“Yes.” She stood up and turned the record-player on. There was a click and a solo saxophone slithered through the room. She’d lit herself a cigarette and the smoke curled in time to the music. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know about the escapologist. But she told me anyway. “I loved him,” she said. “For two years we worked together in the theatre and we lived together for five. We were going to get married. But then, at the last minute, he ran off with a snake-charmer. What did she have that I didn’t – apart from two anacondas and a boa constrictor? That was the day before our wedding – the day before we were meant to tie the knot.” She smiled a half-smile. “Well, what should I have expected from an escapologist? He escaped. And he broke my heart.
“That was when I took up singing. I’ve been singing for twenty years, Nick. The same old songs. And in all that time I’ve only met two decent people. Johnny Naples and you. You’re a nice kid, Nick. If I’d ever had a son, I’d have liked him to be like you.
“All I’ve ever wanted is a place of my own – maybe somewhere in the sun, like the South of France. Look at this place! Ten metres underground – I never get to see the sun. And the Casablanca Club’s the same. When they finally bury me, I’ll actually be going up in the world. But it’s a lousy world, Nick. Lousy …”
Maybe she’d had too much wine. I don’t know. I’d asked her a simple question and she’d given me her life history. It was lucky I hadn’t asked her anything tricky. We could have been there all night. I’d had enough. I was tired and I was dirty.
“I need a bath,” I said.
She shook her head. “Of all the baths in all the towns in all the world, you have to walk into mine. There’s no hot water.”
“Then I’ll just turn in.”
“You can sleep on the sofa.”
I took the tray back into the kitchen while she got me a couple of blankets. It was after she’d said goodnight and I was about to leave that I remembered the one question I’d meant to ask her. It was the whole reason I was there.
“Lauren,” I said. “Back in the Casablanca Club … you were about to tell me something. You told me that you were out with Johnny when he saw something. It made the Maltesers and everything else make sense.”
“That’s right.”
“Well … where were you?”
She paused, silhouetted in the doorway. “We were buying sausages,” she said. “In Oxford Street. In Selfridges. In the food department.”
SELFRIDGES
I don’t like Oxford Street on the best of days – and let me tell you now, December 24th isn’t one of them. Bond Street Station had been doing a good impersonation of the Black Hole of Calcutta and Lauren and I were glad to get out. But there was little relief outside. The Christmas rush had turned into the Christmas panic and the season seemed to have run pretty short of good will. Taxi drivers blasted their horns. Bus drivers leant out of their windows and swore. You couldn’t blame them. The traffic probably hadn’t moved since December 22nd. There were so many people clawing their way along the pavement that you couldn’t see the cracks. And everyone was carrying bulging bags. Of food, of decorations, of last-minute presents. I sighed. Herbert was still in prison.
He’d been there almost a week now. It looked like Christmas for me was going to be the Queen’s speech and two frozen turkey croquettes.
But there was Selfridges with its white pillars, gold clocks and flags fluttering across the roof. Somewhere inside the department store – in the food section – Johnny Naples had seen something that could have made him three and a half million pounds. The thought cheered me up. I clutched the Maltesers. Lauren had lent me a sort of shoulder-bag and I had brought them with me. I wouldn’t have felt easy without them.
We crossed the road, weaving between the traffic, and went in the front entrance. We were greeted by a cloud of sweet, sickly scent. This was the perfume hall. They stocked all the perfumes in the world – and you could smell them all at once.
“Do you want to try this one?”
A pretty girl leant over a counter, holding out a bottle of aftershave towards me. I shook my head. She had a nice face. But she was a couple of years early.
It was hot in Selfridges. The air had been chewed up by air-conditioning machines and spat out again. That was how it smelt. Second-hand. We went into the menswear department, following the signs that read “food.”
“Come along and meet Father Christmas on the third floor in the magical grotto.” The voice came out of invisible speakers, floating above the heat and the crowd.
“See all your favourite nursery rhymes. On the third floor. It’s open now.”
The food department was even worse than perfume and menswear. It was like nuclear war had just been announced. The shelves were being stripped, the shop assistants bullied. I felt Lauren put her hand round my arm.
“This way,” she said.
“I’m with you.” But it was an effort. Relax for a minute and I’d have been swept away on a river of rampant consumerism, drowned in a lake of last-minute shopping.
“If we get separated, we can meet outside Marks and Spencer,” she said. “It’s just across the road.”
We made our way round the centre section of the food department, which was more or less like any supermarket. There were separate bars here and there – juice, sandwiches and cookies – but most people were ignoring them. The meat counter was at the back. There was a number in what looked like a car headlamp, hanging from the ceiling. Every few seconds there was a loud buzzing and the number changed. “Now serving 1108” it read when we got there. It buzzed again–1109. A clutch of housewives stared up at it. They were all clutching tickets like they’d just gone in for some sort of raffle.
So Selfridges sold sausages. I could see them through the glass front of the cabinet. They looked very nice. I’m sure they tasted great. But I didn’t see what that had meant to Johnny Naples. What did sausages have to do with the Falcon?
“Lauren …” I began.
“He was standing here,” she said. “Then he suddenly turned round and went that way.” She pointed.
“You mean he went straight on?”
“No. We’d come from that way. He retraced his steps.”
I followed in the footsteps of the dead dwarf. They took me further round the central supermarket, past the nuts and into the fruits where some fancy items nestled amongst the plums and Granny Smiths. “Brazilian Loquats, £3.50 kg” a sign read. That was probably a bargain if you knew what to do with a loquat. After that it was chocolates and then cash-tills. There was a row of six of them – with six women in brown coats and white straw hats. Five of them were ringing up prices on their tills like they were typing a novel. The sixth was just passing the purchases over a little glass panel in the counter and the prices were coming up automatically.
But I still hadn’t seen anything that made me any the wiser. As far as I could see, Selfridges didn’t even sell Maltesers.
“It was here,” Lauren said.
“Here – what?” I sounded tired and depressed. Maybe that was because I was. It had been a wild goose chase and I didn’t even have enough money to go back to the meat counter and buy a wild goose.
“He knew,” Lauren insisted. “He was standing where you were. And he suddenly smiled …”
I looked around and suddenly I wasn’t smiling at all. There was a door opposite, leading into the street. Two men had just come in with the crowds. I think I saw them a few seconds before they saw me.
“Lauren,” I hissed.
“What?”
I gestured. They’d changed since our first encounter but I’d have recognized Gott and Himmell anywhere. They were still wearing identical suits – pale green with embroidered waistcoats this time. But Himmell (with the blond hair) now had his left arm in plaster. Gott was walking with a stick. Both men had so many plasters on their face that I could hardly see any skin. But the skin I could see wasn’t looking too healthy.
“You told them about the
sausages,” I said.
“Of course I told them,” Lauren growled. “They were going to give me some more of their fairy cakes.”
She’d told them. They’d come to look at the food department for themselves. And now they’d seen us.
“Let’s move,” I said.
We moved.
We ducked to the left – through an archway and down a flight of stairs past wines and spirits. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Gott giving Himmell some hurried instructions. A moment later I collided with a pair of little old ladies. With a little old screech they flew into a pile of crystallized fruit which collapsed all around them. I didn’t stop to apologize. Manners maketh man, my father used to say. But Gott and Himmell weren’t far behind. And they had every good reason to unmaketh me.
“Which way?” Lauren asked.
I stopped. There was a door leading out to Orchard Street but it was blocked with about a dozen people fighting their way in. That left us a choice of three or four directions.
“Wait a minute, Lauren …” I said.
I was about to say that this was ridiculous. Gott and Himmell might be crazy, but there was no way they were going to try anything. Not in the middle of Selfridges on Christmas Eve. I was going to say that they’d wait for us outside and that we’d have to give them the slip when we left. I was going to say …
But right then a cabinet of watches behind my head exploded. Just like that. Glass flew out in glittering fragments. A shop assistant screamed. I spun round. Gott was standing at the top of the stairs. He was holding a gun. It was silenced so there had been no bang. But it was smoking. And nobody had noticed. They hadn’t heard anything and they were too busy with their shopping to stop anyway.
“That way!” I cried.
Lauren went one way. I went another.
She must have missed the way I was pointing. She ran down a corridor back into menswear while I made for the escalator. There was no time to hesitate. And perhaps it was for the best. We had more chance of getting away if we split up.
“The meeting place for customers who have lost their companions is on the lower ground floor …” The voice poured soothingly out of the speakers. Lauren had certainly lost me. But unless I lost the Germans, our only meeting-place would be the morgue.
The escalator was slow. Impossibly slow. And I couldn’t run up it – I was hemmed in by shoppers on both sides. I squatted down and looked back, wondering if Gott and Himmell had missed me. They hadn’t. There was no sign of Gott but Himmell was standing there, taking aim. This time I think I heard the phutt as the bullet came out. Just above my head, a white box with the figure “1” on it suddenly shattered and the light went out inside. I reached the top of the escalator and swung round past a collection of hats, then on to a second escalator with a third after that. On the third floor, not even knowing if Himmell was still behind me, I ran forward – through the children’s clothes department and on.
I stopped to catch my breath at another of the archways. There were fewer people up here. After all, who buys children clothes for Christmas except relatives who should know better? I couldn’t see Himmell and I thought I’d lost him, but then a plastic dummy about twelve centimetres away from me suddenly lurched over backwards with a hole in its forehead and fell with a clatter of broken plastic. Gott had gone after Lauren. But Himmell was still after me. I turned and ran.
And now there were more people. I didn’t mind that. The more the merrier as far as I was concerned. It took me a few seconds to realize where I was heading and by then it was too late to go anywhere else. There was a sign:
To Santa’s Grotto
Now I remembered the loudspeaker announcement. Father Christmas and my favourite nursery rhymes. I’d almost prefer to spend the afternoon with Himmell.
The straggle of people had become a queue. I ignored it. A few people protested as I ran past them but most of them had little children with them and they weren’t going to start a fight. I ran on, past a red screen and down a brightly-lit corridor. It led into a pram park and there was a woman standing behind a desk, gently controlling the crowd. She called out to me but I ignored her, sliding down a ramp to crash into a brick wall. Fortunately, the brick wall was made out of cardboard. I glanced back, hoping that I’d at last shaken Himmell. But there he was, one arm in white plaster jutting out of his body as if he’d been caught in the middle of a karate chop. His other arm was jammed into his pocket. I knew what it was holding.
I dived into Santa’s grotto. I didn’t like it. But I had no choice.
It was packed inside with everyone talking in low voices while nursery rhymes played on the loudspeaker system. There were a lot of models – Elizabethan villages and that sort of thing, illustrating the rhymes. They’d fixed them up with those little dolls that do jerky movements. They didn’t fool me. Jack and Jill looked slightly ill while Miss Muffet seemed to be having convulsions. The models were arranged so that the passage swerved round with dark sections and light sections. I moved as quickly as I could, pushing aside anyone who got in the way. Nobody complained. With their arms full of little kids asking inane questions, they had more than enough to worry about.
So had I. I felt trapped in Santa’s grotto. I needed an exit. I saw one, but it was blocked by a security guard. I turned another corner past Little Jack Horner and stopped again next to Humpty Dumpty. There was no sign of Himmell. Perhaps he was waiting for me outside. Some of the children were more interested in me than in the models. I suppose I must have looked pretty strange, panting and sweating – the way you do when you’re running for your life. I took a couple of steps further into the grotto. At the same moment, Humpty Dumpty exploded in all directions, his arms and legs soaring into the air. All the King’s soldiers and all the King’s men certainly won’t be able to put that one together again, I thought as I forced my way through the crowd.
And still nobody knew anything was wrong. It was incredible. But it was also gloomy. And if you’ve got your eyes on a ship with thirty or so white mice, maybe you won’t notice when a private detective’s younger brother is being murdered behind you. I looked round. Himmell had been held up by a tough-looking gang of seven-year-olds. Still walking backwards, my eyes fixed on him, I turned a corner. Somebody seized me. I was jerked off my feet. I twisted round again. I couldn’t believe it. I’d bumped into Santa Claus and he’d pulled me on to his lap.
Now he looked at me with cheerful eyes and a white-bearded smile. He really was the complete department store Santa: red hat, red trousers and tunic, bulging stomach and bad breath.
“You’re a bit big for Santa, aren’t you?” he asked in a jolly Santa voice.
“Let me go,” I said, squirming on his lap.
But he clung on to me. I got the feeling he was enjoying himself. “And what do you want for Christmas?” he asked.
“I want to get away from a guy who wants to kill me.”
He laughed at that. There were a whole lot of people in Santa’s chamber and if I hadn’t been so angry I’d have been red with embarrassment. A little girl – she can’t have been more than six – pointed at me and laughed. Her parents took a photograph.
“Ho ho …” Santa boomed out.
He didn’t make the third “ho.”
There was another quiet phutt and he keeled over. I threw myself on to the floor. Himmell was on the other side of the chamber, reloading his gun. Nobody was looking at him. They were looking at Santa, at the body twitching on the chair, at the red stuff that was staining his beard. The little girl began to cry.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Santa’s OK.”
Santa died. I fled.
I got out of the grotto just as the people began to scream in earnest. I could still hear them as I ran across a floor of women’s clothes, searching for a way out.
“Security to third floor, please. Security to third floor.” The calm, unruffled voice came over the loudspeakers as I spotted a fire exit, pulled it open and found myself in a quiet stairwe
ll. I wanted to go back down to street level but even as I stood there, I could hear the tramp of feet coming up. They didn’t sound like shoppers. They were too fast, too determined. It had to be the security guards. I looked up. The stairway was clear. I made for the fourth floor.
Through a door, along a corridor, through another door and suddenly I’d burst into the toy department. I was tired now. I couldn’t run much more. And the noise and the colour of the toys somehow drained away the last of my strength. Robots buzzed and clicked. Electric organs played hideous tunes. Computer games bleeped and whined. Something whipped past my head. I thought it was another bullet and jerked back, sending a whole pile of robots flying. But it was only a sales assistant with a paper glider. The robots writhed on the floor. I shrugged and staggered off into the toys.
I was sure I’d lost Himmell now. From toys I went into sports – first the clothes, then snooker tables, weights, golf clubs and hockey sticks. I rested against a counter that had been set up for a special promotion. There was a sign reading:
Discover the delights of deep-sea diving
A young salesman was showing an American couple the latest equipment: masks, wetsuits, harpoons.
“The harpoon works on compressed air,” I heard him say. “You just pull the lever here, load it like this and then—”
And then Himmell appeared. He’d come from nowhere. He was only about three metres away from me. I had nowhere else to run. He had his hand in his pocket and now he brought it up, the jacket coming with it. He smiled. He was going to shoot me through the pocket. Then he would just walk away. And no one would know.
I lunged to one side, grabbed the harpoon gun, then wheeled round. The salesman shouted. I pressed the trigger.
The gun shuddered in my hands. The harpoon shot out, snaking a silver rope behind it. For a moment I thought I’d missed. The harpoon seemed to sail over Himmell’s shoulder. But then I saw that one prong had gone through his suit, pinning him to the wall. The American stared at me.
“Good gun!” I said. And dropped it. Himmell lunged forward but he wasn’t going anywhere. He was stuck there like a German calendar.