Public Enemy Number Two

free!”

Snape nodded. “That’s right. I saw you snatched by Big Ed’s gang. We followed you there. Once they’d left you on the tracks, I came looking for you. I helped you get out.”

“Well, thanks for that . . .”

“It was the same thing tonight,” Snape went on. “We homed in on you under the river and I guessed you’d found the Fence. After that we came in to get you.”

“You took your time.”

“We were waiting for the Fence.”

“Yeah—well, it looks like the one who got away.”

“Don’t worry about him, laddie. We’ve smashed his operation. And one of the gang will talk. You’ll see. We’ll catch up with him eventually.”

“Just so long as you don’t need any more help from me.” I finished the tea. It was the first hot drink I’d had in thirty-six hours. “So how come you weren’t killed?” I asked. “I saw you . . . in the car.”

“I was lucky. I was in the backseat. The door was ripped off and I was thrown clear just before the car blew. The driver managed to get out, too. Then we went back and got Boyle.”

“He’s dead?”

“No. He’s in the hospital. Third-degree burns.”

“You’re breaking my heart, Snape,” I said. “I’ll send him some flowers.”

“That’s good of you, lad.”

“Sure. Dandelions.”

Perhaps I was being a bit hard. But think about it. I’d been framed, tried and sent to jail, menaced, chased, shot at, kidnapped, knocked out, tied to a railway track, almost blown up, menaced some more, tied up again, half drowned, exhausted—and all for two policemen who hadn’t even caught their man anyway. It wasn’t as if I’d been given any choice. And what was I going to get out of it all, except for extra homework once I got back to school?

“You won’t do so badly,” Snape assured me. “There’ll be a reward from the insurance companies for some of the stuff that gets recovered. That should be worth a bit.”

We sat in silence, watching the activity all around us. I yawned. I was dog-tired. All I wanted was a bed. I’d even settle for a kennel.

Then Tim strolled over to us. He’d been fixed up by the doctors. Someone had lent him a sweater. And he was looking in a lot better shape than me. In fact, he was quite his old self. Which is to say that as usual he was totally impossible.

“Hi, Nick!” he said, smiling.

“Are you okay, Tim?” I asked.

He grinned. “This has been my greatest case. It’ll make me famous. The man who got Johnny Powers!”

“What about me?” I demanded.

“You helped, kid. Maybe I’ll even share some of the reward with you. In fact, I’ll forget that fiver you owe me.” He tapped me gently on the shoulder. I felt like knocking him out. “The British Museum will pay me plenty for the return of the Purple Peacock,” he went on. “By the way, where is it?”

He sat down as he spoke. But he was so wrapped up in himself that he wasn’t looking what he was doing. I saw his backside come down fair and square on the cardboard box. The cardboard crumpled. There was a dull splintering from inside. The color drained out of Tim’s face.

The Purple Peacock had been stolen in Camden. It had found its way to Wapping. It had survived an explosion and a flood. But it hadn’t survived Tim.

He’d just sat on it.

FRENCH TRANSLATION

It ended exactly the way it had begun—with French on a hot afternoon.

C’etait un dimanche matin et il faisait chaud. Antoine et Philippe etaient dans le champ. Leur pere dormait dans une chaise longue. Quelqu’un les appelait de l’autre cote de la palissade. C’etait leur grandmere.

“Voulez-vous jouer au football?” demanda-t-elle.

The exercise was written up on the blackboard and we were being made to translate it out loud. Palis would call out a name and some poor soul would have to stand up and stumble over the next sentence. You weren’t allowed to sit down until you reached a period. Why do French translations have to be so stupid? You sweat your guts out turning them into English only to find they weren’t worth it in the first place. Fortunately I’d done this one the night before. If my name was called, I could cope.

“Sington!”

“It was a . . . er . . . dimanche . . . Sunday morning and it made warm.”

“It was hot, you stupid child!”

Two weeks had passed since our escape from Penelope. In the newspapers, the story had slipped from page-one headlines to page-two comment to a few column inches on page three. Anyway, the press had left out more than it had told. For a start, nobody mentioned Tim or me. Snape had seen to that with something called a D-notice. D for “don’t!” He said it would be better for me if my name was kept out of things. And better for you, too, I thought. What would the British public make of the British police framing and blackmailing British schoolkids? I mean, it simply wasn’t British.

“Sit down, Sington. Goodman!”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes you, Goodman.”

“Antoine and Philippe were in the field, sir.”

In the end I’d gotten a four-line mention in some of the nationals. They said that I’d been released from Strangeday Hall “in the light of new evidence.” In other words, my name was cleared. Only Snape and the authorities were making sure that it wasn’t a name you’d read about too much.

“Hopkins!”

“Their father was asleep in a garden chair.”

“Exactement.”

Of course, I’d been the center of attention once I’d got back to school. The headmaster had made a speech about me during assembly. Everyone had made a lot of jokes. But it’s surprising how quickly people forget these things. After a few days everything was back to normal. Sure enough, there was extra homework. Enough to fill an extra home. But I wasn’t the hero anymore. I wasn’t sure that I ever had been.

Palis hadn’t changed either. He was his old, sarcastic, ear-tweaking self. He had barely said a word to me since I’d gotten back. It was as if he wanted to forget the evening we had spent together. I hadn’t mentioned his involvement, the way he had helped me. I guessed he preferred it that way. But he could at least have said he was glad to see me alive.

“Simple!”

He called my name now and I got to my feet. It was hot and stuffy in the classroom. The sun was dazzling me. It was hard to concentrate on the words. Somebody did something from the other side of the palisade?

I remembered. “Someone called them from the other side of the fence,” I said.

“Yes. That is correct, Simple. Now Buckingham! The next sentence . . .”

I sat down again.

My head was throbbing and I could feel the sweat beading on my skin. For a moment I thought I was ill. But it was something else. The voices in the classroom had become a dull echo. I screwed up my eyes and tried to focus on the blackboard. I’d seen something, read something, that was horribly wrong. Or maybe just horrible.

The French words in Palis’s spidery handwriting blurred, then straightened out. I plucked out the sentence I had just translated.