The Greek Who Stole Christmas (7 page)

Santa froze, then slowly turned around.

“It’s … it’s … it’s…!” Tim exclaimed. He stopped. He had no idea who it was, and with the red hood, the white beard and the golden-framed spectacles, I couldn’t blame him. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him. His own wife hadn’t.

I walked forward and pulled off the beard. And there he was.

“Harold!” Minerva exclaimed.

“Harold?” Hammill quavered.

“That’s right,” I said. “Harold Chase.”

There could be no doubt about it. The old man reached up and lowered the hood, revealing more of his face, his silver hair and his hearing aid. He had concealed his permanent suntan with make-up. But there could be no disguising the venom with which he was looking at his wife.

Snape took over. “You just gave Minerva a bomb,” he said.

Harold Chase said nothing.

“That’s a very original present,” Tim commented.

“Not really, Tim,” I said. “He was trying to kill her.”

It was the word “kill” that did it. The bomb had been taken away. But Harold Chase exploded. “I hate her!” he screamed. “You have no idea what it’s been like living with her! I know why she married me. She wanted my money! But now that she’s so big and so famous she doesn’t need me. And so she humiliates and belittles me. She’s made my life hell!”

He took a step towards us. Tim took three steps back.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” Harold went on. “She’s a hypocrite. She smiles at the crowds on Regent Street when secretly she despises them. She hates Christmas too – and every year she’s ruined it for me. No carols, no presents, no tinsel, no fun. She’s stolen Christmas from me and that was a good enough reason to want to see her dead.”

By now, he was frothing at the mouth and I almost wished Boyle was there to deal with him. Fortunately the security guard disguised as an elf had appeared with two colleagues, and the three of them dragged Harold out. He was still screaming as he went.

The five of us went back downstairs to a champagne bar on the ground floor. It was somewhere quiet and we had a lot to talk about. Minerva paid for champagne for herself and the others. I got a glass of lemonade. I had to admit she seemed very shaken by what had happened. Her face was pale. Her eyes were thoughtful. And even her silver-plated breasts seemed to have lost their sparkle.

“All right, Diamond,” Snape said, emptying his glass. “Spit it out!”

“He hasn’t drunk anything yet,” Tim said.

“I want you to tell me what’s been going on. How did you know about Harold Chase and how did you figure out his plan?”

“I worked it out when we visited Janey Winterbotham,” I explained.

“The next-door neighbour?” Snape sniffed. “I spoke to her. She didn’t tell me anything.”

“She told me that Reginald Parker was an out-of-work actor but that he had a job in a department store every Christmas,” I said. “What else could he have been but a department store Santa? That was when it all fell into place.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Jake Hammill suggested.

“All right.” I drew a breath. “This is the way I see it. Harold Chase hated Minerva for all the reasons he just told us. His hatred had obviously driven him mad and he decided to kill her. But the trouble was, it was too obvious. If Minerva died, he would be the main suspect. Everyone knew how badly she treated him.”

“A lot of people would die to be married to me,” Minerva sniffed.

“He
was
married to you – and you were the one he wanted to die,” I reminded her. “Anyway, Harold couldn’t kill you himself. He’d be arrested at once. But then he had an idea. He realized that the best way to get rid of you was to create someone who didn’t exist: a crazy fan. He used that concert you cancelled – for Overweight Albanian Kids – and pretended that someone was out to get revenge.”

“You mean … it was Harold who wrote that anonymous letter?” Hammill asked.

“Exactly. He even put a fake spelling mistake in it – but if he couldn’t spell ‘forgive’, how come he could spell ‘forget’ a few lines later? The whole thing felt fake to me.”

“And what about the cracker?”

“That was another clue. I thought at the time that there was something weird about it, but it was only later that I realized what it was.” I turned to Hammill. “You’d booked Minerva into the Porchester hotel under a false name.”

“Right,” he said.

“But the box of crackers was addressed to her. Whoever sent it even knew the number of the suite where she was staying. It had to be an inside job.”

“But wait a minute,” Snape interrupted. “If it was Chase all the time, what was Reginald Parker doing on the roof at Regent Street?”

“Reginald Parker had been paid by Chase,” I explained. “His neighbour told us he got a lot of money for a job in the West End. She probably thought it was a job in theatre. My guess is that Chase paid him to leave the silver oak leaves on the roof. Parker had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t have a gun or anything. I saw him carrying something, but it could have been a camera. After all, he knew Minerva was there. He was a complete innocent. That’s what he tried to tell me when I went up there. ‘I didn’t…’ That was all he managed. But what he wanted to say was, ‘I didn’t do it!’ He must have been horrified when he heard the shots.”

“So who
did
shoot at me?” Minerva asked. She poured herself some more champagne. I wondered what she was celebrating. Maybe it was the fact she was still alive.

“That was Harold,” I said. “Again, I’m only guessing, but I’d say he fired two blank shots from a gun he had inside his pocket. When we were on the platform, the shots sounded very close. He fired twice and then pointed to Reginald up on the roof – because, of course, he knew he’d be there. You see, he was creating the illusion of a killer … someone who didn’t really exist. The only snag is, the gun burnt a hole in his coat.” I glanced at Minerva. “You thought he’d almost been hit. In fact, he’d fired the shots himself.”

“I don’t get it,” Minerva exclaimed. “He wanted to protect me! It was Harold who persuaded me to get a bodyguard!”

“He did that to throw off any suspicion. At the same time, he made sure you hired the worst private detective in London. Someone too stupid to get in the way of his plan.”

“And who was that?” Tim asked.

“Have some more champagne, Tim,” I said.

“And then Harold Chase killed Reginald Parker,” Snape said.

“You’ve got it in one, Chief Inspector. Chase had chosen Parker because he knew he was going to be the Santa Claus at Harrods. First of all he hired him to go on the roof. Then he killed him and took his place. Tim’s business card must have fallen out of his pocket during the fight. It was when I saw the card that I put two and two together…”

“You did your maths homework?” Tim asked.

“No, Tim. I cracked the case.”

There was a long silence. Either I’d been talking too slowly or they’d been drinking too quickly but all the champagne was gone. And I hadn’t even touched my lemonade.

Jake Hammill put an arm around Minerva. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” he said. “What a terrible experience for you!”

Minerva shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “I’ve got rid of Harold. I’m going to get lots of publicity. And my CD’s certain to go to number one.” She got to her feet. I thought she was going to leave, but she took one last look at me. “You’re quite smart for a scruffy fourteen-year-old,” she said. Then she flicked her eyes towards Tim. “As for you, you’re just an utter loss.”

She walked out.

“What did she mean?” Tim wailed.

I thought for a moment. “Justanutterloss. It’s Greek for sensational,” I said.

“Really?” Tim’s eyes lit up.

“Sure, Tim,” I said. Well, after all, it was Christmas.

There are a few things to add.

Two weeks later, Tim and I got a surprise in the post – and this time it wasn’t a bomb, an unpaid bill or a poison pen letter. It was a note from Jake Hammill. It seemed that he wasn’t so bad after all. We had just saved his most famous client from a murder attempt that would have been not only the end of her career, but – even worse – the end of his percentage. And as a token of his gratitude, he’d decided to send us a cheque for ten thousand pounds. I’ll never forget the sight of Tim holding it between his hands. The last time he had seen that many zeros, it had been in his school report.

We talked a lot about what to do with the money. Of course, we were going to have a proper Christmas lunch. Tim was going to pay off the rent. I was finally going to get a new school uniform – the last one had so many patches in it, it was more patches than uniform. But that would still leave us with several thousand pounds, which was just about the most money we’d ever had.

I forget who suggested it first, but that was when we decided to fly out to Australia to be reunited with our parents. It had been years since we’d seen them, and sometimes I thought it was unnatural for a young lad to be living without his mother, often crying himself to sleep, having to be tucked in every night and cheered up by his brother. Not that I minded doing all that for Tim, but even so I thought it would do us all good to be a family again, just for a while.

And the next day we bought two British Airways tickets to Sydney. We were going to travel out as soon as the Easter term ended, and maybe one day I’ll write down what actually happened when we got there.
The Radius of the Lost Shark
. That’s the title I’ve got written down in my notebook. It’s another story I’ve got to tell.

What else is there? Harold Chase got life in jail for attempted murder, but looking at him I didn’t think that would be too many years. Snape took the credit for the arrest, of course. They actually put his face on the front cover of the monthly police journal,
Hello, Hello, Hello
magazine. Reginald Parker’s remains were scattered in the River Thames, in front of the National Theatre – as he’d requested in his will. It can’t have been pleasant, though. He hadn’t been cremated.

And what about Minerva? She may have got to number one, but I didn’t care. I never listened to her music again. She may have had everything, but without a heart you’re just nothing. She was like a December without Christmas – and at the end of the day, what’s the point of that?

Johnny Naples opened his mouth and tried to speak. “The falcon…” he said. Then a nasty, bubbling sound…

When vertically challenged Johnny Naples entrusts Tim Diamond with a package worth over three million pounds, he’s making a big mistake. For Tim Diamond is probably the worst detective in the entire world.

Next day, Johnny’s dead. Tim gets the blame, his smart, wisecracking younger brother Nick gets the package – and every crook in town is out to get them!

So there I was in a maximum-security prison outside London, accused of theft, trespass, criminal damage and cruelty to animals… Me, public enemy number two!

Framed for jewel robbery, quick-thinking young Nick Diamond finds himself sharing a prison cell with Johnny Powers, Public Enemy Number One. His only chance of rescuing the situation is to nail the Fence, the country’s master criminal.

But first, Nick has to get out of jail – which is where his older brother Tim, the world’s worst private detective, comes in. And with Ma Powers and her gang waiting to greet the jailbirds, the heat is really on!