“Um . . .” I was having to think on my feet. Any minute now I’d be thinking on my back. If I was still conscious. “I’m a singing telegram!” I exclaimed, brilliantly. “Happy birthday to you, happy birth . . .” I tried to sing, but the words died in my throat. The four thugs weren’t convinced. “Come on, guys,” I pleaded. “Gimme a break.”
“Yeah—your legs,” the third one said.
They all laughed at that. I’d heard more cheerful sounds on a ghost train. They were still laughing as they closed in on me.
“You’re making a big mistake,” I said.
The man behind the door was the first to reach me. He grabbed my shoulder with one hand and lifted me clean off my feet. “There’s no mistake, sunshine,” he said. “The Fat Man wants to see you.”
IN THE FOG
I discovered that the four thugs were called Lenny, Benny, Kenny, and Fred. Lenny was in charge. He was the one with the driver’s license. He’d parked the car outside the flat. It was a Volkswagen Bug. After we’d all piled in it I was surprised it was able to move. I certainly wasn’t. I was on the backseat between Benny and Kenny. Things were so tight that if they’d both breathed in at the same time, I’d have been crushed. The Maltesers were still in my shoulder bag, but now the shoulder bag was on Fred’s lap. Lenny was driving. I was being “taken for a ride,” as they say. And I had a nasty feeling I’d only been given a one-way ticket.
We drove out of town, west toward Richmond. Lenny had made a telephone call before we left, so I knew the Fat Man would be waiting for me. It looked like he was going to have a long wait. These heavies really were heavy and the car could only manage thirty miles an hour on the level. Not that I was in any hurry. In fact, my only hope was that the engine would finally explode under the pressure. I could hardly see them “taking me for a ride” on a bus.
“You can’t do this to me,” I protested. “I’m underage. I’m only a kid. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”
“That’s what you think.” Lenny sneered.
“But I’ve got money,” I said. “I could make you guys rich.”
“Sure.” Lenny swung the steering wheel. “You can leave it to us in your will.”
The car turned off the main road and began to follow a winding lane through what looked like the remains of an industrial complex. It was still pretty complex, but I figured it hadn’t been industrial for a hundred years. It was a network of Victorian buildings, most of them burned out. Another bit of London that was falling down.
The lane led down to the river. Suddenly we came to the end of the blacktop and I could hear gravel crunching underneath the tires. The car bounced up and down. The four thugs bounced in their seats. The springs screamed for mercy. We drove right up to the edge of the river. Then Lenny put on the handbrake. We’d arrived.
“Out,” he ordered.
He’d produced a gun from somewhere and I don’t need to tell you what it was pointing at. If you’ve ever looked into the single eye of a gun barrel, you’ll know it’s no fun. The devil must have an eye like that.
“Walk,” Lenny said.
I walked. We’d stopped in a space about the size of a parking lot, only the bug was the only car parked there. It was another building site—more luxury houses for the Thames. But they’d only gotten as far as the foundations and a few pieces of the framework. The iron girders hemmed us in like we were on the stage of a Greek amphitheater, only there was no audience. The light was fading, and to complete the picture—or maybe to obliterate it—the fog had rolled in across the water. It carried the smell of salt and dead fish in its skeleton fingers, and when it touched my neck I shivered. I couldn’t see across to the other side of the Thames. Which meant that anyone on the other side couldn’t see me. I was alone with just about the four nastiest customers you could ever hope not to meet.
There was a low hiss as one of them lit a paraffin lamp. It threw a circle of hard, white light. They’d set it all up in advance. I didn’t understand it—but somehow I didn’t like it much. There was a wooden chair about twelve feet away from the edge of the river and an old iron bathtub right in front of it. The bathtub was quite deep. It came to about the same level as the chair. Nearby, there was a pile of brown paper sacks. Kenny picked one up and tore it open. Gray powder flooded out. At the same time, Benny walked forward carrying a hose. Water was already spluttering out, liquid mercury in the strange, harsh light. Cement, water, a bathtub, a chair, and the River Thames. Now I understood it all—and I liked it even less.
“Sit down,” Lenny said.
He waved the gun toward the chair. I walked forward, the soles of my shoes squelching on the wet gravel. The four men never stopped watching me. They weren’t getting any pleasure out of this. They were just doing a job. Mind you, I wasn’t getting any pleasure out of it either—and I wasn’t being paid. But there was nothing I could do. I sat down on the chair. It was so close to the bathtub that my legs had to go in it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kenny and Benny mixing the cement. If I ever get out of this one, I thought to myself, I’ll take the first flight to Australia. My parents might not have been ideal company, but they’d never tried to kill me. At least, not so you’d notice.
“Look, Lenny—” I began, trying to be reasonable.
“Button it, kid,” he snapped.
Kenny and Benny came over, each carrying a large bucket of wet cement. They glanced at Lenny. He nodded. As one, they tipped them over. The stuff poured out sluggishly, like cold oatmeal. It splattered down into the bath, covering my shoes and rising about five inches up my legs. I could feel it seeping through my socks. It was icy. And it was heavy, too. My shoes were pressing against my toes. They were only sneakers and already the cement was oozing through them. I wiggled my toes. Lenny pressed the gun against the side of my neck. “Keep still,” he said.
“But it’s wet . . .” I complained.
“Don’t worry, kid. It’s quick-drying. You keep still and it’ll set in no time.”
Two more buckets followed the first and two more went after them. By the time Kenny and Benny had finished, the cement came all the way up to my knees. If anyone had seen me—sitting there with my legs in a bath staring out across the Thames—they’d have thought I was crazy. But nobody would see me. It was dark now. And the fog had grown thicker. Like the cement.
Lenny wasn’t even bothering to massage my neck with his gun anymore. The cement had almost set. I experimented. Carefully I tried to lift my right foot. I couldn’t do it. That was when I began to get really afraid. Talk about having one foot in the grave—I had both feet and most of my legs. I was glued to the bathtub and I knew that any minute now they’d pick it up and drop it into the river. I—it—we would sink like a stone. I’d spend the rest of eternity in an upright position.
They say that when a man drowns, his whole life flashes before him. Mine did that now, but it was all over in about five seconds. That made me sad. It had been a short life and I’d spent far too much of it at school.
I heard a sort of glugging sound coming from the Thames. That made my ears prick up. A boat. It was getting closer. For a moment I was hopeful. It might be a river-police boat. Or perhaps a dredger of some sort. But Fred had been waiting for it. The gray curtains of fog were pushed aside by the bow of a sleek white cruiser. A rope was thrown out of the darkness. A gangplank was slid over the edge and made steady on the bank. The Fat Man walked down it.
He was dressed in a dinner jacket with a mauve bow tie and a white silk scarf hanging loose around his neck. He nodded at Fred and the others and then strolled over to me. Without saying a word, he leaned down and tapped the concrete with his knuckles. That made my heart lurch. The stuff was already solid. I couldn’t even feel my feet. He straightened up. The four thugs formed a rough circle around us. And I can tell you now, circles just don’t come any rougher.
“No wisecracks today, Nicholas?” the Fat Man demanded. “Nothing funny to say?”
“You’re a loony, Fat Man,” I said.
“And you, my boy, are a fool. You were lucky to escape alive from the Hotel Splendide. But now your time has run out.”
“What have you got against me?” I asked. “What did I ever do to you?”
