Thriller Page 5

  “He was a guard?” Tim asked.

  “No. He was a prisoner. Armed robbery. Of course, you might think he’s reformed. I’m all for giving a man a second chance. But the other day I overheard him talking on his mobile phone.” Underwood lit the cigarette. Gray smoke curled out of his lips. I was just glad I wasn’t one of his lungs. “Even before I found out about his past, I never trusted King,” he went on. “He’s a sleazy sort of fellow, always short of money. I think he gambles. I hate people who gamble!”

  “I bet you do,” Tim agreed.

  “Anyway, he was standing outside the building with that dog of his—he has an Alsatian—talking on the telephone.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Tim interrupted. “How could the dog talk on the telephone?”

  “King was the one talking,” Underwood growled, doing a pretty good impersonation of the dog himself. “I heard him say that he’d go in at twelve tonight. He said he would get it and hand it over tomorrow.”

  “How do you know he was talking about the coin?” I asked.

  “I don’t. I can’t be a hundred percent certain. And that’s why I haven’t gone to the police. Let’s call it a hunch. I just don’t think he adds up.”

  “He’s bad at math?” Tim asked.

  Underwood ignored him. “I want you to go to the building tonight,” he went on. “I can give you a key to the front door. I want you to follow King and see what he gets up to. My office is number twelve-oh-five. If he goes anywhere near it, you call me or you call the police. Tomorrow morning I have a dealer coming to buy the coin. I just need to be sure it’s still there. . . .”

  “All right, Mr. Slumberwood,” Tim said. “I’ll do it. But it’s going to cost you seventy pounds.”

  “I’ll pay you twice that to make sure the Eagle is safe!”

  “Okay. A hundred and twenty pounds it is.”

  “I’ll give you the money tomorrow.” Underwood got to his feet and I almost felt the chair sigh with relief. He slid a plastic entry card onto the desk. “This is an electronic key-card,” he said. “It’ll get you into the main building. The House of Gold is on St. John Street. You can’t miss it.”

  “Why is that?” Tim asked.

  “Well . . . it’s got ‘House of Gold’ written on the front door.”

  “Good.”

  “And make sure Harry King doesn’t spot you! I don’t want him to know we’re onto him.”

  “I’m the invisible man,” Tim said. “Everyone who sees me calls me that!”

  Underwood was about to leave, but before he went he did something very strange. He picked up the dead butts from the cigarettes he’d smoked and slid them into his top pocket. Why would he do something like that? He didn’t look like the sort of man who was interested in keeping the place clean. Of course, Tim hadn’t even noticed. He was already imagining the money he was going to be paid the next day. And that worried me too. If Underwood had a five-million-pound coin that he was going to sell, how come he couldn’t afford even a five-pound down pay-ment now?

  “Tim,” I said, once he’d left, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Relax, kid!” Tim winked at me. “This case is right up my street.”

  Yeah. The street to the loony bin, I thought. But I didn’t say that. “I’m not so sure I trust this guy Underwood,” I went on. “That story he told you . . . the security guard talking about the robbery on his phone. Don’t you think that’s a bit unlikely?”

  “Not really. Lots of security guards have phones.”

  “I mean, talking about a robbery when he can be overheard! Also, Underwood didn’t pay you. And he told you to ring him if anything happened, but he didn’t give you a number!”

  “Look, Nick,” Tim interrupted. “It’s a simple job. All I have to do is follow the security guard and see what he gets up to.”

  “Okay,” I said. I knew I was going to regret this but I felt I had no choice. “But I’m going too.”

  “Where are you going to?” Tim asked.

  “I’m coming with you, Tim.”

  “Forget it, Nick. No way. Absolutely not. No chance.”

  “So when do we leave?” I asked.

  Tim nodded. “As soon as it’s dark.”

  The House of Gold might have had a fancy name but it was just an ordinary office building in an ordinary street. It was twelve stories high with a flagpole sticking out below the roof, and as I glanced up at it for the first time, I never thought that in about half an hour, I was going to be clinging to it with both hands with Tim clinging to me by both ankles. But maybe that’s my problem. I just don’t have enough imagination.

  We let ourselves in using Underwood’s card and, to be honest, part of me was surprised that it even activated the doors. I’d thought it was going to be as fake as him. We found ourselves in a reception area with half a dozen potted plants that looked half-dead and wilting . . . which was quite surprising as they were actually made of plastic. There was an empty reception desk and on the wall a list of names. More than fifty jewelers and gold dealers worked at the House of Gold and there was the name, Underwood, with the number—1205—among them. That surprised me too. Charles Underwood hadn’t looked like a coin dealer to me. Everything about him had smelled wrong . . . even his aftershave.

  There was no sign of Harry King or his dog but that was just as well. I had no desire to get arrested or bitten . . . and who knows? If he’d seen us, Harry might have done both.

  Tim was wearing black jeans, a black jersey, and a black balaclava covering his face. Frankly, he looked more like a burglar than a private detective and more like an Alpine skier than either. I was still wearing my school clothes. Tim had a flashlight but he didn’t need it because there were lights on throughout the building. Anyway, the batteries were dead, and it occurred to me that any minute now we could be too. I had a nasty feeling about this. Half of me wished we hadn’t come and the other half agreed.

  “There’s a lift!” Tim waved his flashlight in the direction of a corridor leading away from the reception area.

  “Forget it, Tim,” I said. “We can’t risk it.”

  “What? You think it might break down?”

  “No. But somebody might notice it moving. Let’s take the stairs.”

  We found the staircase and began the long climb up. There were sixteen steps between each floor and twelve floors. I counted every one of them. Finally, we got to the top and found ourselves in front of a pair of solid-looking swing doors that met in the middle with metal plates and wires positioned so that they connected. It was like the entrance to a vault or to a top secret laboratory or something. I stopped to catch my breath. Perhaps we should have taken the lift after all.

  “Tim . . . ,” I began.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure you should open these doors.”

  “Why not?”

  Tim pushed them open. At once about a hundred bells all around the building began a deafening clang. A recorded voice burst out of hidden speakers shouting “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” Somewhere, a dog started howling. Searchlights positioned in the street exploded into life, blasting the windows, blinding us. In the far distance, about fifty police cars turned on their sirens, shattering the still of the night as they began to close in.

  “Do you think the doors are alarmed?” Tim asked.

  I grabbed hold of him and began to drag him back down the stairs. All I knew was that this was the sophisticated alarm system that Underwood had mentioned and we had to get out fast. If the police arrived, how were we going to persuade them that we weren’t actually trying to rob the place ourselves? But I’d only taken two steps before I realized that the howling was coming from below me and about half a second later, the biggest dog I had ever seen turned the corner and began to bound toward us.

  By big, I mean big . . . perhaps a hundred pounds of knotted muscle and fur. Its eyes were ablaze and the last time I’d seen so many teeth I was looking at a crocodile. The
dog was leaping toward us with a look in its eyes that simply said “dinner”—and it was clear that Tim and I were the ones on the menu. Behind it, I glimpsed a uniformed figure who I guessed must be Harry King. He was black and bald with arms and shoulders you could use to advertise a gym. Frankly, I’ve seen friendlier sumo wrestlers. He was about ten steps behind the dog. They were both heading our way.

  “This way, Tim!” I shouted.

  We burst through the double doors. It was too late to do any more damage. The alarms were still jangling and the recorded voice was louder than ever. “Intruder Alert!” I think we’d got the message. The police cars were getting nearer too. It was like the whole building was under attack. I was already wishing I’d stayed at home. I’d left behind two hours of French homework—but even that would have been more fun than this.

  We found ourselves in a long, dark corridor with offices on both sides. One of them had to be 1205 but I didn’t stop to check the numbers. I was thinking of the dog coming for us. The doors had swung shut behind us and that might hold it up for a moment. But a moment wasn’t long enough. What was I looking for? A second staircase. A lift. A fire escape. A helicopter launchpad with a helicopter just about to take off. Anything to get us out of here.

  “In here!” Tim had found a door and burst through it. I didn’t bother following him. With typical brilliance, he had found his way into the gents’ toilet. I waited for him to come out again and at that moment the double doors swung open and the dog came pounding through. Tim was holding something and hurled it in the dog’s direction, and at least that distracted it for a few seconds. In the meantime, I found another door. This one opened onto a staircase that climbed up. We took it. We had nowhere else to go.

  The staircase led to a door that took us onto the roof and before we knew what had happened we were out beneath the stars with a freezing January breeze whistling around us, reminding us we’d be much warmer inside. Unfortunately, Fido was also inside, and given a choice between catching a slight cold and being ripped to pieces, I knew which I preferred. Without even stopping to catch breath, we set off across the roof. Surely there had to be another way down.

  Then two things happened at once. The dog burst through the same door that we’d just taken. That was when I realized it was rabid. White foam was pouring out of its mouth, and its eyes were bulging and discolored. At the same time, Harry King appeared. I wasn’t sure where he had come from but he was suddenly there, making his way toward us, and he was holding something in his hand. He raised it, pointing it in our direction.

  “It’s a gun!” Tim shouted.

  To be fair to him, he was trying to protect me. I mention this only because it was Tim who nearly killed me. Thinking that Harry was about to fire, he rugby-tackled me to the ground. The only trouble was that there was no ground. At that moment, we were right on the edge of the building, and with a certain sense of surprise I realized that, in his attempt to protect me, my big brother had just thrown me into thin air with a twelve-story fall and a concrete pavement waiting for me below. I was also aware that Tim was coming with me. I don’t quite know why, but part of me was glad that we were going to be together at the very end. This seemed an unusually stupid way to die, even by Tim’s standards. I’d have hated to do it on my own.

  But we didn’t die. You’ve probably guessed what happened next. I saw the flagpole and managed to grab hold of it, and at the same time, Tim managed to grab hold of me. And that’s how this all started (you can go back to the beginning if you’ve forgotten) with the two of us dangling in the air like a couple of comedians in those old black-and-white movies except without the honky-tonk piano and the laughing audience.

  I don’t think I’d have been able to hold on for more than about thirty seconds. My hands felt like they were being pulled off my wrists. My feet felt like they were being pulled off my ankles. My shoulder blades and spine weren’t doing too well, either. Looking down, I could just make out my big brother, swaying in the breeze. And looking up . . . ?

  Well, suddenly Harry King was there, leaning over the edge. The dog was with him. But neither of them was trying to kill us.

  “Hold on!” Harry shouted. He lay on his stomach and reached down with one hand and I felt his fingers close around my wrist. I could tell at once that he was incredibly strong. It was like being seized by a crane. And then, inch by inch, he was pulling me up—and Tim with me. My fingers found a grip on the edge of the building and I was able to help him, pulling myself over the top. At the same time, Harry got a stronger grip under my arms. He was panting with the effort. The dog—still foaming at the mouth—was wagging its tail. This was all very strange. We weren’t being chased anymore. We were being saved.

  I felt solid ground underneath my chest, then my thighs as I was pulled onto the roof. Tim came with me. As soon as I was safe, Harry reached past and helped him up the rest of the way. Down below, I could hear the police cars pulling in. There was the thud of car doors and feet hitting the pavement. Somehow I knew that the ordeal was almost over. But I still didn’t quite know what it was all about.

  “Are you okay?” Harry demanded. Looking at him close-up, I could see that he was a friendly, pleasant sort of man. But then, he had just saved my life, which may have helped change my opinion. He certainly wasn’t carrying a gun. What Tim had seen was actually a walkie-talkie . . . and it made my head spin to think that this had been enough for him to throw both of us over the edge of a twelve-story building.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  I didn’t answer. Too much had happened too quickly. Then the first police made it up onto the roof and I was almost grateful when we were both placed under arrest.

  There’s not a great deal more to tell.

  I suppose I should start with the man who had come to the office and who had told us his name was Charles Underwood. It wasn’t. The real Charles Underwood visited us in our cell and he turned out to be silver-haired, about five foot three, and Irish. He wasn’t very happy, either. Because while Harry King had been chasing us, while the police had rushed up to the roof and arrested us, someone had slipped into his office and stolen his precious Double Eagle coin.

  I only had to explain it all to Tim five or six times before he understood. The fake Underwood was the thief. Somehow he’d got a key to the building—which he’d given to us—but he hadn’t been able to get past the security system in order to crack the safe. So he’d used us as a diversion. We’d been spotted by CCTV cameras the moment we entered—that was how the police had got there so quickly. We’d set off the alarms. We’d been chased onto the roof. And while everyone was busy dealing with us, he’d had ample time to open the safe and make off with the contents.

  And while I’m tying up the loose ends, I might as well mention that Harry King had never been in prison, and his dog, Lucy, didn’t have rabies. When Tim had ducked into the men’s toilet, he had picked up a bar of soap and that was what he had thrown as we ran for the stairs. The dog had eaten the soap—which was why it was foaming at the mouth.

  They never did find the thief. Of course, we gave the police a description, but the man who had come to our office could have been wearing a wig. He could have had padding under his jacket. He must have heard about Tim from somewhere because it can’t just have been luck that had made him choose the most stupid detective in London. Tim had played right into his hands. And of course those hands were wrapped in gloves, so although the police searched our office, they didn’t find so much as a fingerprint. Our visitor had been careful to take his cigarette butts with him too—making sure he left no DNA.

  He was one of the ones who got away but that’s what happens now and then. In fact, where Tim Diamond is concerned, it happens quite a lot of the time. A happy ending? Well—I hadn’t been killed. I hadn’t fallen twelve stories and fractured every bone in my body. I hadn’t been chewed up by the dog. And speaking personally, I was perfectly happy with
that.

  Pirate

  by Walter Dean Myers

  My name is Abdullah Syed Hari. My great-grandfather was born in a gleaming white house just southeast of Marka. He was a fisherman who had worked those waters for all of his life. My grandfather, too, was a fisherman. His black hands were hard and the fingers twisted from years of pulling the nets into the boats, mending them in bad weather, and so full of salt that he could not feel my face except by turning his hands so that the backs would touch my cheek. My father’s gift was music and he played in the evenings after coming home from a day on the sea and the songs soothed me when I was a child. In the wars before I was born, clan against clan, friend against friend as Somalia tore itself apart, he was wounded and made cripple. I am Abdullah Syed Hari. I am a Muslim, the very servant of God. I am fourteen years of age. And I am a pirate.

  My father tells me that when the first foreign boats came, our fishermen didn’t think much of them. But soon we saw that what they could do was far more than what we could do. We had boats and they had ships with huge nets that caught five times as many fish as our boats could even carry. Sometimes their steel ships would push our boats from the best fishing grounds.

  “Their fishing boats could eat ours,” my friend Kambui said, “and still be hungry.”

  This was certainly how it seemed to me. They came from Norway and Germany and Japan and from all the countries of the world beyond Somalia.

  Other ships came, too. Sometimes they would drop barrels into the water, barrels mostly sealed, but some of them leaked a fluid that turned the water dark. Some of the fish off the shore began to die. They would float onto the beach, their bodies white and shining under the hot sun, until the tide left them to rot and for the gulls to eat.

  Then the gulls began to die.

  Obe Bashir Hari, my uncle, said that what we must do was plain for all the world to see.

  “We have to fight back or watch our families starve,” he said. “They want to pretend that they don’t see us, but we must insist upon being seen.” This was what he said to my cousin and my father when he first became a pirate. When my father asked if I would go with them, my uncle looked at me and felt my arm.