Kat’s pulse spiked at the thought of another grilling by the Dark Lord. ‘Are you nuts? N.O.! Anyway, I doubt I’ll ever see him again.’
‘Didn’t he give you his business card?’
‘Yes, but all he said was, “Stay out of trouble.” He didn’t invite me to tea at Hamilton Park, or say, “Ring if you need any documents decoded or advice on undetectable poisons.”’
Kat fished out the Dark Lord’s card from its hiding place – a removable slat in her futon. She’d shoved it in there without glancing at it. She’d been too busy worrying about whether or not to tell her mother about her helicopter ride. In the end, she’d said nothing. For the first time in years, her mum was truly happy. Kat was not going to be the one to rain on her parade – not if she could help it.
The card was charcoal grey. Dirk Hamilton-Crosse’s contact details were etched into it in bold lettering.
Kat flipped it over. Beneath the family crest were the words ‘Winterbourne Holdings, Limited’.
‘So what do you say?’ Harper was asking. ‘Will you call your granddad or not?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. I have his card in my hand. Want to know the name of Ramon’s landlord?’
‘Don’t tell me the Dark Lord is renting Avalon Heights to our missing man?’
‘Looks that way. Or at least his company is.’
Kat was reeling. She’d thought the Dark Lord was angry with her for hanging out with a hacker and getting the colonel wrongly arrested. Now she wondered whether he’d been more concerned that she’d drawn attention to Avalon Heights when she triggered the Code Blue. He’d talked about Ramon as though he were a stranger. Obviously he knew more than he’d let on.
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to say any more on the phone,’ Harper said. ‘Yours could be bugged. Dad’s at a conference till late tomorrow night. Any chance you could come for a sleepover?’
‘I’ll check with my mum. Harper, if Ramon is Javier Morgan who was in the Owl Service in the US, why do you think he chose to rent a house in Bluebell Bay?’
‘The thing we keep coming back to is the army,’ said Harper. ‘That’s the thread that connects the ambush in Afghanistan, the dead soldiers in the US, Ramon and even your granddad – the UK Minister of Defence. The key to this whole mystery must be on the army base on the edge of town.’
‘Let’s say that Ramon, like you, is on the side of the angels,’ said Kat. ‘If he came here to hunt a ghost owl down, it could mean that the person responsible for killing at least four American soldiers is living on the base where Prince William is due be guest of honour tomorrow night.’
Harper gasped. ‘Ohmigod, you don’t think . . . ?’
‘I think that if the future King of England sits down to dinner with an assassin who likes to kill people with undetectable poisons, it’s not going to end well. But who’s going to believe us if we try to warn them?’
‘Not a soul. So what do we do?’
‘We need proof,’ said Kat. ‘Ramon gave me his computer for a reason, and it wasn’t about Move 58. He wanted me to keep it safe in case anything happened to him. Harper, is there any way you can try to hack into the password on the owl icon on his desktop? The clue to the identity of the ghost owl could be hidden behind it.’
‘I’ll give it everything I’ve got.’
When Darren regained consciousness on the Wolfes’ hallway floor at daybreak, the leopard cat was crouched on a shelf above him, as if deciding which bit to devour first.
If there was a world record for escaping from seaside cottages, Darren would have broken it.
After many hours in A&E (a pest-control job gone bad, he told the doctor), he emerged raging from the hospital.
So far that morning, the military man had sent him nine messages of increasing menace, demanding proof that the ‘pest’ had been neutralized.
‘Job done, sir!’ Darren had replied in his most confident tone, hoping the soldier would be satisfied. No such luck. He wanted to hear the grisly details in person.
Thankfully Darren had had another brainwave. He could put off the military man and ensure Kat’s silence by threatening her best friend – an American girl who’d broken both legs. No fear of a roundhouse kick from her!
For added insurance, he’d take a gun – a real one this time.
He messaged the soldier a lie:
Turns out that the threat has opened her big mouth to another small pest. Want that one neutralized too?
The reply was instantaneous:
Not neutralized, Exterminator. Vanquished. Chopped up like liver.
Overjoyed to have both a reprieve and a meaty new assignment, Darren momentarily forgot the pain of his cracked ribs, torn ear, black eye and fifty-seven scratches.
Roger that, sir. Consider it done.
31
Agent Orange
Sergeant Singh put his foot on the accelerator, crawled forward two metres and ground to a halt again.
This time, he turned off the engine. A tractor and trailer had overturned on one of the narrow lanes leading to Bluebell Bay. Combined with Friday evening commuter traffic, road closures, the rain and the volume of vehicles bound for the Royal Tank Regiment’s anniversary dinner, it had caused gridlock in every direction.
When the notice about the dinner had landed in his inbox, Sergeant Singh automatically assumed he’d be involved in policing the event. The army base was on the edge of Bluebell Bay, after all. But his superintendent in Wareham had been quick to set him straight.
‘This is not a village-bobby affair, Singh. Prince William will be attending. A job like this needs officers with experience of policing high-profile, high-security events. We’ll be bringing them in from London. Stick to helping the good citizens of Bluebell Bay sleep soundly and keep their pumpkins secure at night. It’s what you’re best at, Sergeant. Except for the pumpkin part.’
Laughing at his own joke, he’d ended the call.
A policeman’s lot was a thankless one, and for the most part Sergeant Singh tried not to take it personally. But the super’s words were a bitter pill to swallow.
Days later, Kat Wolfe said something similar: You spend years sweating over a stupid stolen pumpkin, then when a real mystery lands in your lap you can’t be bothered.
Sergeant Singh loved his work and took real pride in it. He hadn’t realized how much he’d hungered for a proper mystery until Kat had asked him to go with her to Avalon Heights. As he’d searched the house, truncheon in hand, he’d felt as if he were a real detective. Adrenalin had raced through his veins.
But it had all amounted to nothing. Once again, the joke was on him.
As he restarted the engine, his police radio crackled to life. Prince William was unwell and wouldn’t be attending the dinner after all. Sergeant Singh almost cheered. Not because His Royal Highness was ill, but because it meant the superintendent’s plans had been thrown into disarray. A replacement celebrity would have to be found at short notice.
Now Sergeant Singh really was glad to be in his plain clothes, heading home for a rare Friday night with his family.
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as the traffic halted again, he noticed the sign for an industrial estate up ahead. Miracle Enterprises, the headquarters of Reg Chalmers’s company, was top of the list of businesses.
For weeks now, the policeman’s wife had been asking him to buy her some Miracle Veg Compost. Their neighbours used it to grow enormous vegetables in their backyard, and Asha wanted to do the same.
Sergeant Singh had kept putting her off because Miracle Veg was sold by Reg, whom he detested. Dealing with him at the height of the Missing Pumpkin Crisis had been a wretched experience. At every opportunity, Reg had poked fun at his detecting skills. Sergeant Singh was quite certain that Reg was responsible for the theft of his own pumpkin, but in the absence of proof he’d had to stand idly by while the man pocketed £100,000 in compensation.
Much as he hated to enrich Reg further, he k
new that sooner or later he’d have to buy the Miracle Veg for his wife. Since he was going nowhere fast in the traffic, it might as well be now. Indicating left, he turned into the industrial estate.
Reg’s BMW was in the director’s parking space outside Miracle Enterprises, but the office was empty. A new delivery had been dumped in reception.
Sergeant Singh examined the pile of boxes plastered with skulls and crossbones. Though they’d been shipped from the Far East, the list of ingredients was in English. So was the warning at the bottom: NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. The policeman was interested to note that a separate delivery contained tubs of vanilla and chocolate flavouring.
Sergeant Singh looked at the poster on the wall. It featured photos of orange-tinged, muscle-bound athletes running, cycling and rowing while drinking Miracle Sprout smoothies. Reg himself was a pale shade of orange, and he too had bulging biceps. The cogs in the policeman’s brain began to turn.
A security guard ducked in out of the rain. ‘Looking for Reg? Try Vanquish Pest Control.’
He gestured towards a portable office at the end of the row of warehouses, its outline fuzzy in the deluge. ‘Reg is always over there, talking to Darren Weebly. Thick as thieves, they are.’
Vanquish Pest Control was shut. Sergeant Singh peered through the window, rain dripping down his collar. The guard’s comment replayed in his head. Thick as thieves . . . Thick as thieves.
Weebly’s desk was neat and tidy. Fluorescent lighting made a nightmare of the stacks of brochures promising to murder or maim anything that crawled, hopped or squeaked. There was a notepad beside the phone. On it was written ‘Paradise House – HARPER’.
Alarm bells rang in Sergeant Singh’s head. If Weebly was doing a pest-control job at Paradise House, it would make sense for him to jot down the name of either Professor Lamb or the housekeeper. That it was Harper’s name made the sergeant deeply uneasy.
As he turned to go, his trainer dislodged something shiny in the gravel. Sergeant Singh bent to pick it up. It was a bullet.
Weebly was exactly the sort of thug who’d enjoy blasting away at fluffy bunnies, but this was not a shotgun slug. It was a revolver bullet.
Sergeant Singh had told Kat that policemen couldn’t go around acting on feelings in their bones, but it wasn’t entirely true. Instinct is a powerful tool in policing, and every cell in Sergeant Singh’s body was telling him that something was terribly wrong.
Circling the portable office in search of more clues, he spotted Reg. The Miracle Sprout director was leaning on a forklift at the cement warehouse opposite, talking to the driver.
In that instant, the pieces fell into place for Sergeant Singh: he saw how Reg and Darren Weebly, might have conspired to steal the pumpkin, with the aid of the forklift driver, and share the insurance money between them.
As he considered his next move, a sound penetrated his consciousness: Stamp, stamp, stamp, ping. The cement bags were being bagged and sealed.
In an instant, he was back at Avalon Heights listening to Kat Wolfe insist that she could prove the threatening message was real because she’d heard a ‘stamp, stamp, stamp, ping’ in the background. And here was that exact noise, close to the office of Darren Weebly, a man who killed for a living and had Harper Lamb’s name on his notepad.
If Kat had been telling the truth about the message and vanished suitcase, she and Harper could be right, or partly right, about everything else. What if some sinister character with a revolver had got word of their detective efforts?
The rain was coming down in sheets now. Sergeant Singh tried calling Professor Lamb, but the landline was engaged, and his mobile went straight to voicemail.
Paradise House was five kilometres away, on the other side of Bluebell Bay. Driving there through the traffic could take an hour.
Leaning into the storm, Sergeant Singh began to run.
32
Operation Ghost Stories
‘I’ve tried every trick I know,’ said Harper, looking up from Ramon’s computer. ‘Nothing works. Unless we can find his original password, it’s unbreakable.’
Kat stood at the window, watching rain pelt the panes. It was 6.45 p.m. on Friday, though it felt much later. Between thunderbolts, lightning shivered across the violet sky, lending the clouds a silver lining. Kat kept hoping for a real one. In little over an hour, the Royal Tank Regiment would be sitting down to their anniversary dinner, and she and Harper were no closer to identifying the ghost owl.
The only good news was that the future King of England was no longer the guest of honour and, therefore, quite safe.
‘Tummy troubles, they say,’ reported Nettie, shortly before she’d hurried off to collect Professor Lamb from Wool station. His London meeting had finished early, and he was on the train home.
‘I shouldn’t be more than an hour, girls. If you think you might be scared with this electrical storm raging, I can get my friend Sue to check on you.’
‘We’re not scared,’ chimed Harper and Kat.
Now they were all alone.
Well, almost alone.
‘Keep the change, ya filthy animal!’ ordered Bailey from his perch atop the piano.
Harper giggled. ‘That’s hilarious. Isn’t that a line from Home Alone?’
‘Mr Newbolt didn’t find it funny when Bailey told him he was a filthy animal this morning,’ said Kat. ‘Mum can’t have her patients’ owners being called names – even when they deserve it – so I had no choice except to bring him here. No parrot would last a day in our cottage, not with Tiny around.’
‘Is that all I am to you – a repository for unwanted pets?’ Harper asked mildly.
‘What’s a repository?’
‘It’s what Paradise House will be once you’ve finished turning it into your own personal animal shelter.’
Kat lifted the parrot on to her shoulder. ‘You said Charming Outlaw is a changed horse since Hero moved in.’
‘He is,’ admitted Harper. ‘And, I suppose, it will be fun having someone besides Nettie to talk to while Dad’s off sifting the Jurassic Coast for the fifth rib of Pliosaurus funkei. Bailey and I can watch action movies and speak Spanish together.’
‘You’ll have a great time,’ Kat enthused. ‘Only –’
Harper threw her a suspicious glance. ‘Only what?’
‘Don’t be alarmed if he starts shooting.’
‘Don’t be alarmed if the parrot starts shooting? One of these days I’m going to record you, Kat Wolfe, and you’ll see that your conversations about animals are not normal.’
‘Normal is overrated,’ Kat told her. ‘Anyhow, Bailey might only be with you for a few days. If we’re wrong about Ramon, and he’s been painting bellbirds in Paraguay, he’ll be home in a week.’
‘I hope we’re wrong,’ Harper said fervently. ‘For Ramon’s sake, and for Bailey’s.’
Her laptop pinged. ‘That’s Jasper. Let’s see what he’s found.’
Hey, Geek, she typed.
Hey, Ace. Ever heard of Operation Ghost Stories?
Be serious.
I am. Whatever you’re mixed up in is heavy stuff. It goes back to the Cold War, when the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) set up a network of spies in the US. They were sleeper agents known as Illegals. The idea was that they’d spend decades pretending to be regular American citizens in cities and suburbs, making friends, being good neighbours, having children. Then the Russians would ‘wake them up’ and set these Illegals to work wherever they needed them. These sleeper spies were so skilled at blending into offices and neighborhoods, at being invisible, that the FBI investigation to catch them was called Operation Ghost Stories.
Kat squeezed up beside Harper so she could watch the words blink up on the screen. ‘Ask him what this has to do with Ramon or the Owl Service.’
According to my source, the Owl Service was a task force of ex-Special Forces soldiers who worked with US intelligence agencies to track down the Russian mastermind behind the network of Il
legals, code-named Ghost Owl. The officer who betrayed them in Afghanistan was a suspected Russian Illegal, so your soldiers might have seen it as their chance to avenge Mario’s death.
Harper’s fingers flew across the keys:
How many of them were in the Owl Service?
Javier (Ramon), Evan, Vaughan, Tony and Trey. The guys from your photo. I’ve confirmed them all now. We still don’t know who was behind the camera. Best guess says it’s Brad Emery, who owned the boat they were on. I found him through a boat registry. He was Tony and Mario’s neighbour and the only one who wasn’t a soldier.
‘So, in all the years of hunting, this task force never caught the Ghost Owl?’ asked Kat. Harper relayed the question.
They got close a couple of times, but then the trail went cold. Next, Owl Service members started dying. Tony and Vaughan from cardiac arrests, Evan from a stroke, Trey from pneumonia, and Javier in a car crash. I think your hunch about Ramon moving to Bluebell Bay because he learned that the Ghost Owl might be hiding on the local army base is spot on. That’s why this ends here. Harper, you and Kat need to stop this Nancy Drew stuff before you disappear too.
Harper and Kat looked at each other.
‘But what about the Tank Regiment dinner tonight?’ protested Kat. ‘What if the Ghost Owl has some diabolical plan?’
Harper nodded furiously. She begged Jasper to keep digging, but he flatly refused.
Ace, the men and women on the base are professional warriors. They can take care of themselves. I promised Professor Lamb I’d keep you safe online, not get you tangled up with some Russian ghost spy haunting Bluebell Bay. Promise me you’ll stop playing detective, Harper? Harper, are you still there? Nuts, I’ve gotta run to a lecture. Harper Lamb, BEHAVE!
The screen went blank.
‘He has a point,’ Kat said.
Harper pulled a face. ‘About us stopping being detectives?’
Kat Wolfe Investigates Page 17
