South by South East by Anthony Horowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

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.