The Hangman's Lair (4 page)

I hadn’t reckoned on this. Foolishly, I’d assumed that they would offer to buy the discs off us. I’d underestimated them. My stomach rolled over in slow motion. I now had to take a risk.

‘We’ll sell them to you,’ I said.

Moz loomed forward. He stood with the toes of his trainers almost touching my shoes. He jabbed a grubby finger against my chest. ‘I hope you like hospital food, Steve, ‘cos if you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll be having a lot of it.’

I stood absolutely still. Which wasn’t easy, when my legs felt like they were shouting ‘Run away!’ and the rest of me felt like it was agreeing with my legs.

‘You can have the discs,’ I said, in as un-wobbly a voice as I could manage. ‘But we want paying for them.’

‘If you don’t give me those discs,’ growled Moz, ‘I’ll set my gang on you.’

‘If you set your gang on me,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t give you those discs in a million years. You know you can make a big profit. Pay up, and we all get something out of this. Otherwise, everyone loses. Your choice.’

I tried to steady my breathing. I couldn’t let Moz think I’d back down. I had to convince him that I meant what I said. I glared up at him, hoping that my expression said ‘I Mean Business’, rather than ‘I Want To Go Home’.

At last, Moz emitted a loud snort and turned to the rest of the gang. ‘I like this kid. He reminds me of me.’

Eurgh, I thought to myself.

‘How many games d’ya say you got?’ said Moz.

‘A hundred and forty,’ I said.

He glanced around at the traffic, as if the next thing he was going to say could be seen painted on the side of a passing van. ‘You’ll take one pound for each.’

I shook my head quickly. ‘No. Five is fair. You can sell them for three times that. You can triple your money, easy.’

‘Two pounds each, no more than that,’ said Moz.

‘Four,’ I said. ‘Four, or forget it.’

‘Three.’

I pretended to have a careful think about that. ‘Three,’ I said at last. ‘Hundred and forty times three . . . That’s . . . That’s four hundred and twenty pounds, exactly . . . Hmm . . . OK, three for each. You’ve got that amount of money, have you?’

Moz snorted again. So did the rest of the gang. They were starting to sound like a herd of buffalo.

‘Yeah, we’ve got plenty of money,’ smiled Moz. ‘Haven’t we, lads?’

The rest of them laughed. Zippy giggled into his coat hood.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll meet right here, tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. I don’t want to wait, I want to get rid of this gear as soon as I can.’

‘Shut it, Steve,’ said Moz, ‘I say when we meet. Eight it is, then. If you’re not here on time, you and your secret agent friend here are going to get a pounding. Understand?’

Without another word, Muddy and I hurried away. We were half a kilometre away from Herbert Street before either of us dared even breathe.

‘Phew, that was close,’ gasped Muddy.

‘Which part of “Let me do the talking” was confusing you there?’ I asked.

‘We did it, didn’t we?’ said Muddy. ‘We convinced them.’

‘We certainly convinced them you’re a complete twerp.’

‘Which works in our favour,’ said Muddy. ‘If they think we’re a couple of bumbling amateurs when it comes to crime, they won’t suspect we’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But remember, if they discover we’ve just told them a pack of lies, and that there are no stolen discs, and that we really
are
working undercover . . . we’re going to get a pounding.’

‘Er, yeah, that bit I got,’ said Muddy.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’ve got work to do!’

A
LITTLE WHILE LATER,
M
UDDY
and I were hiding behind a hedge on Deadman’s Lane, close to the edge of The Hangman’s Lair. Beside us was Muddy’s tatty old school bag, bulging with the equipment I’d listed in my notebook.

‘Don’t you ever clean that bag?’ I whispered, peering at it snootily and wrinkling up my nose.

‘I think it’s only the mud stains which hold it together,’ whispered Muddy. ‘Can’t we hide on the other side of the road? I think my trousers are soaking something up.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we wait here. The gang should be along in about ten minutes.’

Muddy thought for a moment.

‘How do you know they won’t enter the wood from the other end, way over there?’ he said.

‘I don’t
know,’
I replied, ‘but it’s likely they’ll come past us here. Herbert Street is back in
that
direction, so unless they’re going to go completely out of their way and circle around to the other end of the wood, then they’ll be coming along here.’

Muddy thought for another moment.

‘How can you possibly know what time they’ll come to retrieve the money?’

‘I don’t
know,’
I replied, ‘but I can make a good guess. We
do
know it’ll have to be before tomorrow morning, of course, so they’ll make their move tonight. They’ll want to fetch the money when there’s the least chance of them being spotted, a time when it’s dark enough to be hidden in those woods, but light enough to find your way, if you know where you’re going.’

Think back to my previous visit to The Hangman’s Lair. There was a specific hour at which conditions in there would be exactly right for the gang to move around with minimal risk.

Did you make a note of the time?

‘When I came here the other day,’ I said to Muddy, ‘it became too shadowy to search at six p.m., just when it was getting dark. My guess is that the Herbert Street gang will be here in precisely . . .’ I checked my watch. ‘. . . four minutes.’

Six and a half minutes later, all five members of the gang came scuffing along Deadman’s Lane. Moz walked in front, with Zippy just behind him, looking around in all directions.

‘There you go,’ I whispered with a grin. ‘Only two and a half minutes out. Not bad.’

The gang made a sharp turn between two houses, heading for the woods. Muddy and I clipped the Whitehouse Personal Communicators to our ears, and slipped the Whitehouse Ultra-Soft Shoe Covers over our trainers.

‘You’re going to have to work on these communicators, Muddy,’ I whispered, as we scuttled across the road, crouched down. ‘My head keeps lolling over.’

‘Yeah, the weight’s a problem,’ whispered Muddy. ‘I had to use larger batteries than normal.’

‘We look like we’re wearing giant earrings,’ I spluttered.

‘At least if the gang spot us,’ hissed Muddy, ‘they’ll be too busy laughing to give us a pounding.’

‘Shh,’ I hissed. ‘They’ve stopped. Keep down.’

Moz had paused at the outer edge of the trees. For a couple of seconds, I was terrified that one of them had heard us. But then Moz and Zippy said something to each other that I couldn’t overhear, and with one last glance over their shoulders, they all disappeared into The Hangman’s Lair.

I beckoned to Muddy and we followed, keeping as low to the ground as we could. Those Whitehouse Ultra-Soft Shoe Covers did a perfect job of silencing our footsteps. However, silent footsteps seemed a bit pointless when the gear in Muddy’s bag kept clanking around.

‘Keep it steady,’ I whispered.

‘You carry it, then,’ whispered Muddy crossly.

‘Keep it steady,’ I whispered. ‘Come on, we can’t let them get too far ahead, or we’ll lose them in the shadows.’

Now that the gang were under the cover of the twisting, spiky branches, they were marching straight ahead and not bothering to keep a lookout behind them. The sounds of their crunching against fallen twigs was enough to mask any slight noises Muddy and I were making.

We darted from the shadow of one tree trunk to another. There had been heavy rain the night before, and the bark still felt damp and slippery. A smell of wet, sagging vegetation had been stirred up all through The Hangman’s Lair.

With the gang well inside the wood, I was starting to wonder about the method they’d used to mark the place where they’d hidden the money. Before, you’ll remember, I’d found no trace of anything that might lead me to the cash. Now, I was watching them carefully, eager to see what tiny little detail I might have missed.

‘Here’s the line,’ said Moz. ‘It’s up this way.’

I risked going a few steps closer, to get a look at what he was talking about. On the ground, fallen twigs and branches formed a hazy straight line which vanished among the tree trunks, and which the gang were now following.

I almost gave myself a clunk on the head. I’d
seen
that line last time I was here (see page 16), but I hadn’t realised what it meant! Had they simply marked a trail?

A minute or two later, the answer was clear. The gang stopped at a murky spot in front of a plain, anonymous-looking tree. On the ground, the straight line they’d been following came to an end, and where it ended it was joined by two other lines, one to each side of the original line, and vanishing off into the darkness at angles of around forty-five degrees.

No, they hadn’t marked a trail. They’d placed the shape of a gigantic arrow on the ground, pointing to the hiding place! Unless you knew the arrow was there, you’d never have spotted it. I’d been looking for something too small!

‘Oh, that’s clever,’ I muttered, admiringly. ‘You’ve got to admit, that’s clever.’

‘Shhh,’ hissed Muddy. ‘This is it.’

‘Give me the shovel, Moz,’ said Zippy, ‘and I’ll dig it up.’

‘What shovel?’ said Moz. ‘You can see I’m not carrying any shovel! What do you think I’ve got, some sort of magical giant pocket or something?’

‘What am I going to dig it up with?’ said Zippy

‘That’s your problem, mate,’ grunted Moz.

The others laughed. I nudged Muddy.

‘Now’s our chance, while they’re distracted,’ I whispered. ‘You take two of the lamps, I’ll position the rest.’

Muddy nodded. I took the bag and crept away, moving in a wide semi-circle around the gang. Every few metres, I stopped and wedged one of the Whitehouse Dazzletron 6000 Mega-Beam Lamps into the tree branches beside me. When the last one was in place, I crouched down and waited, silently.

By now the gang had stopped arguing about shovels and had made Zippy unearth the money with his bare hands. He dropped to his knees and started digging with his fingers, grumbling and griping under his breath.

I watched from behind a mass of undergrowth, never taking my eyes off the spot where Zippy was digging. I was shaking with nerves, half of me thrilled by Operation Hangman’s Lair, and the other half of me scared to death in case some fang-toothed woodland monster suddenly oozed up out of the ground at me.

Zippy sat back, slopping mud off his hands. ‘There it is. Safe and sound.’

He reached into the hole he’d dug and pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle. It slurped against the earth, as if the woods were trying to hang on to it. By now, the sun had set and the shadows beneath the trees were thickening into the inky chill of night. I could barely make out the bundle in Zippy’s hand. It was rolled into a plastic shopping bag and secured with brown parcel tape, to keep the moisture out.

‘Now, Muddy,’ I whispered into my communicator. ‘Switch on now.’

Suddenly, six sharp white beams of light flashed into life. I blinked in the harsh glare. The gang were dazzled, screwing up their eyes and shielding themselves with their hands. Everything was suddenly lit up, every tiny detail of the woods standing out, bright and stark against the blackness beyond.

‘What the —’ yelled Moz.

Quickly, I raised the Whitehouse Sound Amplifier And Distorter to my lips. Thanks to Muddy’s skill with all things electronic, my voice emerged sounding very deep, very angry and very loud. ‘This is the police! You are surrounded! Raise your hands and stand still! We’ve caught the kids who stole those computer games, and now we’ve caught you!’