I remembered now. Parker had stuttered when he was on the roof. So it hadn’t been because he was afraid.
“I said to him that he ought to be a mime artist,” Mrs Winterbotham went on. “That way he wouldn’t have had to talk. But I don’t think people would have paid to see him. He didn’t have the figure for it. To be honest with you, I’ve seen more attractive figures hanging up in the meat market.”
“When was his last job?” I asked.
“Well…” She put down the biscuit and leant forward conspiratorially. “That’s what I told the police. He always got a job at Christmas. He worked in a department store. But this year something very unusual happened. He got paid for a one-night appearance in the West End! He didn’t tell me what it was but I do know that it was a lot of money.”
“Who paid him?”
“He never said. But I don’t think it can have worked out because when I saw him the next morning, he was very upset.”
“How do you know he was upset?” Tim asked.
“He was crying.”
“You’re sure they weren’t tears of happiness?”
“Oh no, Mr Diamond. He was completely miserable. And then that afternoon, someone came to the house. I heard this banging and crashing and I went round to the garden to see what was happening. Then there was silence. I knocked on the door but I got no answer. So I called the police.”
“Just one last question, Mrs Winterbotham…” I began.
“Please. Call me Janey!”
“Was Reginald Parker Albanian?”
“No. As far as I know, he’d never been to Albania. In fact, he never went anywhere. He couldn’t afford it. Most of the time he just sat at home and watched TV.” She sighed and I got the idea that maybe she’d been his only friend in the world. “And now he’s dead. I can’t believe it. Now, how about a nice piece of banana cake?”
We didn’t have the cake.
Because suddenly, even as Mrs Winterbotham had been talking, everything had made sense. Suddenly I was back on the roof, hearing Reginald Parker as he called out across the gap. I d-d-didn’t… I saw the cracker with the acorn and the death threat and knew what it was that was wrong with the letter Minerva had been sent. I thought about Regent Street and the bullet that had come so close it had drilled a hole in Harold Chase’s coat. I knew exactly what job Reginald had been hired for – it could only be one job – and I also knew what was going to happen at twelve o’clock that day. I looked at my watch. It was five past eleven. We had less than one hour left.
“We have to get to Harrods, Tim!” I said.
Tim shook his head. “This is no time for Christmas shopping, Nick.”
“We’re not going shopping. We have to find Minerva.”
“Why?”
A taxi drove by. I reached out and flagged it down.
“She’s going to be murdered, Tim. And I know who by.”
KILLER WITH A SMILE
We were on the wrong side of town. We had to cross the whole of London to reach Knightsbridge, and with Christmas just weeks away the traffic could hardly be worse. As we sat in a traffic jam on the edge of Hyde Park I could feel the minutes ticking away. Worse than that, I could see them. The taxi meter was running and Tim was staring at it in dismay, watching as the last of his earnings disappeared.
We finally made it with about five minutes and ten pounds to spare, but even so it was going to be tight. Harrods was a huge place and the grotto was right up on the fourth floor. Worse than that, the entire store was heaving – not just with shoppers but with the usual crowd of fans and policemen who had turned out to see or to protect Minerva. There were security men on all the doors and more photographers waiting in the street, although you’d have thought by now the papers would have had enough of her. I certainly had.
And what nobody knew was that the killer was already inside the building. He would smile at Minerva and he would murder her … and she wouldn’t even know it had happened until she woke up dead.
“This way, Tim!”
We had plunged off the street and into women’s handbags, then into cosmetics, then food. Harrods was every Christmas present you could ever imagine – more presents than anyone in the world could ever want. It was Christmas gone mad: hundreds of miles of tinsel; thousands of glittering stars and balls; enough Christmas trees to repopulate a forest. Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas and I’ll tear open as many presents as I can get my hands on. But as I ran for the escalators, past the groaning shelves and the grinning sales assistants, I couldn’t help but feel there had to be something more to it than this. Maybe something less, if you know what I mean.
We reached the escalators and began to fight our way up. I had a strange sense of déjà vu as I went. Suddenly I was in another department store in a different part of London almost two years before. I’d been running then too – to escape from two German assassins who’d been trying to make sure that the only way I saw Boxing Day was from inside a box. But that was another time and another story and if you want to know about it, I’m afraid you’re going to have to buy another book.
We got to the fourth floor and there was a sign pointing towards Santa’s grotto, “Jingle Bells” blaring out of the speakers and little kids everywhere, dragging their mothers to see the man in red.
I stopped, panting. “I hope we’re not too late,” I gasped.
“Yes,” Tim agreed. “Santa may not have any presents left!”
Sometimes I think Tim doesn’t belong in the real world. Maybe he’d be more comfortable in a nice white room with padded walls. But this was no time to argue. It was twelve noon exactly. Somewhere in the clock department down below, a thousand clocks would be chiming, bleeping or shooting out cuckoos. The grotto had just been opened by Minerva. And the way ahead was blocked.
There were toys everywhere. Vast Lego castles, cuddly toys, jigsaw mountains and Scalextric cars buzzing round in furious circles. Children were pulling and pushing in every direction. In the far distance I could see the green, plastic entrance to a green, plastic cave with a long line of people waiting to go in. That was where we had to be. But our path had been closed off by a sixteen-stone store security guard with the body of a wrestler and the face of a boxer at the end of a particularly vicious fight. At least, I assumed he was a security guard. It was hard to be sure. He was dressed as an elf.
“You can’t go this way!” he told me. “You have to go to the back of the queue.” So he was a security guard. I should have known. How many elves do you see carrying truncheons?
“Where’s Minerva?” I demanded. I was afraid I was already too late – and this brute in green tights was only making things worse.
“She’s in with Santa Claus, opening the grotto. You’ll have to wait in line if you want her autograph.”
“I don’t want her autograph. I want to save her life!”
But it was no good. I might as well have argued with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (there was a mechanical version next to the cave). I had to stop myself pulling out my hair. I was expecting a gunshot at any moment and here I was trying to reason with an elf. I looked around me, wondering if I could bribe him with a cuddly toy – or if not, hit him with one. That was when I saw Detective Chief Inspector Snape, standing grim-faced with Boyle next to him, the two of them surrounded by Barbie dolls.
“Snape!” I shouted out, and before the security guard could stop me I had run over to the two men.
“What are you doing here, Diamond?” he snapped the moment he saw me.
Boyle curled his lip and looked ugly – which in his case wasn’t very difficult. Once again he lumbered forward and grabbed hold of me.
“Don’t worry, Boyle!” I said. “I haven’t come here to steal your Barbie doll.”
“Then why are you here?” Snape demanded.
“You’ve got to find Minerva,” I began. “She’s in danger.”
“I know she’s in danger,” Snape replied. “Boyle and I are on special duty. We’re loo
king after her.”
“You don’t understand…”
How could I tell them what I knew? There wasn’t enough time and with all the noise in the place – the children screaming, the music playing, Rudolph singing and all the rest of it – I’d have been hoarse before I got to the end. But just then Minerva appeared, coming out of the grotto with her manager, Jake Hammill, next to her. There was no sign of her husband, but somehow I wasn’t surprised.
I twisted out of Boyle’s grip, and with Tim right behind me I ran over to her. As usual, Minerva was looking drop-dead gorgeous in a slinky, silver number, and despite everything I was glad that I had arrived in time and that she hadn’t, after all, dropped dead. She was holding a present, about the size and shape of a shoe box. Santa must have just given it to her.
She saw me. “You!” she snapped – and unless that’s Greek for Happy Christmas, she wasn’t too pleased to see me.
I stood in front of her, my eyes fixed on the box. I didn’t want to touch it. To be honest, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. I had a good idea what was inside.
“Did Santa give you that?” I demanded.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“Do you know what it is?”
Minerva shrugged. She didn’t really care. She was only here for the publicity. “No,” she said.
“I think it’s a clock,” Tim chimed in.
“Why?”
“Well … I can hear it ticking.”
Snape leant forward and took the box. “What’s all this about?” he demanded.
“Chief Inspector,” I said, and suddenly my mouth was dry. “I’d be very careful with that unless you want to spend this Christmas in six different parts of London all at the same time.”
“What are you talking about?” Hammill demanded.
“There’s probably an oak leaf or two in there and maybe some acorns. But I’ll bet you any money that the rest of it is a bomb.”
Maybe I said the word too loudly. Somehow the crowd caught on to what was happening and suddenly the entire department was filled with hysterical mothers dragging their screaming kids off to the nearest escalator. I ignored them. I just wanted to know if Snape was going to believe me. And to be fair to him, just this once he gave me the benefit of the doubt. Very gently, he lowered the box to the ground, then turned to Boyle. “Have you got a knife?” he asked.
Boyle reached into his pocket and took out first a cut-throat razor, then a bayonet and finally a flick knife. He pressed a button and ten centimetres of ugly steel leapt out to join in the cheerful Christmas atmosphere. Snape took it. Very carefully, he cut a square in the side of the parcel and peeled the cardboard back. He looked inside.
“He’s right!” he said.
He didn’t need to tell me. Looking over his shoulder, I could just make out part of an alarm clock, some loops of wire and something that could have been Plasticine but definitely wasn’t.
Snape looked up. “Plastic explosive,” he whispered. “It’s connected to an alarm clock. It’ll blow up when the bell goes.” He squinted through the square he had cut out. Then, very slowly, he handed the package to Boyle. “All right, Boyle,” he said. “This is timed to go off in forty minutes. You’d better get it down to the bomb disposal squad.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a forty-five-minute drive away.”
Boyle stared at him.
“See if you can find a short cut,” Snape advised.
Boyle disappeared – in a hurry. Snape turned to me. “So what’s this all about?” he demanded.
“Santa just gave me that!” Minerva rasped. She was standing there dazed.
“Have you been a bad girl this year?” Tim asked.
“It’s not Santa!” I said. “Come on…”
The five of us – me, Tim, Minerva, Jake Hammill and Snape – dived into the grotto. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the security guard talking into his radio, presumably calling for reinforcements. There was nobody else left on the fourth floor – as far as I knew, there was nobody left in Knightsbridge. White plastic snow crunched underfoot as we followed the path into the cave. White plastic stalactites hung down and white plastic stalagmites pointed up – or maybe it was the other way round. I can never remember. We passed a couple more mechanical singing reindeer and arrived just in time to see a familiar red figure, about to leave by a back exit.
“Hold it right there, Santa!” I shouted.
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.”