“Yes. But you can’t open it.”
He lifted the gun. “I think we can.”
Gott got to his feet and strolled over to the piano. Then he sat down on the stool and rubbed his hands over the keys. I stood up. “Thanks for the tea,” I said. “If that’s all you wanted to know …”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Gott played a chord. “Eric!”
Himmell had a few cords of his own. I don’t know where he’d got the rope from but there was nothing I could do. While Gott played a tune on the piano, Himmell tied me up. He did it very professionally. My hands went behind my back where they were introduced to my feet. By the time he’d finished, I couldn’t even twitch in time to the music and I could feel my fingers and toes going blue as the blood was cut off. Gott finished his little recital and stood up.
“Well, Nicholas,” he said. “We’re going to Victoria Station.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll be back around five. And if you’ve been lying, we’ll bury you around five thirty.”
I tried to shrug. I couldn’t even manage that with all the ropes. “If this is what they teach you at public school,” I said, “I’m glad I went comprehensive.”
“Take him into the back room,” Gott snapped. “It’s time he met our other guest.”
Himmell picked me up and carried me across the room. I’m not heavy but he was still stronger than I thought. There was a door at the far end, beyond the piano. He drew back a metal bolt with one hand and opened it.
“When are you going to let me out of here?” a voice demanded. A voice I knew.
Himmell threw me down on the floor. I found myself sitting opposite Lauren Bacardi. She was tied up just like me.
“Company for you,” Gott said.
He closed the door and locked it behind him. A minute later I heard the two Germans leave for Victoria Station. I wondered what they’d find in Locker 180. I wondered if there even was a Locker 180. I just knew that I had until five to get out of here. I’d bought myself time OK. But I didn’t fancy paying the price.
With an effort, I tried to put them out of my mind. I looked round at Lauren. “Hi,” I said.
“I know you,” she said.
“Yeah. Nick Diamond. We met at the Casablanca Club – the night they came for you.”
She nodded. “I remember. Thanks a bunch, Nick. I was enjoying my life until you came along.”
She was still dressed in the glitzy clothes she had worn for her singing act but the fake jewellery was gone and she had washed off some of the make-up. She looked better without it. She was sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up, a plate and a mug on the floor beside her. There was no furniture in the room, which was about as big as a large store cupboard. It was lit by a single small window which would have been too high up to reach even if we hadn’t been tied up. I gave a cautious tug at the ropes. In the movies, there would have been a piece of broken glass or something for me to cut them with. But it looked like I was in the wrong movie.
I gave up. “I’m sorry about this,” I said. “But I didn’t lead them to you.”
“No? Then who did?”
It was a good question. How had they found out about her? “You told them about the Maltesers?” I said.
She sniffed. “Why else do you think I’m still alive?”
“Enjoy it while you can,” I said. “They’re going to be back at five and they’re not going to be very happy. I strung them a line out there. When they get back, I reckon they’re going to want to string me up with one.”
“Then we’d better move.”
“Sure. If I can just get across to you, maybe you can get at my ropes with your teeth and …”
I stopped. Lauren Bacardi had wriggled. That was all she had done but now the ropes were falling away from her like over-cooked spaghetti. It was incredible. I tried it myself. But while she got to her feet, unhooking the last loop from her wrist, I stayed exactly where I was.
“That’s a real trick,” I said. “How did you do it?”
“Before I became a singer I worked in cabaret,” she told me. “I was the assistant to an escapologist … Harry Blondini. I spent two and a half years being tied up. Harry loved ropes. He used to wear handcuffs in bed and he was the only guy I ever knew who took his showers hanging upside-down in a straitjacket. He taught me everything he knew.”
By now she was kneeling beside me, pulling the knots undone. “Why didn’t you escape before?” I asked.
“There was no point. The door’s barred from the outside. There’s nothing I can do about that. And even if I could reach the window, it’s too small for me to get through.”
Too small for her, but when she gave me a leg-up about fifteen minutes later, I found I could just squeeze through. Gott and Himmell hadn’t bothered to lock it. Why should they have? They’d left me tied up and anyway, it didn’t lead anywhere. It was five storeys up and just too far below the roof for me to be able to scramble up there. I paused for a moment on the window ledge, my legs dangling inside, my head and shoulders in the cold evening air. I could see men working on a construction site in the distance and I shouted, trying to attract their attention. But they were too far away and anyway, there was too much noise.
I looked down. It made my stomach heave a little. The pavement was a long, long way below. I could see the French windows that led back into the main living-room about three metres away. If I could break in through them, I could open the door and let Lauren out and at least we’d be on the way to safety. But the windows were too far away and although they had a narrow ledge of their own, there was no way I could reach it. Unless …
This was a warehouse and like all the other warehouses it had a hook on a metal arm jutting out of the wall – in this case exactly halfway between the two windows and about a metre above them. In the old days it would have been used to hoist goods up from the street on a rope. The rope was gone, of course. But rope was at least one thing we had in plenty.
I squeezed myself back into the room.
“No way out – eh?” Lauren muttered.
“There might be.” I explained what I had in mind.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “You can’t do it.”
“I’ve got to do it,” I said. “Better crazy than dead.”
Ten minutes later I was half-in and half-out again, but this time with a length of rope around my waist. We’d taken the rope that Himmell had used to tie us up and knotted it into a single length. There was a good four metres of it. I held the slack in my hand and now I began to swing it a bit like a lasso. Then I threw it, holding on to the end. The loop flew out towards the hook, missed and fell. I pulled it in and tried again. I hooked it on the fourth attempt.
So there I am, five storeys up, leaning out of a window. There’s a rope leading from me to a hook and then back again and I tie the end around my waist too. Remember that isosceles triangle I mentioned? Well, it’s a bit like that. The two windows are the lower corners. The hook is the point at the top. All I have to do is jump and the rope will swing me across like a pendulum from one side to the other. At least that’s the general idea.
I didn’t much like it. In fact I hated it. But I was running out of time and there didn’t seem to be any other way.
I jumped.
For a giddy second I swung in the air, one shoulder scraping across the brickwork. But then my scrabbling hands somehow managed to grab hold of the edge of the French windows. I pulled, dangling in mid-air, supported only by the rope, my legs kicking at nothing. I pulled with all my strength. And then I was crouching on the ledge, trying hard not to look down, my heart beating in my chest like it would rather be someplace else.
I stayed where I was until I’d got my breath back, afraid of falling back into space. The ledge could only have been twenty centimetres wide and my whole body was pressed against the window panes. Without looking back into the street, I reached down and pulled off my shoe. Slowly I lifted it up. It was cold out there, but the sweat was running down inside my shi
rt. My eyes were fixed on the grand piano on the other side of the window. Somehow looking at it made me forget where I was and what I was doing. I held the shoe firmly in one hand, then brought it swinging forward. The heel hit the window, smashing it. I dropped the shoe into the room then, avoiding the jagged edges of broken glass, slipped my hand through, found the lock, turned it. The window opened. With a sigh of relief I eased my way inside, then untied the rope and pulled it in after me.
I hadn’t got very far, but at least I was still alive.
Gott and Himmell had left the tea things out. I put my shoe back on and took a swig of milk out of the jug. Then I went over to the door and drew back the bolt.
Lauren raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “So you made it?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I would have said more but for some reason my teeth were chattering at about one hundred and fifty miles per hour. It must have been even colder out there than I’d thought.
Lauren tried the door that led to the staircase. It was locked. Then she strolled across to the broken window and looked out.
“That’s great, Nick,” she drawled. “We’re out of the cupboard but we can’t get out of the room. There’s nobody near enough to hear us shouting for help. You’ve sent our German friends on a wild goose chase and when they get back they’re going to string you up and use you for target practice. We don’t have enough rope to climb down with and we don’t have any guns.”
“That’s about it,” I agreed.
“Then you’d better think up something fast, kid.” She pointed out of the window. “Because here they’re coming now.”
THE LAST CHORD
I ran back over to the window. Lauren was right. The blue van was at the end of Bayly Street. It would have reached us already if a lorry hadn’t backed out of the construction site, blocking its path. Now it was stuck there while some guy in a yellow hat tried to direct the driver. Fortunately it was a tricky manoeuvre. They’d be stuck there for maybe another couple of minutes. How had they got back from Victoria so quickly? I played back what had happened in my mind and realized that my great escape had probably taken about an hour. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.
Lauren was in the kitchen, rummaging through the drawers. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m looking for a knife.” She held up an egg-whisk.
“This is all I can find.”
“They’ve got guns,” I reminded her. “You’re not going to get very far with an egg-whisk.”
“I know. I know.” She threw it over her shoulder. “So what are we going to do?”
What were we going to do? If we yelled for help, the only people who would hear us would be Gott and Himmell. The noise from the construction site would see to that. Even if we found a knife, it would be no defence against automatic pistols. There was no way out and any minute now they’d be coming in. I looked out of the window. The lorry seemed to be pinned at an angle across the road. The man in the yellow hat was frantically giving directions, swatting at invisible flies. I heard the lorry grind into gear. It began to edge backwards. Soon the road would clear and the blue van would come. It would come right underneath the window. I tried to remember where it had stopped when they brought me here. That time they’d parked in front of the door. Would they park there again? Perhaps.
“Lauren,” I said.
“Yes?” She’d found a corkscrew and a dessert spoon.
“Quickly …”
The window that I’d broken in through was, like I said, a French window. It came all the way down to the floor. I looked out again. The lorry had almost completed its turn. The man in the yellow hat was walking away, his job done.
“The piano,” I said.
“The piano?”
“Come on!”
“Nick – this is no time for a concert.”
“That’s not what I have in mind.”
I got my shoulder down to the piano and began to push. It was on castors which helped, but even so it must have weighed a ton. It was a Bechstein, a great chunk of black wood with a gleaming white ivory smile. God knows how much it had cost but if this is what you needed to be a pianist, it made a good argument for taking up the triangle. Lauren had twigged what I was doing and now she stood there, staring.
“Honey,” she said. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious,” I said.
“Deadly,” she agreed.
She came over and joined me. With the two of us pushing, the piano moved more easily. Inch by inch we drew closer to the open window. It was going to be a close fit but the piano would just about slide through the frame. It occurred to me that that was probably how they’d got it in here in the first place. How long had it taken them to hoist it up? The return journey was certainly going to be a hell of a lot faster.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I gazed over the top of the piano. The lorry was in the clear now, rumbling quickly away. The blue van slid forward towards us. I flexed myself. There was a bust of Beethoven or someone on the piano. He was frowning as if he knew what was about to happen. The blue van drew closer, slowing down as it prepared to park.
We pushed with all our strength. The piano shot forward. Its back leg went over the ledge and with a hollow jangle it teetered on the brink, the pedals digging into the carpet. The van was almost level with us now. I pushed again. The piano resisted. Then, with a wave of relief, I felt it topple over backwards. I can tell you now, Bechstein grand pianos are not built with any consideration for aerodynamics. It must have been a bizarre sight as it plummetted through the air: a huge black beast with three rigid legs and no wings. It flew for all of two seconds. Then it crashed fair and square into the van.
It was the Bechstein’s last chord, but it was a memorable one. If you imagine someone blowing up an orchestra in the middle of Beethoven’s Fifth, you’ll get the general idea. It was an explosion of music – or a musical explosion. A zing, a boom and a twang all rolled into one and amplified a hundred times. They heard it at the construction site. I doubt if there was anywhere in London that they didn’t hear it.
It was the Bechstein’s last chord and I somehow doubted that the van would be doing much more travelling either. It hadn’t been completely crushed but it must have been disappointed. Steam was hissing out of the radiator and two of the tyres were spinning away like giant coins. Black oil formed a sticky puddle around the wreckage. The exhaust pipe had shot away like a rocket and was lying about forty metres down the road. The whole twisted carcass of the van was covered in splinters of wood and wires. One of the piano’s legs had shattered the front window. I didn’t like to think what it had done to the driver.
“Quite a performance, honey,” Lauren said.
“Concerto for piano and van,” I muttered.
And now people did come running. Suddenly it was as if Bayly Street had become Piccadilly Circus. They came from the construction site, from left, from right, from just about everywhere. They looked at the carnage. Then they looked up. I leant out of the window and waved.
It was about twenty minutes later that one of the construction workers appeared in the Germans’ living-room. He was carrying a pair of industrial pliers which he must have used to cut through the two padlocks. Lauren and I were sitting on the sofa waiting for him.
“The piano …” He gaped at us. “Was it yours?”
“Sure,” I said. “But don’t worry. I wasn’t much good at it anyway.”
We walked out of the room leaving him standing there. Well, what was he expecting? An encore?
We managed to slip away in the crowd, but not before I’d heard that – miraculously – nobody had been killed.
Apparently the driver of the van would have to be cut away from the steering wheel while the passenger had managed to impale himself on the gear-stick. A doctor had already arrived but Gott and Himmell were more in need of a mechanic. We got a taxi back to the office whe
re I picked up the real Maltesers and then we went straight on to Lauren’s place. There were too many people looking for me in Fulham. From now on I’d have to keep my head down and my raincoat collar up. She lived in a mansion block in Baron’s Court – about a ten-minute drive away. It was one of those great brick piles with fifty doorbells beside the front door and fifty people who don’t know each other inside. She had a basement flat which must have been all of ten centimetres above the main Piccadilly tube line. Every time a train went past the floor rumbled. Or maybe it was my stomach. I hadn’t had a decent meal in twenty-four hours and I was hungry.
She left me in the living-room while she went into the kitchen to fix supper. It was a cosy room in a theatrical sort of way, with a gas fire hissing in the grate, a kettle on the floor and odd bits of clothes thrown just about everywhere. The furniture was old and tired, with a sofa that looked like it was waiting to swallow you up whole.
The walls were plastered with posters from theatres and music halls where Lauren had appeared, either as a singer or as an escapologist’s assistant. It was a room with a past but no future. A room of rising damp and fading memories.
When she came back in she had changed into some sort of dressing-gown and had brushed her hair back. For a woman old enough to be my grandmother she looked good. But then you should see my grandmother. The food she was carrying looked even better. She had it on a tray: omelettes, salad, cheese, fruit, a bottle of red wine for her and Coke for me. We didn’t say much while we ate. We were just glad to be there. Glad to be alive.
“Thanks,” I said when I finished the omelette.
“I should thank you, Nick.” Lauren poured herself some more wine. Her hand was trembling a little. “If it hadn’t been for you … hell … they were going to kill me.”
“You were the one who got out of the ropes,” I reminded her. I glanced at the poster above the gas fire. It showed her with a flashy guy in a sequinned straitjacket. He had greasy black hair, a moustache and a toothpaste advertisement smile. “Is that Harry Blondini?” I asked.