“You have to let me go!” I screamed. “You don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“Oh we don’t, do we?” said Lizard Neck. “Then perhaps you’ll be able to explain it to us through the bars of your cell.”

I yelled and swore and struggled with all my might, but against the two of them my resistance was futile. There was nothing I could do to stop myself from being trussed up and dragged away. But then another voice spoke.

“You don’t have to take him. Why don’t you leave him with me? I’ll look after him.”

We all turned. Standing right behind us was my old friend, the bellhop. I couldn’t help but recall every charming detail of him, from the arrogant tilt of his head to the intense stare of his green eyes and the feel of his rank breath on my face.

The cops looked at each other, clearly unsure about whether they’d be breaching any of their non-existent protocols.

“C’mon fellas,” said the bellhop. “I’m in charge of the Gates now. If anyone is responsible for dealing with Peter’s kidnapper, it should be me.”

That seemed good enough for the two cops. They mumbled something about it being close to bedtime and then disappeared.

I looked at the bellhop. It seemed like a longshot, but I didn’t think I’d have another chance.

“I know we didn’t get off to the best start, but you need to listen to me now. This situation is extremely urgent.”

The bellhop didn’t say anything. For a moment, he looked at me with a lopsided kind of grin. The next moment, his fist was on a collision course with my face.

Something had to give. It wasn’t going to be his fist.

Chapter 15

I OPENED MY EYES. IT WAS DARK. I was lying on a concrete floor. Fortunately, some kind soul had removed the handcuffs from my wrists. Unfortunately, that same soul had replaced them with a couple of lengths of rope, tied tightly around not only my wrists but also my ankles. I had all the mobility of a stuffed walrus.

“Awake at last,” said a voice, but it was a friendly voice. As my eyes began to adjust, I could dimly make out my companion. Although he was lashed up in a similar fashion, I recognised the beard at one end and the spindly legs at the other. It was Peter.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“I’ll live,” I replied.

“Ah Jimmy, always the joker,” Peter chuckled. “I can rely on you to cheer me up.”

I rolled across the floor so that I was closer to him.

“Listen to me, Peter. The time for jokes is well and truly gone. I need to know exactly what’s been happening. Can you tell me who brought you here?”

Peter made a strange twisting gesture with his shoulders that probably would have been a shrug if he hadn’t been tied up like a pig on a spit.

“I can’t tell you much. It all happened so quickly. I was in the middle of sorting out the paperwork after a food poisoning outbreak in Japan when a couple of masked men burst into my office and placed a wet cloth over my mouth. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor in this cold, dark room with a beast of a headache. And then you arrived.”

“So you’ve got no idea who these masked men were?”

“No idea. I couldn’t even start to describe them. I’ve also got no idea how they got into my office. Since the riots twenty years ago, we’ve operated under the tightest security.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea how they got in. You remember when we first met, how you told me good help was hard to find? You were right.”

Peter gasped. “You don’t mean?”

“Yes, I do. This is an inside job.”

“But I don’t understand. Who would want to—”

“Don’t worry about not understanding. You’re not the only one with that problem. But time is running short. Do you at least know where they’ve taken us?”

Peter made that shrugging gesture again. “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

I looked around the room. With my eyes now well-adjusted to the dark, I could see that we were in some sort of cell. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all featureless concrete. There were no windows and only one door. The room looked like the creation of an interior designer with all the imagination of a commercial television programmer.

“I guess our location isn’t so important,” I said. “The main thing is, how are we going to get out of here?”

Peter made a different gesture this time. I think this one was supposed to be a nod. “So what’s your plan?”

“What’s my plan?”

“You do have a plan, don’t you? You must have been in situations like this hundreds of times before. I bet you’ve got all sorts of escape tricks hidden up your sleeve.”

“I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve never been in a situation remotely like this before. I was once locked in a public toilet for a couple of days, but I don’t think that’s quite the same. I’m also sorry to say that the only things I have up my sleeves at the moment are a couple of large bruises.”

“You mean you don’t have a plan?”

“No plan. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here.”

“Then we’re trapped.” Peter rolled away from me and lay, facing the far wall.

I rolled after him. “Just wait a minute. I said I didn’t have a plan. That doesn’t mean we can’t put our heads together and come up with one.”

Peter rolled back to me. “You think I can help you come up with a plan?”

“Why not? You’ve read lots of detective books. You must have a pretty good idea about what an escape plan involves.”

“I’ve got lots of ideas,” said Peter, his enthusiasm renewed. “We could knock down the door with our heads and then roll under the feet of the guard and away. Or we could bite through the concrete floor, discover a hidden underground river beneath this cell, and swim to freedom. Or we could lure the guard into our cell, remove his wooden leg, and use that as a weapon to escape.”

“Those are great plans,” I said.

“You think so?”

“Most definitely. If we should ever find ourselves with a group of children to entertain, I’m sure they’d love to hear them. Unfortunately, I’m not sure they’ll be much use in our current predicament.”

“What do you mean?” Peter sounded just a little hurt.

“What I mean is those plans will work fine as long as the guard happens to have a wooden leg, or there actually is a miraculous underground river underneath this edible concrete floor. But those seem like pretty big assumptions to make. This isn’t some fantasy. This is real life.”

“No it isn’t,” said Peter. “This is Heaven. At least I assume it is. Maybe they’ve taken us . . . down below. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been down there.”

“But I have,” I said.

Given that the rest of his body was virtually immobile, Peter’s face did an excellent job at exhibiting his surprise. “You’ve been down below?”

“Yes, I’ve most definitely been to Hell, and I know exactly what it’s like. In Hell, nothing works. Whatever you try to do, no matter how simple, always turns out wrong.”

“So if we’re in . . . Hell, any escape plan we try is bound to fail.”

“Exactly, which gives me an idea. I think I know a way we can at least discount the possibility that they’ve taken us to Hell.”

“What do we have to do?”

“Pretty much anything. Whatever we try, we know it won’t work in Hell. So if we manage to make it work, then we’ll know for sure we’re not in Hell.”

“Brilliant,” said Peter. “What do you suggest we try?”

“In our current state, I think just standing up should represent enough of a challenge.”

I rolled away from Peter to give myself a little space. Then I attempted to raise my upper body away from the ground, while at the same time flipping my legs underneath. It was a hopelessly complicated maneuvre that should never have had any chance of success, but suddenly there I was, standing up straight in the middle of the cell.