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

hole. There was a pause. Then…
    “Sir!”
    Boyle was holding something. He passed it up to Snape. It was dark blue, shaped a bit like a bell, only paper thin. There was a silver disc squashed in the middle. It took me a few seconds to work out what it was. Then I realized. It was a police-constable’s helmet. But one that had been flattened.
    “Henderson!” Snape muttered.
    There had been a police-constable watching Smile’s flat. He had disappeared a week before the accident. His name had been Henderson.
    And now we knew what had happened to him.
    “Don’t you see, Tim? It was Henderson who was killed. Not Lenny Smile!”
    The two of us were back at our Camden flat. After our hours spent in the cemetery, we were too cold to go to bed. I’d made us both hot chocolate and Tim was wearing two pairs of pyjamas and two dressing-gowns, with a hot-water bottle clasped to his chest.
    “But who killed him?”
    “Lenny Smile.”
    “But what about Hoover? And the woman? They were there when it happened.”
    For once, Tim was right. Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee must have been part of it. Snape had already gone to arrest them. The man they had helped down the stairs must have been Henderson. I had been right about that. He had been drugged. They had taken him out of the flat and thrown him into the road, just as Barry Krishner turned the corner on his way home…
    And yet it wasn’t going to be easy to prove. There were no witnesses. And until Smile was found, it was hard to see exactly what he could do. Suddenly I realized how clever Smile had been. The blurred man? He had been more than that. He had run Dream Time, he had stolen all the money, and he had remained virtually invisible.
    “Nobody knew him.” I said.
    “Who?”
    “Smile. Mrs Lovely never spoke to him. Joe Carter only wrote to him. We went to his flat and it was like he’d never actually lived there. Even Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee couldn’t tell us much about him.”
    Tim nodded. I yawned. It was two o’clock, way past my bedtime. And in just five and a half hours I’d be getting ready for school. Monday was going to be a long day.
    “You’ll have to go to the Ritz tomorrow,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “To tell Joe Carter about his so-called best friend.”
    Tim sighed. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “He had this big idea about Lenny Smile when all the time he was someone else!”
    I finished my hot chocolate and stood up. Then, suddenly, it hit me. “What did you just say?” I asked.
    “I’ve forgotten.” Tim was so tired he was forgetting what he was saying even as he said it.
    “Someone else! That’s exactly the point! Of course!”
    There had been so many clues. The note in the cemetery. Mrs Lovely and the card Lenny had sent her. The gravestone. The photograph of Smile outside the Café Debussy. And Snape…
    “We know when he was born…”
    But it was only now, when I was almost too tired to move, that it came together. The truth. All of it.
    The following morning, I didn’t go to school. Instead I made two telephone calls, and then later on, just after ten o’clock, Tim and I set out for the final showdown.
    It was time to meet Lenny Smile.
    * See
Public Enemy Number Two

THE BIG WHEEL
    The tube from Camden Town to Waterloo is direct on the Northern line – which was probably just as well. I’d only had about five hours’ sleep, and I was so tired that the whole world seemed to be shimmering and moving in slow motion. Tim was just as bad. He had a terrible nightmare in which he was lowered, still standing up, into Lenny’s grave – and woke up screaming. I suppose it wasn’t too surprising. He’d fallen asleep on the escalator.
    But the two of us had livened up a little by the time we’d reached the other end. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The rain was sheeting down, sucking any colour or warmth out of the city. We had left Waterloo station behind us, making for the South Bank, a stretch of London