The Falcon's Malteser

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 okay.”

Santa died. I fled.

I got out of the workshop 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 stairwell. I wanted to go back down to the 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 color 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 clerk 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 billiard 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, wet suits, 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 ten feet 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 around. 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.

“You little . . . !” he began.

I didn’t want to hear him. I found another fire exit and this time I managed to get out of Selfridges without being stopped. I crossed the road and made my way around the front of Marks and Spencer. I was relieved to find Lauren waiting for me.

“What kept you?” she said.

“You got away okay?” I asked.

“Sure. Gott could hardly walk, let alone run. Himmell was in better shape.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He was.”

Lauren sighed. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she said. “We didn’t learn anything.”

I thought back to the food department, to the things I had seen. And suddenly I understood. It was as if I’d known all along, only someone had to sock me on the jaw to make me realize it. I smiled. Johnny Naples must have smiled that way. Lauren saw it. “Come on . . .” I said.

The same taxis and the same buses were jammed in the same place as we crossed Oxford Street again. We got back on the subway. It would take us to South Kensington, where we’d get a bus.

I knew. But I had to be sure.

INFORMATION

“The bar code,” I said.

“The what?”

“Those little black-and-white lines you get on the things you buy.”

“What about them?”

I pulled the Maltesers out of the shoulder bag and showed them to Lauren. “Look,” I said. “You see? It’s got a bar code.”

“So what?”

“That’s what they were using in Selfridges. The girl was passing her products over a scanner and the scanner was telling the cash register how much the products cost.” Lauren looked blank, so I went on. “Maybe if you pass this bar code over a scanner, it’ll do something different.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

I needed a science lesson in a hurry and for once in my life I was sorry school had shut for the holidays. But I had another idea. Journalists write about technology and things like that. They know a little bit about everything. And I knew a journalist: Clifford Taylor, the guy who’d interviewed Herbert and me. He’d been at the Falcon’s funeral, too, so I figured he must still work on the same newspaper, the Fulham Express. That was where we were heading now. I had to be sure that I was right.

Nobody reads the Fulham Express, but everybody who lives in Fulham gets it. They don’t have any choice. It’s one of those free newspapers that come uninvited along with a shower of plumbers’ business cards, taxi telephone numbers, and special offers from Reader’s Digest. It’s delivered every Wednesday in the morning. And you can see it every Wednesday, in the afternoon, stuffed into trash cans or drinking up the dirt in the gutter.

We took a bus all the way down the Fulham Road, past Herbert’s flat, to the bottom—Fulham Broadway. This was the Fulham Road at its worst: dirty in the rain, dusty in the sun, always run-down and depressing. I’d occasionally walked past the office of the Fulham Express, but I’d never been inside before. It was on the main road, next to a bank. Lauren and I climbed up a flight of stairs and found ourselves in a single, rectangular room with a printing press at one end and a photocopying machine at the other. In the middle there were two tables, piled high with newspaper clippings. The room must have been a dance studio at one time because it had mirrors all the way down one wall, making it seem twice as big as it was. Even so, it was small.

Clifford was there, feverishly working on a story that in a few days someone would use to wrap their fish and chips. I coughed, and when he didn’t respond, I walked up to him. He was the only person there.

“Clifford . . .” I said.

“Yes?” He looked up.

“You don’t remember me?”

“If you’re from the dance class, you’re too early. The newspaper has the room until five—”

“I’m Nick Diamond.”

He took his glasses off and wiped them. There were sweat stains under his arms and his acne had grown worse. He was a mess. I doubted if he could even spell “personal hygiene.” “Nick who?” he asked.

“Diamond.” I glanced at Lauren, who shrugged. “You interviewed me,” I reminded him. “My brother’s a private detective.”

Now he did remember. “Of course! Absolutely! How’s it going? There’s not much call for private detectives in Fulham—”

“I know,” I interrupted. Clifford liked talking. When he interviewed us, he’d talked more than we had. “I was wondering if you could help me,” I said.