“Don’t you see, Tim? It was Henderson who was killed. Not Lenny Smile!”

The two of us were back at our Camden apartment. After our hours spent in the cemetery, we were too cold to go to bed. I’d made us both hot chocolate and Tim was wearing two pairs of pajamas and two robes, with a hot-water bottle clasped to his chest.

“But who killed him?”

“Lenny Smile.”

“But what about Hoover? And the woman? They were there when it happened.”

For once, Tim was right. Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee must have been part of it. Snape had already gone to arrest them. The man they had helped down the stairs must have been Henderson. I had been right about that. He had been drugged. They had taken him out of the apartment and thrown him into the road, just as Barry Krishner turned the corner on his way home . . .

And yet it wasn’t going to be easy to prove. There were no witnesses. And until Smile was found, it was hard to see exactly what he could do. Suddenly I realized how clever Smile had been. The blurred man? He had been more than that. He had run Dream Time, he had stolen all the money, and he had remained virtually invisible.

“Nobody knew him.” I said.

“Who?”

“Smile. Mrs. Lovely never spoke to him. Joe Carter only wrote to him. We went to his apartment and it was like he’d never actually lived there. Even Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee couldn’t tell us much about him.”

Tim nodded. I yawned. It was two o’clock, way past my bedtime. And in just five and a half hours I’d be getting ready for school. Monday was going to be a long day.

“You’ll have to go to the Ritz tomorrow,” I said.

“Why?”

“To tell Joe Carter about his so-called best friend.”

Tim sighed. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “He had this big idea about Lenny Smile when all the time he was someone else!”

I finished my hot chocolate and stood up. Then, suddenly, it hit me. “What did you just say?” I asked.

“I’ve forgotten.” Tim was so tired he was forgetting what he was saying even as he said it.

“Someone else! That’s exactly the point! Of course!”

There had been so many clues. The note in the cemetery. Mrs. Lovely and the card Lenny had sent her. The gravestone. The photograph of Smile outside the Café Debussy. And Snape . . .

“We know when he was born . . .”

But it was only now, when I was almost too tired to move, that it came together. The truth. All of it.

The following morning, I didn’t go to school. Instead I made two telephone calls, and then later on, just after ten o’clock, Tim and I set out for the final showdown.

It was time to meet Lenny Smile.

THE BIG WHEEL