The Hangman's Lair Read Online Free Page A

voice). ‘This is awful. We’re not crooks. We just did a very bad thing, just the once. Come on . . . James . . . we’re going to go and throw all those discs away. Get rid of them.’
    ‘Hang on,’ said Zippy. ‘Don’t chuck ‘em. I know someone with a market stall. You could make a load of money.’
    ‘Button yer lip, Zippy,’ said Moz. ‘I’ll say if they get chucked or not.’ He looked down at me with those squashed-up eyes of his. ‘Yeah, don’t chuck ‘em, Steve, you could make a load of money.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, no, no way. That’d make things even worse. No, those discs are getting binned. Right now.’
    Come on, Moz, I thought to myself, think the thought I want you to think! There’s a great idea just sitting there, waiting for you to find it! My heart was racing and my legs were starting to get shaky
    Zippy leaned over and whispered to Moz. Moz stared at him for a second or two, then turned back to me and Muddy
    ‘I’ve had a great idea,’ said Moz. ‘If you don’t want to make a load of money, then we will. You can give us those discs.’
    ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to risk walking around with them. The cops might pick us up!’
    ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ sneered Moz. ‘You fetch those discs, now, and you give them to us, or you get a pounding. Understand?’
    I hadn’t reckoned on this. Foolishly, I’d assumed that they would offer to buy the discs off us. I’d underestimated them. My stomach rolled over in slow motion. I now had to take a risk.
    ‘We’ll sell them to you,’ I said.
    Moz loomed forward. He stood with the toes of his trainers almost touching my shoes. He jabbed a grubby finger against my chest. ‘I hope you like hospital food, Steve, ‘cos if you don’t do what I tell you, you’ll be having a lot of it.’
    I stood absolutely still. Which wasn’t easy, when my legs felt like they were shouting ‘Run away!’ and the rest of me felt like it was agreeing with my legs.
    ‘You can have the discs,’ I said, in as un-wobbly a voice as I could manage. ‘But we want paying for them.’
    ‘If you don’t give me those discs,’ growled Moz, ‘I’ll set my gang on you.’
    ‘If you set your gang on me,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t give you those discs in a million years. You know you can make a big profit. Pay up, and we all get something out of this. Otherwise, everyone loses. Your choice.’
    I tried to steady my breathing. I couldn’t let Moz think I’d back down. I had to convince him that I meant what I said. I glared up at him, hoping that my expression said ‘I Mean Business’, rather than ‘I Want To Go Home’.
    At last, Moz emitted a loud snort and turned to the rest of the gang. ‘I like this kid. He reminds me of me.’
    Eurgh, I thought to myself.
    ‘How many games d’ya say you got?’ said Moz.
    ‘A hundred and forty,’ I said.
    He glanced around at the traffic, as if the next thing he was going to say could be seen painted on the side of a passing van. ‘You’ll take one pound for each.’
    I shook my head quickly. ‘No. Five is fair. You can sell them for three times that. You can triple your money, easy.’
    ‘Two pounds each, no more than that,’ said Moz.
    ‘Four,’ I said. ‘Four, or forget it.’
    ‘Three.’
    I pretended to have a careful think about that. ‘Three,’ I said at last. ‘Hundred and forty times three . . . That’s . . . That’s four hundred and twenty pounds, exactly . . . Hmm . . . OK, three for each. You’ve got that amount of money, have you?’
    Moz snorted again. So did the rest of the gang. They were starting to sound like a herd of buffalo.
    ‘Yeah, we’ve got plenty of money,’ smiled Moz. ‘Haven’t we, lads?’
    The rest of them laughed. Zippy giggled into his coat hood.
    ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll meet right here, tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. I don’t want to wait, I want to get rid of this gear as soon as I can.’
    ‘Shut it, Steve,’ said Moz, ‘I say