The Blurred Man by Anthony Horowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

and Lee can be trusted. And someone has just killed Boris.” I remembered what Mrs Lovely had told us. “Mrs Lovely said that someone had been asking questions about the balloon-seller,” I went on. “I thought she was talking about you … the police! But now I wonder if it wasn’t someone else. The real killer, for example!” Snape stared at me. “I think Boris saw what really happened,” I concluded. “And that was why he was killed.”
    “Who by?” Snape demanded.
    “By Lenny Smile!”
    There was a long silence. Snape looked doubtful. Boyle looked … well the same way Boyle always looks.
    “What do you mean?” Snape demanded at length.
    “It all makes sense. Lenny Smile knew that you were after him. You say you had a policeman watching his flat?”
    Snape nodded. “Henderson. He’s disappeared.”
    “Since when?”
    “He vanished a week before the accident with the steamroller…”
    “That was no accident!” I said. “Don’t you get it, Snape? Smile knew he was cornered. You were closing in on him. And Joe Carter was coming over too. Carter wanted to know what had happened to all the millions he’d given Dream Time. So Smile had to disappear. He faked his own death, and right now he’s somewhere in London. We’ve seen him! Twice!”
    That made Snape sit up. “Where?”
    “He was at the circus. He was in the crowd. We saw him about a minute before Boris was killed. And he was at the cemetery. Not underground – on top of it! I followed him and he ran away.”
    “How do you know it was Smile?” Snape asked.
    “I don’t. At least, I can’t be sure. But I’ve seen a photograph of him and it looked the same.”
    “We don’t know much about Smile,” Snape admitted. “Henderson was watching the flat, but he only saw him once. We know when he was born and when he died. But that’s about all…”
    “He didn’t die. I’m telling you. Dig up the coffin and you’ll probably find it’s empty!”
    Snape looked at Boyle, then back at me. Slowly, he nodded. “All right, laddy,” he said. “Let’s play it your way. But if you’re wasting my time … it’s your funeral!”
    “There was no funeral,” I said. “Lenny Smile isn’t dead.”
    “Let’s find out…”
    I’ll tell you now. There’s one place you don’t want to be at five past twelve on a black November night – and that’s in a cemetery. The ground was so cold I could feel it all the way up to my knees, and every time I breathed the ice seemed to find its way into my skull. There were the four of us there – Snape, Boyle, Tim and myself – and now we’d been joined by another half-dozen police officers and workmen, two of whom were operating a mechanical digger that whined and groaned as it clawed at the frozen earth. Tim was whining and groaning too, as a matter of fact. I think he’d have preferred to have been in bed.
    But maybe it wasn’t just the weather that was managing to chill me. The whole thing was like a scene out of
Frankenstein
. You know the one – where Igor the deformed Hungarian servant has to climb into the grave and steal a human brain. Glancing at Boyle, I saw a distinct physical resemblance. I had to remind myself that two days ago I had been enjoying half-term and that the following day I would be back at school, with all the fun of double geography and French. In the meantime I had somehow stumbled into a horror film. I wondered what was going to turn up in the final reel.
    The digger stabbed down. The earth shifted. Gradually the hole got deeper. There was a clunk – metal hitting wood – and two of the workmen climbed in to clear away the rest of the soil with spades. Snape moved forward.
    I didn’t watch as the coffin was opened. You have to remember that I was only fourteen years old, and if someone had made a film out of what was going on here I wouldn’t even have been allowed to see it.
    “Boyle!” Snape muttered the single word and the other man lowered himself into the