The Fangs of the Dragon

by Simon Cheshire

I chewed my way through a particularly tough section of pastry. ‘Aren’t you having the pie?’ I said.

  She gave my plate one of her arch, feline looks. ‘As if,’ she said. She unzipped her pink sandwich bag and took out a pot of home-made pasta salad and a fork.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED HOW the members of some families seem almost identical, while the members of other families seem about as alike as a pot of jam and the Empire State Building?

  Izzy’s mum was as unlike her daughter as it was possible for two people to be, without major genetic re-sequencing. Whereas Isobel was all glitzy trousers and chunky rings, her mother was sombre and businesslike.

  At six o’clock that evening, as we stood together on the doorstep of number 29, Mercia Way, Izzy’s mum looked ready to march into a high-powered, top-level executive meeting and start firing people. And that’s not an easy look to achieve in a tracksuit. I still had my school uniform on.

  The door was opened by the owner of the house, Mrs Ferguson. It was her turn to host this week’s session.

  ‘Hallo, hallo,’ she twittered, ushering us inside. ‘Lovely to see you, Caroline. Who’s this with you?’

  I’d given Izzy’s mum my carefully thought-out cover story. I was to be Matt, her adopted nephew. I was to be staying with her while my house was repaired following a gas explosion. I was to be accompanying her this evening due to the traumatic after-effects of having my house blown up.

  ‘This,’ said Izzy’s mum, ‘is my daughter’s friend Saxby. He’s just tagging along.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Mrs Ferguson. ‘The more the merrier; do come along in, Monsieur Jacques has arrived and we’re ready to start.’

  As we walked to the living room, I nudged Izzy’s mum in the ribs.

  ‘What about my carefully thought-out cover story?’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Izzy’s mum. ‘Half the people here will know you from school. What on earth do you need a cover story for?’

  ‘It’s more detective-y,’ I grumbled.

  Assembled in the living room were a dozen other women in tracksuits. Standing in front of them was a man with a hairdo shaped like a headless duck, and a moustache that set a whole new standard for the phrase ‘thin and weedy’. He wore bright yellow trousers, and a polo-neck pullover with Dragonfang printed across the chest. A gold badge with a dragon logo on it was pinned above the lettering.

  So this was Monsieur Jacques. Immediately, his face seemed vaguely familiar to me.

  ‘Good evening, everyone,’ he cried, clapping politely for quiet. (For the full effect here, you need to read his words in a French accent as thick as week-old gravy.) ‘To business! Voilà! We ’ave ze beginning exercise! Aaaaand . . .’

  Everyone lined up and started sticking their legs out at weird angles. I nudged Izzy’s mum again.

  ‘I forgot to ask,’ I whispered. ‘Which class is this, exactly? Advanced Relaxation? Meditation For Beginners?’

  ‘Ballet-robics,’ said Izzy’s mum. ‘Come on, get those arms moving.’

  Thumpy music started up on the CD player. If my heart had sunk any lower, I’d have been standing on it. ‘Great,’ I muttered to myself.

  I reminded myself that I was here to make careful observations. I was troubled by the fact that Monsieur Jacques seemed strangely familiar. And I was even more troubled by his accent. Something, as Monsieur Jacques would probably say, smelled of ze fish.

  ‘That’s it, mes amis!’ cried Monsieur Jacques. ‘Kick and twirl! And one, two, three, one, two, three! That is good, Mrs Ferguson! Also good, Mrs Moustique!’

  After a few minutes, he shut up a bit and started patrolling each of his pupils, tapping out the rhythm of the music with his fingers. I took the chance to ask him some deceptively innocent questions. The first of these questions was based on a snippet of historical knowledge I’d learned during the case of The Treasure of Dead Man’s Lane . . .

  ‘This is a really brilliant class, Monsieur Jacques,’ I said, above the music’s beat. ‘Absolutely outstanding.’

  He glanced at me as if I was something he’d recently picked from his nose. ‘Merci,’ he said. ‘Aaaand one, two —’

  ‘Why did you call your gym Dragonfang?’ I said. ‘Why not something more French; maybe something historical like “Waterloo”. You know, to commemorate Napoleon’s victory?’

  He tapped at his gold dragon badge. ‘Yes, of course I considered “Waterloo”, but I am ze, as you say, fan of ze martial arts movies. My favourite, it eez Dragon Warrior Goes Nuts in Shanghai. You know it?’

  ‘Oui! Or, as it translates into French, Le Penzler de Bennett Izzy de la Muddi, yeh?’

  ‘Oui, exactly,’ he said. ‘Now then, come along, one, two —’

  ‘But I hear you’re closing the gym soon?’ I said, putting on my best sorrowful-puppy-dog expression.

  ‘Yes,’ said Monsieur Jacques, ‘ze Mrs wife and I, we do ze work for ze charity in Africa; we ’elp orphans build ze shelters for endangered species in ze Brazilian rainforest. Soon we sell up and move there.’ He clapped his hands and raised his voice. ‘In time with ze music! Good! Lovely work, everyone! Three, four, five . . .’

  I knew it! The guy was a total phoney, no more French than my Auntie Pat. And I doubted he could even point to Africa on a map showing nothing but Africa, with Africa marked in red, and a sign saying Africa, This Way printed on it!

  Did you spot his three mistakes?

  1. Napoleon LOST the Battle of Waterloo. (For more info, see my previous case file.)

  2. That translation I gave him was total gibberish. Even I speak more French than him, and all I can manage is to order a baguette!

  3. The Brazilian rainforest is in South America. In, like, you know, er, Brazil! It’s nowhere near Africa.

  I tapped at Monsieur Jacques’s sleeve. ‘Could I ask if you —?’

  He was clearly getting ever so slightly fed up with my questions now. ‘I don’t appear to ’ave your name on my list, young man. ’Ave you paid for ze session?’

  ‘Er, no, I’m just tagging along,’ I said.

  ‘Well, tag along to ze kitchen and make ze tea,’ said Monsieur Jacques. He gave me a smarmy smile.

  And in that instant, I knew why his face had looked familiar. Remember what I said about family resemblances? Monsieur Jacques’s smarmy smile was identical to the smarmy smile of a certain low-down rat from school . . .

  My heart suddenly started to race. So as not to give anything away to ‘Monsieur Jacques’, I quickly retreated to the kitchen. While the kettle boiled, I phoned Izzy.

  ‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a picture of him and send it to you straight away.’

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ she said.

  I hurried back into the living room, holding the phone to my ear as if Izzy was still on the line. I planned to stand as close to our phoney French friend as I could, pretend to be deep in conversation, and click the photo button when he wasn’t looking.

  The living room was empty.

  For a second or two I panicked, thinking that the class was suddenly over and that everyone had gone home. But as the steady throb of the music continued, I could hear people moving about all over the house.

  One or two members of the class reappeared, and kick-stepped their way across the room. I spotted a couple more of them twirling and stretching in the hallway. From somewhere upstairs came a familiar, treacle-thick accent: ‘Looovely, Mrs Ferguson, hold your leg in zat position and spin! Yeeees, that is perfecto; you three there, please to be going downstairs to join ze group in ze dining room. Loooovely!’

  I found Izzy’s mum doing funny-looking arm movements on the stairs.

  ‘Does every class include this different-rooms routine?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Izzy’s mum, continuing to wave her arms about like a slow-motion windmill, ‘we always split up, spread out and move about. Monsieur Jacques says it’s to give us a free-flowing feeling of pe
rsonal space. He says it allows him to assess us individually.’

  A crime-related thought popped into my mind. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I bet that’s not all it allows him to do.’

  Monsieur Jacques appeared at the top of the stairs and started skipping lightly down towards us. ‘Mrs Ferguson,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘ze spinning, she is enough now, you will get dizzy again.’

  As he drew level with Izzy’s mum and me, he smiled at one of us and sneered at the other. I’ll leave you to guess which of us got the sneer.

  ‘You ’ave made ze tea?’ he said.

  ‘Oui,’ I replied. ‘Ze kettle, she is boiled.’

  For the briefest of split seconds, the look on his face said, ‘I don’t like you, sunshine!’ But then he switched his attention to Izzy’s mum, grinning soppily at her. He dug into his pocket and produced a gold badge like the one he was wearing, with a dragon logo printed on it.

  ‘Mrs Moustique!’ he declared. ‘You ’ave made such terrific effort this evening. You are quite a new member to our group, but already I award you my Star Pupil badge!’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ said Izzy’s mum, as he pinned it to her tracksuit. There was a ripple of applause from upstairs.

  I took the opportunity, while Monsieur Jacques’s attention was diverted, to flip open my phone. I got an excellent shot of his face while he was busy asking Izzy’s mum for her monthly subscription fee.

  Later, after I’d sent the picture to Izzy and was back home, I waited nervously for confirmation of the evening’s findings. I didn’t have to wait very long. Izzy called me back within the hour.

  ‘You were right to suggest I look back through crime reports on the news sites,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take me long to find this Monsieur Jacques. The pictures I’ve got of him are ten years old, but it’s definitely the same guy.’

  ‘Ten years old?’ I said. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because until the middle of last year, he was in prison,’ said Izzy. ‘He organised a gang that conned half a million quid out of a group of Third World aid charities. What a scumbag!’

  ‘And his real name?’

  ‘Oh yeh, that’s the best bit,’ said Izzy. ‘You were quite right. He certainly isn’t French. He’s Harry’s uncle. His name is Jack Lovecraft.’

  That piece of information was the last piece in the puzzle. I now knew exactly what had been going on. I knew what those non-break-ins were all about, and I knew what Harry had been up to.

  But catching the intruder would still be difficult.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  THURSDAY 10.55 A.M.

  ‘Can’t we park outside the house?’ asked Miss Bennett.

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘We mustn’t be seen, we can’t let the intruder suspect anything.’

  Miss Bennett stopped the school minibus and we all got out: Miss Bennett, me, the six pupils in Miss Bennett’s class who’d already been visited by the intruder and a seventh pupil, a scruffy boy called Oliver.

  ‘I live at the other end of this street,’ said Oliver, as Miss Bennett locked up the minibus.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re here. OK, everyone, most of these houses have hedges around their front gardens. Keep down, below the hedges, out of sight.’

  Everyone crouched down and shuffled along the street towards Oliver’s house. An old lady walking a tiny dog passed us on the other side of the road. Both of them gave us a funny look.

  ‘Honestly, Saxby,’ said Miss Bennett crossly, ‘is this really necessary?’

  ‘It’s vital,’ I whispered.

  ‘Why couldn’t you have talked to us at school?’ said Miss Bennett.

  ‘Because until we’ve caught the intruder red-handed, news mustn’t get out at school that the mystery’s been solved. One sneaky phone call from Harry Lovecraft, and the intruder will fold up the whole scheme and make a run for it. I’ve got Muddy covering for me back in class. As far as Harry’s concerned, I’m at the optician’s getting my glasses adjusted.’

  ‘You’re making some pretty serious allegations about that boy,’ said Miss Bennett quietly. ‘You’d better have your facts straight.’

  By now, we’d reached Oliver’s house. Luckily, the hedge round his garden was particularly tall and thick. We all scrunched down, at a point where we couldn’t be seen from the front door or any of the windows.

  I checked my watch. 11 a.m. precisely.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Now, we all know that, right at this moment, there’s a weekly de-stress session going on, which the mums of all seven of you are attending. This week, it’s over at Liz Wyndham’s house.’

  ‘Right,’ said Liz Wyndham.

  ‘The homes of six members of that class have already been visited by a mysterious intruder,’ I said. ‘Oliver here is the only person we know of whose mum is at that class, but whose home has not yet been visited by a mysterious intruder.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Surely, there are more than seven people at this weekly session? How can we know which house is next on the intruder’s list?’

  ‘Weeeeeell,’ I said, ‘strictly speaking, we can’t . . .’

  ‘So, we could all be crouching here, behind a hedge, like a bunch of idiots, using up lesson time, for nothing?’ said Miss Bennett.

  ‘Strictly speaking . . . yes,’ I admitted. ‘But I have every reason to believe I’m right, and that the intruder is, right now, as we speak, in Oliver’s house.’

  ‘Well, let’s get in there and grab them, then!’ cried Oliver.

  ‘Shhh!’ I hissed. ‘No good. If we barge in there, the intruder could simply dump the evidence we need and run out of the back door. We have to wait. We have to catch them.’

  ‘But what’s this evidence you mention?’ said Miss Bennett. ‘And how do you know this is the right house?’

  ‘Look at what we know so far,’ I said. ‘In every case, the intruder has struck at a house they know will be empty. Think about it from the intruder’s point of view. Mum X attends a gym class. So she’s out of the house, but half a dozen more people might still be at home! An intruder will want to minimise the risk of finding the place still occupied. That is the link between all seven of you here. All seven of you can confirm to a third party that, on a Thursday morning, when Mum’s at her gym class, there’s nobody else at home.’

  ‘A third party?’ said Oliver.

  ‘You mean . . . Harry Lovecraft?’ said Miss Bennett.

  ‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘He’s been unusually friendly of late. He’s been chatting away to people left, right and centre. And the interest he takes in all his new friends covers up the fact that he’s fishing for information. About your mums and dads, about what goes on at home . . .’

  ‘That sneaky, miserable, underhand . . .’ muttered Liz Wyndham.

  ‘So,’ said Miss Bennett, ‘cross-referencing the addresses of the people who attend the gym class, with the information gathered by Harry, means that the intruder can know which houses would make the best targets.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Of course, the intruder only needs to have an address, and can use various tricks to find out if there’s someone else at home, but the information provided by Harry would be a perfect shortcut to targeting houses left unattended.’

  ‘But we’re still no nearer knowing how or why these incidents are happening,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘The intruder can’t be the man running the classes. He’s running the classes.’

  ‘How is Monsieur Jacques involved?’ said Liz Wyndham. ‘My mum thinks the world of him.’

  ‘I’m afraid Monsieur Jacques is really Monsieur Harry Lovecraft’s uncle, a man with a criminal record as long as an anteater’s tongue. He got out of prison last year, set up Dragonfang Gym and is using it as a front for his latest con trick.’

  ‘You mean he’s holding all these classes as a kind of distraction, so that the intruder can get to work?’ said Miss Bennett.

  ‘Oh, he’s doing a lot mor
e than that,’ I said. ‘Remember how there’s never any sign of an actual break-in? That’s because the intruder is using a key. You see, because Monsieur Jacques holds his classes in people’s homes, he’s got every opportunity to snoop. He sends people off around the house, doing their exercises, and all he needs is a few seconds to locate the owner’s keyring, and take an impression of their keys with a bar of soap or a block of modelling clay.’

  ‘But if he’s going to all that trouble,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Why is so little being taken?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘A great deal is being taken. Look at the sort of things that were disturbed in each case. Computers, household papers, even waste paper bins. The intruder is stealing words and numbers.’

  ‘Words and numbers?’ said Oliver.

  ‘Bank account numbers, computer passwords, login details, financial records. Personal information of all kinds. Identity theft.’

  ‘But none of the parents have had their bank accounts emptied, or anything like that,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Surely he’s not simply storing up all that information?’

  ‘Yes, that’s precisely what he’s doing,’ I said. ‘He’s already told everyone he’s closing Dragonfang Gym down and moving abroad. Not to Africa, as he claims, I’m sure. But somewhere. And when he’s safely on the other side of the world, he can use all that information to whatever criminal ends he likes. It’s all done by computer. He could be on Mars and still launch raids on one bank account after another.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Bennett, ‘if he’s abroad, it’ll be that much harder to trace him, and that much harder for the law to catch up with him.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said. ‘He’s been running loads of different classes, so by now he’s probably got passwords and account numbers for dozens of people, possibly hundreds.’

  ‘If that’s true,’ said Liz Wyndham, ‘why haven’t more people in more gym classes noticed that these intrusions are happening?’

  ‘Why would they? You lot only noticed by accident. If the intruder is careful enough, most of this scheme’s victims won’t even realise the intruder’s visited them.’