Free South by South East by Anthony Horowitz Page B

used knives.
    They’d used a pair of ice-skating boots.

SHREDDED WHEAT
    We spent the night at a cheap motel on the edge of Amsterdam. Our money was low and so were we. Rushmore had been our only link in a chain that might lead us to Charon and now he was dead. Worse still, it seemed that Charon knew we were in Amsterdam. How else could he have got to the ice-rink before us?
    It was raining when we got to the Van Bates Motel. We were shown to our room by a thin, twitchy manager who didn’t speak a word of English. In the end we had to get his mother down to translate.
    All I wanted was a shower and a bed but the shower wasn’t working and as usual Tim took the bed. There was a TV in one corner of the room. It was tuned to the BBC – the ten o’clock news. I didn’t want to hear the news but I was somehow glad to hear another English voice. I listened. And suddenly I was glad I’d turned it on.
    There was a reporter on the screen. He was standing outside Sotheby’s, the auction house in New Bond Street, London.
    “Boris Kusenov—” They were the first two words I’d heard. That was what had caught my attention— “is considered to be the key figure in the struggle for power at the Kremlin.”
    The picture changed. Now the reporter was inside the auction house, standing in front of a large canvas. For a moment I thought the TV had broken. Then I realized. This was modern art.
    “Kusenov is in England to bid for a canvas by the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali,” the reporter’s voice went on. “Titled ‘The Tsar’s Feast’, it depicts Tsar Nicholas II offering stale bread to his dissatisfied serfs…”
    Well, that may have been what it looked like to him. To me the picture looked like a bent watch beside a pink lake being examined by two oversized amoebas. Had Kusenov come all the way from Russia just to buy this? The TV screen cut to a picture of the reporter. He answered the question for me.
    “Kusenov came to Britain unexpectedly because of his belief that the painting should hang in Russia. Although it is expected to reach almost a million pounds, he will be bidding for it when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s in two days’ time.”
    The reporter smirked at the camera and the programme cut back to the studio and the next news item.
    “Police have completely lost the track of the dangerous criminal, Tim Diamond, who…”
    I turned the set off. I’d heard quite enough about
him
.
    “Kusenov,” I muttered. Tim was sitting upright on the bed. The sound of his own name had evidently woken him up. “He’s already in England.”
    “Is that bad?” Tim asked.
    I sighed. It wasn’t bad. It was terrible. “It means we’re running out of time. Charon could move at any moment.” I thought for a minute. “We’ve got to find this Winter House,” I said. “We need help.”
    Tim’s eyes lit up. “Charlotte!”
    “You’d better call her.”
    Tim called her. The phone rang about six times before we were connected. Charlotte answered in Dutch.
    “Charlotte?” Tim interrupted. “It’s me … Tim.”
    “Tim?” There was a pause and I wondered if she’d forgotten who he was. But then she continued breathlessly. “Thank goodness you rang. I have to see you. I think I’ve found something.”
    “What?” Tim asked.
    “I can’t tell you. Not over the telephone. Let’s meet somewhere safe.” Another pause. I could hear heavy breathing. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Tim’s. Then Charlotte cut in again. “Just outside Amsterdam, in the Flavoland. There’s a crossroads and a bus stop. Can you meet me there tomorrow morning? At nine.”
    “Tomorrow?” Tim crooned. “But that’s a whole day away!”
    “I know.”
    “I’ll be there.”
    Tim hung up. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Just off the Flavobahn. In Autoland.”
    “I heard,” I said.
    And I had heard. Charlotte was frightened and Rushmore was dead. Charon, it seemed, was everywhere. How long would it be before he moved in