More Horowitz Horror

by Anthony Horowitz

  “If I may get back to what happened yesterday,” Falcon said. Suddenly he wanted to get out of this office, away from the smoke, out into the winter sunlight. “I wonder if you noticed an eleven-year-old boy get into the elevator with you at Covent Garden station?”

  “I did indeed, Lieutenant. A rather fat little boy with ginger hair. Wearing baggy trousers and a scarf . . .”

  “That was him.”

  “He pushed his way in just before the elevator doors closed. Then he forced his way to the front of the elevator. He was the first to leave. I was a little worried about him, as he seemed too young to be out on his own. But before I could do anything, he was out of my sight. I saw him go through the turnstile and into the street. But then he was gone.”

  “You saw him exit onto the street?” Beagle asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “But forgive me, sir.” Beagle was confused. “The security cameras at the station show you leaving the elevator. But there was no sign of the boy.”

  Orlov frowned and sucked his pipe. Smoke trickled over his lips and into his beard. “Could it be, perhaps, that the camera was malfunctioning?” he said at last. “Because, I assure you, I saw him leave. With my own eyes.”

  “It is possible,” Falcon agreed. He stood up. “Thank you very much, Mr. Orlov. I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”

  “Anything I can do to help!” Orlov waved a pudgy hand like a king dismissing a courtier.

  Falcon paused at the door. “One last question, sir? Did you go to the concert? You and your friends?”

  “Indeed so. Mozart and Brahms. At St. Christopher’s Church in Covent Garden. It was a delightful evening.”

  “And I suppose you went on to dinner afterward.”

  Orlov hesitated, the pipe halfway to his lips. “No. As a matter of fact we didn’t. We weren’t hungry.”

  The two policemen left.

  Falcon said nothing until they got back to New Scotland Yard. Sitting next to him in the car, Beagle had become more and more frustrated and when they reached the office he finally broke out. “He was lying! The boy never left the elevator. And the camera’s fine. It’s already been checked.”

  “I know, Jack,” Falcon said.

  The video camera with the security tape was still there and he turned it back on, but he knew what to expect. He was feeling sick. Just two months until he retired, nine months until he left London forever. And this had to come along.

  Eric Smith had come to London with his parents and just for a laugh he had disobeyed them and slipped into an elevator on his own at Covent Garden subway station. Normally nothing would have happened. Normally he would have found himself surrounded by strangers and he would have arrived at the top at the same time as his mom and dad. They would have told him off and he would have sulked and that would have been the end of it. But this hadn’t been a normal day. This had been a one-in-a-million chance.

  Eric had gone into an elevator with thirty-five cannibals, going out for their anniversary dinner. When the doors had closed, he had found himself alone with them for fifty-eight seconds.

  Orlov had been lying, of course. He had said that his experience in the Arctic Circle had been painful and disgusting. But Falcon had seen the truth. He had seen it in the flash in those eyes behind the gold-framed spectacles and that little tongue, so pink and moist as it passed over his lips. Perhaps they’d hated it at first, the survivors in that plane. Having to survive for five months, eating human flesh.

  But suppose they had come to enjoy it? Suppose they had come to like the taste? They had nineteen bodies. Thirty-eight roast shoulders. Thirty-eight roast legs. One hundred and ninety stewed knuckles. Day after day, they would have sat there, feasting.

  But then, after they were rescued, how would they have coped? No more human flesh! Oh yes, they could meet in their little clubhouse and talk about it, relive all those happy meals. But they could only dream of the succulent, pink meat. And all the time they would be hungry, so hungry . . .

  . . . until a small, plump boy walked right into the middle of them and a door closed and they suddenly realized they couldn’t resist it anymore and as one they had fallen on him with teeth and nails . . .

  Falcon didn’t like to think about it. At least it would have been over for Eric very quickly.

  He forced himself to look at the screen. There was Orlov, walking out of the elevator. Orlov and his friends. Was it really gum that the woman was chewing? Was the man with the handkerchief blowing his nose or wiping his mouth? That Chinese woman! Was her cheek swollen or was it just that her mouth was full? The old woman with the walking stick! Looking more closely, Falcon could see that the handle was shaped very much like a child’s foot. And as for the teenager with the football, he wondered now if it actually was a football at all . . .

  He turned off the machine.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Beagle asked.

  “No.” Falcon sat staring at the blank screen. Two questions were going through his mind. How was he going to tell the parents what he knew? And (no wonder Orlov had been so calm) how was he ever going to prove it?

  The Phone Goes Dead

  This is how Linda James dies.

  She’s walking across Hyde Park in the middle of London when she notices that the weather has changed. The sky is an ugly color. Not the blackness of nightfall but the heavy, pulsating mauve of an approaching storm. The clouds are boiling and seconds later there is a brilliant flash as a fork of lightning shimmers the entire length of the Thames.

  It has been said that there are two things that you shouldn’t do in a storm. The first is to make a telephone call. The second is to take shelter under a tree. Linda James does both of these things. As the rain begins to fall, she runs under the outstretched branches of a huge oak tree, then fishes in her handbag and takes out a cell phone.

  She dials a number.

  “Steve,” she says. “I’m in Hyde Park.”

  That’s all she says. There’s another flash of lightning and this time Linda is hit dead-on. Seventy-five thousand volts of electricity zap through her, transmitted through the cell phone into her brain. Her body jerks and the phone is thrown about fifty feet away from her. This is the last physical action Linda James ever makes, and it goes without saying, she is dead before the phone even hits the ground.

  We will never find out anything more about Linda. Was she married or single? Why was she crossing Hyde Park at six o’clock on a Wednesday evening and does it matter that, wherever she was going, she never arrived? Who was Steve? Did he ever find out that Linda was actually killed at the very moment she was speaking to him? None of these questions will ever be answered.

  But the cell phone. That’s another story.

  The phone is a Zodiac 555. Already old-fashioned. Manufactured somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is found in the long grass the day after the body has been removed and by a long, circuitous route, it ends up in a secondhand store somewhere near the coast in the south of England. Despite everything, the phone seems to be working. Linda’s SIM card—the little piece of circuitry that makes it work—is removed. The phone is reprogrammed and another SIM card put inside. Eventually, it goes back on sale.

  And a few weeks later, a man called Mark Adams goes in and buys it. He wants a cell phone for his son.

  David Adams holds the cell phone. “Thanks, Dad,” he says. But he’s not sure about it. A lot of his friends have got cell phones, it’s true. Half of them don’t even make any calls. They just think it’s cool, having their own phone—and the smaller and more expensive the model, the smarter they think they are. But the Zodiac 555 is clunky and out of date. It’s gray. You can’t snap on one of those multicolored fronts. And Zodiac? It’s not one of the trendier brand names. David has never heard of it.

  And then there’s the question of why his father has bought it in the first place. David is sixteen now and he’s beginning to spend more time away from home, sleeping over with friends, parties on Saturday
evening, surfing at first light on Sunday. He lives in Ventnor, a run-down seaside town on the Isle of Wight. He’s lived his whole life on the island and maybe that’s why he feels cramped, why he wants his own space. He’s talking about college on the mainland. Mark and Jane Adams run a hotel. They only have one son and they’re afraid of losing him. They want to keep him near them, even when they can’t see him. And that’s why they’ve bought the cell phone. David can imagine the next Saturday evening, when he’s out with his friends at the Spyglass, the trill of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue (which is what the phone plays when it rings) in his back pocket and his father or his mother checking up on him. “You’re only drinking lemonade, aren’t you, David? You won’t be home too late?”

  But even so, it’s his own phone. He can always turn it off. And now that he’s started going out with Jill Hughes, who lives in the neighboring village of Bonchurch and who goes to the same school as him, it could be useful.

  Which is why he says, “Thanks, Dad.”

  “That’s OK, David. But just remember. I’ll pay the line rental for you, but the calls are down to you. It’s ten cents a minute off-peak, so just be careful you don’t talk too much.”

  “Sure.”

  They’re a close family. For half the year there are just the three of them shuffling around in the twenty-three rooms of the Priory Hotel, which stands on a hill, overlooking the beach at Ventnor. Mark and Jane Adams bought it ten years ago, when David was six. They got fed up with London and one day they just moved. Perhaps it was a mistake. The summer season on the Isle of Wight is a short one these days. Package vacations are so cheap that most families can afford to go to France or Spain, where they’re more sure of good weather. It gets busy around June but this is only March and the place is quiet. As usual, it’s hard to make ends meet. David helps his dad with the decorating and small maintenance jobs. Jane Adams has a part-time job with a yacht club in Cowes. The three of them get along. Mark still says he prefers Ventnor to London.

  David isn’t so sure. There are too many old people on the Isle of Wight. Everything feels run-down and neglected. People say that the whole place is fifty years behind the rest of England and he can believe it. Sometimes he looks at the waves, rolling into the shore, and he dreams of other countries—even other worlds—and wishes that his life could change.

  It’s about to.

  The cell phone rings at half past four one afternoon when David is on his way home from school. Bach’s great organ piece reduced to a series of irritating electronic bleeps. Only about six people have his number. Jill, of course. His parents. A few other friends at school. But when David manages to find the phone in his backpack, dig it out, and press the button, it is none of them on the line.

  “Hello?” It’s an old man.

  “Yes?” David is sure that it’s a wrong number.

  “I want you to do something for me.” The old man has one of those slightly quavering, do-what-you’retold voices. “I want you to go and see my wife at Number Seventeen, Primrose Hill.”

  “I’m sorry . . .” David begins.

  “I want you to tell her that the ring is under the fridge. She’ll understand.”

  “Who is this speaking?” David asks.

  “This is Eric. You know my wife. Mary Saunders. She lives at Number Seventeen and I want you to tell her—”

  “I know,” David interrupts. “Why can’t you tell her?”

  “I can’t reach her!” The old man sounds annoyed now. As if he’s stating the obvious. “Will you tell her it’s under the fridge? It’s under the fridge. She’ll understand what you mean.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Thank you very much.”

  The phone goes dead. David hasn’t even asked how Eric Saunders got his telephone number or why he should have dialed it to ask him (why him?) to do this favor. But the fact is that David does vaguely know Mary Saunders. Ventnor being the sort of place it is, everyone more or less knows everyone, but there’s more to it than that. Mary Saunders used to work at the hotel. She worked in the kitchen but she retired about a year ago to look after her husband, who had cancer or something. David remembers her; a small, plump, busy woman with a loud laugh. Always cheerful—at least, until she heard the news about her husband’s illness. She used to bake cakes and she’d always be there with a cup of tea and a slice of something when David got back from school. She was all right. And Primrose Hill is only a few minutes’ walk from where David is now, from where he took the call.

  It’s strange, Eric calling him this way, but David decides that after all it’s not too much to ask. He hasn’t even stopped walking. His footsteps carry him to Primrose Hill.

  Number Seventeen is part of a long row of almost identical houses, tall and narrow, standing shoulder to shoulder on a steeply rising lane. Ventnor Down looms over them and they have no sea view. In fact most of the houses have no view at all. Lace curtains have been pulled over the windows to stop people from looking in. As if anyone would want to.

  Feeling slightly foolish, David rings the bell. Even as he hears the chimes, he changes his mind and wishes he hadn’t come, wonders why Eric Saunders chose him and why he even listened. But it’s too late. The door opens and there is Mary Saunders—just as he remembers her and yet not quite the same. She is older and thinner. She looks defeated and somehow David knows that she doesn’t laugh so much anymore. Even so, she’s pleased to see him.

  “David!” she exclaims. It’s taken a moment or two to remember who he is and she’s puzzled that he’s come. “This is a nice surprise! How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks, Mrs. Saunders.”

  There’s an awkward pause. David is embarrassed. She has been caught off guard.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asks at last.

  “No. No, thanks. I was just passing on my way home from school.”

  “How are your parents? How’s the hotel?”

  “They’re fine. Everything’s fine.” David decides to get this over with as quickly as possible. “I just got a phone call,” he says. “I was asked to give you a message.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “It was Eric. He said to tell you that the ring is under the fridge . . .”

  But already Mary’s face has changed. She’s looking at David as if he’s just spat in her face. “What . . . ?” she mutters.

  “He said it was under the fridge and that you’d understand.”

  “What are you talking about? Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No. It was him . . .”

  “How can you be so cruel? How can you . . . ?” She blinks rapidly and David sees, with a sort of sick feeling, that she’s about to cry. “I don’t know!” she mutters, and then she slams the door. Just like that. Slams it in his face.

  David stands on the doorstep, bewildered. But not for long. He should never have come here and now he’s glad to go. One of the net curtains in the house next door twitches. A neighbor has heard the slamming door and looks out to see what’s going on. But there’s nobody there. Just a boy in a school uniform, hurrying down the hill . . .

  That night, at dinner, David mentions—casually—that he saw Mary Saunders. He doesn’t tell his parents about the phone call. He doesn’t mention the door shutting in his face.

  “Ah, Mary!” His mother was always fond of the cook. “I haven’t seen her for a while. Not since the funeral.”

  “Who died?” David asks. But he remembers Mary’s face when he spoke to her. He already knows.

  “Her husband. You remember Eric,” she says to Mark.

  “He did some work in the garden.” Mark remembers now.

  “Yes. Very sad. He had lung cancer. It wasn’t surprising really. He was smoking a pack a day.” David’s mother turns to him. “You saw her today? How was she?”

  “She was fine . . .” David says, and he can’t stop himself from blushing. Someone played a joke on him. A stupid, malicious joke. Who was it? Who had his number and knew about Eric Saunders?
Who telephoned him and imitated the old man’s voice? Could it have been Jonathan Channon? Jonathan is his best friend at school and he’s always had a mischievous side. But David can still hear the old man’s voice and knows that it was an old man. Not a boy pretending to be a man. He knows it wasn’t a joke.

  And a few days later, David meets Mary Saunders again. He’s walking down the High Street and he’s just reached the old pile that used to be the Rex Cinema and suddenly she’s there in front of him. He’d avoid her if he could but it’s too late.

  “Hello, Mrs. Saunders,” he says. He’s ashamed. He can’t keep it out of his voice.

  But now she’s looking at him very strangely. She seems to be struggling with herself. There are tears in her eyes again but this time she’s not unhappy. She’s fighting with all sorts of emotions and it takes her a few seconds to find her voice, to find the words to say, “You came to see me.”

  “I’m sorry,” David stammers. “I didn’t know . . .”

  She raises a hand, trying to explain. “My Eric died just six weeks ago. It was a long illness. I nursed him to the end.”

  “Yes. My mom told me. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “We both had wedding rings. We were married thirty-seven years ago and we each had a wedding ring. Just silver. Nothing very expensive. My ring was inscribed with his name. And his had mine, on the inside. And after he died, I looked for his ring, and I couldn’t find it. It really upset me, that did. Because he’d never taken that ring off. Not once in thirty-seven years. And it was meant to be buried with him. That was what he’d always wanted.”

  She stops. Takes out a tissue and dabs her eye.