“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 crowd. I think I saw them a few seconds before they saw me.
“Lauren,” I whispered.
“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 vests this time. But Himmell’s left arm was now in a cast. Gott was walking with a cane. Both men had so many bandages 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 salesgirl screamed. I spun around. 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 a better chance of getting away if we split up.
The escalator was slow. Impossibly slow. And I couldn’t run up it as 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
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 three inches away from me suddenly lurched over backward 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 Workshop
Now I remembered the loudspeaker announcement. Santa Claus and my favorite nursery rhymes. I’d almost prefer to spend the afternoon with Himmell.
The straggle of people had become a line. I ignored them. A few people protested as I ran past them, but most 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 day-care area where a woman was 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 a white cast 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 workshop. 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 around 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 was trapped in Santa’s workshop and 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 farther into the workshop. 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 on it, maybe you won’t notice when a private detective’s younger brother is being murdered behind you. I looked around. Himmell had been held up by a tough-looking gang of seven-year- olds. Still walking backward, my eyes fixed on him, I turned a corner. Somebody seized me. I was jerked off my feet. I twisted around again. I couldn’t believe it. I’d bumped into Santa Claus and he’d pulled me onto 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 suit, 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 held 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 couldn’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
