Public Enemy Number Two (17 page)

But this was no time for self-congratulation. Johnny Powers was getting closer and now his mother was with him.

“You look out for yaself, Johnny boy,” I heard her say.

“Don’t ya worry, Ma,” he replied. “I’m gonna find that lousy, dirty, double-crossing . . .” His words became incoherent.

Ducking down behind the columns, I ran through the gallery. I could see Johnny Powers now. He’d gotten dressed and was holding a gun. There were six men with him, fanning out to search the place. The others had run on to deal with the flames. Ma Powers hung back in her bathrobe and curlers.

Fortunately I found Tim before they did. He was standing with the Purple Peacock, gazing at it like he was in some posh department store and he was thinking of buying it. It was incredible. Didn’t he realize that we were still trapped underground with an awful lot of very awful people out to kill us? There are times when I think that in his own way Tim is as mad as Johnny Powers. This was one of them.

“Tim!” I whispered. “Have you quite finished?”

“Sure, Nick.” He clutched the vase to him. He was actually smiling. It meant that much to him, finding it.

“Then do you mind if we go?”

“Ya’re not going anywhere!”

Powers was standing only a few feet away. He hadn’t seen me, but he had seen Tim. And now he’d gotten both of us. The six armed men formed a semicircle around us. They were all holding guns. They looked like an execution squad. In fact, they were an execution squad.

“Ya’re finished, Diamond,” Powers snarled. His face was distorted with hatred. “I should’ve plugged ya when I had ya before. But this time I’m not making any more mistakes. I’m gonna do it now.” He giggled. “And I’m gonna enjoy it.”

He raised his weapon.

I knew it was the end. But I still didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. And it wasn’t the end that I’d expected.

First there was a gunshot. But it wasn’t Johnny’s gun. It came from the end of the corridor. The gun was torn out of Johnny’s hand, clattering on the floor. The six men wheeled around. My eyes followed them.

Chief Inspector Snape of Scotland Yard stood there. He was alive. He was armed. There were about twenty uniformed policemen with him.

“All right, Powers,” he said. “Come on out with your hands up. I’ve got this place surrounded. You haven’t got a chance.”

Then the roof collapsed.

I suppose it had only been a matter of time. Powers had spoken of a problem in the building of the tunnel—the tunnel that was now the Fence’s headquarters. Something to do with the limestone. Whatever it was, it had been a splinter that had just been waiting for an excuse to turn into a yawning chasm—and the explosion had been that excuse. The whole complex shook. Then about a ton of bricks and broken stone crashed down on Powers, burying him. I didn’t see what happened to the six men, because a second later the Thames followed. All of it.

If I hadn’t been standing to one side, I’d have been killed there and then. Even so I was hurled off my feet. The last thing I saw was Tim, clasping the Purple Peacock. Then I was swept away, carried in a torrent of racing, foaming water. Somebody screamed.

Another section of the ceiling smashed down. A column tottered and collapsed, plowing into a grand piano and reducing it instantly to matchwood. Televisions and video recorders surged past, spinning in the current. Everything was spinning. The water was roaring in my ears.

I’m going to drown, I thought. This is it. Prepare to meet your Maker. And don’t forget to ask Him why you got such a raw deal.

But then a hand grabbed me and pulled me up into the air. It was Snape. He had formed a human chain with the other policemen. It reached back to the metal grille, which was also the way they’d come in. After the initial impact, the flow of the water eased off. It was about six feet deep. The
Titanic
must have looked a bit like this with furs and jewelry floating in the icy water. Another column snapped in half, unable to stand the pressure. More stonework cascaded down.

“Tim!” I shouted.

For there he was, swimming toward me with one hand. It was incredible. He wasn’t only alive. He still had the Purple Peacock. And despite everything—the explosions, the falling masonry, the flood, it was still in one piece.

“This way, laddie,” Snape said.

I was too exhausted to do anything for myself anymore. I allowed Snape to pull me through the water. I still couldn’t believe he was alive. And how had he found me? But explanations could wait until later.

Two more policemen took hold of me and a moment later I found myself sitting on dry land. Then Tim was pulled out to join me, still holding the Purple Peacock.

We were on a sort of wooden platform. It was behind the metal grille, which Snape now closed. All twenty policemen were there, along with Tim, Snape, and myself and you could still have found room for more. There were two buttons set in a box on the wall. One was red, the other green.

“This had better work,” Snape muttered.

He pushed the green button.

There was a whir of machinery and the platform began to move, sliding upward into blackness. For thirty seconds I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel my stomach sink. And now I knew, of course. It had reminded me of an underground parking garage. Because the platform was nothing less than a huge elevator.

At last it broke into the light of the early morning. I looked around, blinking. And then I wanted to laugh. We had traveled up a shaft, up through the water. And I knew where we were. I should have known all along.

We were inside the
Penelope.

 

 

“All right, Snape,” I said. “Spit it out. How come you’re alive? How did you get here? What’s been going on?”

I was sitting on a bench near the river, wrapped in a blanket and holding a tin mug of hot tea. The Purple Peacock was in a cardboard box beside me. It was eight o’clock in the morning and for once Wapping was a hive of activity. There were police cars everywhere. A mobile canteen had been set up, supplying tea and bacon sandwiches. There were also two ambulances. I was fine, but Tim was being treated for shock.

The banks of the Thames were lined with constables holding nets. They were more like fishermen than policemen. For the past hour all sorts of treasures had been floating to the surface to be caught and taken away for identification. And they weren’t the only things to fall into the police net. Ma Powers had been arrested, trying to escape through the station, and now she was being bundled into a police van.

By the time she got out of jail, she’d be Great-grandma Powers, and do you know, I almost felt sorry for her? After all, she’d only been looking after her boy. Which was more than my mother had ever done for me.

Johnny Powers and Nails Nathan were never found. Maybe they both drowned, but I have a feeling they both got away. It’s certainly true that later that day two Japanese tourists got knocked out at the Thames Barrier and woke up minus their clothes, cameras, air tickets, and credit cards. Maybe that was the two of them and maybe even now they’re out there, continuing their life of crime in Tokyo. If so—I just hope they stay there.

But the worst of it was that it had all been for nothing. We hadn’t gotten the Fence. He hadn’t been in the underground complex at the time and it was unlikely now that he would show up. The whole area had been cordoned off. Crowds of journalists and television cameras were being held back behind the barriers. The river police were patrolling the Thames and helicopters buzzed overhead. The whole of London knew what had happened, was being told about it on the morning news. By now, the Fence was probably miles away.

“Where do I start?” Snape asked.

“How about with the way you framed me?” I growled. He might have saved my life a few minutes ago. But that didn’t even the score. If it hadn’t been for him I’d have still been happily at school—or at least, as happy as you can be when you’re in a dump like mine.

Snape wasn’t even a little bit apologetic. “I had to frame you,” he said. “You wouldn’t play along otherwise.”

“But that’s criminal!”

“No. That’s police work. But don’t worry, my old son. All the charges against you will be dropped now. And I did my best to look out for you. I was never far behind.”

“Yeah. How come you showed up like that?” I sipped the tea; it was warm and sweet. I wouldn’t have used either word to describe Snape.

“You were bugged,” Snape explained. “I had you on radar every minute of the day.”

“Bugged? How?”

“In your shoes.” Snape pointed. “Your prison shoes. There’s a powerful tracking device in each of the heels.”

“So . . .” Suddenly it came to me. “That night on the railway tracks in Clapham. It was you who cut me free!”

Snape nodded. “That’s right. I saw you snatched by Big Ed’s gang. We followed you there. Once they’d left you on the tracks, I came looking for you. I helped you get out.”

“Well, thanks for that . . .”

“It was the same thing tonight,” Snape went on. “We homed in on you under the river and I guessed you’d found the Fence. After that we came in to get you.”

“You took your time.”

“We were waiting for the Fence.”

“Yeah—well, it looks like the one who got away.”

“Don’t worry about him, laddie. We’ve smashed his operation. And one of the gang will talk. You’ll see. We’ll catch up with him eventually.”

“Just so long as you don’t need any more help from me.” I finished the tea. It was the first hot drink I’d had in thirty-six hours. “So how come you weren’t killed?” I asked. “I saw you . . . in the car.”

“I was lucky. I was in the backseat. The door was ripped off and I was thrown clear just before the car blew. The driver managed to get out, too. Then we went back and got Boyle.”

“He’s dead?”

“No. He’s in the hospital. Third-degree burns.”

“You’re breaking my heart, Snape,” I said. “I’ll send him some flowers.”

“That’s good of you, lad.”

“Sure. Dandelions.”

Perhaps I was being a bit hard. But think about it. I’d been framed, tried and sent to jail, menaced, chased, shot at, kidnapped, knocked out, tied to a railway track, almost blown up, menaced some more, tied up again, half drowned, exhausted—and all for two policemen who hadn’t even caught their man anyway. It wasn’t as if I’d been given any choice. And what was I going to get out of it all, except for extra homework once I got back to school?

“You won’t do so badly,” Snape assured me. “There’ll be a reward from the insurance companies for some of the stuff that gets recovered. That should be worth a bit.”

We sat in silence, watching the activity all around us. I yawned. I was dog-tired. All I wanted was a bed. I’d even settle for a kennel.

Then Tim strolled over to us. He’d been fixed up by the doctors. Someone had lent him a sweater. And he was looking in a lot better shape than me. In fact, he was quite his old self. Which is to say that as usual he was totally impossible.

“Hi, Nick!” he said, smiling.

“Are you okay, Tim?” I asked.

He grinned. “This has been my greatest case. It’ll make me famous. The man who got Johnny Powers!”

“What about me?” I demanded.

“You helped, kid. Maybe I’ll even share some of the reward with you. In fact, I’ll forget that fiver you owe me.” He tapped me gently on the shoulder. I felt like knocking him out. “The British Museum will pay me plenty for the return of the Purple Peacock,” he went on. “By the way, where is it?”

He sat down as he spoke. But he was so wrapped up in himself that he wasn’t looking what he was doing. I saw his backside come down fair and square on the cardboard box. The cardboard crumpled. There was a dull splintering from inside. The color drained out of Tim’s face.

The Purple Peacock had been stolen in Camden. It had found its way to Wapping. It had survived an explosion and a flood. But it hadn’t survived Tim.

He’d just sat on it.

It ended exactly the way it had begun—with French on a hot afternoon.

 

 

The exercise was written up on the blackboard and we were being made to translate it out loud. Palis would call out a name and some poor soul would have to stand up and stumble over the next sentence. You weren’t allowed to sit down until you reached a period. Why do French translations have to be so stupid? You sweat your guts out turning them into English only to find they weren’t worth it in the first place. Fortunately I’d done this one the night before. If my name was called, I could cope.

“Sington!”

“It was a . . . er . . .
dimanche
. . . Sunday morning and it made warm.”

“It was hot, you stupid child!”

Two weeks had passed since our escape from
Penelope.
In the newspapers, the story had slipped from page-one headlines to page-two comment to a few column inches on page three. Anyway, the press had left out more than it had told. For a start, nobody mentioned Tim or me. Snape had seen to that with something called a D-notice.
D
for “don’t!” He said it would be better for me if my name was kept out of things. And better for you, too, I thought. What would the British public make of the British police framing and blackmailing British schoolkids? I mean, it simply wasn’t British.

“Sit down, Sington. Goodman!”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes you, Goodman.”

“Antoine and Philippe were in the field, sir.”

In the end I’d gotten a four-line mention in some of the nationals. They said that I’d been released from Strangeday Hall “in the light of new evidence.” In other words, my name was cleared. Only Snape and the authorities were making sure that it wasn’t a name you’d read about too much.