‘Hello?’ said Rosenfield again. ‘Are you … Are you there?’
‘Do not come any further,’ said a deep baritone voice. Dirk couldn’t see who it belonged to.
‘I can’t see you,’ said the professor.
‘That’s the idea,’ replied the voice. ‘Is that it?’
‘Oh yes, yes. This is it.’ He held up the silver case.
‘And you are sure no one suspects anything?’
‘Positive. The AOG project is top secret, but I can’t see what use it is to you. I told you, I can enter coordinates, but you can’t operate it without …’
The deep voice interrupted him. ‘This is not your concern, professor.’
‘What about your side of the bargain?’ asked the professor.
‘It’s in the parcel,’ said the gravelly voice.
The professor walked to the middle of the room, where he picked up a brown parcel.
‘Open it,’ said the voice.
The professor did so excitedly like a child opening a Christmas present. Dirk couldn’t see what was inside, but he saw the professor’s face light up and a tear form in the corner of his eye. ‘My goodness,’ he gasped. ‘Is it real?’
‘Yes, and there’ll be more once you have reprogrammed the machine. The coordinates are also in there.’
The professor looked up vacantly then blinked and said, ‘This is very marvellous.’
‘Thank you, Professor Rosenfield. Now go home and I will contact you shortly with details of where you should go next,’ said the voice. ‘Please make sure that no one knows of this.’
‘Gosh, no.’
Rosenfield tucked the parcel under his arm, picked up the silver case and left the room.
Dirk kept his eye on the room below, wanting to catch a glimpse of the owner of the deep voice. He shifted slightly to get a better view, waiting for him to step into sight, but no one appeared. He heard a noise and raised his head, but not quickly enough. A sharp pain shot through his skull and he slumped on the ground, knocked unconscious.
Chapter Three
Holly could hear Petal’s voice from the other end of the girls’ dormitory corridor.
‘I don’t give two hoots how much they love the book. It isn’t enough money and no one else can play me. I don’t care how many Oscars she’s got. I’ll play myself.’
Holly entered the room. Petal, her thin blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a T-shirt with the cover of her mum’s latest album on the front, was pacing with her mobile phone held to her ear.
‘Just tell them or I’ll go with the Disney offer and please stop back-chatting me.’ She switched off the phone, exclaimed, ‘Agents!’ and threw herself on to her bed.
She looked up at Holly. ‘Oh, hi there,’ she said frostily.
‘Hello, Petal,’ replied Holly.
‘Look, I don’t want there to be any bad feelings between us. I understand why you said what you did in class and I forgive you. I know you’re jealous of me.’
‘I’m not jealous of you,’ replied Holly.
‘It’s totally understandable. I’d be jealous of me if I wasn’t me. I called Hermann. He’s my therapist and he explained the whole thing. I actually feel sorry for you now,’ said Petal, forcing her face into an unnatural-looking smile.
A few days ago a comment like that would have caused Holly to blow up into a raging ball of indignation, but today she bit her lip. Today she could rise above anything Petal threw at her. Today she was getting out.
‘Sure,’ she said calmly. ‘Thanks.’
‘And I’ve looked into it. Bob says the title isn’t supposed to be taken literally. It’s figurative.’
Bob was the man Petal had employed to write the book for her.
‘And you can thank me,’ Petal continued, ‘I’ve sorted out the pest problem.’
Holly felt the colour drain from her face. ‘What?’ she said.
Petal lifted up the duvet to reveal, under the bed, a mousetrap with a dead mouse caught in it, its neck broken in two. ‘I’ve asked the caretaker to come and remove it,’ she said, looking pleased with herself.
Holly clapped her hand to her mouth to stop herself screaming.
It was Little Willow.
Murdered.
Late that night Holly lay in bed, fully clothed beneath the sheets; her trainers, coat and bag by the door.
She didn’t want Petal to know how much Little Willow had meant to her, so had said nothing and waited until she left the room before taking out the dead mouse and burying her in the school grounds, with a solemn vow to avenge her death.
‘No, Mummy,’ muttered Petal in her sleep. ‘It has to be real fur.’
Holly listened as footsteps passed outside the door. The overnight teacher patrolled every hour. Once they had gone, she checked her watch. It had just gone midnight. Time to go. She pulled back the covers, slipped out of bed, crept across the room and picked up her things. She pulled open the door and stepped out.
Still in her socks, she darted across to a cupboard and climbed in. This was a blind spot. No cameras. She put on her trainers, her black coat over her black jumper and the black balaclava she had fashioned from a bobble hat by cutting out eye holes and pulling it over her face. She slipped her bag over her shoulder and emerged.
Sticking to the shadows, hoping that no one would be staring too intently at the cameras at this time of night, she made her way to the exit. She pulled out the principal’s wristband and held it up to the door. A red light turned green and the door buzzed open.
She slid out and dived behind one of the large shrubs that stood on either side of the doorway. The door clicked shut behind her. From what she had learned about the security cabin she knew that a light would be blinking on the console inside, indicating that the door had been opened. One of the guards would be examining all monitors covering that area, checking for any unusual activity. Seeing nothing, they would hopefully assume it was just one of the prefects nipping back after a crafty smoke.
It was a cold night. She was wearing her warmest jumper and jeans, but her ankles were exposed. She needed to get moving to warm up. She waited another minute, counting the seconds on her watch, checked that no one was coming and then moved.
The concrete courtyard between the buildings and the playing fields offered no cover. Holly’s only option was to make a run for it. If she had her timings right, the night guard would be way over on the other side of the building. As for the guard in the security cabin, having only just checked the cameras around the girls’ dorm, he would hopefully be watching the football game that had just started on TV.
She ran across the courtyard. It seemed a lot further tonight than on the practice runs and her footsteps sounded like someone clapping in a large empty hall. Reaching the playing field, she took cover behind the first of the tall conifer trees that lined the private road which ran from the main buildings to the perimeter gate.
She climbed high into the tree until she was hidden in the darkness of its dense leaves. She remained still for a moment, listened, then climbed along a thick branch to the next tree. She had practised the route several times but her previous attempts had all been made with the benefit of daylight. It was proving more difficult at night. She had a torch but it would have been suicide to turn it on. Her foot slipped and she grabbed a branch to avoid falling, thinking perhaps it was suicide not to use it.
She hung silently in the tree for a second, the rough bark digging into her hand, suddenly aware of the sound of her own breathing. The trees rustled loudly in the breeze. She thought she heard someone cough. She listened. No, it must have been her imagination. There was no one there.
Slowly she made her way from tree to tree until she reached the last one, just far enough from the high wire fence to make a jump impossible. She climbed down to the lowest branch then dropped to the ground, landing badly on her ankle. It hurt and she wanted to shout in pain but kept quiet. The security cabin was only twenty metres away. She could
see the light on inside.
Using the trees as cover, she ran along the fence to a point just out of sight of the cameras. She took her bag off her shoulder and pulled out a pair of large wire cutters that she had lifted from her technical design class. One thing you could say about William Scrivener, it was well supplied. Only the best for the children of the best.
She lifted the cutters up to the wire and was about to cut when she felt a hand land on her shoulder and pull her sharply away from the fence.
‘All right, far enough,’ said a girl’s voice.
She felt the wire cutters being pulled away from her other hand. ‘Let me go,’ she cried, turning round.
‘Why, so you can escape?’
Holly recognised the older black girl as one of the prefects.
The girl smiled and said, ‘Don’t be too annoyed. You got a lot further than I did on my first run.’
Chapter Four
Dirk opened his eyes, raised his head and groaned. He was still in the old hospital, exactly where he had fallen. The room was empty. The light in the room below had gone out. His head pounded.
He crept to the window and looked out. Yellow street light illuminated the melon man, who was packing away. I can’t have been out long, Dirk thought, but long enough to lose the professor.
Checking the room for clues, he found a plank of wood. He examined it. White paint and nail holes indicated that it had once been a shelf. He could see where it had been ripped from the wall. The shelf was broken in the middle where the wood had splintered and the paint fallen away. He touched the top of his head and inspected his paw. Flecks of white paint. This was what knocked him out. On the other end of the shelf was a semicircle of holes. There was no mistaking them. Dragon tooth marks. This was bad news. Once again, it meant that Dirk wasn’t the only dragon in London.
Every type of dragon was different. Not just in colour, but in shape, strength, powers, and jaw shape. A grey-backed, blue-bellied Sea Dragon, for example, had a pointy nose, enabling it to cut through the water at great speed, while a Tree Dragon’s teeth were longer and sharp enough to cull the mightiest oak.
The jaw that had torn the shelf from the wall had left a more rounded imprint and belonged to a Shade-Hugger, an earth-dwelling dragon that couldn’t bear sunlight and only ever surfaced at night, if then. It had been dark when he had arrived at the hospital, so the Shade-Hugger that had knocked him out had probably been there before he arrived. Dirk knew of only one local Shade-Hugger.
‘Karnataka,’ he growled, running up the stairs to the roof. The air was cold and sharp. He took a moment to consider his route then leapt to the next building, then the next, heading south to the river, able to move quickly with darkness as his cover.
He darted up a block of flats, built like a giant staircase in the sky, and looked down. By the river, in a small park next to a children’s playground, was a large cylindrical red-stone building. To the locals who used the park it was an air vent for one of the car tunnels that ran beneath the Thames. To Dirk, it was an entrance.
It was a long jump from the building and Dirk would never have risked it in daylight, but it was dark and he didn’t want to waste any more time. He spread his wings, stood on his hind legs and jumped, gliding silently through the night sky, across the road, landing safely inside the vent. He found a door, opened it and stepped into the darkness. He felt along the wall and found a second door. He pushed it open and slid into a small stone room, not much bigger than a cupboard.
He said a few words in Dragonspeak and the small room plummeted into the depths of the earth.
When it finally stopped moving, Dirk saw in front of him a large ornate door carved into the shape of a dragon’s head, with blood-red jewels set into its eyes and a ring through its nose. He jumped up, took the ring in his mouth, pulled it back and let it go. The bang echoed around the chamber and the door creaked open.
The hall behind was even more impressive than the door itself, lined with great stone pillars carved into the shapes of various creatures. There was a Vibria, a Wyvern, a Gogmagog, breeds of creatures that humans had branded mythological, each one sitting upright with its head tilted back and mouth wide open. Red flames burnt tirelessly from each mouth, illuminating the rock ceiling.
This was Karnataka’s home, deep beneath the surface of London, far from the sunlight. The impressive hall was a stark contrast to Karnataka himself, a miserable no-good cowering coward with the morals of a Two-Toothed Fire Toad.
Dirk stopped by a giant stone snake with a large head and a long mane. It was an Amphiptere, like the one he and Holly had rescued from the Thames. He wondered again why Holly hadn’t been in touch. In befriending a human, he had breached the forbidden divide, risking banishment if he was found out, but Dirk didn’t care much for rules and regulations. Holly was his friend.
A thunderous voice boomed, ‘Stop. Who enters this hall?’
First-time visitors might have been scared by the impressive sound, but Dirk knew it was nothing more than a cone-shaped voice projector, that transformed Karnataka’s thin nasal whine into the huge voice that filled the hall.
‘I’m in no mood for the whole big-ego greeting, Karny,’ yelled Dirk threateningly.
There was a brief pause and then the voice spoke again: ‘Please leave! You are trespassing.’
The flames from the statues died down and two red eyes appeared in the darkness.
‘You’re not scaring me with your big pretend eyes, Karny,’ taunted Dirk, peering into the darkness. ‘Karny?’ He walked towards the red lights.
‘Turn around, Mountain Dragon,’ said the voice threateningly. ‘You are not welcome.’
Dirk sprang into action. He darted forward, past the two false eyes, and raised himself on to his hind legs, drawing his claws.
‘You’re not Karnataka,’ he said.
Behind the wall was a Shade-Hugger, all right, with his brown back and caramel belly, but it wasn’t Karnataka. He was thinner than Karny, with large fearful eyes. In a lilting voice he said, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
‘Where’s Karnataka?’ demanded Dirk. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Grendel Sheving. I’m Karny’s cousin. I came down from the Midlands to visit but he’s not here. Are yow with the Dragnet?’
‘Do I look like a Drake?’ said Dirk. The Dragnet was the dragon police force. Its officers were Drab-Nosed Drakes – wingless dragons with big bellies and short tails. ‘Where has he gone?’
‘He’s legged it. The Dragnet have a warrant out for his arrest. I’m looking after the place while he’s away,’ said the dragon, gazing up at the rows of statues. ‘It’s a bit over the top, but it’s a lot more spacious than my place under Dudley. I could get used to this.’
Dirk could think of a whole string of reasons why the Dragnet might be after Karnataka, but he had always figured that Karny was too smart, or too slippery, to get found out.
Grendel limped out from behind the voice projector and whispered, ‘There are mutterings of a Kinghorn revolt. There’s a new captain at Dragnet and he’s arresting half the dragon world on suspicion of being Kinghorns.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Everyone knows,’ replied Grendel. ‘Where have yow been? They’re filling up the cells with suspects. The Council have been called.’
The Dragon Council was made up of the six oldest living dragons, all of whom were very old and extremely forgetful. As Dragon Law required all six councillors for a trial to take place, accused dragons often waited years for their cases to come up, while the councillors came and went, forgetting where they were supposed to be or what they were supposed to be doing.
‘What have they got on Karny?’ asked Dirk.
‘I don’t know, but he’s hardly got a clean slate, has he? He’s a Cuddlums all right.’
‘A what?’ said Dirk.
‘Oh, has he never told you his surname? He prefers all this Karnataka the Great, Karnataka the Brave.’ Grendel laughed. �
�Karnataka Cuddlums doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? Yes, trouble runs on that side of the family. Yow know what happened to Elsinor?’
‘Karnataka told me, yes,’ said Dirk.
Karnataka’s brother, Elsinor, had been accused of attacking a remote human village in Romania several years ago. The incident had made the human press, but most right-minded humans had dismissed it as nonsense, knowing full well that dragons don’t exist.
‘What about you? Looks like you’ve been in the wars,’ Dirk said, indicating Grendel’s limp.
‘Oh, this, it’s nothing,’ said Grendel, sitting down.
‘I don’t suppose you have been leaping around the city recently, have you?’ asked Dirk, reading the Shade-Hugger for any signs of guilt.
‘Breaching the forbidden divide? No way, matey,’ replied Grendel, a look of fear in his eyes. ‘I don’t want to join them Cuddlumses in the Inner Core.’
Elsinor had protested his innocence to the bitter end, but that hadn’t stopped the Council finding him guilty and sending him on the last journey he would ever make, to the edge of the Outer Core, then swimming through the liquid fire and blinding light to the earth’s Inner Core. No dragon had ever returned.
‘What makes you think Karnataka’s heading down to join his brother?’
‘The Dragnet always catch their dragons eventually, don’t they? I don’t know what they’ve got on him but I’d bet my right claw that it’s more than gold tax evasion. I was thinking of swapping the door knocker for a bell. What do yow think?’
‘I think you shouldn’t go changing things that don’t belong to you, Shade-Hugger,’ said Dirk.
He left Grendel considering interior decoration and walked thoughtfully back into the small stone room, wondering if Karnataka really could have been responsible for his bruised head. Of course he could. Karny would have bashed his own mother over the head with a plank of wood if there was a chance she might get in the way of one of his deals. At least Dirk had something on him now. Cuddlums, he thought, smiling to himself.
The Case of the Wayward Professor Page 2
