The Greek Who Stole Christmas Read Online Free PDF

a lift opposite the front door and I was lucky. The doors were just closing as I arrived. I ran in and pressed the top button – the sixth floor. I was lucky again. The lift didn’t stop on the way up.
    The sixth floor seemed to be devoted to Christmas presents for people you don’t like: really nasty golfing jumpers, oversized umbrellas and multicoloured shoes. There weren’t too many shoppers around as I burst out of the lift and made for the nearest fire door. Sure enough, a flight of concrete stairs led up to the roof. I took them two at a time and it only occurred to me now that I was unarmed and about to come face to face with a would-be assassin who probably wouldn’t be too pleased to see me. But it was too late to go back. And, I figured, he couldn’t be more deadly than those golfing jumpers.
    I reached a door marked FIRE EXIT and slammed into it … which, incidentally, set off all the fire alarms and the sprinkler system on the seven floors below. But now I was on the roof: a strange landscape of chimneys, satellite dishes, water tanks and air-conditioning units. I stopped for a moment and let my eyes get used to the darkness. Not that it was exactly pitch black. The Regent Street lights were still glittering below me and, looking down, I could see the scattered crowds, the police, what was left of the Salvation Army band.
    Something moved. And there he was, the man that Harold Chase had seen from below. He was only about fifteen metres away from me, cowering on the other side of the roof. He didn’t look like your typical assassin. He was short and very fat – almost spherical – with white, curly hair. I wondered if he was one of the overweight Albanians. It was Minerva’s absence at a concert in Albania that had started all this.
    The man looked at me with something between horror and dismay. He raised a hand as if to prevent me moving forward.
    “No!” he shouted. “I d-d-didn’t…”
    Then he turned and ran.
    I chased after him and that was when I discovered that I had miscalculated. I had run into the wrong store and there was a three-metre gap between his roof and mine. But I hadn’t come this far to let an impossible jump and a probable fall to my death seven floors below worry me. I picked up speed and threw myself off the edge.
    For a moment I hung in the air and I could feel the ground a very long way beneath me. The cold night air was rushing into me and – for a nasty moment – so was the pavement. The other roof was too far away. I wasn’t going to make it. Suddenly I was angry with myself. Who did I think I was? Spider-Man? If so, I’d forgotten to pack a web.
    But I didn’t fall. Somehow my outstretched hands caught hold of the edge of the other roof and I winced as my stomach and shoulders slammed into the brickwork. I could taste blood and dust in my mouth. I’d cut my lip and maybe loosened a couple of my teeth. Using what little strength I had left, I managed to pull myself up and roll to safety. Painfully, I got to my feet. I wasn’t surprised to see that the little fat man had gone.
    He had left something behind. I saw them – three small silver objects on the asphalt. At first I thought they were bullets, but as I walked towards them, I realized they were too big. People down in the street were pointing up at me and shouting as I dropped to one knee and scooped them into my hand.
    Three oak leaves. That was what the sniper had left behind. The acorn in the cracker and now this. He was definitely trying to tell me something and I’d got the message loud and clear.

DINNER FOR TWO
    When I woke up the next morning, we were right back where we’d started. Which is to say, we were in Camden Town, in the office, and once again Tim was out of work. It turned out that nobody had been particularly impressed by my death-defying leap when all I’d got to show for it was grazed arms, bruises and a handful of silver oak leaves. I’d given the police a description of the man