The Switch (6 page)

“I arranged it.”

“But what about the alarm . . . ?”

The stick whistled down, missing Tad’s head by less than an inch. “What’s the matter with you?” Finn demanded.

“Nothing . . . !”

“Nuffing, Bobby-boy? Oh yes. There’s something queer all right. Finn can smell a fish. A rotten fish.” Finn rested the stick on Tad’s shoulder and gazed into his eyes. “You been ill,” he continued. “I can respect that. I’ve made lots of people ill myself. But you’re acting like you never been on a job before. What’s happened to you?”

“I’m all right, Finn. Nothing’s changed.”

“I wonder.” Finn let the stick slide off Tad’s shoulder. “But you better not let me down, Bobby-boy. Stuffed with nice things this ’ouse is. Nice pictures and candlesticks. Smart jewelry and antiques. And you got to get me in!”

Finn looked left and right, then hurried across the road. Feeling sick and frightened, Tad followed. The last time he had come to Nightingale Square it had been for crumpets and tea. Now he was back as a thief in the night. It was impossible. When he had woken up in the Snarbys’ caravan he had thought things were as bad as they could get. But this was far, far worse.

Finn had already reached the other side of the road and was crouching down. As Tad joined him, he straightened up and now he was holding what looked like a circular section of the pavement. Looking closer, Tad saw it was the cover of a manhole. Finn grunted and set it down, then pulled out a tangle of multicolored wires, which he began to examine.

“What are you doing?” Tad asked.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Finn shook his head and sighed. “The alarm’s connected to the police.” He pulled out a pair of wire cutters, selected an orange-colored wire and snipped it in two. “At least, it was.”

“You’ve cut it!”

“Don’t disappoint me, Bobby-boy.” Finn glanced upward and suddenly it seemed to Tad that he was holding the wire cutters like a weapon. “You’ve seen it all before. You know the procedure. You know what’s what.”

“Of course, Finn.”

“Good.” Finn flipped the cutters over and put them away, then slid the manhole into place and stood up. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “That’s how long we got before they’ll send someone over to check.” He gestured at the house. “I want the door open in five.”

Tad stood staring at the house. A hundred excuses formed in his mind but died before they could reach his lips. He couldn’t risk asking anything. Finn was already suspicious, and if Tad asked something he was supposed to know . . . he thought of the wire cutters and hurried forward.

Gingerly he reached out and took hold of the ivy, testing it against his weight. He had been right about one thing. The twisting stems would never have taken the weight of a man, but holding on tight he was able to lift himself off the ground. The ivy bent but held firm.

“Five minutes,” Finn reminded him.

Tad began to scale the wall, pulling himself up a few inches at a time. Finn stood below, keeping a lookout along the empty pavement. Somewhere a car door slammed and an engine started up. Tad froze. But the sound grew more distant and finally disappeared. Tad grunted and dragged himself up over the first window.

He had passed the balcony and was making his way up to the third floor when he made the mistake of looking back down. It was the worst thing he could have done. The ground seemed a very long way away and for a moment he couldn’t move. This sort of thing might have been easy for Bob Snarby, but Tad Spencer had always been afraid of heights. The whole house had begun to spin with him attached to it and he was certain he would have to let go. Already he could imagine the wind sailing past him, the crushing impact as he hit the concrete below. He wanted to shout out, but he was too frightened even to draw breath.

There was a low whistle from the pavement. Finn. The sound snapped Tad out of his paralysis and he began to climb again. He was more afraid of Finn than he was of falling. It was as simple as that. He had to go on.

But the farther up he went, the thinner the ivy became. It was bending now, pulling away from the wall. Tad heard the unmistakable sound of a branch snapping and his left foot suddenly kicked out into space. For a ghastly moment he hung there, feeling himself topple backward away from the wall as the ivy came loose. Another branch broke. But then Tad lurched out and managed to grab a thicker clump. Carefully, he transferred his weight across. Then, gritting his teeth, he began to haul himself up farther.

He was only a foot from the window and was about to reach out to open it when there was a second low whistle—this time a warning. A moment later a car drove past, its headlights spilling out over the white front of the house. Instinctively, Tad stopped and pressed himself against the brickwork, not moving, not turning around. The car continued through the square and darkness fell like a curtain behind it. Finn whistled an “all clear.” Tad began again.

He pressed his hand against the window and almost shouted with relief as it began to open inward. It wasn’t locked! At least Finn had been right about that. The strange thing was that Tad wasn’t frightened anymore. The truth was, he felt almost pleased with himself. At school he had never been any good at sports. He had never managed to get more than an inch or two up a rope and the parallel bars had made him feel sick. He had been excused from soccer and football—his parents thought they were too dangerous—and had even cheated at cross-country running by getting a taxi to wait for him around the first corner.

And now he had climbed fifty feet up the side of a building and he wasn’t even out of breath! Tad didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. He was proud of himself. He was pleased.

Letting go of the ivy with one hand, he reached out for the window. This was the difficult part, but he knew he had to keep moving. At least three minutes had passed since he had begun the climb. Finn had given him five. The police would be here in fifteen. Carefully, he swung his weight from the ivy onto the windowsill. Then he pulled himself up and in.

It was only at the very last moment that he lost his balance. Half in the house, half out of it, he suddenly found himself flailing at the air, his center of gravity hopelessly lost. Even then, some instinct saved him. He knew that he could topple backward and down or throw himself forward and in. He took the second option, twisted in midair and dived forward. His shoulders passed neatly through the window. Unable to stop himself, he pitched forward, then fell to the floor with a crash. The noise seemed deafening, but nobody came. Nobody had heard. So Finn was right again. It seemed that there was nobody in the house.

The window had opened into a storage room, stacked high with suitcases and tea chests. Tad could just make out a door in the half-light and crept over to it. The door led out to a corridor with, straight ahead of him, a flight of stairs going down. Tad tiptoed out.

Someone had left a light on in the hall. Tad hurried down four flights of thickly carpeted stairs past paintings by Rubens and Picasso. A huge chandelier hung over him and a gold-framed mirror reflected his image as he scuttled over to the front door. Tad was certain now that the house was empty. It had that feel. His own feet rapped out a brittle sound on the marble slabs in the hall. A grandfather clock ticked. But nothing else stirred.

He reached the front door and slid off the security chain and drew back the bolts. The door opened and there was Finn, standing in front of him, his glasses two brilliant white discs as they caught the streetlight.

Finn lifted his walking stick and pushed Tad aside. He hurried into the house and closed the door behind him. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a vein in his neck was throbbing rapidly. The spiderweb was pulled taut.

“What the devil happened?” he hissed.

“What do you mean . . . ?” Tad began.

“You made the devil of a racket at the window, Bobby-boy. An ’orrible racket. I’d have heard you three blocks away.”

“I fell,” Tad replied. “Anyway, what does it matter? The house is empty. You said so yourself.”

Finn half smiled. “Got a tongue in your head, have you?” he snarled. “That sounds more like my old Bob.” He glanced at his watch. “Seven minutes,” he said. “We’d better move.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll start with the safe. On the second floor.” Leaning on his stick, Finn hurried toward the stairs and began to climb. Tad followed, saying nothing.

They had reached the first landing when the door opened.

Finn saw it first and stopped. He was on a landing above, five steps below the level of the door, with Tad just behind him. A man in a blue silk dressing gown and leather slippers stepped out. He was in his sixties with silver hair and a gaunt face and Tad didn’t need to ask his name. It had to be Lord Roven. The owner of the house was looking down at them, clutching a heavy silver candlestick as a weapon in his hand.

“Stop there!” he said in a cultivated voice. “I heard you come in the window and I’ve already called the police. You might as well wait where you are and make it easier on yourselves.”

Finn looked over his shoulder at Tad and snarled at him with the cobwebbed side of his face. “You little fool!” he hissed. “You little idiot! I told you, didn’t I? All that blooming noise!”

Tad took a step back. Everything was swimming again. He felt sick. He just wanted to disappear.

Finn turned back to Lord Roven. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Wednesdays is your bridge night.”

Lord Roven frowned. He shook his head slowly. “It’s Thursday . . .” he said.

“Thursday!” Finn almost shouted the word. A tic had appeared at one of his eyes, making the cobweb dance. “Thursday?” he whimpered again. “Then it’s not my fault, is it? It was a perfect plan. Perfect! I just got the day wrong, that’s all!”

Then everything seemed to collide with itself. Tad would never be quite sure what happened—or when.

The shrill sound of a siren cut through the night. Finn took a step forward. Lord Roven moved toward him, reaching out as if to grab him. Finn dropped his ebony walking stick—or part of it. When Tad looked again, he was still holding the handle, but the rest of the stick had fallen away and an ugly length of steel protruded from his hand. A sword stick, Tad realized. But Lord Roven hadn’t seen it. Whether Finn lifted the sword or whether his victim walked onto it, Tad couldn’t say. But the next thing he knew, Finn had laughed out loud, a single cry that danced in his throat. At the same time Lord Roven groaned and fell to the floor. Then there was a screech of tires. A blue light flashed on and off through a downstairs window. A hand hammered at the door.

“The kitchen!” Finn hissed, snatching up the rest of his walking stick. “We can get out the back way!”

“You’ve killed him!” Tad whispered.

Finn swore and then grabbed Tad by the throat. For a moment their faces were pressed so close that they touched and Tad could feel the stubble of the man’s beard rubbing against his own skin. “I’ll kill you too if you don’t move!” he snarled. “Now—come on!”

The thumping on the door continued, harder now, and a second police siren echoed across the square. Finn ran down the stairs—five steps at a time—and slid across the marble hallway. Tad followed. He could just make out a uniformed shape through the stained glass next to the front door, but he ignored it, twisting around to follow the passage back past the grandfather clock. Then Finn grabbed hold of him and pulled him through an open doorway even as a booted foot crashed into the front door, splintering the wood and smashing the first of the locks.

Tad found himself in the kitchen, a long, narrow room all white and silver with French windows leading into a garden at the end. Finn was already trying the handles, but they were securely locked.

“Stand back!” he ordered. As Tad obeyed, he raised his walking stick, then brought it whistling through the air into the glass. The window shattered at exactly the same moment as the front door was kicked in. Tad heard the falling wood, the sound of voices shouting in the hall. “Move!” Finn commanded.

Tad followed Finn into the garden. The lights on the police cars were still flashing and the bushes and trees loomed up on him, flickering blue against the night sky. The garden was surrounded by a low wall with other gardens on each side.

“Split up!” Finn hissed. “Confuse ’em. We got more chance that way. Meet back at the caravan . . .” Then, before Tad could stop him, he hoisted himself over the wall and disappeared down the other side.

Tad swung around. Two policemen had stepped out of the kitchen and were standing in the garden. Slowly, they began to approach, and Tad realized they were afraid of him.

“All right . . .” one of them began.

Tad turned his back on them and ran. He felt his feet first on the grass, then in the soft earth of the flower beds. His scrabbling hands found the garden wall and he pulled himself up, half expecting the two policemen to grab him and pull him back. But he had been too fast for them. He twisted over the top of the wall and fell, squirming down the other side.

“There goes one of them! On the other side!”

A heap of garden rubbish had broken his fall. Tad stood up and brushed some of it away. There were more whistles, more shouts. Lights had gone on in the adjoining houses, illuminating the gardens that ran along the back. Tad looked one way, then another, then began to run. He reached another garden wall and threw himself over it. Then another. He had forgotten all about Finn, didn’t care if he had been caught or not. Tad couldn’t stop. A window opened in one of the houses and somebody shouted. He came to a garden fence, kicked out at it with his foot and broke through.

He found himself in a narrow alleyway. Down one end he could see flashing lights and hear voices. The other end was dark and silent. That was the direction he chose.

Tad never knew how he got away without being arrested. But the alleyway led to a main road and suddenly he was in the clear with no policemen in sight and the chaos of Nightingale Square far behind him. He ran for an hour and only stopped when he could run no more.