At this point, my aunt broke wind and blamed it on the cat. On hearing his name, Killer raised his head, but realising what had happened, went quickly back to sleep. Pikeaway ignored this and carried on. “He told us that they already had a buyer and had negotiated a seven figure sum. They had also contacted someone who specialised in getting people and goods out of the country. He told us the gang was to split up and meet again twenty four hours later at an area of town called The Cliffs. “This area used to be a busy retail centre and contained many shops including some of the large chain stores. “But as these large stores have relocated to the out of town malls, the area has become pretty run down. “One of the larger stores has been broken down into a number of smaller units and these are rented to small specialist retailers.” “I know the place,” I said. “There used to be a comic shop, a games shop and place that sold dolls houses in there. I used to go regularly.” “You must have been the only one. When we got there, most of the units were empty and the rest of them were closed. Only two of them were actually open. One of them was a stamp shop, the other sold coins. “And this is an important part of our little mystery.” He took another sip of his tea. “We waited for the two raiders to arrive and watched them go into the store. We decided that we couldn’t leave them in there unobserved for too long as there are too many places to hide and too many exits. The owner of the underground knows this and uses it to help smuggle his clients out. “When we got in, the raiders were gone. “We interviewed the two owners of the shops. “The first was the numismatist called Sandra Mewes. She seemed cheerful enough and very knowledgeable about coins. She showed me a William and Mary farthing from the seventeenth century. She knew all the details, but said it was only worth a couple of quid. There seemed to be very little stock in her store. “The second was the philatelist Kevin Yeow. He was the exact opposite of Mewes. He’d got loads of stock, but knew nothing about it. He showed me a penny black which he said was nothing special, but told me even the run-of-the-mill ones go for two hundred pounds. I looked it up on the web. A bog standard one is worth less than a fiver.” “It must be one of these two, we searched the whole place and could find no sign of the two robbers.” “How do you know it must be one of these two store owners?” asked my aunt. “Because, as I said earlier, we’ve already solved this case. I also said I thought you’d like this solution. So which of these two is our criminal travel agent?” The Challenge. There is a choice of two possible people who arrange for criminals to escape the country. One is Sarah Mewes, the coin collector who has few or no coins in his shop. The other is Kevin Yeow, the stamp collector who doesn’t seem to know the value of stamps. Which one is running an underground railway?
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