Public Enemy Number Two

Public Enemy Number Two is a novel written in 1987 by Anthony Horowitz. The main character in the book is Nick Diamond, a 13-year-old boy who has already featured in another novel - The Falcon's Malteser. His older brother Herbert Simple - who goes by the name Tim Diamond - is an unsuccessful private detective. The novel is particularly known for its humor. It is followed by South By South East.

Characters

See also: List of characters in Public Enemy Number Two

French Dictation

It all begins when 13-year-old Nick Diamond is kept behind in an after school detention by his French teacher, Mr.Palis, for misbehaving in class - during a French dictation, he had joked with a friend that you had to be a French dictator to give a French dictation. He is writing all the tenses of the French verb 'rire' (laugh) when the door opens and Snape and Boyle walk in.

Snape is Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard and Boyle is his assistant. Nick doesn't like them but they are impressed by him after he solved the case of the Falcon's Malteser. Snape tells Nick about a convicted criminal called Johnny Powers, who is serving 15 years in a maximum security centre after he was caught trying to steal £1million worth of designer clothes from Harrods. Snape has recently found out about a mysterious criminal called 'the Fence' who buys and sells all the stolen goods in England, and would have traded in the designer clothes that Powers stole if he hadn't been caught. They already tried asking Powers who the Fence really is, and even offered to halve his sentence in return for a name. But Powers refused because he hates policemen. Snape then tells Nick that he wants him to go to Strangeday Hall - the maximum security centre where Powers is imprisoned - and share a cell with Powers in hope of finding out the Fence's identity. As soon as Nick finds out who the Fence really is, then Snape and Boyle will have him released straight away.

Nick isn't interested in the offer so Snape and Boyle let him go.

The Purple Peacock

Nick goes home, where he lives with his older brother Tim, a bird-brained private detective. They have been living on the breadline recently, but Tim has just been paid by the British Museum for a new job. A ming vase called the Purple Peacock has been stolen and the Museum staff are so humiliated that they won't go to the police, so they went to Tim instead. It had been in the back of a van and on its way to be cleaned when the van driver stopped at a petrol station in Camden to refuel. When the driver had paid for the petrol, he returned to the petrol pumps and found the van gone - with the Purple Peacock inside. Tim has been employed to find it.

With so much money behind him from the Purple Peacock mission, Tim finds enough money to pay for Nick's upcoming trip to Woburn Abbey.

The Woburn Carbuncles

On the trip to Woburn Abbey, Nick is walking out of the Woburn Carbuncles exhibition room when he hears a shattering of glass and an alarm bell ringing. He realises that someone has stolen one of the carbuncles and placed it in his pocket. The police arrive in no time and Nick tries to escape through the house, demolishing a host of expensive plates and knocking an old lady unconscious with a falling painting. He then hides under the tarpaulin on the roof of a Land Rover which is parked on the visitors car park.

The Land Rover starts moving slowly and Nick gets out, only to find himself in the Woburn Abbey Safari Park. He comes face to face with a lion and fears for his life. The safari park warden is approaching in his jeep but Nick doesn't think it can reach him in time. He escapes being eaten by catapulting the Woburn Carbuncle into the lion's mouth, knocking it unconscious. An anaesthic dart is fired by the safari park warden and Nick faints. He realises that the safari park warden had been aiming for him and not the lion all along.

Arrest and Imprisonment

Nick is arrested and charged with theft, trespass, assault, criminal damage and cruelty to animals. The jury at the Old Bailey finds him guilty on all 5 charges. The judge told Nick that he was a particularly unpleasant criminal who had committed a serious crime. If he had been older, his sentence would have been more severe. As Nick was only 13, he was sent to a young offenders institution for 18 months.

Strangeday Hall and Johnny Powers

Nick was locked up at Strangeday Hall and shared a cell with Johnny Powers. Soon after his arrival, he got a visit from Snape and Boyle who told him that they framed him and reminded him that he must try and find out who the Fence is, so he can come out of prison soon. Nick protests that he had turned down Snape and Boyle's offer when they came to visit him at school, but Snape replied that there was nobody else to do the job so they set up Nick for the Woburn Carbuncles robbery anyway.

A few weeks into his sentence, Nick is entering the prison showers when he sees Johnny Powers from a distance. He has been beaten up by three other inmates - Zuckie Hommel, Mark White and Mark Hards. Mark White has a gun and vows to shoot Johnny in two minutes when Concorde flies over, so the noise of Concorde will drown out the gunshot.

Nick is determined to save Johnny and turns the pressure gauge for the showers on full blast. The showers explode and he manages to save Johnny. The three other inmates also survive but are burnt by the boiling hot water. Johnny manages to retrieve the gun without being spotted by the prison staff.

Jailbreak

The day after the incident in the showers, Johnny receives a coded letter from his mother. She is telling him that he must escape soon because a gangster called Big Ed is taking over his territory in London - Big Ed was the man who had somehow sent a gun into Strangeday Hall and tried to have Johnny murdered. Johnny then tells Nick that he must escape too, and the day before the escape Johnny's getaway driver Nails Nathan became ill with food poisoning. So Johnny tells Nick that Tim has to be the getaway driver instead.

Nick gets a visit from Tim later that day and tells him to go to the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport at 11.00pm - that was where Ma Powers, Johnny's mother, would be waiting with the getaway car.

At midnight, Johnny tells Nick that it's time to escape and orders him to feign stomach pains. Prisoner Officer Walsh appears and Johnny pounces on him with the gun that he had retrieved from the shower room. Nick and Johnny march Walsh to the top of the prison and order him to let them into the control room. They lower the drawbridge and leave Walsh there before jumping 20 feet off the roof and landing on matresses which are tied to the roof of a people mover. It is being driven by Tim, and Ma Powers is guarding it with a machine gun.

Tim's erratic driving helps offset four pursuing police cars and forces a lorry full of eggs to swerve off the road, while Ma Powers gave him a bit of help with her machine gun. Then a fifth and final police cars catches up with them and Nick recognises the two back seat passengers as Snape and Boyle. Ma Powers opens fire and the car's windscreen shatters. The car swerves into the kerb, spins through the air and hits a telephone box before exploding. Nick is convinced that Snape and Boyle are dead - and they had been his only way out of this mess.

The people mover then loses control on a bend and the overcarriage crashes through an empty office block and lands on the River Thames. They float along the river and climb out of the people mover at Wapping.

The Hideout

Johnny Powers and his mother are living in a tumbledown old terraced house in a rundown Wapping street. It is three stories high, except the third story has fallen in on itself. Johnny's sidekick Nails Nathan is living with them.

Nick, Tim, Johnny, Ma Powers and Nails Nathan were eating breakfast when their attention was drawn to the news bulletin on the television. The newsreader was reporting on the escape from Strangeday Hall and said that the police were looking for Johnny Powers and Nick Diamond. Johnny had been dubbed 'Public Enemy Number One' after his armed robbery conviction, but now the media were considering Nick to be 'Public Enemy Number Two'. It was also revealed that the police were looking for Nick's brother Tim, who may be able to help them with their inquiries.

When Nick is alone with Tim, he orders him to behave like a gangster because if Johnny or Nails found out that Tim was a detective, they'd both be killed. When Tim had told Ma Powers that he was a private investigator, Nick had convinced everyone that Tim was a private investigator of water - to which Ma Powers replied: 'That explains why he's such a drip'.

Vanishing Act

Nick later overhears Johnny telling his mother that he is going to Penelope. He is convinced that 'Penelope' is the Fence, and decides to follow him. Johnny had told Ma Powers to make sure that nobody left the house while he was gone, so Nick has to be very careful. Nick follows Johnny through the dilapidated streets of Wapping until he reaches Wapping Tube Station and wonders why Johnny be going there. He thinks that Johnny could be meeting 'Penelope' on the platform, or he could be catching a train to wherever she is. But Johnny suddenly vanishes and Nick can't find him, despite searching every nook and cranny of the station. Nick catches the elevator back to street level. The next thing he knows, a car is stopping and two people are getting out of the car and forcing him in.

Big Ed

Nick has been kidnapped by three men - a punk and two men in women's clothes - who take him to Clapham Junction. They lock him in an empty carriage for about two hours before the punk lets him out. Nick follows the punk into another carriage where a man called Big Ed lives.

Big Ed introduces himself as Zuckie Hommel's uncle. He is angry with Nick for stopping Zuckie and the two other men from killing Johnny Powers - by causing the explosion in which Zuckie was badly burnt. When Big Ed found out that Powers had escaped, he had sent his cronies out to catch him but they had captured Nick instead. Big Ed then orders his cronies to take Nick away and kill him. They tie him to the railway track, knowing that an Intercity Express train will soon be passing through Clapham Junction.

Just after Big Ed's henchmen leave, a man approaches Nick and cuts one of his hands free and helps him from the tracks just before the train passes. Nick is convinced that he knows the man from somewhere but can't put a name to his face.

Nick finds a box of matches on the platform at the nearby railway station and empties an oil drum within Big Ed's compound. He goes to the nearest telephone box and asks for the police, who are interested in finding Big Ed. Nick tells them that Big Ed is living in carriages near Clapham Junction. He tells them that it won't be difficult to find Big Ed's hideout and proves this by dropping a match on the pool of oil that surrounds the carriages. The fire quickly spreads and Nick walks away, convinced that Big Ed and his cronies will be burnt to death.

Palis

Nick decides that he must go back to Johnny Powers and Tim, as they will surely be wondering where is by now. And he is still determined to find the Fence, although with Snape and Boyle dead he didn't think anyone would believe his story. Then he realises that Palis could have seen Snape and Boyle on the afternoon that he was serving a detention. He heads for Palis's flat in Chelsea but is spotted by the police just before he gets there.

Nick hides on the roof of a boiler room outside the apartment block where Palis lives. The police appear on the pavement and are speaking in such loud voices that Palis is roused and appears on his balcony. He sees Nick but tells the police to go looking somewhere else for him because he obviously isn't here.

When the police are gone, Palis tells Nick to come into his flat and he explains the whole story. He did not steal the Woburn Carbuncles, and had been working for the police all along. Nick then asks Palis if he had seen Snape and Boyle, but he hadn't. Palis lets Nick sleep in his spare bedroom for the night but urges him to back to Johnny Powers and Tim the next day.

Penelope

Palis drives Nick back to Wapping the following morning and tells him to get in touch if he needs anything. Nick heads for the hideout and goes to ring the doorbell, but then realises that there hadn't been a doorbell at the house when they had arrived the previous day. He climbs in through an upstairs window and enters the living room to find Tim tied up in a chair, with an alarm clock and a bomb on the dining table. The bomb is connected to the doorbell, so it would have blown up instantly if Nick had rung it. But there are still only six minutes left before the bomb explodes. Nick manages to prevent the bomb from exploding by defusing it.

Ma Powers had left some food in the kitchen and serves lunch for himself and Tim. Tim then explains that Johnny had come back the previous afternoon from wherever he'd been to find Nick gone. He'd asked Tim questions and was suspicious about the answers. The atmosphere during dinner had been as frozen as the fish fingers Nails Nathan had served. Tim had gone to bed early only to be dragged out of dawn. Before Johnny left, he said that they'd have gone underground by the time Nick got back. Nick is still determined to find out who the Fence is, so they spend all afternoon scouring Wapping for anywhere that might lead them to the Fence. Nick then notices a houseboat called 'the Penelope', moored to the quay. He realises now that 'Penelope' is not the name of the Fence, but it is more likely to be the meeting place where Johnny does his dealings. It is surrounded by a high fence which is impossible to climb over, so Nick and Tim manage to swim to the other side. They are disappointed to find the houseboat empty and Nick thinks that the Penelope is not behaving like a boat should be.

Nick and Tim decide to keep a watch on the Penelope from a nearby derelict house. They wait six hours before they see anything. A light goes on in the Penelope and a man appears. He is carrying a crate and before long four more men carrying crates join him. A lorry then turns up and someone unlocks the gate before loading the crates into the back of the lorry. Two more lorries are then loaded with goods including a piano and a hi-fi - all of which come out of the Penelope. And when Nick and Tim had been inside it was completely empty. Nick then realises that the Penelope hadn't titled when he leaned against it, and had resisted the choppy water in the Thames. He remembers that Johnny 'went to Penelope' through Wapping Tube Station.

Underground

The five men disappear into the lorry and back into 'the Penelope'. Nick and Tim head for Wapping Tube Station. The Tube system was closed for the night, but the lights were still on and the entrance was still open. They searched the station thoroughly but still couldn't find anywhere that might lead to the Fence's headquarters. Tim then turned on a tap in a store room because he was thirsty, and a panel in the wall suddenly opened. This was obviously where Johnny had 'vanished' to when Nick had followed him.

Soon after Nick and Tim entered the tunnel, Tim sneezed. A door opened at the other end of the corridor and they could hear Johnny Powers talking to his mother. Johnny had heard sneezing but Ma Powers assured him that he hadn't heard anything. Then the door closed and Nick and Tim proceeded further into the complex. They soon found themselves in a network of passages which were crammed with stolen goods including fur coats, cutlery, hi-fis and televisions. Tim then found the Purple Peacock, which he was being paid to recover. Then Nails Nathan appeared and was holding a gun, but Nick pinned him to the floor and shouted for Tim to hit Nails. But Tim couldn't bring himself to smashing the vase and Nails fired a bullet from the gun, shattering a mirror and drawing more armed men to the scene. Then Johnny Powers appeared with his mother and ordered Nails to tie Nick and Tim up before locking them in another room.

Nick had brought the bomb with him in his backpack, as he thought it might be useful to him later. It was attached to the Mickey Mouse alarm clock, and Nick set it so it would explode and blow the locked door off. He was confident that they could both escape in the confusion.

Underwater

Nick untied himself and Tim and managed to set the alarm. They both waited in an adjoining store room for the bomb to explode. The door was blown off and Nick and Tim got out. Nails Nathan appeared on the scene and tried to shoot Nick, but Nick fired a crossbow bolt and shattered a chandalier which buried Nails. Incredibly, Tim was scouring the complex for the Purple Peacock although Johnny Powers and his gang were searching for both of them. When Tim found the vase, Johnny Powers surrounded Nick and Tim and produced a gun. He vowed to kill them both.

From the other end of the corridor, a gun went off. It ripped Johnny's gun out of his hand. Powers and his henchmen wheeled round and Nick's eyes followed them. Chief Inspector Snape of Scotland Yard stood there. He was alive, armed and accompanied by about 20 uniformed policemen. Snape told Powers to give himself up because the complex was surrounded and he didn't stand a chance of escape. Then the roof collapsed. The complex was soon flooded but Nick and Tim got out through the Penelope with Snape.

Snape had apparently escaped from the crashed police car by being thrown clear just before it exploded. Boyle had been trapped in the car and burnt but he survived and was still in hospital recovering from third degree burns. Snape had known exactly where Nick was because his prison shoes contained a powerful tracking device. They had seen him snatched by Big Ed's gang and it was Snape who cut Nick free from the rails. They had followed Tim and Nick into the underground complex and were waiting for the Fence. Snape assured Nick that although the Fence hadn't been caught, his operation had been smashed and he'd be caught before long.

Johnny Powers and Nails Nathan were never found. Nick had a feeling that they both got away because later that day two Japanese tourists were mugged and robbed near the Thames Barrier. He suspected them of continuing their life of crime in Tokyo. Ma Powers was arrested trying to escape through Wapping Tube Station along with a few other members of Johnny's gang.

The End

The story ended how it had begun - with Nick being in Mr Palis's French lesson on a hot afternoon. Mr Palis was challenging the class with French phrases which they then had to translate into English. Nick translate some French text and suddenly starts to feel ill. He then realises that he'd just read something on the blackboard which was horribly wrong - or maybe just horrible. He focuses on the text that he'd just read out and realises that he'd just said - the Fence.

Nick stares at Palis and soon works out that Palis is the Fence. It couldn't have been anybody else.

When Snape had first told Nick about the Fence, he said that the Fence could have been hiding behind any ordinary occupation - a banker or a shopkeeper, for example. He could also have been a teacher. And with his afternoons off and long holidays, Palis would have had plenty of time to concentrate on his other career. And Snape had probably suspected Palis from the start. Otherwise, why would Snape have chosen Nick of all people to go to Strangeday Hall? He'd guessed that Powers would escape and Nick would escape with him. And when Powers escaped, he would soon meet the Fence and if Nick was there too, he would recognise him.

Nick had wondered how Palis knew so much about antiques and valuable items during the Woburn Abbey trip. As the Fence, that was his profession - buying and selling stolen goods of all shapes, sizes and ages. When he had stayed at Palis's flat, he had seen what he thought were copies of Rubens and Picasso on the walls. Now he knew that they were the real thing. As soon as he'd gone in there, he'd blown it. Palis had rescued Nick from the police because he thought he was on his side, and had been about to tell him that he was the Fence. But before Palis could speak, Nick had said that he was working for the police and that he had broken out of Strangeday Hall with Johnny Powers. So Palis had contacted Johnny Powers and organised the bomb plot which had nearly blown Nick and Tim up.

Palis surely knew that his days were now numbered.

At the end of the lesson, Palis announced to the class that he was leaving. He dismissed the whole class except Nick, who knew exactly what Palis was planning. As Palis was producing a gun, Nick fled the classroom and dodged a shot from Palis's gun. He dodged a second bullet which injured a teacher called Mr Roberts instead. Nick ran upstairs and hid under a workbench in a laboratory. The Fence saw him go in and shot him in the arm, but Nick managed to smash a bottle full of chemical in his face. He then ran onto the roof of the school and below him police cars were surrounding the school. Snape was there too. He was late, but at least he'd arrived.

Palis then appeared on the roof and shouted at Nick, saying how he had destroyed his life's work. Nick responded by telling him that it was 'his last post'. Palis conceded this, but said he would have some satisfaction from the fact that he'd be taking Nick with him....

Palis squeezed the trigger of his gun, but had run out of bullets. He ran at Nick like a wild bull. Nick stepped aside. Palis plummeted down screaming and within a few seconds the screams had stopped. The Fence had impaled himself on a fence.

With Palis dead, the story ended with Nick's troubles over. His main target had been uncovered and was now dead. Johnny Powers and Nails Nathan were either dead or in Japan. The rest of the gang were safely behind bars. The fate of Big Ed and his gang is never revealed, but they were surely burnt to death in the inferno at Clapham Junction before they could get away.

Trivia

Johnny Power's number in jail was 00666.