South by Southeast Read online

  This room had six lumpy chairs and a coffee-table stained with coffee. Two elderly men were sitting at a table playing chess. A third man was in an armchair with his back to us.

  “My name is Mrs Jackson,” the lady told us. She spoke like a duchess, rolling each word between her lips. “Let me introduce you to my guests.” She gestured at the plump, fair-haired man in the armchair. “Mr Blondini is in the theatre!” she announced. The man in the armchair grinned and tried to stand up. But he couldn’t, as he was wearing a straitjacket and there were about a dozen chains snaking round his arms, legs and chest. “Mr Blondini is an escapologist,” Mrs Jackson explained.

  “Just practising!” Mr Blondini added, heaving frantically with his shoulders.

  Mrs Jackson went over to the two men playing chess. The first of them was short with close-cropped hair and a monocle. “This is Mr Webber,” she said. “Mr Webber is from Germany. But otherwise he’s perfectly nice.”

  “Check!” Mr Webber snapped, moving his bishop with such force that it snapped too.

  “And this is Mr Ferguson.” The other player was tall and thin, a timid-looking man with curly hair. Mrs Jackson drew Tim aside. “Do try not to mention mountains or tall buildings to him,” she whispered. “Mr Ferguson suffers terribly from vertigo.”

  Tim waved at Mr Ferguson. “Hi!” he said.

  Mr Ferguson rolled his eyes and fainted.

  Mrs Jackson frowned. “I have a room on the first floor,” she said. “How many nights will it be?”

  “We’ll be here until the end of the week,” I lied.

  “It’s thirty pounds a night. Cash in advance.”

  I nodded and Tim counted out three ten pound notes.

  Mrs Jackson snatched them hungrily. “Room twelve on the first floor at the end of the corridor,” she said. She stopped and looked more closely at Tim. “Do I know you?” she said. “Your face is very familiar. What did you say your name was?”

  “It’s … it’s…” Tim stared blankly at me.

  I glanced at the ten pound notes in Mrs Jackson’s hands. “It’s Queen,” I said. “We’re the Queen brothers.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Good night, Mrs Jackson.”

  I grabbed Tim and we made our way upstairs. At the top, I turned and looked back. The landlady was still there, watching us, her eyes glinting in the half-light. I nodded at her and she spun on her heel, disappearing the way she had come.

  “She knows who we are!”

  “No, Tim. Maybe she saw you on the news. But I don’t think she recognized you…”

  We were sitting in room twelve a few minutes later. The room was about as inspiring as the rest of the hotel. It had one ancient bed, a couch and a swirly carpet that had lost most of its swirls. Tim was lying on the bed. I was sitting next to him, thinking. We couldn’t stay long at this guest house. Not at thirty pounds a night. We had to go somewhere. But where?

  It seemed to me we had only one choice. Tim was now a wanted bank robber. Snape would never believe our story about the bomb, not after the telephone box and the pet shop. No, Mr Waverly – the real Mr Waverly – had us right where he wanted us. We had to help him find Charon. It was our only chance.

  But where could we start? Sitting on the bed, I thought about what he had told us. One of his agents, Jake McGuffin, had been following Charon’s trail but he hadn’t been working alone. Waverly had mentioned a Dutch secret agent. A man with no name – but a number. Seventy-six or eighty-six…

  Eighty-six! It meant something to me. I was sure of it. I had seen or heard the number somewhere before. And sitting there on the lumpy mattress, I suddenly remembered where.

  “Tim!” I exclaimed. I stood up and pulled the ticket out of my pocket. This was the ticket to the ice-rink that I had found in McGuffin’s hotel room. And I was right! There was a number printed in the left-hand corner.

  The number was eighty-six.

  I showed it to Tim. “Don’t you see?” I said. “I think this is a ticket to an ice-rink in Amsterdam. McGuffin and the Dutch agent must use it as a meeting place.” I pointed at the two words at the top of the ticket. “Amstel Ijsbaan. Do you think that sounds Dutch?”

  “It’s all Greek to me,” Tim said.

  “Amstel…” Just for once I wished I’d concentrated more in geography lessons. “Isn’t that a river,” I said. “In Amsterdam?” It was all beginning to make sense. “We have to go there.”

  “To Amsterdam?”

  “We’ll find the ice-rink. We’ll find 86. And he’ll help us find Charon.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know, Tim. I’m completely in the dark…”

  That was when the lights went out.

  Suddenly it was pitch black in the room. At the same time there was a click and a rush of cool air as the door was opened and even as I stood up to take my bearings, I felt myself grabbed and thrown back on the bed. I heard Tim cry out. Then someone grabbed my hand and I felt a circle of cold metal closing around my wrist. There was a second click, closer this time and more distinct. I tried to move my hand and found that I couldn’t.

  And then the lights went back on and I found myself staring at Mrs Jackson and two of her lodgers – Mr Webber and Mr Ferguson. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Tim was lying next to me and now I saw that they had managed to handcuff us together. And, most bizarre of all, Mrs Jackson was holding a gun.

  A moment later, Mr Blondini came into the room. He had obviously been the one controlling the main fuse. “Did you get them?” he asked.

  “Oh yes!” Mrs Jackson pursed her lips. “Who’d have thought it?” she went on. “A dangerous criminal sleeping in my house!”

  “It’s not true!” I said.

  “That’s right!” Tim agreed. “I hadn’t gone to bed yet.”

  “He’s not a dangerous criminal!” I explained. “He hasn’t done anything!”

  “Then why is his face here?” Mr Ferguson asked. He produced a copy of that day’s Evening Standard with Tim’s face on the front page. So that was how they had recognized us.

  “We’d better call the police.” Mrs Jackson was still aiming the gun at us. She turned to Mr Webber. “Do you know the number?”

  “Nine, nine, nine,” the German said.

  “All right,” she muttered. “I’ll look it up in the phone book.”

  “I’ve already called them,” Mr Blondini said. “They’re on the way.”

  “Good!”

  I looked around me, trying to find some way out of this situation, but there was nothing I could do, not while Mrs Jackson had the gun. The gun … I’d been held up at gunpoint quite a few times in my life. The Fat Man, Johnny Powers, Big Ed – they’d all tried it at one time or another. But now I looked at her, I saw there was something wrong about Mrs Jackson. It wasn’t just her. It was the way she was holding the gun. Or perhaps it was the gun itself…

  And suddenly I knew. “Have you got a cigarette, Mrs Jackson?” I asked.

  “You’re too young to smoke,” she scowled.

  “Then why are you offering me a light?” I pointed at the gun. My hand was chained to Tim’s and he pointed at it too.

  “What…?” Tim began.

  The front doorbell rang. The police had arrived.

  “Move!” I shouted.

  We leapt off the bed and pushed past Mrs Jackson and her friends, making for the door. They were too surprised to do anything and a moment later we were out of the room. I could feel the chain straining at my wrist as Tim hesitated. I suppose he was afraid that we were about to get shot. But I knew better. It hadn’t been a real gun at all but a fancy cigarettelighter. And how had I guessed? Maybe it was just intuition. But the single word “Dunhill” printed on the barrel had probably helped.

  Down below, the police were hammering at the door. That meant we could only go up. We found a second staircase and clambered up it, arriving on the second floor. This was also the top floor. We had nowhere else to go. Behind me I hear
d Mrs Jackson hurrying down to let the police in. We had maybe ten seconds before we were taken.

  There was a window at the end of the corridor. Pulling Tim with me, I went over to it. The window was at the back of the house. There was a narrow alley – about two metres across – and then a lower building. The roof of the other building was a few metres below us. It was flat, covered in black asphalt.

  “We can jump,” I said.

  “We can’t,” Tim quavered.

  “We’ve got to.” I opened the window and Tim and I crawled out onto the sill. The handcuffs didn’t make it easy. We hovered there for a few seconds. Behind us, I could hear the police racing up the stairs.

  “Jump!”

  I launched myself into space. Tim did the same. Like some sort of clumsy, prehistoric bird we soared out of the house. For a horrible moment I thought I wasn’t going to make it. And if I didn’t make it, nor would Tim. The chain would drag him back and we’d both end up as so many broken bones on the pavement below. But then the asphalt roof rushed up and hit me in the chest. My legs still hung in space but enough of me had reached the building to save me. I twisted to the right. Tim was lying beside me.

  “Close…” he rasped and wiped his brow. He used the chained hand and I had to wipe his brow too.

  The building was some sort of office block. We found a skylight in, a flight of stairs down and a glass door out. Nobody saw us go. There were about a dozen police cars parked in the street at the front but everybody was concentrating on Mrs Jackson’s guest house so we simply walked away. We held hands until we were round the corner. But then, of course, we were still very much attached.

  TRAIN REACTION

  Getting across London again wasn’t easy – but we had no choice. If we really were heading for Amsterdam, that meant a ferry from Dover. If we wanted to get to Dover we had to start at Victoria. And that meant holding hands through Hyde Park and on through Knightsbridge to the other side of London.

  The chances of our reaching Victoria without being seen must have been a thousand to one against, but somehow we managed it. We emerged in front of the main forecourt where the taxis and buses were locked into what had become a frozen mosaic of black and red. All we had to do now was to find the right train.

  “Where’s the ticket-office?” I muttered the question more to myself than to Tim but unfortunately he heard me.

  “I’ll ask,” he said. He turned to someone standing nearby. “Excuse me,” he went on. “Can you tell me where the ticket-office is?”

  “Certainly, sir. It’s through the main entrance and on the left.”

  It was the “sir” that alerted me. I looked round and nearly died on my feet. Tim had just asked a policeman.

  Even then we might have slipped away. But Tim had realized what he had done. He went bright red. He squeaked. He hid his head behind his arm. If the policeman hadn’t noticed him before, he couldn’t help but look twice then. I hurried Tim away. But it was already too late. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the policeman staring after us. He was talking into his radio at the same time.

  We didn’t buy a ticket. I knew that the police would soon be after us and that would be the first place they’d look. Our only chance was to get out of Victoria as quickly as possible on a train. I dragged Tim across the main concourse. There was a train to Dover leaving in nine minutes. Would it pull out before the police pulled in? I decided to take a gamble. We took the train.

  As we climbed on, Tim stopped me. “Look!”

  I followed his eyes. “Network South East!” he explained.

  It was true. We were travelling Network South East. The words were written on the side of the carriage. “So what?” I asked.

  “We’re going south by South East!” Tim said.

  I had to admit that he had a point. South by south east. Was that what McGuffin had meant by his final words? “Let’s get on,” I said.

  We walked down the train, looking for the quietest carriage. We were still chained together of course and I was frightened that somebody might notice. But the other passengers were too busy getting out their sandwiches and newspapers. We had just reached First Class when the train jolted and began to move forward. We were on the way.

  The second-class carriages had been almost full. First Class was almost empty. But as I began to move forward again, I noticed a young woman, sitting on her own, reading a book. At least, she had been reading the book. Now she was staring at us.

  She was a few years older than Tim, dressed in a smart shirt and suit with a silk scarf and grey, suede gloves. I thought she might be an actress or maybe the head of a fashion firm. She had long fair hair, a little make-up and soft, suntanned skin. Her eyes were a shade of green that made me think of cats and Egyptian princesses and witchcraft.

  She knew who we were. There could be no doubt of it. “Sit down!” she said.

  I hesitated. But I could see we had no choice. I sat down, pulling Tim with me.

  “Tim Diamond!” She smiled as she said the words. As far as she knew, Tim was a wanted criminal, a dangerous bank robber. But she was treating the whole thing like a joke.

  “Hello!” Tim’s voice sounded peculiar.

  I glanced at him. He had gone bright red and his lips were wobbling. For a minute I thought he was train sick. Then I realized it was something much, much worse. Tim had fallen in love.

  “I’m Tim,” he said. “This is another brick.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My brother, Nick,” he corrected himself.

  The woman glanced at our handcuffs. “Is that chain the one you pull in emergencies or do you always travel like that?” she asked. Her voice had an accent. She wasn’t English, that was for sure. But what was she? Who was she? And why hadn’t she sounded the alarm?

  “I can explain…” I began.

  “There’s no need to.” She smiled again and I had to admit it was a pretty smile. “My name is Charlotte Van Dam,” she went on. “I’m Dutch and I’m a writer. Crime stories. I’m on my way home from a convention in London.”

  “How unconventional,” Tim gurgled.

  “If you know who he is, how come you aren’t calling the cops?” I asked.

  She leaned forward and put a hand on Tim’s knee. Tim squirmed in his seat and blushed. “I know an innocent man when I see one,” she said. “And your brother has got the most lovely big, wide, innocent eyes.”

  Yeah. They match his lovely big, wide, innocent brain, I thought. But I decided to say nothing. If Charlotte Van Dam was crazy enough to fancy Tim, that might just help us. And right now we needed all the help we could get.

  “So tell me, Timothy,” she said. “What takes you to Dover?”

  “Well … the train does,” Tim replied. As brilliant as ever.

  “You’re on the run from the police!” she whispered. And now I understood. She’d been writing crime fiction all her life but now she’d just met the real thing. No wonder she was excited. “Are you going to leave the country?” she asked.

  In the end we told her the whole story, just as we had told Snape a few days before. The only difference was that she believed us. And not only did she believe us – she was enthralled.

  “I want to help!” she gasped, when we had finished. “I can find this man you’re seeking.”

  “86?” I said.

  “Yes. The secret agent. I can go to the Amstel Ijsbaan for you. I live in Amsterdam. I speak the language. Please, you must let me go!”

  Tim shook his head. “But Charlotte, it could be dangerous.”

  “Charon could be there,” I agreed.

  “Yes. And you might slip on the ice,” Tim added.

  Charlotte moved closer to Tim and looked at him adoringly. I could almost hear the violins playing in the background. She was in love with Tim! It was incredible. “You’re just like every character I’ve ever written about,” she murmured.

  “You do horror stories too?” I said.

  Her lips moved closer to his.
“Tim…”

  “Charlotte…”

  “The train’s slowing down!” She broke free – and it was true. The train had slowed down while we were talking and now it had stopped completely. But we weren’t in a station. We were in the middle of a field.

  “I wonder…” she began. She got out of her seat and went over to the section between our carriage and the next. This was the only part of the train where there was a window you could open. I watched as she opened it and stuck her head out.

  At the same time, the train started up again and quickly picked up speed.

  When Charlotte came back, she looked worried. “It was a police block,” she said. “Five of them just got on the train.”

  Sure enough, as the train continued, we passed a police car parked next to the track. We were sitting right in the middle of the train. The policemen had got on at the front. I guessed it would take them less than a minute to reach us.

  “How did they know you were on the train?” Charlotte asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tim replied.

  But I did. He had asked a policeman for directions at Victoria Station. The policeman must have followed us and seen us get onto the train.

  “You’re going to have to jump!” Charlotte said.

  “Jump…?” I looked out of the window. We were already doing twenty miles per hour and moving faster by the second.

  “Quickly!”

  “Can we pull the communications cord first?” Tim asked.

  “No.” Charlotte shook her head. She’d already got it all worked out. A typical writer. “If you pull the cord, it will tell the police you were here.”

  “And there’s a fifty pound fine,” I added.

  “Move!”

  Still chained together, Tim and I got out of our seats and moved to the nearest door. Charlotte followed. Fortunately there were only a couple of other passengers near us and they were so buried in their papers that they didn’t see us go.

  We reached the nearest exit door. Tim pulled it open and stood there with the wind buffeting his face. The train was moving very fast now and I could see he had changed his mind about the plan. To be honest, I wasn’t too wild about it either.