Spylark

by Danny Rurlander

  ‘When I saw Archie shoot into the clearing, I thought that was game over,’ Maggie said, grabbing a fistful of crisps. ‘If they’d spotted me then, they would have caught me for sure.’

  ‘And probably put you in that concrete bunker and tortured you for weeks on end,’ said Joel, dipping a generously buttered cheese scone in his soup.

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Maggie, ‘and I would have offered them my brave little brother as a ransom, without a moment’s hesitation!’

  Tom stretched out his leg, which was aching with the damp. ‘At least you were able to hear what you did when you were hiding in the trees. It’s confirmed everything I’d already worked out on my own. With that, and the pictures I took from Skylark, I’ve got all the proof I need now.’

  Maggie put down her mug of soup and looked at him, suddenly serious. ‘You mean we’ve got the proof we need, don’t you, Tom?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘If you want us to help you, you’re going to have to trust us. Especially as I nearly got captured by those terrorists!’

  Their eyes locked for a moment and he knew she could see right through him. He felt his cheeks reddening and wondered what she really thought of him: limping, irritable, electronic gadgets instead of friends. He looked away and stared at the tin Aunt Emily had brought the flapjack in: a commemorative Diamond Jubilee tin that had originally held shortbread. He pictured Maggie bolting along the jetty and diving into the lake and found himself smiling back at her in amazement. When she’d landed on the island, and asked him to look out for danger from Skylark she had trusted him completely. Now it was time for him to do the same.

  ‘OK, then.’ He shrugged, but inside he felt as if a tightly coiled spring was being released. ‘We’d better get to work!’ He picked a chunk of flapjack from the tin. Then, one step at a time, he filled them in on everything he had seen, and explained his theory that what Maggie had overheard on Benson Isle was part of a terrorist plot to send the Teal and the Duke of Lancaster – whoever he was – to the bottom of the lake on Wednesday afternoon.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Maggie, shaking her head. ‘You worked all this out with that little Spylark drone thing!’

  ‘So how do you think this attack is going to happen?’ said Joel.

  ‘15.03 must be the time of the attack. Three minutes after leaving the jetty in Dowthwaite Bay is all it would take for the Teal to be in exactly the right place.’

  ‘Maggie!’ said Joel, grabbing Maggie’s arm. ‘What was it you were saying in the boat, just before I crashed Skylark in the lake?’

  ‘Oh, I’d almost forgotten,’ said Maggie. She paused for a moment, eyes wide with concentration. ‘Routine. Victor. Hoped. That’s what the straw-hat guy – Mr C – said when the pilot asked, “where?”’

  ‘I think that might be a digital address,’ said Joel. ‘Anyone in the world can locate any three-by-three-metre square of space, if they know the three-word combination.’

  Tom took his laptop from a workbench and tapped the words into a map. ‘I knew it! That’s the very spot I had worked out from mapping the triangle set by the three trig points, and where they sank that old cruiser, Clementine.’

  ‘The dummy run for the Teal?’ Joel was now sitting with his feet on the table, working his way through a handful of crisps.

  ‘Exactly. So, this is what I think is going to happen. After opening the new freshwater study centre at Dowthwaite House, the duke will board the waiting Teal and head straight out for the cruise. As the Teal turns out of Dowthwaite Bay she’ll be in the line of sight of the three trig points, and from there they will attack.’

  ‘Why can’t they just attack from the lake?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘Because the place will be crawling with people protecting the Teal,’ said Tom. ‘I think they will each fire some sort of weapon at the same time, from the three trig points.’

  ‘But why from three different places?’

  ‘I guess it gives them three chances of hitting the target.’

  Aunt Emily tapped on the metal doors, and came in with a tray of hot chocolate.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Maggie. ‘Oh, Mrs Hopkins . . . er . . . Emily? I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the Duke of Lancaster, by any chance?’

  ‘Of course I have, dear.’ She bent over and tapped the flapjack tin. ‘The Duke of Lancaster is Her Majesty the Queen! They are one and the same.’

  CHAPTER 17

  No one spoke as Aunt Emily’s footsteps faded. A pair of magpies chuckled in the cedars.

  Joel puffed out his cheeks. ‘Like I said. Not TV presenters and football players.’

  ‘Wow.’ Maggie picked up the tin. On the Union Jack lid was a smiling portrait of the Queen in a cream-coloured hat with the words: Celebrating Sixty Glorious Years: 1952-2012 around it. ‘Who are these people anyway? We need to find out.’

  ‘Tom,’ said Joel, ‘what are those numbers on the side of boats?’

  ‘Every powered vessel on the lake has to be registered with the National Park Authority and display a five-figure number at all times. I didn’t take a note of the Invincible’s number, I’m afraid. But how would it help anyway?’

  Joel reached for the laptop. ‘I did. It’s 64431. All we have to do is hack into the right database and find the relevant file. Pleasure-boat numbers are hardly national security stuff.’

  Joel tapped away at the computer, and by the time Tom had cleared the lunch things away, he had what he was looking for.

  ‘Boat name: Invincible. Model: Vulcan. Manufacturer: Marlin Sport Boats. Engines: Tohatsu Four-Stroke; Two Hundred Horsepower; three.’

  ‘That’s the one!’ said Tom. ‘Who would need that sort of power?’

  ‘Well,’ said Joel, ‘you said yourself it comes in handy sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, but six hundred horsepower on a lake with a ten mile an hour speed limit?’

  ‘Here’s our Mr C, I think. Owner: Mr Rufus Clay. Ah, pity, there’s no local address, just a PO box in . . . the Cayman Islands.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Tom. ‘What about the ice cream van? Could that be a clue as well?’

  ‘One specializing in horrible ice cream,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Good call,’ said Joel. ‘Let’s try good old Google.’ He tapped away for a few minutes. ‘Here we go. Not just an ice cream van, but an ice cream company. The Luscious Lakeland Ice Cream Company. Registered as a new business in February last year. Directors: Rufus E. Clay, Mike J. McCain and Dr Victoria Juniper. Now let’s see.’ He tapped something into the search engine, and a few moments later brought up the face of ponytail man, unmistakable even without a ponytail, wearing full khaki combat gear, and then the red-haired woman, whose picture showed her in an academic gown receiving a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering. ‘Mr McCain also has an address in the Cayman Islands. But now the ice cream company is registered in . . . Hollowdale, Cumbria, UK.’

  ‘Hollowdale?’ said Maggie

  ‘It’s north of here. Middle of nowhere, really,’ said Tom. ‘Not an obvious choice for an ice cream factory, but it would be a great place for a terrorist HQ.’

  ‘I can’t find anything else on Rufus Clay. It can’t be his real name, I guess.’

  ‘May I?’ asked Maggie, picking up the laptop. ‘It’s probably too obvious but . . .’ She tapped ‘Rufus Clay’ into Google Images.

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ said Joel, shrugging.

  ‘Because,’ said Maggie, ‘you have a certain kind of brain. And I have another.’ They hunched together to look at the hotchpotch of faces and pictures brought up by the search engine: a newborn baby and a happy mother in hospital; an old man, with a long beard sitting on a stool playing a banjo surrounded by hay bales; a teenage boy posing by a lamp post with a skateboard. Joel clicked to a second page, to be greeted by banjo man again, after which the images became more and more random.

  ‘There!’ said Maggie, pointing to a photograph of a sports team. She indicated a tall young man on the second row, almos
t a head above the men on either side. ‘It’s him,’ she whispered.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Tom. He leant close to look at the grainy face staring back at him.

  ‘Look – that face, light hair, glasses. I’d remember him anywhere.’

  ‘Who are those people?’ said Tom.

  But when Joel clicked on the image itself to try and get to a web page, an error message came up.

  ‘It’s an orphan: an image somehow floating around the internet, whose original page had been removed. What can we get from the picture itself?’

  It was a picture of a football team, arms folded, front row sitting, back row standing behind, goalie all in black, holding a ball in gloved hands.

  Maggie nudged Joel. ‘Go on, Sherlock, now’s your chance.’

  Joel shrugged, then took the laptop and stared at the picture.

  After almost a minute he let out a long breath. ‘Our friend Rufus Clay is a retired soldier. This is an army unit of some kind. Look at the way every sock is perfectly pulled up, all the boots shiny and clean. They’re in a hot part of the world. Look at the bright light, the way they are squinting at the camera, their suntans, the dust at their feet – not grass. And that vehicle in the background. Looks like a rocket launcher. Satellite dish. High tech. I’m guessing they’re some sort of engineers.’

  ‘Impressive,’ said Tom. And he meant it.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Joel, holding his hand up. ‘There’s a symbol on their shirts. It’s a bit grainy.’

  Maggie bent over the screen and then gasped. ‘It’s that naked man. The ice cream man had that tattooed on to his wrist.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘I saw it too. It’s a man with some sort of golden bird under his arm.’

  ‘I didn’t see the tattoo,’ said Joel, ‘but I think I know what it is. It’s not a naked man, Maggie. It’s a Roman god. Mercury, the winged messenger. And that will be the clue to who these men are. Hold on . . . ’ He tapped something into the search engine. ‘Yes, here we are . . . it’s the emblem of the Royal Signals. Which means,’ he said with a note of triumph, ‘that our Mr Clay is an expert in electronic warfare.’

  Maggie stood up. ‘Right. We’ve got photos and we’ve got a name. Now we go to the police.’

  ‘But what about the memory card?’ said Joel. ‘We don’t know if it survived getting wet yet.’

  ‘I think it will be OK,’ said Tom. ‘Solid state storage is hard to destroy. I’ve put it on the kitchen windowsill to dry in the sun. And you’re right, Maggie. We do need to report this. The problem is working out who we can trust.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Maggie.

  ‘When I saw the tattoo on the ice cream man, it was the second time I’d seen it in the space of a week.’

  ‘Who else did you see it on?’

  Before Tom could reply, there was a loud crash on the roof above them, followed by the squawk and fluttering of a startled bird.

  ‘Listen!’ said Maggie. The sound of a motorboat was receding into the distance.

  Joel ran outside and brought back a jagged piece of slate with a crude skull and crossbones scratched on to one side. Underneath a rubber band was a piece of paper, which Joel unfolded.

  If you want it back, come and get it.

  SBS.

  ‘SBS?’ said Maggie. ‘We saw those letters carved on a tree on the island.’

  ‘Special Boat Squad,’ said Tom. ‘It’s what Snakey’s lot call themselves. But come and get what? What have they taken? Not Maggot?’

  ‘No,’ said Joel. ‘It . . . she’s still there in the harbour.’

  ‘Strange.’

  Outside they could hear the magpies flapping and fussing as they settled back into their nest.

  ‘Could Snakey be mixed up with Rufus Clay?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘Snakey’s an idiot, but he’s no terrorist. He wouldn’t have the guts, for one thing. No, whatever they’ve taken, this is just the usual bullying to keep us off their island. But right now we’ve got more important things to think about. Let’s see if that memory card is dry yet.’

  As Tom walked out of the workshop, he thought about going to the police. Of course, now they knew how serious things were, they had no choice. He would simply give the memory card to the police and let them take it from there. On the other hand, it might be the most dangerous thing they could do. Rufus Clay clearly had some powerful friends and if people like the RAF Puma pilot, who were supposed to be guarding the Queen, were involved in his plot, by tipping them off about what he had discovered, Tom would be putting himself and everyone connected to him in danger.

  He could hear the whirr of the lawnmower somewhere as it worked its way around the garden. The sky had cleared completely and warm sunlight bathed the southern side of the house.

  Tom reached his arm through the open window to where he had left the memory card next to a pot of parsley, but there was nothing there and the plant was lying on its side, a handful of soil scattered over the worktop. He put his head through the window and searched the sill and the surrounding sideboards. He hunted around below the window. He then went inside the house and searched the kitchen itself: in the sink, on the floor, under the cupboards. His throat tightening, he went to find Aunt Emily, who was doing some ironing in the utility room.

  ‘Aunt Emily, I don’t suppose you’ve seen a small piece of shiny metal, about the size of a postage stamp?’ he said desperately.

  ‘No, dear, I haven’t. Is it important?’

  Tom hesitated. For a few seconds the only sound was the hiss of the steam iron as he went over in his mind the fact that the small piece of metal he was looking for contained the key proof for a terrorist attack on the Queen of the United Kingdom, an attack that was less than twenty-four hours away, and whose prevention, he now understood with a prickle of alarm, solely rested on him and his friends.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s nothing really.’

  CHAPTER 18

  A few moments later the three of them stood on the lawn outside the kitchen window, eyes like spooked deer.

  ‘But how on earth did Snakey happen to look on the windowsill?’ said Maggie at last.

  The whirr of the lawnmower was growing stronger.

  Tom shrugged. ‘I guess they must have been sneaking around looking for something to take.’

  The machine rounded the corner of the house and crossed the lawn in front of them. They watched it silently as it returned to its recharging point, like a well-trained animal. They heard the motor power down and then a click as the contacts were engaged.

  ‘Pity,’ said Joel at last.

  ‘On to Plan B, then,’ said Maggie. ‘Whatever that is.’

  Despite having no solid evidence to give them, they did phone the police. Tom decided that they should call the Crimestoppers number and give the information anonymously. Maggie did the talking, with the others listening, and relayed everything they knew in great detail. The man at the other end had a Birmingham accent and Tom imagined him in some huge call centre somewhere in the Midlands. He took everything down with the same matter-of-fact tone that he would if they were reporting a missing cat, or some noisy neighbours. He needed the name of the lake spelling out for him, and Maggie had to explain about the three fell tops and the Teal and the lines intersecting where the cruiser had sunk three times before he understood what she was saying.

  ‘I’m just going to put you on hold for a second and see if I can find any information about this incident on file, OK?’

  They were hunched around Maggie’s phone and some cheery pop music came from the speaker while they waited. Tom thought again about what the Puma pilot had said. He’d accused Tom of ‘nosing around a sector under surveillance’. Beneath the air force jargon was a simple and clear message: mind your own business, we’ve got it sorted.

  The voice came on the phone again. ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting. We have no record of a boat called Clementine being reported missing, so I can’t give you a crime number at this point. But I can
confirm that the event on Wednesday is being covered by a number of security services, so I suggest that if any criminal activity were to take place surrounding the event they would know about it already. However I have logged the information you’ve provided. Is there anything else I can help you with today?’

  Tom spent the rest of the afternoon in his workshop, repairing the morning’s damage. Skylark, which had suffered a broken aileron and an electronic failure from the crash-landing in the lake, needed a bit of soldering and a new circuit board. Maggot’s waterlogged outboard was another matter, but Tom shut the doors, put his overalls on, laid out his tools, and settled down to the task, glad to be doing something with his hands. He made a start by siphoning the fuel tank. He was gripping the rubber hose between his teeth when the doors opened and Maggie walked in, followed by Archie, who pressed his body against Tom’s leg. Unbalanced, he toppled against the engine stand, sending engine parts crashing to the floor, and the hose spurting fuel on to his overalls.

  ‘Archie, sit down!’ Maggie scolded.

  Flustered, Tom began to pick up the engine parts.

  Maggie bent down to help, laughing. ‘I’m sorry about Archie. He does really seem to like you.’

  Tom could feel the dog sniffing his overalls where the fuel had spilt, and he found his hand running over his head between the ears, where the fur felt soft and creamy. ‘He’s got a strange way of showing it!’

  ‘What were you doing with that pipe in your mouth anyway? Drinking it?’

  He sighed audibly. ‘Siphoning the water out.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it. Sorry for bothering you.’ She turned to go, when the events of the last twenty-four hours came flooding back to him. She had been intimidated by Snakey, nearly lost her dog, almost been caught by ruthless criminals on Benson Isle, and he hadn’t heard a word of complaint.

  ‘The water is heavier so it settles on the bottom,’ he explained gruffly. ‘You can then siphon it out, just using gravity.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’