Anthony Horowitz - South by South East

I decided to have one last try. “Please, Mr Rushmore,” I said. “You’ve got to help us.”

Still he looked blank. And then I remembered the ticket that I had found in McGuffin’s hotel room, the ticket that had brought us all this way. I still had it in my pocket. I fished it out and handed it to him.

“McGuffin gave us this,” I said. “Before he died.”

Rushmore took the ticket. It was as if I’d said the right password or turned on some sort of switch. A light came on in his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get a drink.”

We went up to the cafe terrace I’d seen before. It had a view over the rink, but either the day had got warmer or the ice had got colder, because there was so much mist you could hardly see it.

I could just make out two figures standing at the far end and thought of Scarface and Ugly but they were too far away and the mist washed them out. Rushmore was drinking a Coke and had bought us both milk shakes, which would have been nicer if someone had remembered to shake the milk.

“There’s not a lot I can tell you,” he began. “I do a little work for the Dutch Secret Service…”

“What sort of work?” Tim asked.

“That’s a secret. But I’ll tell you this much. I was ordered to look after Jake McGuffin while he was over here. His boss — Mr Waverly — was desperate to find Charon.” Rushmore paused and considered. “There was something odd going on,” he added. “Something Waverly hadn’t told Jake.”

“You mean, Waverly was keeping something back?” I said.

“That’s right. There was a connection between Mr Waverly and Charon. It was as if they knew each other in some way. Jake said the whole thing stank. But he never found out what it was…”

A connection between Waverly and Charon. It seemed impossible. After all, Waverly was the one who wanted to find Charon. It was all getting confusing. “What was McGuffin doing here in Holland?” I asked.

“He’d followed Charon over here.” Rushmore finished his Coke. “The last time I saw him he was planning to check out some old house just outside the city.”

“You know the name?” Tim asked.

Rushmore nodded. “Yes. It’s called the Winter House. The Villa de Winter, in Dutch. It’s about twenty kilometres from Amsterdam.”

“Twenty kilometres…” Tim tried to work it out on his fingers. He didn’t have enough fingers.

“Twelve miles,” I said. I turned to Rushmore. “Could you take us there?”

His eyes narrowed. “It could be dangerous.”

“That’s all right,” Tim chimed in. “You can go in first.”

Rushmore looked from Tim back to me. “All right,” he said. “The rink closes at six today. Come back at five past. I’ll drive you out this evening.”

We stood up.

“See you later, Mr Skater,” I muttered.

“Yeah. Watch how you go, Hugo,” Tim added. I looked down at the ice, searching for the figures that I’d glimpsed behind the mist. But the ice was empty. The two of them had gone.

We got back to the ice rink at six o’clock after an afternoon in Amsterdam. It was still light outside, but once we’d passed through the swing doors into the old building it was as if we’d entered some sort of artificial Arctic night. The ticket-seller had gone home. The lights had been turned off and the windows with their frosted glass and wire grills kept most of the sunlight out. The rink itself stretched out silent and empty, with the mist still curling gently on the surface. The music was switched off, too. But the machine that made the ice was still active. I could hear it humming and hissing like some sort of mythical creature, its pipes spreading out like tentacles, chilling everything they touched.

“Where is he?” I whispered. My words were taken by the cold air and sent scurrying up towards the rafters. Where is he? Where is he?

I could almost hear the echo.

The mist on the ice folded over itself, rolling towards us.

“What…?” Tim began.

There was something on the ice. It was in the very middle, a grey bundle that could have been somebody’s old clothes.

“Wait here,” I said.

I walked through the barrier and onto the ice. I could feel it, cold underneath my shoes. As I walked forward, my feet slid away from under me and I had to struggle to stay upright. The ice-making pipes rumbled softly below. The mist swirled round my ankles, clinging to my skin. I wanted to hurry but I was forced to be slow.

At last I reached the bundle.

It was Rushmore. The Dutch secret agent must have been on his way to meet us, crossing the ice when he was stopped. Somebody had found out who he was and had known about his connection with McGuffin. And they had made sure that he wouldn’t help us.

He had been stabbed twice. The blades were still in his back, one between his shoulders, the other just above his waist. There was a pool of blood around his outstretched hand. It had already frozen solid.

I took one last look at the body and at the blades, long and silver and horribly appropriate. Because whoever had killed Hugo Rushmore, professional ice-skater and spy, hadn’t used knives.

They’d used a pair of ice-skating boots.

We spent the night at a cheap motel on the edge of Amsterdam. Our money was low and so were we. Rushmore had been our only link in a chain that might lead us to Charon and now he was dead. Worse still, it seemed that Charon knew we were in Amsterdam. How else could he have got to the ice-rink before us?

It was raining when we got to the Van Bates Motel. We were shown to our room by a thin, twitchy manager who didn’t speak a word of English. In the end we had to get his mother down to translate.

All I wanted was a shower and a bed but the shower wasn’t working and as usual Tim took the bed. There was a TV in one corner of the room. It was tuned to the BBC — the ten o’clock news. I didn’t want to hear the news but I was somehow glad to hear another English voice. I listened. And suddenly I was glad I’d turned it on.

There was a reporter on the screen. He was standing outside Sotheby’s, the auction house in New Bond Street, London.

“Boris Kusenov-” They were the first two words I’d heard. That was what had caught my attention- “is considered to be the key figure in the struggle for power at the Kremlin.”

The picture changed. Now the reporter was inside the auction house, standing in front of a large canvas. For a moment I thought the TV had broken. Then I realized. This was modern art.

“Kusenov is in England to bid for a canvas by the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali,” the reporter’s voice went on. “Titled ‘The Tsar’s Feast’, it depicts Tsar Nicholas II offering stale bread to his dissatisfied serfs…”

Well, that may have been what it looked like to him. To me the picture looked like a bent watch beside a pink lake being examined by two oversized amoebas. Had Kusenov come all the way from Russia just to buy this? The TV screen cut to a picture of the reporter. He answered the question for me.

“Kusenov came to Britain unexpectedly because of his belief that the painting should hang in Russia. Although it is expected to reach almost a million pounds, he will be bidding for it when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s in two days’ time.”

The reporter smirked at the camera and the programme cut back to the studio and the next news item.

“Police have completely lost the track of the dangerous criminal, Tim Diamond, who…”

I turned the set off. I’d heard quite enough about him.

“Kusenov,” I muttered. Tim was sitting upright on the bed. The sound of his own name had evidently woken him up. “He’s already in England.”