And that, of course, was when the bomb went off.
I didn’t even realize what had happened at first. There was a flash of red light and the window seemed to curve out towards me. I must have been off-balance from the start because my legs jackknifed under me and I was thrown back onto the flower-bed. This was just as well. A torrent of burning air and jagged glass missed my head by a fraction as half the office was blown out into the street.
Somehow I managed to get back to my feet. I was glad they were still at the end of my legs. I gave myself a quick examination. There was blood on my shirt and it looked like my colour but otherwise I seemed to be in one piece. It was raining. I blinked. The rain was made of paper. I looked closer and realized what was happening. It was raining money, Canadian dollars and English pounds blown out of the manager’s personal safe. As I staggered round to the front door, I snatched a few notes and put them in my pocket. I had a feeling I was going to need them.
Inside, the calm of the bank had been shattered. So had the marble floor. The cashiers were in hysterics, the alarm-bells jangling, the air thick with dust. I couldn’t see the security guard, which was probably just as well.
Then I saw Tim. He had walked back into the main banking hall as if he were in a daze, which, in fact, he probably was. His clothes were in rags, his face was black, and he seemed half-stunned. But like me, he was still in one piece.
Then the security guard staggered towards him. At the same time Louise Meyer appeared in the shattered doorway. Her two-piece suit was now a four-piece suit. Her make-up had been blown off. And she was completely covered in dust. Now, with the security guard only millimetres away from Tim, she shouted out, “Don’t go near him! He’s got a gun!”
“No I haven’t,” Tim protested.
Suddenly I knew there was only one way out of this. “Yes you have!” I shouted.
“Have I?” Tim saw me. And he understood. “Yes I have!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got a gun!”
It worked. The cashiers began screaming again and the security guard backed away. For a moment the way out was clear but already I could hear the first police sirens slicing their way through the London traffic. It was time to go.
“Tim!” I shouted. He saw me and ambled over to the door. “Let’s get out of here!”
We went. Nobody tried to stop us. As far as they were concerned, we were dangerous criminals. I didn’t know where we were going or what we were going to do. I was just glad to be out of there. But as we passed through the front door, Tim stopped and turned round.
“Wait a minute, Nick,” he said. “I still haven’t heard if I’ve got the job.”
A police car turned the corner. I grabbed Tim and ran.
CHAIN REACTION
One hour after the bank blast, Tim was a wanted man. Suddenly his picture was in the papers and on TV. Identikit pictures had appeared so fast you’d think the police had had them printed in advance just in case they needed them. Once again we were Public Enemies — but all we’d managed to take from the bank was two hundred dollars and some travellers’ cheques. I changed the dollars and used some of the money to buy Tim a new shirt. That hardly left enough to get us a room for the night.
We couldn’t go back to the office. That was the first place they’d come looking for us. We needed a cheap hotel somewhere quiet, where they didn’t look at their guests too closely. Somewhere that needed guests so badly they wouldn’t look at all.
We found the hotel on the wrong side of Paddington. In fact it wasn’t a hotel but a guest house; a narrow, grimy building with no name on the door, but a “Vacancies” sign in the window. It was halfway down a cul-de-sac so there would be no passing traffic. And you couldn’t reach it from the back either. The Paddington railway tracks cut right through the garden. Try mowing the lawn and you’d be run over by a train.
“What do you think?” Tim asked.
“It’s fine,” I said. I rang the bell.
The door was opened by a thin, elderly woman in a grey cardigan that she had knitted herself. About halfway through she must have lost the pattern. Underneath it there was a shabby dress hanging over a hideous pair of slippers with pink pom-poms.
“Yes?” she said.
“You got a room?” Tim asked.
“Oh yes! Come in! I’ve got lots of rooms.”
The lady led us through a dark, depressing hallway and into a reception room that wasn’t much better.
This room had six lumpy chairs and a coffee-table stained with coffee. Two elderly men were sitting at a table playing chess. A third man was in an armchair with his back to us.
“My name is Mrs Jackson,” the lady told us. She spoke like a duchess, rolling each word between her lips. “Let me introduce you to my guests.” She gestured at the plump, fair-haired man in the armchair. “Mr Blondini is in the theatre!” she announced. The man in the armchair grinned and tried to stand up. But he couldn’t, as he was wearing a straitjacket and there were about a dozen chains snaking round his arms, legs and chest. “Mr Blondini is an escapologist,” Mrs Jackson explained.
“Just practising!” Mr Blondini added, heaving frantically with his shoulders.
Mrs Jackson went over to the two men playing chess. The first of them was short with close-cropped hair and a monocle. “This is Mr Webber,” she said. “Mr Webber is from Germany. But otherwise he’s perfectly nice.”
“Check!” Mr Webber snapped, moving his bishop with such force that it snapped too.
“And this is Mr Ferguson.” The other player was tall and thin, a timid-looking man with curly hair. Mrs Jackson drew Tim aside. “Do try not to mention mountains or tall buildings to him,” she whispered. “Mr Ferguson suffers terribly from vertigo.”
Tim waved at Mr Ferguson. “Hi!” he said.
Mr Ferguson rolled his eyes and fainted.
Mrs Jackson frowned. “I have a room on the first floor,” she said. “How many nights will it be?”
“We’ll be here until the end of the week,” I lied.
“It’s thirty pounds a night. Cash in advance.”
I nodded and Tim counted out three ten pound notes.
Mrs Jackson snatched them hungrily. “Room twelve on the first floor at the end of the corridor,” she said. She stopped and looked more closely at Tim. “Do I know you?” she said. “Your face is very familiar. What did you say your name was?”
“It’s… it’s…” Tim stared blankly at me.
I glanced at the ten pound notes in Mrs Jackson’s hands. “It’s Queen,” I said. “We’re the Queen brothers.”
“Oh yes?”
“Good night, Mrs Jackson.”
I grabbed Tim and we made our way upstairs. At the top, I turned and looked back. The landlady was still there, watching us, her eyes glinting in the half-light. I nodded at her and she spun on her heel, disappearing the way she had come.
“She knows who we are!”
“No, Tim. Maybe she saw you on the news. But I don’t think she recognized you…”
We were sitting in room twelve a few minutes later. The room was about as inspiring as the rest of the hotel. It had one ancient bed, a couch and a swirly carpet that had lost most of its swirls. Tim was lying on the bed. I was sitting next to him, thinking. We couldn’t stay long at this guest house. Not at thirty pounds a night. We had to go somewhere. But where?
It seemed to me we had only one choice. Tim was now a wanted bank robber. Snape would never believe our story about the bomb, not after the telephone box and the pet shop. No, Mr Waverly — the real Mr Waverly — had us right where he wanted us. We had to help him find Charon. It was our only chance.
But where could we start? Sitting on the bed, I thought about what he had told us. One of his agents, Jake
