South by South East (14 page)

What if …?

I forced myself to think. Tim hadn’t gone straight into his bedroom. He’d taken a shower first. The shower…

The flat was so small, we didn’t have room for a bathroom. The shower was at the back of the kitchen in a sort of alcove. I dashed in there, skidding on the floor which was covered in water. Tim’s shower-cap was perched on the kettle. There were three bars of soap in the fridge.

But the card was nowhere to be seen.

I emptied every drawer in the place. Knives and forks clattered to the ground. Tea towels and tablecloths flew into the corners. I searched in the dustbins, the ovens, the cupboards … and finally I found it, pinned to the wall behind the door. It read:

The Tunnel of Love! No wonder Tim had blushed so much when he read it. I looked at my watch. It was half past six. Hampstead was only a couple of kilometres up the road. I could still get there in time.

I was out of the office and running before I’d even started to think. Tim had an appointment with a killer. He was in love. I was going to save him. But I was unarmed.

As I hit the High Street and started up the hill, the night was drawing in. And somehow I knew that the Tunnel of Love was going to be longer and darker than it had ever been before.

Whirling lights. Crowds. The smell of hot dogs and the jangle of different tunes fighting with each other in the warm evening air. The fair had come to Hampstead Heath and lay sprawled out across the grass for as far as I could see. It was five to seven. I had run all the way in the heat of the evening and for a moment I stood where I was, swaying on my feet. On one side of me came the wail of the ghost train; on the other, a rattle and a scream as a painted carriage whirred round a metal track. I can’t say I’m a big fan of funfairs. I can’t afford the fares so I never have much fun. But that evening the Hampstead Heath fair was looking its best. There must have been a thousand people there. Maybe more. Tim was one of them. I had five minutes to find him.

I pressed forward, past the coconut shies, the Hall of Mirrors, the helter-skelter and the big wheel. There was a blast of organ pipes and a huge merry-go-round started up, its multicoloured horses leaping and plunging at the end of their twisted golden poles. The Tunnel of Love was on the other side. I saw it and I saw Tim at the same time. He was sitting in a boat with Charlotte; number eleven. Before I could reach them, the boat had drifted off into the mouth of the tunnel. A short, fat man pocketed the one pound fare and looked around for any other customers. But it must have been too hot for love. There was no one else around.

The Tunnel of Love was a big, wooden structure with plastic walls that were meant to look like stone but still looked like plastic. You went through it all in a little boat which was carried along on a shallow river. I almost smiled at that. Charon was the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology. Well, it looked like Tim had just bought himself a ticket.

I couldn’t go into the tunnel. I didn’t have the money for a ticket and anyway I doubted if the man would let me ride alone. But if the entrance was blocked, the exit wasn’t. I ran past the merry-go-round. For a moment the horses galloped beside my shoulder. Then I had left them behind me as I reached the end of the tunnel where the water gushed out before looping round to start all over again. Without stopping to think, I went into the tunnel.

There was only one way in and that was along the artificial river. The water lapped over my ankles as I splashed through the soft glow of this plastic lovers’ world. If you’ve ever been into a Tunnel of Love, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The river looped and zigzagged, going nowhere – slowly. There were a few plastic cupids – dressed-up shop dummies floating under the roof. I went past what must have been the high point of the ride, a couple of dummies done up as Romeo and Juliet.

The only sound in the place was the echo of the fairground music outside and the trickle of the water. Add a plastic skeleton or two and the place could have just as easily doubled as another ghost train.

A ferry bobbed round the corner and I stepped up onto one of the banks to let it sail past me. I watched it go with an unpleasant feeling in my stomach. It was number eleven. But it was empty.

“You ruined everything. You and your interfering brother…”

The voice was a malevolent hiss. I stepped forward softly. A thick black wire snaked in front of my foot. It was plugged into a second wire that trailed along to a socket in the wall. I realized that I had found the power source for the entire tunnel and at once half an idea came to mind. I leaned down and picked up the wire, cradling the connector in my two hands. Now, if I pulled the two wires apart, I would plunge the tunnel into darkness. The only trouble was, I’d probably electrocute myself at the same time.

“Charlotte…” Tim protested.

Still holding the wire, I tiptoed forward and looked round the next corner. Charlotte was standing on a triangular piece of dry land in front of a mock-up of Snow White and Prince Charming. But there was nothing very charming about her. She was holding a gun. And she was aiming it at Tim.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Charlotte rasped, and now I recognized the voice I had heard at the Winter House outside Amsterdam.

“But I thought you loved me!”

“Loved you? I can’t stand you…!”

“Oh…” I had never seen Tim look sadder.

Charlotte raised her gun. “I’ll enjoy killing you,” she said. “And then I shall kill your brother. I enjoy killing people, you see. It’s my business. But it’s also my pleasure and so I’ll build up an even bigger network of assassins. Everyone in the world wants someone else dead. I will provide the service. I will be the head of a multinational murder organization. I’ll float shares on the stock market! I’ll be number one.”

She was insane. I could see it now. She was Charon. Pure murder.

Her finger tightened on the trigger.

I took another step forward – into sight.

“Tim!” I shouted. “Duck!”

I pulled the two wires apart.

There was a flash and the whole tunnel went pitch black. But even in that second, Charon had wheeled round and fired; not at Tim but at me. I felt the bullet whip past my face. I fell back and dropped the wires.

“I’ll kill you!” Charon screamed. Her voice was a thin, inhuman wail in the darkness. “I’ll kill both of you.”

I heard her step towards me. I couldn’t see anything.

“No!” That was Tim.

“What…?” That was Charon.

There was a splash and – perhaps half a second later a terrible blue flash like nothing I had ever seen before. I was lying on my back, but in that flash I saw everything. Tim had realized Charon was coming for me.

He had pushed her into the river. But what he hadn’t known was that the live cable I had dropped was also in the water. And when Charon had hit the surface, the circuit had been completed.

There was nothing we could do. There was another blue flash. Charon floated, rigid, in the water. Then the entire system short-circuited and the blackness returned.

We watched as the ambulance men carried Charon away. The electrical charge hadn’t been strong enough to kill her, but it would be a while before she could stand up again and when she did the first thing she’d need would be a new hairdresser. The top of her head looked like a giant toilet-brush.

The police had been called and we were sipping cups of hot, sweet tea while we answered their inevitable questions. I suppose they thought we were in shock. But Charon was the one who’d got the biggest shock of all.

I didn’t say very much. The fairground was still spinning and echoing all around us and I felt lost in all the noise and the bright lights. I had to face it: I had come to save Tim’s life, but in the end it was he who had saved mine. I looked at him, sipping his tea from a plastic cup and suddenly I felt almost affectionate. Maybe I was in shock after all.

“Thanks, Tim,” I said.

“It wasn’t me who got the tea,” Tim replied. “It was one of the policemen.”

Behind me, the merry-go-round had started up again for the thousandth time, and that made me think. People got killed. Bad things happened. But at the end of the day, life was only another ride and, like it or not, I’d been given a ticket, so what else could I do but hang on and enjoy it and save the tears for when it was time to get off?