The Falcon's Malteser db-1

by Anthony Horowitz

  “There was no point. The door’s barred from the outside. There’s nothing I can do about that. And even if I could reach the window, it’s too small for me to get through.”

  Too small for her, but when she gave me a leg up about fifteen minutes later, I found I could just squeeze through. Gott and Himmell hadn’t bothered to lock it. Why should they? They’d left me tied up, and anyway, it didn’t lead anywhere. It was five stories up and just too far below the roof for me to be able to scramble up there. I paused for a moment on the window ledge, my legs dangling inside, my head and shoulders in the cold evening air. I could see men working on a construction site in the distance and I shouted, trying to attract their attention. But they were too far away and, anyway, there was too much noise.

  I looked down. It made my stomach heave a little. The pavement was a long, long way below. I could see the French windows that led back into the main living room about ten feet away. If I could break in through them, I could open the door and let Lauren out and at least we’d be on the way to safety. But the windows were too far away, and although they had a narrow ledge of their own, there was no way I could reach it. Unless . . .

  This was a warehouse and like all the other warehouses it had a hook on a metal arm jutting out of the wall—in this case exactly halfway between the two windows and about a yard above them. In the old days it would have been used to hoist goods up from the street on a rope. The rope was gone, of course. But rope was at least one thing we had in plenty.

  I squeezed myself back into the room.

  “No way out—eh?” Lauren muttered.

  “There might be.” I explained what I had in mind.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “You can’t do it.”

  “I’ve got to do it,” I said. “Better crazy than dead.”

  Ten minutes later I was half in and half out again, but this time with a length of rope around my waist. We’d taken the rope that Himmell had used to tie us up and knotted it into a single length. There was a good twelve feet of it. I held the slack in my hand and now I began to swing it a bit like a lasso. Then I threw it, holding on to the end. The loop flew out toward the hook, missed, and fell. I pulled it in and tried again. I hooked it on the fourth attempt.

  So there I am, five stories up, leaning out of a window. There’s a rope leading from me to a hook and then back again, and I tie the end around my waist, too. Remember that isosceles triangle I mentioned? Well, it’s a bit like that. The two windows are the lower corners. The hook is the point at the top. All I have to do is jump and the rope will swing me across like a pendulum from one side to the other. At least that’s the general idea.

  I didn’t much like it. In fact I hated it. But I was running out of time and there didn’t seem to be any other way.

  I jumped.

  For a giddy second I swung in the air, one shoulder scraping across the brickwork. But then my scrabbling hands somehow managed to grab hold of the edge of the French windows. I pulled, dangling in midair, supported only by the rope, my legs kicking at nothing. I pulled with all my strength. And then I was crouching on the ledge, trying hard not to look down, my heart beating in my chest like it would rather be someplace else.

  I stayed where I was until I’d gotten my breath back, afraid of falling back into space. The ledge could only have been six inches wide and my whole body was pressed against the windowpanes. Without looking back into the street, I reached down and pulled off my shoe. Slowly I lifted it up. It was cold out there, but the sweat was running down inside my shirt. My eyes were fixed on the grand piano on the other side of the window. Somehow looking at it made me forget where I was and what I was doing. I held the shoe firmly in one hand, then brought it swinging forward. The heel hit the window, smashing it. I dropped the shoe into the room, then, avoiding the jagged edges of broken glass, slipped my hand through, found the lock, turned it. The window opened. With a sigh of relief I eased my way inside, then untied the rope and pulled it in after me.

  I hadn’t gotten very far, but at least I was still alive.

  Gott and Himmell had left the tea things out. I put my shoe back on and took a swig of milk out of the jug. Then I went over to the door and drew back the bolt.

  Lauren raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “So you made it?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I would have said more, but for some reason my teeth were chattering at about one hundred and fifty miles per hour. It must have been even colder out there than I’d thought.

  Lauren tried the door that led to the staircase. It was locked. Then she strolled across to the broken window and looked out.

  “That’s great, Nick,” she drawled. “We’re out of the closet but we can’t get out of the room. There’s nobody near enough to hear us shouting for help. You’ve sent our German friends on a wild-goose chase, and when they get back they’re going to string you up and use you for target practice. We don’t have enough rope to climb down with and we don’t have any guns.”

  “That’s about it,” I agreed.

  “Then you’d better think up something fast, kid.” She pointed out of the window. “Because here they come right now.”

  THE LAST CHORD

  I ran back over to the window. Lauren was right. The blue van was at the end of Bayly Street. It would have reached us already if a truck hadn’t backed out of the construction site, blocking its path. Now it was stuck there while some guy in a yellow hat tried to direct the driver. Fortunately it was a tricky maneuver. They’d be stuck there for maybe another couple of minutes. How had they gotten back from Victoria so quickly? I played back what had happened in my mind and realized that my great escape had probably taken about an hour. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re having fun.

  Lauren was in the kitchen, rummaging through the drawers. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m looking for a knife.” She held up a whisk.

  “This is all I can find.”

  “They’ve got guns,” I reminded her. “You’re not going to get very far trying to whisk them.”

  “I know. I know.” She threw the whisk over her shoulder. “So what are we going to do?”

  What were we going to do? If we yelled for help, the only people who would hear us would be Gott and Himmell. The noise from the construction site would see to that. Even if we found a knife, it would be no defense against automatic pistols. There was no way out and any minute now they’d be coming in. I looked out of the window. The truck seemed to be pinned at an angle across the road. The man in the yellow hat was frantically giving directions, swatting at invisible flies. I heard the truck grind into gear. It began to edge backward. Soon the road would clear and the blue van would come. It would come right underneath the window. I tried to remember where it had stopped when they brought me here. That time they’d parked in front of the door. Would they park there again? Perhaps.

  “Lauren,” I said.

  “Yes?” She’d found a corkscrew and a dessert spoon.

  “Quickly . . .”

  The window that I’d broken in through was, like I said, a French window. It came all the way down to the floor. I looked out again. The truck had almost completed its turn. The man in the yellow hat was walking away, his job done.

  “The piano,” I said.

  “The piano?”

  “Come on!”

  “Nick—this is no time for a concert.”

  “That’s not what I have in mind.”

  I got my shoulder down to the piano and began to push. It was on wheels which helped, but even so, it must have weighed a ton. It was a Bechstein, a great chunk of black wood with a gleaming white ivory smile. God knows how much it had cost, but if this is what you needed to be a pianist, it made a good argument for taking up the triangle. Lauren had figured out what I was doing and now she stood there, staring.

  “Honey,” she said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Deadly serious,” I said.

  “Deadly,” she agreed.<
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  She came over and joined me. With the two of us pushing, the piano moved more easily. Inch by inch we drew closer to the open window. It was going to be a close fit, but the piano would just about slide through the frame. It occurred to me that that was probably how they’d gotten it in here in the first place. How long had it taken them to hoist it up? The return journey was certainly going to be a hell of a lot faster.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I gazed over the top of the piano. The truck was in the clear now, rumbling quickly away. The blue van slid forward toward us. I flexed myself. There was a bust of Beethoven or someone on the piano. He was frowning as if he knew what was about to happen. The blue van drew closer, slowing down as it prepared to park.

  We pushed with all our strength. The piano shot forward. Its back leg went over the ledge and with a hollow jangle it teetered on the brink, the pedals digging into the carpet. The van was almost level with us now. I pushed again. The piano resisted. Then, with a wave of relief, I felt it topple over backward. I can tell you now, Bechstein grand pianos are not built with any consideration for aerodynamics. It must have been a bizarre sight as it plummeted through the air: a huge black beast with three rigid legs and no wings. It flew for all of two seconds. Then it crashed fair and square into the van.

  It was the Bechstein’s last chord, but it was a memorable one. If you imagine someone blowing up an orchestra in the middle of Beethoven’s Fifth, you’ll get the general idea. It was an explosion of music—or a musical explosion. A zing, a boom, and a twang all rolled into one and amplified a hundred times. They heard it at the construction site. I doubt if there was anywhere in London that they didn’t hear it.

  The Bechstein was finished and I somehow doubted that the van would be doing much more traveling either. It hadn’t been completely crushed, but it must have been disappointed. Steam was hissing out of the radiator and two of the tires were spinning away like giant coins. Black oil formed a sticky puddle around the wreckage. The exhaust pipe had shot away like a rocket and was lying about a hundred feet down the road. The whole twisted carcass of the van was covered in splinters of wood and wires. One of the piano’s legs had shattered the front window. I didn’t like to think what it had done to the driver.

  “Quite a performance, honey,” Lauren said.

  “Concerto for piano and van,” I muttered.

  And now people did come running. Suddenly it was as if Bayly Street had become Piccadilly Circus. They came from the construction site, from the left, from the right, from just about everywhere. They looked at the carnage. Then they looked up. I leaned out of the window and waved.

  It was about twenty minutes later that one of the construction workers appeared in the Germans’ living room. He was carrying a pair of industrial pliers, which he must have used to cut through the two padlocks. Lauren and I were sitting on the sofa waiting for him.

  “The piano . . .” He gaped at us. “Was it yours?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But don’t worry. I wasn’t much good at it anyway.”

  We walked out of the room, leaving him standing there. Well, what was he expecting? An encore?

  We managed to slip away in the crowd, but not before I’d heard that—miraculously—nobody had been killed.

  Apparently the driver of the van would have to be cut away from the steering wheel, while the passenger had managed to impale himself on the gearstick. A doctor had already arrived, but Gott and Himmell were more in need of a mechanic.

  We got a taxi back to the office, where I picked up the real Maltesers and then we went straight on to Lauren’s place. There were too many people looking for me in Fulham. From now on I’d have to keep my head down and my raincoat collar up. Lauren lived in a huge condominium in Baron’s Court—about a ten-minute drive away. It was one of those great brick piles with fifty doorbells beside the front door and fifty people who don’t know one another inside. She had a basement apartment that must have been all of five inches above the main Piccadilly subway line. Every time a train went past, the floor rumbled. Or maybe it was my stomach. I hadn’t had a decent meal in twenty-four hours and I was hungry.

  She left me in the living room while she went into the kitchen to fix supper. It was a cozy room in a theatrical sort of way, with a gas fire hissing in the grate, a kettle on the floor, and odd bits of clothes thrown just about everywhere. The furniture was old and tired, with a sofa that looked like it was waiting to swallow you up whole.

  The walls were plastered with posters from theaters and music halls where Lauren had appeared, either as a singer or as an escape artist’s assistant. It was a room with a past but no future. A room of rising damp and fading memories.

  When she came back in she had changed into some sort of dressing gown and had brushed her hair back. For a woman old enough to be my grandmother she looked good. But then you should see my grandmother. The food she was carrying looked even better. She had it on a tray: omelettes, salad, cheese, fruit, a bottle of red wine for her, and Coke for me. We didn’t say much while we ate. We were just glad to be there. Glad to be alive.

  “Thanks,” I said when I finished the omelette.

  “I should thank you, Nick.” Lauren poured herself some more wine. Her hand was trembling a little. “If it hadn’t been for you . . . hell . . . they were going to kill me.”

  “You were the one who got out of the ropes,” I reminded her. I glanced at the poster above the gas fire. It showed her with a flashy guy in a sequined straitjacket. He had greasy black hair, a mustache, and a toothpaste-advertisement smile. “Is that Harry Blondini?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She stood up and turned the stereo on. There was a click and a solo saxophone slithered through the room. She’d lit herself a cigarette and the smoke curled in time to the music. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know about the escape artist. But she told me anyway. “I loved him,” she said. “For two years we worked together in the theater and we lived together for five. We were going to get married. But then, at the last minute, he ran off with a snake charmer. What did she have that I didn’t—apart from two anacondas and a boa constrictor? That was the day before our wedding—the day before we were meant to tie the knot.” She smiled a half smile. “Well, what should I have expected from an escape artist? He escaped. And he broke my heart.

  “That was when I took up singing. I’ve been singing for twenty years, Nick. The same old songs. And in all that time I’ve only met two decent people. Johnny Naples and you. You’re a nice kid, Nick. If I ever had a son, I’d have liked him to be like you.

  “All I’ve ever wanted is a place of my own—maybe somewhere in the sun, like the South of France. Look at this place! Thirty feet underground—I never get to see the sun. And the Casablanca Club’s the same. When they finally bury me, I’ll actually be going up in the world. But it’s a lousy world, Nick. Lousy . . .”

  Maybe she’d had too much wine. I don’t know. I’d asked her a simple question and she’d given me her life history. It was lucky I hadn’t asked her anything tricky. We could have been there all night. I’d had enough. I was tired and I was dirty.

  “I need a bath,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Of all the baths in all the towns in all the world, you have to walk into mine. There’s no hot water.”

  “Then I’ll just turn in.”

  “You can sleep on the sofa.”

  I took the tray back into the kitchen while she got me a couple of blankets. It was after she’d said good night and I was about to leave that I remembered the one question I’d meant to ask her. It was the whole reason I was there.

  “Lauren,” I said. “Back in the Casablanca Club . . . you were about to tell me something. You told me that you were out with Johnny when he saw something. It made the Maltesers and everything else make sense.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well . . . where were you?”

  She paused, silhouetted in the doorway. �
�We were buying sausages,” she said. “In Oxford Street. In Selfridges. In the food department.”

  SELFRIDGES

  I don’t like Oxford Street on the best of days—and let me tell you now, December 24, isn’t one of them. Bond Street Station had been doing a good impersonation of the Black Hole of Calcutta and Lauren and I were glad to get out. But there was little relief outside. The Christmas rush had turned into the Christmas panic and the season seemed to have run pretty short of goodwill. Taxi drivers blasted their horns. Bus drivers leaned out of their windows and swore. You couldn’t blame them. The traffic probably hadn’t moved since December 22. There were so many people clawing their way along the pavement that you couldn’t see the cracks. And everyone was carrying bulging bags. Of food, of decorations, of last-minute presents. I sighed. Herbert was still in jail.

  He’d been there almost a week now. It looked like Christmas for me was going to be the Queen’s speech and two frozen turkey croquettes.

  But there was Selfridges with its white pillars, gold clocks, and flags fluttering across the roof. Somewhere inside the department store—in the food section—Johnny Naples had seen something that could have made him five million dollars. The thought cheered me up. I clutched the Maltesers. Lauren had loaned me a sort of shoulder bag and I had brought the candies with me. I wouldn’t have felt easy without them.

  We crossed the road, weaving between the traffic, and went in the front entrance. We were greeted by a cloud of sweet, sickly scent. This was the perfume department. They stocked all the perfumes in the world—and you could smell them all at once.

  “Do you want to try this one?”

  A pretty girl leaned over a counter, holding a bottle of af tershave toward me. I shook my head. She had a nice face. But she was a couple of years early.

  It was hot inside Selfridges. The air had been chewed up by giant air-conditioners and spat out again. That was how it smelled. Secondhand. We went into the menswear department, following the signs that read FOOD.