Finn looked left and right, then hurried across the road. Feeling sick and frightened, Tad followed. The last time he had come to Nightingale Square it had been for crumpets and tea. Now he was back as a thief in the night. It was impossible. When he had woken up in the Snarbys’ caravan he had thought things were as bad as they could get. But this was far, far worse.

  Finn had already reached the other side of the road and was crouching down. As Tad joined him, he straightened up and now he was holding what looked like a circular section of the pavement. Looking closer, Tad saw it was the cover of a manhole. Finn grunted and set it down, then pulled out a tangle of multicolored wires, which he began to examine.

  “What are you doing?” Tad asked.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Finn shook his head and sighed. “The alarm’s connected to the police.” He pulled out a pair of wire cutters, selected an orange-colored wire and snipped it in two. “At least, it was.”

  “You’ve cut it!”

  “Don’t disappoint me, Bobby-boy.” Finn glanced upward and suddenly it seemed to Tad that he was holding the wire cutters like a weapon. “You’ve seen it all before. You know the procedure. You know what’s what.”

  “Of course, Finn.”

  “Good.” Finn flipped the cutters over and put them away, then slid the manhole into place and stood up. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “That’s how long we got before they’ll send someone over to check.” He gestured at the house. “I want the door open in five.”

  Tad stood staring at the house. A hundred excuses formed in his mind but died before they could reach his lips. He couldn’t risk asking anything. Finn was already suspicious, and if Tad asked something he was supposed to know . . . he thought of the wire cutters and hurried forward.

  Gingerly he reached out and took hold of the ivy, testing it against his weight. He had been right about one thing. The twisting stems would never have taken the weight of a man, but holding on tight he was able to lift himself off the ground. The ivy bent but held firm.

  “Five minutes,” Finn reminded him.

  Tad began to scale the wall, pulling himself up a few inches at a time. Finn stood below, keeping a lookout along the empty pavement. Somewhere a car door slammed and an engine started up. Tad froze. But the sound grew more distant and finally disappeared. Tad grunted and dragged himself up over the first window.

  He had passed the balcony and was making his way up to
the third floor when he made the mistake of looking back down. It was the worst thing he could have done. The ground seemed a very long way away and for a moment he couldn’t move. This sort of thing might have been easy for Bob Snarby, but Tad Spencer had always been afraid of heights. The whole house had begun to spin with him attached to it and he was certain he would have to let go. Already he could imagine the wind sailing past him, the crushing impact as he hit the concrete below. He wanted to shout out, but he was too frightened even to draw breath.

  There was a low whistle from the pavement. Finn. The sound snapped Tad out of his paralysis and he began to climb again. He was more afraid of Finn than he was of falling. It was as simple as that. He had to go on.

  But the farther up he went, the thinner the ivy became. It was bending now, pulling away from the wall. Tad heard the unmistakable sound of a branch snapping and his left foot suddenly kicked out into space. For a ghastly moment he hung there, feeling himself topple backward away from the wall as the ivy came loose. Another branch broke. But then Tad lurched out and managed to grab a thicker clump. Carefully, he transferred his weight across. Then, gritting his teeth, he began to haul himself up farther.

  He was only a foot from the window and was about to reach out to open it when there was a second low whistle—this time a warning. A moment later a car drove past, its headlights spilling out over the white front of the house. Instinctively, Tad stopped and pressed himself against the brickwork, not moving, not turning around. The car continued through the square and darkness fell like a curtain behind it. Finn whistled an “all clear.” Tad began again.

  He pressed his hand against the window and almost shouted with relief as it began to open inward. It wasn’t locked! At least Finn had been right about that. The strange thing was that Tad wasn’t frightened anymore. The truth was, he felt almost pleased with himself. At school he had never been any good at sports. He had never managed to get more than an inch or two up a rope and the parallel bars had made him feel sick. He had been excused from soccer and football—his parents thought they were too dangerous—and had even cheated at cross-country running by getting a taxi to wait for him around the first corner.