There was a white van waiting for us in an enclosed courtyard – we could have been anywhere. I looked back at the house we had just left. It was a grey building, three storeys high. Most of its paint had flaked off and there were scorch marks, as if it had been involved in a fire. About half the windows were shattered. Others had been bricked in. The place looked derelict. I guessed it was supposed to.
I was bundled into the van and the next moment the engine started up, roaring at me like a mechanical beast. I almost expected it to come bursting through the floor, to gobble me up. The noise hammered at my ears and I groaned. Tim was thrown in next to me. The doors slammed. My stomach heaved. We were off.
There was a small window set in the door and I managed to stagger over to it and pull myself onto my knees to look out. But it was hard to see anything. The world was spinning faster now, tilting from side to side. I just made out a series of letters in red neon, but it seemed to take me for ever to work out the three words they formed:
THE FRENCH CONFECTION
The van turned a corner and I lost my balance. Before I fell, I caught a glimpse of a blue star … on a flag or perhaps on the side of a building. Then the sound of the van’s engine rose up again and swallowed me. The floor hit me in the face. Or maybe it was me who had hit the floor. I no longer knew the difference.
The journey took an hour … a month … a year. I no longer had any idea. What was the stuff they had given me? Whatever it was, it was taking over, killing me. I could feel it happening, an inch at a time. The van stopped. Hands that no longer belonged to bodies pulled us out. Then the pavement slapped me in the face, there was another scream from the engine and suddenly I knew that we were alone.
“Tim…?” I gasped the word. But Tim was no longer there. He had turned into some horrible animal with sixteen eyes, tentacles and…
I forced myself to concentrate, knowing that it was the drug that was doing it to me. The image dissolved and there he was again. My brother.
“Nick…” He staggered to his feet. All three of them. Things weren’t back to normal yet.
The sky changed from red to blue to yellow to green. I stood up as well.
“Must get help,” I said.
Tim groaned.
We were back in the centre of Paris. It was late at night. And Paris had never looked like this before.
There was the Seine but the water had gone, replaced by red wine that glowed darkly in the moonlight. It was twisting its way underneath the bridges, but now that I looked more closely, I saw that they had changed too. They had become huge sticks of French bread. There was a sudden buzzing. A Bateau Mouche had suddenly sprouted huge blue wings and legs. It leapt out of the water and onto one of the bridges, tearing a great chunk out with a hideous, hairy mouth before spiralling away into the night.
The ground underneath my feet had gone soft and I realized I was sinking into it. With a cry I lifted one foot and saw that the tar had melted and was dripping off my trainer. Except the tar was yellow, not black.
“It’s cheese!” I shouted. And it was. The entire street had turned into cheese – soft, ripe, French cheese. I gasped for air, choking on the smell. At the same time, the cheese pulled me into it. Another few seconds and I would be sucked underneath the surface.
“Nick!” Tim called out.
And then the cheese was gone as he pointed with an arm that was now a mile long. There was a snail coming down the Boulevard. No … not one snail but a thousand of them, each one the size of a house, slithering along ahead of the traffic, leaving a grey, slimy trail behind them. At one corner, the traffic lights had gone red and all the snails were squeaking at each other, a fantastic traffic jam of snails. At the same time, I heard what sounded like a gigantic burp and a frog, the size of a bus, bounded across my vision, leaping over a building. But the frog was missing its legs. It was supporting itself on giant crutches.
The world twisted, heaved, broke up and then reformed with all the pieces in different positions: a jigsaw in the hands of a destructive child.
Suddenly we were surrounded by grinning stone figures, jabbering and staring at us with empty stone eyes. I recognized them: the gargoyles from Notre Dame. There must have been a hundred of them. One of them was sitting on Tim’s shoulder like a grey chimpanzee. But Tim didn’t seem to have noticed it.
Light. Car lights. Everywhere. A horn sounded. I had stepped into the road – but it didn’t matter because the cars were the size of matchboxes. They were all Citroëns. Every one of them. And they were being followed by cyclists. The Tour de France had come early that year. All the cyclists were smoking cigarettes.
Tim was clutching a streetlamp. Now he was wearing a striped jersey and a beret and there was a string of onions hanging from his side. “Je suis,” he said. “Tu es, il est…”
I opened my mouth to reply.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
I saw it before he did. Perhaps he didn’t see it at all. Even now, with the drug pumping through my body, I knew that it wasn’t real, that I was hallucinating. But it made no difference. As far as I was concerned, everything I saw was real. And if it was real, it could kill me. It could step on me. It could crush me.
The Eiffel Tower! On our first day in Paris we had crossed the city to visit it. Now the Eiffel Tower was coming to visit us. There it was, walking across Paris, swinging one iron foot, then the next, moving like some sort of giant, four-legged crab. One of its feet came down in a pancake stall. Wood shattered. Pancakes flew in all directions. Somebody screamed.
The cheese was getting softer. I was sinking into a boulevard of Brie, a dual carriageway of Camembert. The squirming yellow slipped round my waist, rose over my shoulder and twisted round my neck. I didn’t even try to fight. I’d had enough. I waited for it to pull me under.
I thought I was going to die and if I’d waited another minute I might well have. But just then I heard what I thought was an owl, hooting in my ear. At the same time, I found myself staring at a face I knew. A dark-haired man in a grey-coloured suit. I became aware of a blue flashing light which either belonged to a dragon or a police car. I looked up and saw something driving out of the moon, flying through the sky towards me. An ambulance.
“Don’t go to sleep!” a voice commanded. “Don’t go to sleep! Don’t go to sleep!”
But it was too late. I went to sleep.
For ever.
THE MAD AMERICAN
“You’re lucky to be alive,” the man said.
It was two days later. I don’t want to tell you about those two days. I’d spent both of them in hospital in Paris and all I can say is, if you’ve ever had your stomach pumped, you’ll know there are plenty of things you can do that are more fun. I don’t remember much about the first day. The next day, I felt like a spin-drier that’s been left on too long. All I’d eaten in the entire time was a little bread and water. Fortunately, the water didn’t have bubbles. I don’t think I could have managed the bubbles.
And now, here I was in the headquarters of Sûreté, the French police force. It’s funny how police stations are the same the whole world over. This may have been grander and smarter than New Scotland Yard. The curtains were velvet and the pictures on the wall showed some grey-haired Frenchman in a suit rather than our own grey-haired Queen in a crown. But it still smelled the same.
Tim was sitting next to me. He was the colour of the yoghurt that had brought us here in the first place, with eyes like crushed strawberries. His hair was dishevelled and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a month. I was going to say something but decided against it. I probably looked just as bad.
We were in the office of the Chief of Police – a man called Christien Moire. I knew because I’d seen the name and title on the door. It was on his desk too. Maybe he was worried he was going to forget it. He was the man in the grey suit whom I’d seen standing outside Le Chat Gris, the man who had been talking to the receptionist and who had later taken our photograph. Things were beginning to ad
d up even if I still had no idea of the sum total.
“Another one hour and it would have been too late,” Moire went on. He spoke English as if he had no idea what he was saying, lingering on every word. He had the sort of accent you get in bad television plays: Anuzzer wan our an’ eet would ’ave bin too late. I hope you get the idea. “You were very lucky,” he added.
“Sure,” I muttered. “And we’d have been even luckier if you’d arrived a couple of hours before.”
Moire shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he said. But his dark, empty eyes looked about as apologetic as two lumps of ice. “We had no idea you had been taken,” he went on.
“Who are you?” Tim demanded. “You call yourself the Sûreté. But what exactly are you sure about?”
“The Sûreté,” Moire repeated, “is the French police force. I am the head of a special unit fighting the traffic in …”
“…drugs.” I completed the sentence.
“Exactement. I have to say that you and your brother seem to have turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I hadn’t been watching you…”
“You were at the hotel,” I said. “I saw you outside. You had a camera…”
“Is that your hobby?” Tim asked. “Photography?”
Christien Moire stared at Tim through narrow eyes. He obviously hadn’t ever met anyone like him before. “Le Chat Gris has been under surveillance,” he said. “Perhaps I should explain…”
“Perhaps you should,” I said.
Moire lit a Gauloise. It’s a funny thing about the French. Not only do they all smoke, but they smoke the most horrible cigarettes in the world. Forget about the health warning on the packet. The smoke from Moire’s cigarette was so thick, you could have printed it on that.
“For some time now,” he began, “we have been aware of a drug-smuggling operation. Somebody has been moving drugs to London … using the trains under the channel. We still don’t know how they’re doing it. We have searched the trains from top to bottom but we have found nothing. Worse still, we do not know who they are.”
“Is there anything you do know?” I asked.
Moire glanced at me with unfriendly eyes. “We know only the code-name of the man behind the operation,” he replied.
“The Mad American,” I said.
That surprised Moire, but he tried not to show it. “The drugs arrive from Marseilles,” he went on. “They are weighed and packaged somewhere in Paris. Then the Mad American arranges for them to be sent to London. We’ve been working with the English police to try to stop them. So far we have had no success in London. But in Paris we had one lucky break.”
“Le Chat Gris,” I said.
“Yes, we learned that the hotel is sometimes used by the Mad American. When dealers arrive from London to buy his drugs, that is where they stay. He meets them there. They pay him the money and then his two associates – Jacques Bastille and Luc Lavache – arrange for the drugs to be sent on the train.”
“So that’s why you photographed us!” I said. “You thought we’d come to Paris to buy drugs!”
“I know it sounds unlikely,” Moire said. “An English kid and his idiotic brother –”
“Nick isn’t idiotic!” Tim protested.
“We became interested in you the moment you reported that Bastille and Lavache had attempted to kill you,” Moire went on. “I ordered the photograph to be taken so that we could check you against our criminal files.”
“But if you thought we were criminals, why did you let us go in the first place?” I asked. It had puzzled me at the time, the policeman suddenly changing his mind and telling us we could leave.
“The answer to that is simple,” Moire said. “We still had no idea what part you had to play in all this, but you had mentioned Le Chat Gris and that was enough. It was important that the Mad American should not be aware that the police were involved. I personally ordered your release, and at the same time I made sure that we kept you under – how do you say? – surveillance. This was very lucky for you, considering how things turned out.”
“You were following us.”
“Yes. I saw you go back to the hotel, and minutes later I saw the van with the two men who knocked you out and kidnapped you. We followed the van but unfortunately lost it in traffic…”
“…so you don’t know where we were taken.”
“No. But I knew that you were in danger and I had every gendarme in Paris looking out for you. One of them saw you and radioed HQ. By that time they had pumped you with enough drugs to kill a horse.”
“Why would they want to kill a horse?” Tim asked.
Moire ignored him. “We only got to you in the nick of time. Another ten minutes, and the two of you would now be in Père Lachaise.”
“You mean, another hotel,” Tim said.
“No. Père Lachaise is a cemetery.”
“OK. You saved us, Monsieur Moire,” I said. “But now, if you don’t mind, I’m heading back to the hotel, packing and leaving for London.”
“That’s right, Monsieur Loire,” Tim agreed. “We’re out of here!”
“I’m afraid not.” Moire hadn’t raised his voice. If anything, he had done the exact opposite. But that’s the thing about the French. When they’re being really nasty, they don’t shout. They whisper. “You realize that I could have you arrested?” he asked.
I almost laughed. “What for?” I demanded.
“You were found in the middle of Paris, full of drugs,” the police chief explained. He sounded almost reasonable. “Two English tourists who decided to experiment with these forbidden substances…”
“That’s a complete lie!” I exclaimed.
“Yes!” Tim agreed. “We’re not tourists!”
“And then there is the matter of the Bateau Mouche…” Moire continued. “You jumped off a bridge, endangering the lives of the people on the boat. This could also prove to be drug-related.”
“What do you want, Moire?” I demanded.
Moire leaned forward. His face could have been carved out of stone. Even the cigarette smoke seemed to have solidified. “There are two things we wish to find out,” he said. “First, who is the Mad American?”
“Why don’t you ask Bastille and Lavache?” I demanded.
“They wouldn’t tell us anything. And if we did arrest them, it would only let their boss know that we were getting close … and that would ruin everything. The second thing we wish to know is, how are they smuggling the drugs across the Channel? As I have told you, we have searched the train many times … but with no success. These packets of white powder – they must be somewhere. But…” He smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “It is infuriating!”
“What do you want us to do?” I asked.
“I want you to go back to the hotel,” Moire replied. “It will be as if nothing has happened.”
“Why?”
“Because you can be useful to me … on the inside. My men will continue to watch you. You’ll be completely safe. But maybe you can find the answers to the questions. And if there is anything to report…”
“Forget it!” I snapped.
“Right!” Tim nodded. “Bestlé only paid for four days. We can’t possibly afford it.”
“Bestlé?” For the first time Moire looked puzzled. “Who is Bestlé?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “We’re British citizens. You can’t blackmail us!”
“You don’t think so?” Moire almost smiled. “You are Europeans now, my friend. And if you don’t do exactly as I tell you, let me assure you that you will be spending a great deal of time inside a European jail.”
I wanted to argue, but I could see there was no point. The last person to argue with Christien Moire probably found himself with a one-way ticket to Devil’s Island.
He knew he’d beaten me. “Go back to Le Chat Gris and wait for further instructions,” he said. “Don’t worry about the bill. I will see to it.”
“And what if we get killed?”
I asked.
“My department will pay for the funeral too.”
I sank back in my chair. There was nothing I could say. Not in French. Not in English. It really wasn’t fair.
And that was how we found ourselves, a few hours later, back in our room at Le Chat Gris. As I’d walked back into the hotel, I’d known how those French aristocrats must have felt as they took their last steps towards the guillotine. The receptionist had almost fallen off his chair when he saw us and he’d been on the telephone before we’d reached the lift. The Mad American would have presumed we were dead. Now he’d know he was wrong. How long would it take him to correct his mistake?
Tim sat down on the bed. He was actually looking quite cheerful, which made me feel even worse. “Maybe this isn’t so bad, Nick,” he said.
“Tim!” I cried. “How bad can it get?”
“We’re working for the French police now,” he said. “This could be good for business! Tim Diamond Inc … London and Paris. That’ll look good on the door.”
“It’ll look even better on your gravestone,” I said. “Don’t you understand, Tim? We’re not working for anyone! Christien Moire was lying through his teeth!”
“You mean … he isn’t a policeman?”
“Of course he’s a policeman. But he doesn’t want us to work for him. He’s using us!” I’d taken a guidebook of Paris out of my case. Now I sat down next to Tim. “Moire wants to find out the identity of the Mad American,” I explained. “What’s the best way to do that?”
“Just ask for Tim Diamond…”
“Just use Tim Diamond. He’s sent us back here because he knows that our turning up again will panic the Mad American. He’s already tried to kill us twice. He’s certain to try again – and this time Moire will be watching. He’s using us as bait in a trap, Tim. The Mad American kills us. Moire gets the Mad American. It’s as simple as that.”
I opened the guidebook. “I’m not sitting here, waiting to be shot,” I said.