The Switch by Anthony Horowitz

Thursday . . .” he said.
    “Thursday!” Finn almost shouted the word. A tic had appeared at one of his eyes, making the cobweb dance. “Thursday?” he whimpered again. “Then it’s not my fault, is it? It was a perfect plan. Perfect! I just got the day wrong, that’s all!”
    Then everything seemed to collide with itself. Tad would never be quite sure what happened—or when.
    The shrill sound of a siren cut through the night. Finn took a step forward. Lord Roven moved toward him, reaching out as if to grab him. Finn dropped his ebony walking stick—or part of it. When Tad looked again, he was still holding the handle, but the rest of the stick had fallen away and an ugly length of steel protruded from his hand. A sword stick, Tad realized. But Lord Roven hadn’t seen it. Whether Finn lifted the sword or whether his victim walked onto it, Tad couldn’t say. But the next thing he knew, Finn had laughed out loud, a single cry that danced in his throat. At the same time Lord Roven groaned and fell to the floor. Then there was a screech of tires. A blue light flashed on and off through a downstairs window. A hand hammered at the door.
    “The kitchen!” Finn hissed, snatching up the rest of his walking stick. “We can get out the back way!”
    “You’ve killed him!” Tad whispered.
    Finn swore and then grabbed Tad by the throat. For a moment their faces were pressed so close that they touched and Tad could feel the stubble of the man’s beard rubbing against his own skin. “I’ll kill you too if you don’t move!” he snarled. “Now—come on!”
    The thumping on the door continued, harder now, and a second police siren echoed across the square. Finn ran down the stairs—five steps at a time—and slid across the marble hallway. Tad followed. He could just make out a uniformed shape through the stained glass next to the front door, but he ignored it, twisting around to follow the passage back past the grandfather clock. Then Finn grabbed hold of him and pulled him through an open doorway even as a booted foot crashed into the front door, splintering the wood and smashing the first of the locks.
    Tad found himself in the kitchen, a long, narrow room all white and silver with French windows leading into a garden at the end. Finn was already trying the handles, but they were securely locked.
    “Stand back!” he ordered. As Tad obeyed, he raised his walking stick, then brought it whistling through the air into the glass. The window shattered at exactly the same moment as the front door was kicked in. Tad heard the falling wood, the sound of voices shouting in the hall. “Move!” Finn commanded.
    Tad followed Finn into the garden. The lights on the police cars were still flashing and the bushes and trees loomed up on him, flickering blue against the night sky. The garden was surrounded by a low wall with other gardens on each side.
    “Split up!” Finn hissed. “Confuse ’em. We got more chance that way. Meet back at the caravan . . .” Then, before Tad could stop him, he hoisted himself over the wall and disappeared down the other side.
    Tad swung around. Two policemen had stepped out of the kitchen and were standing in the garden. Slowly, they began to approach, and Tad realized they were afraid of him.
    “All right . . .” one of them began.
    Tad turned his back on them and ran. He felt his feet first on the grass, then in the soft earth of the flower beds. His scrabbling hands found the garden wall and he pulled himself up, half expecting the two policemen to grab him and pull him back. But he had been too fast for them. He twisted over the top of the wall and fell, squirming down the other side.
    “There goes one of them! On the other side!”
    A heap of garden rubbish had broken his fall. Tad stood up and brushed some of it away. There were more whistles, more shouts. Lights had gone on in the adjoining houses, illuminating the gardens that ran along the back. Tad looked one way, then another,