A Ravelled Flag (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  “Of course I will.” Anna’s answer got a bit muffled because she’d hidden her face in her napkin. “I’m ... sorry. I somehow thought that I was going to find ... my mother. I knew I wasn’t being ... logical.”

  June Ribiero put her arm round Anna’s shoulders as her own dark eyes filled up. Gerald stood up and sat down again while Rev. Wendy clasped her hands tight together as if sending off prayers by express delivery.

  For one bad moment it seemed as if Vicky was going to pick up on her sister’s emotion and begin howling in sympathy. Skye quickly offered her a knuckle to chew.

  Edward looked incredibly uncomfortable. “Oh dear me, yes,” he muttered. “What wouldn’t we all give to have Ms Lottie Livesey present. Three million pounds and now the patent residues and the apartment as well. It’s too great a responsibility. I can’t see how it’s to be managed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘three million pounds’?” asked Xanthe.

  Edward looked surprised. “The legacy, my dear. Miss Anna Livesey’s legacy – though it will now be shared with her sister, Miss Victoria Whiting.” He seemed to have worked out who Vicky was and nodded across the table to her, raising his champagne glass a second time. “Their grandmother, Theodora, was a highly successful novelist. You won’t remember ... but that film they made of The Castaways!” He sighed. “Charlotte – Charlotte Livesey as she became – was Theodora’s only child and she made it clear that she would not accept a single penny of her mother’s money. So it was all put in trust for her daughter ... daughters, I should say. The income has been mounting up and it must be spent for their benefit. Yet how are we to interpret this without the advice of the children’s mother? Professor Reif made every effort to find his niece. But there had been a rift. On political grounds. And now he too has died, there is the additional question of his residual patents and his home. The entire top floor of Bawdsey Manor was his personal property. He has left it to Miss Anna Livesey.”

  Anna was sitting up, white as her napkin, staring at Edward. “You are saying that, because I did a completely straightforward binary/decimal conversion, I get all that? Because I didn’t do anything else. It was Donny and Maggi and Xanthe and Luke who got us to the Easternmost Point.”

  The lawyer’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “No, no, my dear,” he said. “The quest was Callum’s last-minute attempt to create some feeling of connection between himself and the person he thought was his only surviving relation. Once he had finally despaired of making contact with your mother. He hoped to take you on an adventure with him. That’s why I was somewhat taken aback to learn of Miss Whiting’s existence. I wondered whether I should modify the challenge to enable her to participate. But she really is too young. I will have to rely on you to explain matters when she is able to understand. The inheritance is yours and hers whether you like it or not. As your Trustee I cannot even allow you to refuse it until you have both come of age.”

  “I don’t want to refuse it,” said Anna decidedly. “I want to use everything I’ve got to help my friends – and my family. I don’t think you knew I have brothers. We’re all in this together. I won’t let anyone split us up.”

  Luke and Liam leaned behind Great Aunt Ellen’s chair and did high fives.

  “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” said Edward. “But we really do need your mother back, don’t we?”

  “I’ve been searching on the Internet for ages,” said Anna. “But I can search better now I’ve got money. All those sites where you have to pay, I can go on them now.”

  “As your Trustees we have already disbursed considerable funding via investigation agencies and similar channels. Without the least success. Hence Professor Reif’s final attempts to make direct appeal using the Internet. Fruitless, as it transpired. Troublingly so. But we must not give up. Perseverando! I would ask you to consider how your mother would choose to communicate – if she had something private to convey?”

  There was a long silence round the table. Chopsticks lay idle; helpings congealed on plates. Edward hadn’t even started. The problem was that Lottie had vanished deliberately, knowing that her children would be Looked After, and she hadn’t sent Anna a single message to say she was okay. This was why they thought she might be ... dead.

  “Anna,” asked Xanthe, at last. “If your mum had been trying to tell you something, how would she have done it? I mean, you said she never liked computers ...”

  “We used to talk. Quite a lot. But she does get fired up. She isn’t what I’d call logical. Although, possibly I’m not as logical as I thought I was.”

  “Your mum liked singing best,” said Liam. “She singed stuff to me an’ Luke. Loads of times.”

  Anna looked at him, fondly. “Out of the mouths of babes! Liam’s completely right. Music was Mum’s real life – like I thought maths could be mine. I’m not sure how it helps us.”

  Donny jumped up as if an electric eel had stung him on the backside. “Oh my stars and compasses,” he gabbled. “I’ve got it right here; she’s in my bag.”

  He pushed his chair aside and rushed over to the corner of the room where they’d dumped their jackets. There was his rucksack. And there was the grotty old music folder he’d taken from Anna’s marked space in the DT cupboard.

  He shoved it at her, unable to speak with hope and excitement.

  The first batch of manuscript pages was as off-putting as the cover. Someone had been practising writing out key signatures and simple scales. Their pencil was blunt and they were basically clueless so there were lots of scribblings-out and smudged erasing with a dirty rubber. Then there were time signatures that didn’t add up and tunes that started on impossible notes and didn’t progress any further.

  No-one who knew Anna could have believed this folder was hers and no teacher would have wasted more than thirty seconds leafing through it.

  Then there was a diagram of a piano keyboard. Not a very good one because the keys went up like steps instead of being in a straight line. A message in a leaking biro said “2 x 13 = 26. Remember Dr Gradus ad Parnassum.”

  “Oh!” said Anna and swayed as if she might be going to faint.

  “Gradus ad parnassum,” said Edward reading over her shoulder. “My oh my, that takes me back. Steps to heaven!”

  “But in our house it was the staircase, a chromatic octave, thirteen steps. And Mum is telling me to go up the stairs and down again. And twenty-six is the number of letters in the alphabet!”

  Edward handed her his fountain pen without her needing to ask.

  “This is the sort of code I understand,” she breathed ecstatically, ready to write.

  “Not on the book!” Ai Qin stepped forward hastily. “You may need to send a message back ... ”

  She handed Anna a blank order pad. Anna looked at her a moment, looked alarmed, then bent her head over the music and began spelling out her mother’s message from the shapeless tunes and odd key signatures.

  “I work for Pura-Lilly Cleaning. There are many of us and we are all afraid. Usually we work at night, sometimes in your schools and other places. I am held here by a debt that I cannot repay and by my fears for you if I should fail. We live in the wastelands. Tell no-one except in extreme emergency. Write me a note in this book and kiss sweet little Vicky. Be good to the boys.”

  No-one said anything for a moment.

  “So she does care!” said Maggi, her face alight with happiness.

  “That folder’s been in my bag since the end of last term. And it was on the shelf for weeks before that. She must think you’re never going to answer.” Donny felt terrible. Why hadn’t he insisted that Anna should check the book out properly? Would she start crying again, now she knew?

  But Anna, who’d been so emotional before, was completely calm and collected. “Well,” she said to Edward. “I hope Vicky’s and my Trustee will see it as a ‘benefit’ to pay our mum’s debts and get her
out of that cleaning company. And this time she won’t be able to say no because it’s not her mother’s money any more, it’s ours!”

  “Yes indeed,” said Edward. “Of course we’ll need to appoint a second Trustee before we can make any decisions at all. I rather hoped one of your carers might be willing?”

  “That’d be nice,” said Anna with a quick shy smile at Wendy and Gerald. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for them. They have to work quite hard, looking after all of us.”

  “We’d be delighted,” said Wendy, with an upward glance. “I take a professional interest in miracles and this one’s really quite exceptional. I wonder whether Pura-Lilly’s in the telephone directory. Perhaps we could ring your mother straight away?”

  “No,” said Donny. “No, I don’t think you should. There’s something not right about this. But I don’t know what it is.”

  He hadn’t been signing but Skye saw from his body language that he was worried. She asked him what his trouble was.

  “The cleaning company,” he signed back. “Pura-Lilly. There’s something I don’t like.”

  Skye looked puzzled. She gestured at the vase in the corner. “Is it the flower company?” she signed. Her hands were still weak. “Is their mother working for the flower company? The small man is not good. She must be careful.”

  Suddenly Donny saw it. “Yes, yes she is. But they don’t sell flowers, they do cleaning.”

  “I know that!” Skye’s hands expressed the exasperation she couldn’t utter. “The flower is on the van. It is a picture.”

  Of course it was! That bath-pink lily sign. And not only on the van! It was embroidered on the pocket of the Chinese cleaner’s overalls. And stamped on the sides of that horrible heap of containers in Ipswich – the place where they couldn’t believe any human could be living ...

  “Oh my God!” he gasped.

  Rev. Wendy glared at him.

  “Er ... sorry. But I’ve just sussed it out – Anna’s mother’s working for the Tiger!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ghosts

  Thursday 28 December

  “Tiger? Who’s the Tiger?”

  “The Tiger is the man who employs the Chinese cleaner who let me out of the cupboard. That bit really doesn’t matter but the point is that her overalls had the Pura-Lilly logo. And she was kind. She could be a friend of Anna’s mum. She could even have brought in the folder. Unless there were lots of them.”

  It was no good. Only Donny’s Allies and Gold Dragon understood what he was saying. People like Gerald, Joshua Ribiero and Edward the lawyer were new to the idea that there was anything criminal happening at all. Wendy and June had at least begun to suspect that Flint and Toxic might be more than power-mad bullies but while June was eager to learn more from Ai Qin, Ai Qin was not yet willing to talk to anyone outside her own community.

  She and Gold Dragon spoke urgently to one another in Mandarin while Donny tried to make everyone else understand that what had been happening to him and Skye was somehow connected to the plight of Lottie Livesey.

  “Because she’s not on a mission, is she? She’s almost some sort of prisoner.”

  Ai Qin summoned the big, scarred chef from the Floating Lotus kitchen and seemed to be asking his opinion. He spoke Cantonese, not Mandarin, and it took ages. By the time all the explanations, translations and connections had been made, Vicky and Liam had fallen asleep and Luke had propped his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands and was staring at the fish tank with glassy-eyed intensity.

  Maggi and Xanthe were determined to get things clear. They questioned Donny even more thoroughly than they had on the afternoon of Snow Goose’s accident.

  “So, if the Tiger is the manager of Pura-Lilly, and Lottie and these other people are controlled by him, then he’s more than some sidekick who’s doing Flint and Toxic’s dirty work.”

  “Except that he is doing their dirty work, isn’t he? They want Gold Dragon out of here and he’s the person who’s been trying to make her leave by getting Skye addicted and chasing after you in his white van.”

  “It must have been him who slashed the dragon flag and wrote those warning signs on the Hispaniola.”

  “He must want Gold Dragon out as well.”

  “I think,” said Donny, “that he was at that meeting.” He remembered the inconspicuous man in a suit who had looked so interested when someone – was it Toxic? – had asked Great Aunt Ellen where in China Strong Winds had been built. “I think that there’s something in Gold Dragon’s past that really scares them. She thought she’d come home to be a good great-aunt. But they won’t let her.”

  Xanthe nodded at this but Maggi frowned. “Still not sure I get it. When Toxic brought him into the school, posing as a computer expert, it was Mr Mac and Anna they were after. You were just some random kid in their way. How could they have decided that that was exactly the right moment to hand your mum the vodka bottle?”

  “Because I’d left my shoes on a bench by the door and my name was written in them.”

  “What an idiot!”

  “I had blisters ...”

  “They’d read my computer by then anyway,” said Anna. “They knew Mum hadn’t sent any messages. They were just making extra trouble for Mr Mac.”

  “And the music folder was in his department all the time! That is so neat!”

  The chef finished what he had to say, bowed politely to Gold Dragon and returned to his kitchen. Ai Qin decided to speak English and the discovery of Anna and Vicky’s three million-pound fortune was almost lost in the disgust of the other things the Allies learned that evening. Things they really didn’t want to know but were there in the world whether they liked them or not.

  When Great Aunt Ellen had lived in Shanghai – and for many years before that –people often gave her information. About tiger-sharks. That was all she said. Once she’d made the decision to return to England, she’d agreed to deliver some private messages from the families of poor workers who had borrowed money to pay smugglers to get them into England.

  “Then that would be the end for me. If I was to live with you here, in a family, I had to cut my cables from the past. You can lose more than a hand if you swim too long with tiger-sharks.”

  Donny thought about the Floating Lotus chef who walked in that strange way because he only had one leg ...

  Ai Qin explained that the people smugglers always told the illegal workers that it would be easy to pay off their travel debt. England was a great place, full of good jobs, they said. As soon as the debt was cleared, the workers could begin sending money home to their villages to support the elderly parents and the children they had left behind. If they failed to keep up their repayments their families would suffer. Even if they were sick or died, their families would still have to pay back the journey money. But no-one really expected that that would be a problem.

  The illegal workers were not offered good jobs when they arrived. The pay was low, the conditions terrible and they didn’t have anyone to whom they could turn for help. Who could they trust? They were almost invisible, ghosts in the local economy, doing the jobs that nobody else wanted. They had to hand all their money to their gang-masters but the debts never seemed to go.

  Ai Qin’s Floating Lotus was like a refuge, especially for women and young girls. A legal way for them to work and earn money, get advice and keep safe. She had a network of contacts and could get messages to people who needed to stay hidden. She helped as many as she could. Especially when they wanted to go home.

  “Since the Tiger arrived conditions for the workers have become even worse. He seems to be able to do just as he likes. We believe he has powerful friends among the ghosts.”

  “You’ve lost me, Ai Qin. Who are the ghosts?” Xanthe was puzzled. “I thought you meant the invisible workers were like ghosts but now you say ghosts are the Mr Bigs?”

>   “I am so sorry. This was rude of me. We Chinese often call Westeners ghosts because, well ...” She giggled. “Because of the way they look! These powerful ghosts who are making a much worse situation are English not Chinese. This Tiger has crossed from Holland and his territory is growing. He brings fear and violence. He makes addicts.”

  “Yes,” said Gold Dragon. “I think we know that.”

  “Flint and Toxic!” breathed Anna to Donny. “They must be the English ghosts.”

  It seemed completely obvious to the Allies that the bullying policeman, the poisonous Professional and the small man in the Pura-Lilly van were all one sinister gang.

  “But you have no proper evidence for this,” Edward interrupted firmly. “I insist that we must be cautious. Our approach to Lottie Livesey must be handled with the greatest care. Until she is safely reunited with her children and can speak more freely about her experiences, I do strongly urge everyone in this room to say or do nothing that might prejudice the situation.”

  “Cal Reif’s niece has been cast up on a dead lee shore. She may not be easily plucked off. This is no time to look abaft the beam.”

  “We don’t know how much money Lottie Livesey owes, nor to whom it is due,” said Joshua gravely.

  “It doesn’t matter how much. It can’t be more than Three Million Pounds!”

  June smiled at Anna. “That wasn’t what we meant. Of course you will pay whatever is needed to release your mother and of course your Trustees will sanction that. But we have to think how best to get the money to her. If she is in the hands of extortionists and they see that she is rich, they might demand more ... ”

  “Which could endanger you children – whom, it appears, she has been trying to protect all this time,” said Gerald. He looked shocked. Here was another unexpected re-think to disrupt his settled life.