Anthony Horowitz - South by South East

“You’re right,” Tim agreed. “He wasn’t wearing shiny tights.”

I took the ticket back. “Maybe he was going to meet somebody there,” I said.

“Amstel Ix-barn.” Tim turned the words over in his mouth. “Do you think it’s a play?”

“Not a very catchy title,” I muttered.

There was a sudden rattle at the door. Both of us froze. Somebody was trying a key in the lock and somehow I got the feeling it wasn’t room service. “Quick!” I whispered. I gestured at the bathroom. As the main door opened we disappeared inside. I took the ticket with me.

Two men came into the bedroom. I had swung the bathroom door shut behind me but left a crack so I could see them. The first man was thin and pale, about thirty-five years old, dressed in a dark suit with hair cut so close that when he spoke you could see the skin move on his skull. The second man was exactly the same. Maybe they hadn’t been born twins but whatever work they did had turned them into mirror reflections of each other. They even wore the same sunglasses. You couldn’t see their eyes.

“OK, Ed,” the first one said. “This is the room.”

“Right, Ted.”

The second one — Ed — moved forward and grabbed McGuffin’s suitcase. Then he started throwing things into it… the ties, the pen, everything McGuffin had left behind. Meanwhile Ted had pulled a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and was talking quietly to someone somewhere outside.

“Red? This is Ted. I’m here with Ed. You wait with Ned. We’ll be five minutes.” He switched it off. “Come on! Let’s move it,” he muttered. His accent was faintly American but I got the feeling he was English.

“I’ll clear the bathroom,” Ed announced.

Ed was already moving towards the door. I just had time to grab hold of Tim and jerk him backwards into the bath. As Ed opened the bathroom door, I swept the shower curtain across but it was still a close thing. As he busied himself at the sink, scooping up McGuffin’s toothbrush and razor, he was only separated from us by a thin sheet of plastic. Next to me, Tim seemed to be crying. I wondered what had upset him. Then I looked up and realized that the shower was dripping on his nose.

Ed moved out. We got out of the bath and went to the door. Tim had snatched up a lavatory brush in self-defence.

The two men had cleared the room. All McGuffin’s things were in his suitcase and the suitcase was in Ted’s hand. And that might have been it. They might have walked out of there and been none the wiser. But it had been Tim who had opened the door to McGuffin’s room. He had had the key in his hand. And he had left it on the bed. I saw it about half a second before Ted. Then Ted saw it.

“Ed!” he said.

“Ted?”

“The bed!”

Ed looked at the bed and saw the key lying on top of the duvet. As one, the two men’s heads turned towards the bathroom. Ted reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. Then he started moving towards the bathroom. Things looked bad. I was trapped in the bathroom with a quivering brother and a lavatory brush. There was no other way out.

And then, suddenly, the bedroom door opened. Ted spun round. The gun vanished so fast that if he’d missed the holster he’d have stabbed himself with it. A housemaid had chosen that moment to walk into the room. She stood there now with a pile of fresh towels in her hands. She seemed a little surprised to see the two men.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I have new towels.”

I realized it was time to move. Grabbing a towel off the handrail I walked straight out of the bathroom with Tim close behind. I didn’t even look at Ed and Ted. I knew I had to move quickly. The way Ted had concealed the gun told me that he didn’t want to start any shooting with witnesses about. Before he had time to change his mind I had walked up to Ed and Ted as if I worked for the hotel too.

“Hi,” I said. “These are the old towels.”

“Yes,” Tim added. “They’re very old.”

I threw the towels at the two men and ran.

We sprinted out of the room and back down the corridor. I knew that Ed and Ted were close behind us. I’d heard them curse and now their feet were thudding down on the soft-pile carpet. The corridor seemed to stretch on for ever and I couldn’t remember the way to the lift. I thought of turning and somehow fighting it out but I knew it was a bad idea. Find people. Instinct told me. You’ll be safe in a crowd.

Luck must have been on my side because we found the lift just as it reached the sixth floor and the door slid open. I dived in and stabbed at a button. I didn’t even notice which one. I just wanted the door to close before Ed and Ted arrived. The door seemed to be taking for ever. Then I realized Tim was leaning on it. I yanked him out of the way. The door slid shut and there was a soft hum as we began to go down. It wasn’t the lift that was humming, by the way. It was Tim. I think it must have been the relief.

The lift carried us all the way down to the ground floor and the moment the doors opened we were out. We crossed the lobby and went through the revolving doors. No sooner were we in the sunlight than a taxi drew up in front of us. Even then I thought it was a little odd. There was a taxi rank to one side with several cabs waiting. But this one had come from nowhere, jumping the queue.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

I threw open the door and got in. “Camden Town,” Tim said. I looked through the back window. There was no sign of Ed or Ted.

But as we set off, there was a nasty feeling in my stomach and I knew it wasn’t car sickness. The driver took a left turn, then a right. Which was funny, because if I’d been going to Camden Town, I’d have taken a right turn, then a left.

“We’re going the wrong way,” I said.

“What…?” Tim began.

The driver pressed a button and there was a loud click as the cab doors locked themselves automatically. Then he put his foot down on the accelerator and Tim and I were thrown back into our seats as the cab rocketed round a corner.

The driver wasn’t going anywhere near Camden Town. We were prisoners on a one-way journey to who-could-say where. Well, one thing was certain. We wouldn’t be leaving a tip.

The taxi took us into the centre of London, down Oxford Street and into the shabby end of Clerkenwell. We turned into Kelly Street, a road that went from nowhere to nowhere with nothing worth visiting on the way and stopped at Number Seventeen. It was a broken-down red-brick building on four floors. You entered through a set of glass doors. Immediately behind them was a wide empty space that might once have been a shop. Now all it was selling was dust.

“Out!”

The driver was a man of few words, but then “thank you” and “goodbye” would have been enough words for me. Now that I’d taken a closer look at him, I saw that he’d come off the same assembly line that had produced Ed and Ted and I guessed they must have telephoned him from the hotel. He had the same sort of gun too. And he was pointing it at us in just the same way.

He’d unlocked the doors and we got out of the taxi and walked towards the glass doors. There was nobody in sight in Kelly Street. Otherwise we might have tried to make a break for it. I hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Kidnap and murder,” I said. “You think you can get away with it?”

“Yeah,” Tim added. He nodded at the cab. “And you’ve parked on a yellow line.”

“Just keep moving,” the driver said, waving.

He led us down a corridor and through a door that opened on to a bare, uncarpeted staircase. The concrete felt cold underneath my feet as we climbed up and I wondered who or what would be waiting for us at the top. There was a rusting fire extinguisher attached to the wall. The driver reached out and turned the tap. It looked as if he’d gone crazy. There was no fire that I could see and anyway no water was coming out. A moment later I understood. Part of the wall swung open — a secret door, and the extinguisher was the handle.