The Sultan's Tigers (2 page)

Inside, things were even worse. The house was a danger zone. The kitchen sink was blocked and the stove was caked with dried food. In the hallway, the light switch had fallen off. Exposed wires drooled out of the wall. It was a miracle Grandpa had survived so long.

I went hunting for food. The fridge contained nothing but some carrots covered in black spots and a half-drunk carton of milk with a sell-by date of three weeks ago, but I found some cans of tomato soup in a cupboard. I opened one and tipped the contents into a saucepan. When the soup was piping hot, I poured it into a bowl and ate my lunch in front of the TV, flicking through every channel. There was nothing on. I feel sorry for the Irish. Their TV is lame.

Grandpa had a few books and there were some old magazines lying around, but I didn't feel like reading. So I explored the house, looking through the rooms, poking around, seeing what I could find. I don't know what I was looking for, but I hoped I might uncover some curious treasure from one of Grandpa's adventures.

I was standing in his bedroom, staring at the suits and shirts hanging in his wardrobe, when I heard a sound like breaking glass. It seemed to have come from downstairs.

I stood very still, listening.

Had I imagined it?

Yes, I must have imagined it.

Then I heard the noise again. Another smash. More glass tinkling. As if someone was knocking the loose pieces out of a windowpane.

Why would anyone want to break into this house?

Maybe it wasn't a person. Maybe it was a cat hunting for a warm place to take a nap.

I decided to investigate.

I took three steps along the landing and heard a loud thump.

That wasn't a cat. That was the sound of feet slamming down on the floor. Now I could hear them crunching on the glass that they'd just knocked out of the window.

I could have run. I could have hidden. I could have snuck into the wardrobe in Grandpa's bedroom or jumped out of an upstairs window. But it was daylight and I was in my own grandfather's house, so I thought I'd be able to look after myself.

Anyway, I knew what I'd find when I went downstairs.

A kid like me.

Who else would break into an empty house?

I've done it myself. If you're bored on a Saturday afternoon and the town is quiet and your friends are otherwise occupied, what could be better than sneaking into a derelict house and poking around? I like seeing what's left behind. Sometimes people have to get out in a hurry and they discard everything—all the junk they couldn't carry, clothes and TVs and tins of tuna fish. Once I found a twenty-dollar bill in the crack of a kitchen drawer. Another time, I found a white bag stuffed with plastic giraffes. Who could possibly want a hundred plastic giraffes? I took one as a memento. It's still on a shelf in my bedroom.

Anyway, that's how I knew who would have broken into Grandpa's house. It would just be someone looking for a bit of excitement. Some kid who lived in this boring little village on the edge of nowhere and wanted to get a kick from exploring some dead guy's abandoned home. If I was really lucky, he might want to hang out with me for the next couple of hours while I was waiting for my family to come back from lunch.

I jogged down the stairs and headed along the hallway. I was just about to stroll into the sitting room and make some quip, looking forward to startling the kid who'd dared to break into my grandad's house, when a man appeared out of the shadows.

“Not another step,” he said, his voice low and threatening.

“Who are you?” I stammered. “What are you—?”

He swung at me. I dodged backwards, but he managed to grab me around the neck. I held his arm with both hands. His fingers pressed into my throat. I struggled. Lurched backwards. Tried to wriggle out of his grasp. Then I felt something pressing into my side and knew it was a knife. He'd just have to push a bit harder and the blade would be sliding between my ribs. I went very still.

He was a big guy. Much taller than me. Much broader, too. His eyes were dark and cold. “Who's here?” he hissed. “Who else?”

“No one,” I said, then cursed myself for telling the truth. Why didn't I say my friend the black belt was coming over for lunch?

“When will they be back?”

“Who?”

He pressed the knife deeper into my side. “When will they be back?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

It's difficult to think straight when you've got a knife pushing against your ribs, and so, like an idiot, I told him exactly what he wanted to know. I guess I was nervous. I even told him the restaurant was twelve miles away, whereas if I'd been thinking straight, I would have said it was just around the corner and my folks might be back any minute. I probably would have told him about being grounded and the unfairness of it all, but he interrupted me: “What's your name?”

“Tom.”

“This way, Tom. And keep quiet. If you make a noise, I'm gonna hurt you. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, then.”

He half pushed, half dragged me down the hallway and in to the kitchen.

I knew who he was. I'd heard about this. There are thieves who read the local papers, looking for announcements of weddings and funerals, the days that houses will definitely be empty. He must be one of them. Well, he was wasting his time today. There was nothing worth stealing in Grandpa's house. Not unless you wanted eleven cans of tomato soup or some very smelly socks.

The only thing was, this guy didn't look like a crook. Not the type of crook who breaks into empty houses, anyway. His clothes were too nice.

If I'd seen him in the street or been shown a photo of him, I would have guessed he was a soldier or an athlete. Maybe a tennis player. He was a big guy with broad shoulders and strong hands. He had a long face, a strong chin, and a great tan. He had to live somewhere sunny. So he wasn't from around here.

He didn't sound local, either. I couldn't place his accent, but I was almost sure he wasn't Irish. His words had more of a twang. He might have been South African
or Australian, something like that.

Once we were through the door, he told me to turn around. For a terrible moment I thought he was going to slit my throat. Instead he slipped a dishcloth into my mouth and tied it tight.

I tried to scream, but I didn't have enough breath in my lungs, and before I could suck in any more, he was tipping me forward and yanking my hands behind my back. He was too strong for me. I couldn't wriggle away. I heard him opening a kitchen drawer. Slamming it. Opening another. He must have found what he was looking for, because he started working quickly and efficiently, tying my hands behind my back with what felt like a piece of string, then sitting me down in a chair and strapping me to that.

He put his face close to mine.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he said. “But if you make a noise or try to get away, I
will
kill you.”

I don't get scared easily,
but this guy filled me with fear. I don't know what it was. His eyes, maybe, or his voice, or simply the way he'd crept up on me and grabbed me from out of nowhere. Whatever it was, I knew I didn't want to mess with him. He was serious about killing me, I could hear that in his voice. I sat very still, listening to him pacing around the house. Was he a thief? If so, why had he bothered breaking in to this house? And wouldn't he leave as soon as he saw the way Grandpa had lived? The TV must have been a hundred years old and nothing else in the house was worth anything. What could this guy possibly be looking for?

I heard him moving through the ground floor, room by room, then heading up the stairs. His footsteps were directly above me. This was my chance. I didn't want to stick around and allow him to kill me. Even if he heard me, he'd take a few seconds to come all the way downstairs. That should be enough time to get out of here.

I started wriggling my arms. My phone was in my pocket. If only I could stretch a little further . . .

No. Impossible. The string was tied so tightly, I could hardly move.

I shuffled from side to side. Pulled my arms up and pushed them down again. Shrugged my shoulders. Twisted my wrists. Strained every muscle.

Finally I got frustrated and started jerking my arms halfway out of their sockets, ignoring how much it hurt, just trying to get free. The chair's legs suddenly lifted off the ground. I tipped forward and landed face-first, smacking my forehead into Grandpa's floor. For a moment I was stunned.
No problem,
I thought to myself.
I'll crawl out of here. Take the chair with me
. I scrabbled across the floor like a wounded crab, heading for the door.

I heard his laughter before I saw him. “What are you doing? You think I don't know how to tie a knot? Come on, kid. Let me help you.” He must have heard me clattering around and come back to the kitchen. He bent down, reached out a hand, and yanked off my gag. I was still gasping for breath when he picked up the chair, swung it around, and plonked me down as if I weighed nothing at all. We were face-to-face, me sitting and him bent double, peering into my face. “You all right?”

“I won't tell anyone you're here,” I begged. He sounded sympathetic, but I didn't believe a word of it. He'd just threatened to kill me; why should he suddenly be worrying if I was all right? “Please, just let me go.”

“I will. In a minute. First we need to talk. What's your name again?”

“Tom.”

“That's right. Now, Tom, I need you to help me. Your gramps and me, we were doing a deal together. He's broken his side of the bargain by dying, but I want to keep mine. I'm looking for something. It's in this house, but I don't know where. You're going to help me find it.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Just some old papers. Nothing interesting.”

He reached into his belt and pulled out his knife. Before I could even think about screaming, he was slitting the string that bound my wrists.

“You can get up if you want,” he said. “But don't bother trying to run away.”

I stood and flexed my wrist, getting the blood moving into my veins. Why was he being so friendly? Was it a trick? I glanced at the door. Should I make a run for it? I looked back at him and I could see he knew what I was thinking, but he wasn't worried. He knew I wouldn't get three paces before he tripped me up, knocked me down, and stuck a knife in my ribs.

“I'm Marko,” he said.

“Mark-oh?”

“That's right.”

“Nice to meet you, Marko. Not.”

He grinned. “You're like the old man, aren't you?”

“You knew him?”

“We were good friends.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Maybe not exactly friends. You can call us colleagues if you'd rather. We were working together. He had something I wanted. I was going to buy it off him. Now he's gone and I can't find it. Where is it, Tom? Where would the old guy hide something he wanted to keep hidden?”

“I don't know.”

“You can do better than that.”

“I really don't.”

“Do I have to tie you up again?”

“No. But I don't know where your stuff is.”

Marko looked at me for a moment as if he was trying to decide whether I could be trusted. Then he said, “Do you want to earn five hundred euros?”

“Sure.”

“I'm looking for a bundle of old papers. I want them, Tom, and I'm willing to pay for them. Help me find these papers and I'll give you five hundred euros.”

“No, you won't.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I find the papers, you'll just steal them.”

“You're wrong, Tom. I'm an honest guy. If I make a deal, I keep it. Here's the money.” He took out his thick wallet and counted five notes. He offered them to me. I reached for the money, but he pulled it away immediately. “Find the papers first,” he said.

Five hundred euros. That was more than six hundred dollars. Enough to buy a new computer or a new bike.

I didn't like Marko. And I certainly didn't trust him. But I could deal with five hundred euros.

“What's in these papers?” I said.

“They're just some documents.”

“What sort of documents?”

“Historical ones.”

“Why do you want them?”

“I'm working for a collector,” said Marko. “He loves all this old stuff. He wants it for his collection.”

“How much is he paying for them?”

“That's my business, Tom.”

“How much were you going to pay my grandfather?”

“A decent amount.”

“More than five hundred euros?”

“A bit more.”

“How much more?”

“Like I said, a bit more.”

“I'm not going to help you unless you tell me.”

“If you really want to know, we agreed on two thousand euros. It's a fair price. Your grandfather got in touch with my boss and said he had something to sell. How were we meant to know if he was telling the truth? So I came over here to have a chat with him and see what he was selling. We had a nice chat. I went back to talk to my boss. Next thing I heard, your grandpa was dead.”

“So you thought you'd break in to the house and steal these documents instead?”

“That's right,” said Marko, smiling as if he had nothing to be ashamed of. “But I can't find them. You know this house better than I do. What do you say? Will you help me?”

“I don't see why not,” I said. “For two thousand euros.”

“That's not the deal, mate. We said five hundred.”

“Two thousand or nothing.”

He laughed. “You really are just like the old man, aren't you?”

“He was my grandfather.”

“I guess he was. Let's say a thousand.”

“Two.” I smiled, trying to look a lot braver (and more relaxed) than I actually felt. I remembered how Uncle Harvey dealt with negotiations. He just smiled and pretended he didn't care. So that's what I tried to do too.