South by South East (2 page)

He shut the door behind him. It must have been raining outside because there were big drops clinging to his forehead and dripping off the hem of his coat. Or maybe he was sweating. “You Tim Diamond?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m Tim Diamond,” Tim agreed.

The man moved further into the room and saw me. For a moment the gun pointed my way and my hands flickered automatically towards a position somewhere above my head. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m Nick Diamond,” I said. “His brother.”

His eyes travelled down. “Why are you sitting on a tray?” he demanded.

“Because I feel like a cup of tea.” It was the first thing to come into my head but the answer must have satisfied him because a moment later, walking over to the window he’d forgotten me.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Tim said.

“Jake McGuffin.” The man peered out of the window, his eyes as narrow as the venetian blind we’d sold the week before. He glanced back over his shoulder at the door. “Is that the only way in?”

Tim nodded. “Are you in some sort of trouble?” he asked.

“Somebody’s trying to kill me,” McGuffin said.

He turned away from the window just as a high-velocity bullet fired from the street drilled a neat hole through the pane, flashed across the room a bare millimetre from his face, smashed the vase on the shelf opposite and exposed the carton of milk I had hidden there earlier. Milk fountained out.

“What makes you think that, Mr McStuffing?” Tim enquired.

I was staggered. Even McGuffin had gone pale. But evidently Tim just hadn’t noticed there was anything wrong. The truth was he was so wrapped up in his own performance that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if his visitor had been hit then and there. I edged closer to the filing cabinet, ready to hurl myself behind it if any more bullets blasted into the room.

McGuffin slipped the gun into a shoulder holster and moved across the carpet, keeping clear of the window. “I need to use a phone,” he said. The words came out fast, urgent.

“Why?” Tim asked.

McGuffin hesitated. I think he still hadn’t worked Tim out. But then he had other things on his mind.

“You can tell me, Mr McMuffin,” Tim went on. He tapped his nose. “I’m a private nose with an eye for trouble. Trouble is my middle name.”

McGuffin looked around the room. If he could have seen a telephone I reckon he would have used the flex to strangle Tim and then made his call uninterrupted. But whoever was waiting for him outside had him cornered. Time was running out. He had no choice. “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

He sat down opposite Tim and took out a cigarette. “You got a light?” he asked.

Tim switched on his desk light. McGuffin scrunched his cigarette on the desktop. He seemed to have got a lot older in the last few minutes. “Listen,” he said. “I’m an agent. It doesn’t matter who I work for.”

“Who
do
you work for?” Tim asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m on the track of a man called Charon. He’s a killer, an assassin, the head of a murder organization that’s bigger than Esso.”

Tim was puzzled. “Charon?” he asked. “What sort of name is that?”

“It’s a code name,” McGuffin explained. “It comes out of the Greek myths. You ever hear of Hades, the Greek underworld? In the old legends, it’s where people went when they died. Charon was the person who took them there. He was the ferryman of the dead.”

The sun must have gone behind a cloud. For the first time that summer I felt cold. Maybe it was the breeze coming in through the bullet hole.

“Nobody knows who Charon really is,” McGuffin went on. “He can disguise himself at the drop of a hat. They say he’s got so many faces his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

“Do you know his mother?” Tim asked.

“No.” McGuffin took a deep breath. “There’s only one way to recognize Charon,” he said. “He’s lost a finger.”

“Whose finger?” Tim asked.

“His own. He only has nine fingers.”

Tim smiled. “So that’ll help you finger him!”

McGuffin closed his eyes for a few seconds. He must have hoped he was dreaming and that when he opened them he’d be somewhere else. “Right,” he said at last. “But I’ve got no time. Charon is about to kill a Russian diplomat called Boris Kusenov.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I muttered. And it was true. I’d seen the name in the last newspaper I’d read. It had been underneath my chips.

“If Kusenov dies, that’s it,” McGuffin went on. “The Iron Curtain goes back up. There’ll be another arms race. Maybe even war…”

“As bad as that?” Tim asked.

“I’m the only man who can stop him. I know when Charon plans to kill him. And I know how. I’ve got to make that call.”

Tim shrugged. “That’s too bad, McNothing. We don’t have a phone.”

“No phone…” For a moment I thought he was going to murder Tim. He’d told us everything. And he’d got nothing for it. His hands writhed briefly. Maybe he was imagining them round Tim’s throat.

“There’s a phone box round the corner, in Skin Lane,” I suggested.

McGuffin had forgotten I was even in the room. He looked at me, then at the bullet hole. The bullet hole was like a single eye and that seemed to be looking at me too. “It’s an alley,” I added.

“Outside.” McGuffin licked his lips. I could see his problem. If he waited here much longer, Charon would come in and get him. And next time it might not be a single bullet. One grenade and we’d all be permanently disconnected, like the telephone. On the other hand, if he stepped out into the street he’d be a walking target. And I doubted if Charon would miss a second time.

But McGuffin was obviously used to thinking on his feet. Suddenly he was out of the chair and over the other side of the room where Tim’s raincoat was hanging on a hook. “I’ll give you fifty pounds for the coat,” McGuffin said.

“But you’ve already got a coat,” Tim observed.

“I’ve got to get out of here without being seen.”

McGuffin pulled off his own coat. Underneath he was wearing an off-white suit that had probably been white when he put it on. It didn’t quite hide the gun, jutting out of a shoulder holster where most people carry a wallet. He put on the raincoat, folding the collar up so that it hid most of his face. Finally he produced fifty pounds out of nowhere and threw them down on the desk, five ten pound notes which were the best thing I’d seen all day. Tim wasn’t going to complain either. The coat had only cost him ten pounds in the Oxfam shop and even they had probably made enough profit out of it to buy another ox.

McGuffin took a deep breath. He hesitated for one last moment. And then he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him.

I got off the tray. “What do you think?” I asked.

Tim opened his eyes. The money was sitting right in front of him. “Fifty quid!” he exclaimed.

“I wonder who he was working for?”

“Forget it, Nick,” Tim pocketed the money. “It’s none of our business. I’m just glad we’re not involved.”

I picked up McGuffin’s coat, meaning to hang it back on the hook. As I lifted it, something fell out of one of the pockets. It was a key. There was a plastic tag attached to it and in bright red letters:
Room 605, London International Hotel
.

I looked at the key. Tim looked at me. We were involved all right.

Maybe I should have emigrated to Australia.

My parents had left the country three years before when I was eleven, and of course they’d meant to take me with them. I’d got as far as Heathrow. But while my parents had got jammed up in one door of the aircraft, I’d slipped out another. Then I’d legged it across the main runway, leaving the screams of the engines – and of my mother – behind me. I remember stopping at the perimeter fence and turning round. And there they were, my mum and dad, flying off to Australia without me. As the plane soared away into the setting sun there was a big lump in my throat and I realized I’d laughed so much I’d swallowed my chewing-gum.

Ever since then I’d been living with Tim. Twice I’d almost been killed with him. I should have remembered that as we set off together in search of McGuffin. Perhaps this was going to be third time unlucky.

“Are you sure about this?” Tim asked as we walked together.

I jiggled the key in my hand. “We’re just going to give it back,” I said.

As we approached Skin Lane, a street cleaner limped round the corner, stabbing at the pavement with a broken, worn-out brush. The cleaner wasn’t looking much better himself. Maybe it was the heat. There was a dustcart parked in the alley and that puzzled me. Why hadn’t the cleaner taken the cart with him? Meanwhile Tim had walked on and, looking past him, I saw Jake McGuffin standing in the telephone box with the receiver propped under his chin.

“He’s still there,” I said.

“Yes.” Tim sniffed. “But look at that. He’s only had my coat five minutes and he’s already spilled something all down the front.”

“What?” Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so good. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, which was strange, because I didn’t know I had any hairs on the back of my neck. Leaving the cart, I moved quickly past Tim. McGuffin watched me approach but his eyes didn’t focus. I reached out to open the door.

“Wait a minute, Nick,” Tim said. “He hasn’t finished talking.”

I opened the door.

McGuffin had finished talking. The telephone was dead and any minute now he’d be joining it. The stuff he had spilled down the coat was blood, his own blood, and it was Charon who had done the spilling. Even as I opened the door I saw the shattered pane of glass where the bullet had passed through on its way to McGuffin’s heart. And at the same time, I knew that the man with the broom – Charon – had just made a clean getaway.

I was holding the door. For a moment I was trapped behind it. Tim was standing in front of me, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Then McGuffin pitched forward, landing in Tim’s arms. He was still alive. He began to talk. I would have heard what he said but it was exactly then that a train decided to pass overhead, and for the next few seconds the air was filled with the noise of grinding, creaking metal. The brick walls of the alley caught the sound and batted it back and forth like a ping-pong ball. I saw McGuffin’s lips move. I saw Tim nod. But I didn’t hear a word. I tried to move round but the glass door was still between me and them. By the time I managed to close it and get over to them, the train was gone.

So was McGuffin.

Tim let him go and he sprawled out on the tarmac. I tried to talk but my lips were too dry. I took a deep breath and tried again. “What did he say?” I asked.

“Suth,” Tim said.

“Suth? You mean – south?”

“Yes.”

“Was that all?”

“No. He said ‘bee’.”

“A bumblebee?”

“No.” Tim shook his head. “Just ‘bee’.”

“South. Bee…”

“Suff-iss.”

“Suff-iss?”

Tim looked at me sadly. “I couldn’t hear,” he wailed. “The train was too loud…”

“I know!” I forced myself not to shout at him. “But you were closest to him, Tim. You must have heard what he said.”

“I’ve told you. Suff. Bee. Suff-iss.”

“Suff. Bee. Suff-iss?” I played it over in my head a few times. “You mean south by south east? Was that what he said?”

Tim brightened. “Yes! That was it, Nick! I mean, that’s what it must have been. South by south east! That’s exactly what he said.”

“South by south east.” I made a quick calculation, then turned round so that I faced the corner of Skin Lane, away from the High Street.

“A dead end,” Tim said. He looked down at the body, his face going the colour of mouldy cheese. If we stayed here much longer he was going to pass out on me.

“You’re not going to faint, are you?” I asked.

“No!” Tim was indignant.

“You usually faint when there’s a dead body.”

“No I don’t.”

“You even fainted when your goldfish died.”

“That was grief!”

“We’d better call the police,” I said.

Tim glanced at the phone box but I shook my head. “We can’t use that one. Fingerprints…”

We half walked, half ran. The police station was a half-mile away. It seemed we were doing everything by halves. It even took us half an hour to get there. The trouble was that Tim was seeing Charon all over the place now. A woman with a pram, a traffic warden, a man waiting for a bus … they all had him paralysed with terror and he would only speak to the desk sergeant in the station when he had counted his ten fingers.

The desk sergeant listened to our story with a cold smile, then showed us into a back room while he went to find a senior officer. I was beginning to wonder if we hadn’t made a mistake going there.

Then the door opened and I
knew
we’d made a mistake.

The senior police officer was Chief Inspector Snape.

Snape was a tough, round-shouldered bull of a man. Wave a red flag at him and he’d probably flatten you. He had the sort of flesh you’d expect to see hanging upside down in a butcher’s shop. Snape hardly ever smiled. It was as if nobody had taught him how. When his lips did twitch upwards, his eyes stayed small and cold.

But without any doubt, the worst thing about Snape was his sidekick, Boyle. And with Boyle, kick was exactly the word. Boyle loved violence. I once saw a photograph of him in full riot gear – shield, truncheon, tear gas, grenade, helmet – and that had been taken on his day off. He was shorter than Snape, with dark, curly hair that probably went all the way down to his feet.

“Well, well, well,” Snape muttered. “If it isn’t Tim Diamond!”

“But it is!” Tim replied, brilliantly.

“I know it is!”

Snape’s eyes glazed over. Perhaps he was remembering the time when Tim had put together an Identikit picture and the entire police force of Great Britain had spent two months looking for a man with three eyes and an upside-down mouth. “There never was another police constable like you,” he rasped.

“Thank you, Chief.” Tim grinned.

“I’m not flattering you! I fired you!” Snape had gone bright red. He pulled out a chair and threw himself into it, breathing heavily.

Boyle edged forward. “Are you all right, sir?”