South by South East (7 page)

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.

“Good luck,” Charlotte said.

“Actually…” Tim began.

“Goodbye!” Charlotte said.

Tim fell out of the train and in that split second I realized two things: one – that Charlotte had given him a helpful push; and two – that I was still chained to him. With a yell I launched myself after him.

I felt the wind grab me. For a moment everything was a blur. Then long grass rushed up at me from all sides. I heard Tim yell, the sound blending in with the roar of the train. I could feel his weight at the end of the chain, still pulling me forward. There was a sickening thud as my shoulder came into contact with the earth. And then everything was blue, green, blue, green as I rolled down a hill between the grass and the sky. I couldn’t see Tim any more and wondered if he’d managed to pull off my arm.

Then I must have blacked out for a moment. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back, winded and only half-conscious. A pair of eyes that I thought I knew well loomed over me.

“Tim?” I muttered.

“Moo,” came the reply. It was a cow. And it seemed as astonished as I was that I was still alive.

I raised my hand and was grateful to see it was still there. It seemed that I hadn’t broken any bones in the fall – but I had broken the handcuffs. A length of chain trailed away from my wrist.

There was a loud groan a short distance away and Tim popped up behind a small bush. It had been a big bush until he had rolled through it. Tim had been less fortunate than me. As soon as we were separated, he had rolled through six nettles, a clump of thistles, a cowpat and the bush.

“Next time, we take a bus!” he muttered as I tried to tidy him up. The cow ambled over and tried to eat his sleeve. “Shoo!” Tim cried out. The cow put its head down to the ground and took a bite out of one of his shoes.

We chased the cow away and found Tim’s other shoe. A few minutes later we crossed the field leaving the railway line behind us. There was a gap in the hedge and a lane on the other side. We turned left, following our noses. Actually, Tim’s nose had been stung so badly, it now pointed both ways.

But he didn’t complain. He was limping along beside me, deep in thought. For a long time neither of us spoke. Then, at last, he sighed. “Charlotte!” I’d had a feeling he was thinking about her. “You know, I really think she likes me.”

I shrugged. “Well, she was certainly smiling when she pushed you off the train.”

We reached a crossroads. This time there was a sign. Dover straight ahead. But it didn’t say how far.

“How far do you think it is?” Tim asked.

“It can’t be more than a couple of kilometres,” I said. Tim grimaced. “I’m not sure I can make it, kid. I think I’ve twisted both my ankles.”

I looked down. “No you haven’t,” I said. “You’ve got your shoes on the wrong feet.”

“Oh.”

We walked a little further and suddenly there we were. We were high up with the sea – a brilliant blue – below us. The port of Dover was a knotted fist with a ferry and a hovercraft slipping through its concrete fingers even as we watched. And to our left and to our right, as far as we could see, a ribbon of white stretched out beneath the sun. The White Cliffs of Dover. We had made it to the edge of England. But now we had to go further, over the water and away from home.

We slipped into the crowded port without being noticed. Maybe the police were still waiting for us at the station. Maybe they had given up on us and gone. There was a ferry leaving for Ostend in ten minutes. We took it. Despite what I’d been able to save from the bank robbery, we were getting low on cash so we only bought one-way tickets.

But as I said to Tim, if we didn’t find Charon in Amsterdam, it was unlikely that we would be coming back.

To be honest, I’m not crazy about Amsterdam. It’s got too many canals, too many tourists and most of its buildings look like they’ve been built with a Lego set that’s missing half its pieces. Also, the Dutch put mayonnaise on their chips. But if you like bicycles and cobbled streets, flower stalls and churches, I suppose there are worse places you can go.

We arrived the next morning after hitch-hiking up from Ostend. That was one good thing about Amsterdam. After three hours with a lorry driver, a cheese salesman and a professional juggler (who dropped us in the middle of the city) we realized that just about everyone in the place spoke English. This was just as well. Ten minutes after we’d set off in search of the Amstel Ijsbaan, we were hopelessly lost. It wasn’t just that we couldn’t understand the street signs. We couldn’t even pronounce them. We found our way by asking people. Not that that was much help.

Me: “Excuse me. We’re looking for the Amstel Ijsbaan.”

Friendly local: “Go along the canal. Turn left at the canal. Continue until you see a canal. And it’s on a canal.”

There were hundreds of canals and they all looked exactly the same. In fact if you went on holiday in Amsterdam you’d only need to take one photograph. Then you could develop it a few dozen times. We must have walked for an hour and a half before we finally found what we were looking for; a low, square building on the very edge of the city, stretching out into the only open space we’d seen. Like the rest of the place, the sign was old and needed repair. It read: AMS EL IJSBAAN.

“There’s no ‘T’,” I said.

“That’s all right,” Tim muttered. “I’m not thirsty.”

We went in. An old crone was sitting behind the glass window of the ticket office. Either she had a bad skin disease or the window needed cleaning. As Tim went over to her she put down the grubby paperback she had been reading and looked up at him with suspicious eyes.

“
Kan ik u misschien helpen?
” she said. It sounded like she was gargling, but that’s the Dutch language for you. Tim stared at her.

“
Hoeveel kaartjes wilt u?
” she demanded more angrily.

You didn’t have to be Einstein to work out what she was saying. After all, she was a ticketseller and we needed tickets. But Tim just stood there, rooted to the spot, mumbling in what sounded like GCSE French. I stepped forward.

“
Twee kaarties alstublieft,
” I said and slid some money under the window. The old woman grunted, gave us two tickets and went back to her book.

“What did you say?” Tim demanded.

“I asked for two tickets.”

“But when did you learn to speak Dutch?”

“On the ferry. I looked in a phrase book.”

Tim’s face lit up. “You’re brilliant, Nick!”

“Not really.” I shrugged. “It’s just a phrase I’m going through.”

We passed through a set of double doors. We could hear the ice rink in the distance now, or at least the music booming out over the speakers.

I noticed that Tim had picked up a pair of skates.

“We’re here to look for 86,” I reminded him. “We’re not going skating.”

“86 could be on the ice,” he said.

“But Tim … can you skate?”

“Can I skate?” He grinned at me. “
Can
I skate!”

Tim couldn’t skate. I watched him fall over three times – and that was before he even reached the ice. Then I left him and began to search for the secret agent who called himself 86. How would I recognize him? He was hardly likely to have a badge with the number on it. A tattoo, perhaps? I decided to look out for anyone who seemed strange or out-of-place. The trouble was, in a run-down Dutch skating rink in the middle of the summer,
everyone
seemed out of place.

The ice rink was enormous. It was like being inside an aircraft hangar. It was rectangular in shape, surrounded by five rows of plastic seats rising in steps over the ice. There was an observation box at one end and the terrace café at the other. Everything was slightly shabby, old-fashioned … and cold. The ice was actually steaming as it caught the warm air from outside and chilled it. There were only about half a dozen skaters out there and, as they glided along the surface of the rink, they seemed to disappear into the fog like bizarre, dancing ghosts.