Steiner and the Hypnotic Cue

CHAPTER 20 To Catch a Thief

We left the hotel, and walked towards the taxis. It was quite a distance to the main coffee shops. We didn’t want to walk too far at night, David was still limping after all! He started some negotiations with the taxi driver. We had been ripped off about a hundred times in about a dozen countries  to know better than to just jump into a taxi without sorting the price first.

Just then, two boys, aged about 12 or 13, emerged from the back of the hotel. One was holding a bag and the other was holding my cue!

I just froze, and stared at them. I was speechless. They must have been in the hotel and robbing people all that time, or at least hiding, waiting for the police to leave.

One of them gave me a flitting glance and a smile as they moved hastily across the car park—that was my ‘cue’ to make a move.

“Give me back my cue!” I screamed.

“No, Steiner!” David screamed as he popped up his head from the taxi window, only to see my running into the distance after the two boys. 

They leapt over the car park wall and ran headlong into the traffic and across the road. Horns blazed and tyres screeched. Before the traffic could pick up speed, I darted through the gaps. Behind me cries to stop were totally ignored.

They bolted down a narrow alleyway between some houses, the type of alleyway we would call a vennel in Scotland. I gave hot pursuit. They turned right, climbing  over walls and jumping along flat roofed buildings that were covered with cheap corrugated iron.

Now, there were a few things about me that they didn’t know.

The first thing was I was brilliant at Parkour, or Free-running as we used to call it in school. In case you don’t know about it, Parkour is like open air gymnastics using buildings as apparatus. I had a year’s worth of training at school in this sport, and had forgotten nothing in the last few months.

I started to gain on them. They looked panicked. Before long, like little cowards, they were screaming and shouting in their language. They scrambled  onto a wall, and darted along it. The wall was  about a foot wide, but had barbed wire along the top edge—a couple of times I caught my jeans on it and almost fell off.  Then they climbed over the barbed wire, and jumped down the other side. I followed a few seconds later.

I looked up into the darkness of the narrow alleyway. My eyes met with a boy about 18 or 19. He was bigger than me and slouched against a beat up old heap of a car—obviously some kind of get-away machine. He stared at me, smiling at first, but  hearing the other boys shouting, his face  instantly changed. His eyes narrowed and his face dropped. He squared up to me, swaggering  like a Glaswegian, while the other two dived into the car.

Now, the second thing they didn’t know about me was just how good I was at boxing. Scott Milne had spent hours  showing me how to punch and spar—to work out the right combinations of jabs, hooks, uppercuts and crosses; to block blows and dodge the quickest of fists.

This boy’s face had the look of madness about it. He said something very low and threatening.

His voice turned to rage, as he ran at me to hit me.

He didn’t know what hit him.

As Scott always used to say:

“Slip to the inside -

right uppercut -

left hook.”

Fists flashing in the darkness saw his staggering back to the car,  blood pouring from his nose. I’m sure I heard him cry like a baby.

The boy with the bag started the engine, while the older boy got into  the back. I ran around the other side of the car, and wrenched the door open, where my cue was. I tried to get it from him, but the car started to pull away. I ended up running along side them as he picked up speed. Just then, he swerved to make a right turn. The door went it the corner of the wall with a thump, shattering the cue. I released my grip, just before I was smashed into the wall.

They drove off with my watch and the rest of their bounty, leaving me with pieces of shattered wood lying on the ground.