The Falcon's Malteser by Anthony Horowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

we’d walked in on the dead dwarf and I could tell something was brewing. Perhaps he was finally going to pack in the private-detective business and send me packing, too. All the same, I dug up the Maltesers from beneath the floorboard and took them with me. That was funny, too. Before, when I hadn’t known what they were worth, I’d slung them about like you would any box of candy. Now that I knew they carried a five-million-dollar price tag, I could feel them burning a hole in my pocket.
    We walked down the Fulham Road toward Kensington Station. Herbert was still quiet. And he was jumpy. When a guy stopped us to ask us the time, Herbert jumped, disappearing behind a parked car. I found him there a minute later, crouching down, pretending to tie his shoelaces. It would have been a bit more convincing if his shoes had had laces. The truth was, Herbert was afraid, certain we were being watched. The taxi driver on the other side of the road, the old man walking his dog, the couple kissing at the bus stop . . . as far as Herbert was concerned, any one of them could have been working for the Fat Man, for Beatrice von Falkenberg, for the police . . . whoever.
    We stopped at a fast-food restaurant called Grannies. It got the name because all the hamburgers were served in granary-bread buns. As a sort of publicity stunt, someone had also had the bright idea of only employing grannies—little old ladies with gray hair and glasses. The only trouble with all this was that for a fast-food restaurant, it was actually pretty slow. The chef must have been about a hundred and two. One of the waitresses used a walker. But the food’s okay and we were in no hurry. We took a table by the window. Herbert chose the chair that looked out. There was no way he was going to sit with his back to the street.
    We ordered Grannyburgers and fries with chocolate milk shakes on the side and hardly said anything until it all arrived. I picked up the ketchup holder and squeezed it. The stuff spat out, missing the plate and splattering onto the white table. It looked like blood.
    Herbert put down his knife and fork. “Nick . . .” he began.
    Herbert?” I said expectantly. Actually, I knew what to expect now. I should have seen it coming.
    “This case is getting out of hand,” he said. “I mean . . . it’s getting dangerous. The way things are going, I reckon somebody could soon get hurt.”
    “You mean—like Johnny Naples?” I reminded him.
    “Right.” Herbert stared at the ketchup, his lip curling. “And he wasn’t just hurt,” he went on. “I mean, he probably was hurt. But he was also killed.”
    “You can’t get more hurt than that,” I agreed.
    He nodded. “So what I’m saying is, maybe it’s time you split. You’re a good kid, Nick. But you’re only thirteen. This is a case for Tim Diamond.”
    It was incredible. Maybe it was the shock of what had happened that day or maybe it was the milk shake, but Herbert was trying to get rid of me. “This is a case for Tim Diamond”—it was a line out of a bad movie, but Herbert really believed it. I could see him switching into his private-detective role even as he sat there, shoulders slumped, eyes hard. He’d have had a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth if cigarettes didn’t make him throw up.
    “I figure I’ll send you to Auntie Maureen in Slough,” he went on. I shuddered. Auntie Maureen, my mother’s sister, had a semidetached house and a semidetached artificial hip. She was only fifty years old but was in need of round-the-clock nursing. Whenever I stayed with her, I ended up as her round-the-clock nurse. “Or you could always go to Australia and stay with Mum and Dad,” Herbert added.
    I took a deep breath and pronged a forkful of french fries. Whenever Herbert got into these moods, I had to tread carefully. If I ever suggested that the great Tim Diamond needed any help from his thirteen-year-old brother, I’d have been on the next plane to Sydney