by Lauren Child
‘Isn’t it?’ beamed Brant Redfort, proudly.
‘And what’s that one, Mr Redfort?’
‘Oh that’s the tile floor of the airport.’
Ruby started making the drinks; she took a long time about it. As she turned the blender off, she could hear her mother saying, ‘And this is us at the airport, just before that funny little man with the moustache spilled his drink over me.’
‘Oh, there he is honey,’ said Brant Redfort. ‘Boy, was he in a hurry.’
Ruby turned the blender on again. How am I gonna explain Clancy to Hitch? she wondered. But maybe I don’t have to, Clance won’t blab, Hitch need never know. Ruby poured the liquid into highball glasses and put them on a tray. The conversation hadn’t gotten any more interesting.
‘And who are these people?’ asked Clancy, in a desperate attempt to sound interested.
Bad move, Clance my old pal, said Ruby to herself. ’Cause now they’re gonna tell ya.
‘Well,’ started Sabina, ‘that couple there, they’re the Zimmermans, and that’s Mr Rodrigez and let me think, oh yes, the blonde couple must be the Summers, and the redhead in the background there, did we meet her honey?’
‘No, darling,’ replied Brant
Oh boy! Poor Clance. Better get him outta there before he loses his mind.
Ruby entered the room, all smiles. ‘Fruit cocktail anyone? Hey, where’s Hitch?’ she said looking round, ‘I thought he wasn’t leaving until eight?’
‘He looked at his watch and suddenly decided that he had to go out and fix something in the yard,’ said Clancy pointedly. ‘It seemed kinda urgent.’
‘I’ll bet it did,’ said Ruby, glancing up at a slide which showed her mother and father looking into each others eyes while biting into the same strudel.
Chapter 25.
Some likely suspects
RUBY GOT UP VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, made a face at herself and said, ‘Ruby my old pal, you look terrible.’
Her mind was buzzing with thoughts – she had not been sleeping well.
She went downstairs. Hitch was in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘that was a neat trick you pulled last night, disappearing at the last minute.’
‘Well, it wasn’t planned. I got a strange signal on my watch – flashed up for just a second. Didn’t make any sense – like a call from beyond the grave.’
‘Huh?’ said Ruby.
‘It was a signal from a non-existent agent,’ explained Hitch
Ruby paused before dropping some bread into the toaster. ‘Meaning, an extinct agent?’
‘Yeah, he’s dead all right – though there’s not a soul in Spectrum who doesn’t wish he wasn’t. I had to check it out, though of course it was nothing.’
‘This dead agent, he wouldn’t be this guy Bradley Baker would he?’
Hitch flinched, almost imperceptibly but Ruby caught it. ‘It’s confidential,’ was all he said.
Ruby let the subject drop. She was thinking about another extinct agent – just what had happened to poor old Lopez?
But all she said was, ‘Well, call it what you like but I figure you were saved from a fate worse than Chinese drip torture.’
‘I’m glad you survived it kid. So you know I’ve got to ask you – you going to have anything to report tomorrow?’
‘Maybe,’ said Ruby. ‘I just need to check out a couple more things before I know for sure – but I’m close.’
‘That’s not what Froghorn said – he seemed to think you’d struck out.’
‘Yeah well, you know Froghorn – always likes to rain on someone else’s parade.’
Ruby’s toast popped up and Hitch slid it on to a plate.
‘Looks like you’re out of time kid – LB wants to see you today.’
Ruby looked down at the plate and instantly lost her appetite.
‘Redfort, report to Spectrum at 0800 hours’
When they arrived, Buzz informed them that LB was giving a briefing to some of the Spectrum staff.
‘She’s in the cinema room – looking at key suspects for the City Bank robbery.’
Hitch led the way down a black and white tunnel until they reached the circular doorway of the screening room.
‘You better wait here kid, this is highly confidential – I’ll call you in when we’re done.’ Hitch entered and the door locked shut behind him.
Ruby stood around gently kicking at the wall until she heard footsteps running down the passageway. Agent Blacker appeared, out of breath and even more crumpled than usual.
‘You meant to be at this thing too?’ he wheezed.
‘Yeah,’ replied Ruby. ‘I forgot the password – talk about dumb!’
‘No worries,’ said Blacker, ‘we can probably slip in unnoticed if we sit in the back – I know all this stuff anyway so I’m not missing anything.’
He tapped in the password and they crept in silently; a projector was whirring and grainy pictures were being thrown up on to the screen, twenty or so people sitting listening as LB talked. Ruby caught sight of the back of Hitch’s head, and sank as low as she could into her seat; Agent Blacker made himself comfortable, propping his feet up in front of him. Projected large was the image of a big, thuggish looking man in a raincoat.
‘I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night,’ whispered Ruby.
‘I wouldn’t want to meet him on any night,’ replied Agent Blacker.
The next picture came up: a strangely comical face – ugly, sinister even but definitely comical.
There was a wave of muffled laughter from the Spectrum audience.
‘I see you have taken an instant liking to our dear friend Hog-Trotter,’ said LB. ‘Not as funny as he looks I’m afraid.’
‘Is he as stupid as he looks?’ said a young man in the front row.
‘Oh, never underestimate this portrait of crime – where HogTrotter is concerned it’s always wise to bear in mind the cliché “never judge a villain by his face” – however ugly that face may be. He is strangely good at second-guessing people and quite the intellectual. I wouldn’t rule him out.’
LB clicked the button again.
‘Wow, he doesn’t look like the criminal kind,’ whispered Ruby, peering at the green–eyed, sweet-looking man who filled the screen.
‘Ah yes, Baby Face Marshall – now he always surprises everybody,’ replied Blacker.
‘He’s dangerous?’ said Ruby doubtfully.
‘Quite the cold-blooded killer,’ hissed Blacker. ‘You see Baby Face, don’t bother calling for Mommy – run!’
Ruby gulped. She was used to the baddies she saw on TV. There the murderers always seemed to have a hump, or hooked hand, or half a dozen gold teeth, something to give them away, but this guy looked like he might run the local pet store. The projector clicked on and up came the face of a woman.
‘Valerie Capaldi, also known as Nine Lives,’ said LB.
‘Wow, she’s pretty,’ said the same mouthy young man.
‘Not as pretty now,’ replied LB. ‘A couple of years back she got into a nasty tangle escaping one of our agents – I would imagine she has a fairly ugly scar across her left eye. Be kind of hard to miss – they call her Nine Lives because she has cheated death as many times as any cat.’
The woman on the screen didn’t look the type, Ruby thought – in fact she looked like someone her parents might know.
‘She’s a decadent sort and pretty stylish,’ continued LB, ‘though I would be surprised if she were involved in a gold heist – jewels and precious stones are more her style. She was trained by this gentleman.’ Click. ‘Fenton Oswald – he loves planning a good robbery, enjoys the challenge but he is strictly speaking more of a jewel thief – spends most of his time in Europe.’
He looked an ordinary sort of man – the picture showed him exiting a jewellers in Berlin. He was wearing tinted glasses, a tweed suit and carried a rolled umbrella.
Then came a
very different sort of face, the kind of face you might expect to appear in an old movie, very melodramatic looking with slicked grey hair and pointed sideburns. The nose was long and elegant which gave the face a dignified look, but the chiselled cheekbones were those of a gothic villain. His clothes were different too, long black coat and pointed black shoes, polished to a high shine. The slide was aged and the picture black and white. LB clicked past him without explanation.
‘Who was that guy?’ asked Ruby.
‘Oh him?’ said Blacker. ‘That was the Count.’
‘The Count of what?’
‘The Count von Viscount. If you think he looks like something from some old B-movie then that’s because he is.’
‘He used to be an actor?’ asked Ruby.
‘Not an actor but a director – there’s a theory that he turned to crime when all his movies were trashed by the critics. Some say he was a little ahead of his time – the movie-going world wasn’t ready for him back then. Still isn’t – too dark, too strange, too dangerous. Unfortunately, he became a much more successful criminal than he ever was a film maker – only one of our agents ever met him and lived to tell the tale.’
‘Who was that?’ asked Ruby.
‘Oh, no one’ said Agent Blacker, quickly. ‘No one you would know’
Bradley Baker? wondered Ruby
‘It’s been a long time since we heard from the Count,’ said Blacker.
‘But he’s a contender?’ asked Ruby
‘Oh, he’s been off our radar so long we are wondering if he isn’t pushing up daisies – that, or he retired.’
‘How would you know if you had heard from him?’ asked Ruby.
‘You can recognise a Count von Viscount crime because it is always bizarrely melodramatic. You can be sure if someone is dangling you over a bubbling volcano rather than just dropping you into it then it is almost bound to be the Count.’
‘That’s a comfort,’ said Ruby.
‘Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him myself but they say he was always very charming – right up until the moment he decided your time was up.’
Ruby shivered.
Suddenly the lights came on – the briefing was over. Ruby managed to slip out, hidden amongst the crowd; in the corridor she adopted the pose of someone who was fed up of waiting.
A short while later Hitch stuck his head out of the door. ‘You’re up, kid.’
When Ruby walked in, LB didn’t waste time with hellos.
‘So Redfort, anything to report?’
Ruby tried to look confident, even if she didn’t sound confident. Here goes everything. She cleared her throat. ‘Um, not quite but almost.’
‘What does that mean?’ said LB.
‘I think I have almost figured something out but I kinda need, well, I sort of wondered if I could, you know…’
‘Spit it out Redfort.’
‘Take a look at Lopez’s stuff.’ The words sort of hung stupidly in the air; LB didn’t say anything but Ruby could gauge what she was thinking by the scowl on her face.
‘What “stuff”?’
‘The stuff she had with her when she died in that avalanche.’
‘And why would you need to look through Lopez’s backpack? What does it have to do with anything?’
‘I just thought maybe she could have had the missing code with her,’ said Ruby.
LB looked at her as if she hadn’t heard quite right.
‘Lopez was a professional, do you even know what that means? She wouldn’t dream of removing classified evidence from Spectrum and take it with her on vacation – up a mountain!’
It did sound kind of preposterous when put like that but Ruby persevered. ‘But the thing is, I’ve been thinking, what if everything isn’t quite as it seems? What if Lopez found something, but she didn’t tell anyone that she had found that something, but instead decided to check it out herself?’
‘You’re talking crazy kid – why would she not tell anyone?’
‘Because she was bored?’ suggested Ruby
‘Because she was bored?’ LB clearly couldn’t believe her ears. ‘This isn’t an installment of Nancy Drew, this is the real world and in the real world Spectrum code breakers don’t just run around playing hero because they get bored.’
‘But you see I think that’s what coulda happened and I think she found something and someone saw her find that something – someone who didn’t want her to find it – so they bumped her off.’
‘Redfort! She died in an avalanche – let’s not let our imagination run away with us. It was an accident! Lopez was a desk agent not some action hero.’
‘But you see,’ said Ruby, ‘the code isn’t anywhere in the files so Lopez must have had it with her.’
‘What you mean is that because you can’t find it, then it can’t be there.’
‘No, I know it isn’t there because…’
Ruby tailed off, she could hardly tell LB how she knew it wasn’t there. Instead she simply had to stand there looking like some dumb kid until LB, exasperated, waved for her to go. When Ruby got to the door LB said, ‘by the way, you’re out of here – you failed and that’s all there is to it.’
Chapter 26.
The little brown box
BEING DROPPED BY SPECTRUM was humiliating but Ruby wasn’t taking it lying down. If she could only get some proof – get her hands on that piece of paper.
By the time Hitch dropped her back home it was already early evening. Her parents were out and she wasn’t in the mood to sit eating her supper alone so she headed off in the direction of the Double Donut. When she arrived she settled on one of the high stools at the counter and was about to order when a thought occurred to her. She slipped off the stool and went straight to the phone booth next to the restroom.
‘Hey Clance, meet me at the Double, as soon as.’
‘I’m not really hungry Rube,’ replied Clancy.
‘Good, ’cause I wasn’t planning on eating.’ She put the phone down.
Fifteen minutes later a very out of breath Clancy stumbled through the door.
‘What took you?’ said Ruby.
‘Give me a break! I ran the whole way – so what am I doing here exactly?’
‘I’ll tell you in the cab,’ said Ruby.
‘Oh brother, not again!’
Soon enough they were in a car heading east.
‘So,’ said Clancy, ‘what’s going on?’
‘So LB wouldn’t listen – I told her my hunch. I told her that Lopez was most probably bumped off by the Fool’s Gold Gang. It makes sense – she wasn’t trained as a spy and as a consequence she got spotted.’
‘Do you think the Fool’s Gold Gang know who she was working for?’
‘Nah, I figure they don’t – I think they think she’s just some nosey parker who happened to be looking in their direction and they don’t like people looking in their direction.’
‘They sure don’t,’ said Clancy with a shiver.
‘My guess is they tailed her to see what she was up to and when she landed up mountain climbing, they came to the conclusion that she was just some woman who had accidentally seen something suspicious but to be on the safe side they decided to rub her out. Only they’re clever – they make it look like an accident by starting an avalanche.’
‘Do you think they mighta spotted you? This Fool’s Gold Gang?’ Clancy was beginning to feel queasy again. Danger did that to him – he had a weak stomach when it came to life and death situations.
‘I certainly hope not, not now I have seen some of the likely suspects – one of them looked like Dracula.’
‘What, you saw the actual gang?’
‘No, not the gang, just some possible suspects – just in a slide show.’ Ruby hadn’t meant to tell him about that. She was telling him far too much – knowing too much about a bunch of ruthless killers wasn’t going to do his health any favours at all.
‘So who were they?’
‘Look, we�
��re here now Clance – I’ll tell you some other time, OK? It was no big deal – just a few faces.’
‘Tomorrow?’ said Clancy.
Minutes later the cab pulled up on Maverick Street. The two of them stepped out on to the sidewalk. There was no one around, it wasn’t a residential neighbourhood and being Friday evening the shops and offices were deserted.
‘This place gives me the creeps,’ said Clancy.
‘Well, I’m not planning on staying the night – we’ll take a look in the box and then go home.’
‘Box? What box?’
‘Just a box of Lopez’s stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ said Clancy
‘The stuff she had on her when she died.’
Clancy shivered – he wasn’t feeling so good. ‘I’m not sure about this Rube – can’t you just ask LB about it again tomorrow?’
‘Look you don’t get it Clancy – there is no tomorrow. LB fired me, OK?’ She hadn’t wanted to tell him that.
He was suitably stunned.
‘So do you see why I have to do this?’
Clancy nodded; he knew she had no choice.
‘Look Clance, we’ll just break in to the office, take a look around and then I promise I’ll take you home.’
‘Break in to the office?’ said Clancy not a little alarmed.
‘Well, it’s not technically a break-in. I have the key code, Blacker gave it to me, it’s just we will probably be murdered by Spectrum if we get caught using it.’
Clancy was speechless as he watched Ruby punch in the door code and turn the handle. ‘Well come on bozo, don’t hang around waiting to get caught.’
Clancy was unimpressed by the Spectrum secret agency office.
‘What a dump!’ he marveled. ‘I think someone has been pulling your leg, I don’t think these people are secret agents at all.’
But Ruby wasn’t listening, she was busy climbing up the high file shelves which spanned the back of the office.
‘What are you doing?’ said Clancy.
Ruby pointed at the box on the very top shelf, it was wrapped and ready for mailing, ‘I can’t reach, I am going to have to stand on your shoulders.’
