by Lauren Child
LUPO DI MARE – the Sea Wolf.
The boat her father had dived from all those years ago in Italy. The boat that belonged to that marine biologist guy.
It was all adding up.
‘What have you found?’ asked Clancy, scooting over to where Ruby knelt in a sea of books.
She pointed at the photograph. ‘This picture, where did you get it from?’
‘Beats me,’ shrugged Clancy. ‘Most of these books are second-hand; I’ve never seen this picture before. What’s the big deal about it?’
‘This guy, I know who he is. Francesco something-or-other. I’m pretty sure my dad used to be part of his dive crew. In fact I’m sure of it. And I think he’s been following me around too.’
‘You do?’ said Clancy uncertainly.
‘Look, can I use your phone?’ Ruby had already picked up the receiver and was halfway through dialling.
‘Be my guest,’ said Clancy, shrugging.
Ms Blanche put her through right away. Ms Blanche had no doubt her boss would want to speak to Ruby – Brant Redfort always took his daughter’s calls.
‘Dad, what was the name of that diver guy you worked for in Italy?’
‘Fornetti,’ said her father. ‘Francesco Fornetti. Why are you asking?’
‘You said he was a genius?’
‘Oh yes, he was a genius all right,’ replied her father.
‘What happened to him? You mentioned he was laughed out of town. If he was such a genius, how come he was discredited?’
‘He sort of lost it, was raving about a sea monster and crazy stuff. He even wrote a book about it.’
‘What was it called?’ Ruby asked.
‘I don’t remember. All I know is he went AWOL after that. Some said he had sunstroke or maybe had swallowed too much saltwater; perhaps he was hallucinating.’
‘Did you believe him?’ said Ruby.
‘I didn’t know what to think. I never exactly knew the fellow, not really. I just admired his work.’
‘But you spent time with him, right?’ said Ruby.
‘Only once after Italy. He happened to be in Twinford and we met while your mother and I were sailing round the coast. We were taking it easy because it was that crazy summer that your mom broke her arm and I dislocated my shoulder. Fornetti was free-diving and joined us on our boat. Nice guy and… heroic too, but then I guess he just sorta went right off the rails.’
Heroic: now that was a strange word to use.
‘Look, sorry honey, I’m due in a meeting any minute…’
‘OK, but just tell me – did I meet him?’ asked Ruby.
Her father hesitated. ‘Not really, sorta, you were just a tiny kid.’ Ruby had the sense he was being cagey about something, which wasn’t like him.
‘How old was I exactly?’ she asked.
‘You were a baby, no more than a toddler, you wouldn’t remember.’
It was true, she didn’t remember.
‘So this Francesco Fornetti, would he recognise me if he saw me now?’
‘No, how could he? Why are you asking?’ said her father.
‘Oh, you know, no reason,’ said Ruby.
‘Shouldn’t you be in school by the way?’ said her father.
‘Yeah, you’re right, gotta go.’
She hung up.
There were two certainties in Ruby’s mind, and both of them worried her.
One: she was sure that Francesco Fornetti was following her.
Two: she was sure that her father was keeping something from her – something that might explain why.
Was this guy dangerous?
Chapter 37.
A cloud of indigo
AFTER PROMISING THAT SHE ABSOLUTELY WOULD, on pain of death, call Clancy later, Ruby climbed back out of the third-storey window and headed on down to the second-hand bookstore. It was named Penny Books after Ray Penny, the owner, but it had a sort of double meaning because a lot of the books were pretty cheap. It was one of those shops that was stuffed full of things that daylight would never see due to the sheer quantity of it all. Books stacked three deep one in front of another; books spread on rickety tables and piled in teetering towers on the floors of the narrow passages between the shelves.
Ruby started scanning the rows of paperbacks, hardbacks and pamphlets, lost in a world of her own until she heard a raspy voice call.
‘What are you looking for there?’
Ruby turned to see Ray standing at the counter, his broken glasses wedged on his nose. Ray knew Ruby pretty well and liked her a lot; she was one of his regulars, always in browsing, particularly the old graphic novels.
‘I’m looking for a book by someone called Fornetti,’ she said. ‘Francesco Fornetti.’
Ray scratched his cheek in a thoughtful sort of way.
‘That name kinda rings a bell with me,’ he said. This wasn’t surprising – Ray seemed to know most books; if you couldn’t remember the title, he could usually identify it just by a description of the cover.
‘Fact or fiction?’ he asked.
‘Fact, I guess,’ said Ruby.
‘Subject?’ asked Ray.
‘Marine biology, the ocean,’ replied Ruby.
‘Oh yeah, that guy, I know. So which book were you interested in?’ asked Ray. ‘If I remember correctly, he wrote a whole lot.’
‘I guess the one I’m looking for he might have written around nine or ten years ago,’ said Ruby. ‘It probably would have been the last thing he had published,’ she added, thinking of what her dad had said about his reputation.
Ray nodded. ‘Can you just give me an hour or so? I need to search the back there.’ He pointed to the area at the rear of the shop, the area where the floor disappeared under a cascade of paper.
‘Sure,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll go get a fruit shake from Cherry’s. I’ll be back.’
Once she had paid for her beverage, she carried it across the road and sat on the low bench outside Penny’s, enjoying the sun and making the drink last.
Nearly three hours and five fruit shakes later Ray called out, ‘So I found your book. It’s short, more of an essay really – it’s called The Sea Whisperer. That’s the one you wanted, right? Came out ten years ago. I made some calls – the guy hasn’t written a word since The Sea Whisperer was published.’
Ruby paid for the book: it was indeed a slim volume, a flimsy paperback; the dog-eared and torn cover was orange and an image of a sinister black tentacle trailed across it.
Ruby returned to her bench and sat in the fading sun reading it, cover to cover, over and over.
The book made for more than merely interesting reading, it was gripping. The author described an encounter with a creature he identified as the Sea Whisperer, the very creature all the legends spoke of. He had met it quite by chance when sailing off the Twinford coast: it was a giant octopus, spanning fifty feet, by far the biggest he had ever recorded.
At the time, he had told no one about what he had seen – he himself had found it hard to believe his eyes as he watched it pulse its way back down to the deep. He wanted evidence and became obsessed with the monster and spent every waking moment searching for it, and just six weeks later he was lucky enough to spot the octopus again. He had tracked it into waters north of the Sibling Islands. He had watched it attack huge prey – an eleven-foot shark.
Fornetti was busy taking pictures of the giant when it released a cloud of indigo into the water. He became disoriented, dropped the camera and felt the creature pull the breathing apparatus from his mouth. Fornetti gulped in water and ink, stabbing at the creature with a knife – tiny by comparison with the monster’s bulk. Perhaps the creature could not be bothered to fight this miniature man, perhaps it simply wasn’t hungry, but Fornetti was lucky to live to tell the tale.
And tell the tale he did: in fact he couldn’t stop himself. He claimed that the ink he had swallowed acted as some sort of truth serum and so he blurted the story of the sea monster to everyone and anyone. He became the butt
of every joke – no one took him seriously.
It wasn’t this that Ruby found odd though. No: Ruby felt it strange that the diver’s first encounter with the creature was described so sketchily. Why had he dived into the ocean in the first place? He mentioned something about being on a sailing trip. But why had he not bothered to put on his scuba gear?
However, despite the missing details and blurry facts, there was something about the passionate way the story was told that made Ruby believe every word of it.
So that’s why this guy’s been lurking around Twinford, she thought. He’s trying to find the Sea Whisperer and prove that he’s not a crank…
But why is he showing up every place I go? What have I got to do with any of this? Why would he be interested in following me?
Chapter 38.
Just static
WHEN RUBY WAS DONE READING, she stuffed the book into her satchel and cycled back as fast as she could to Cedarwood Drive. She ran into the house and called out to Hitch.
No reply.
She ran downstairs, knocked on his door – he wasn’t there. She tried contacting him via the rescue watch, but her signal was not answered. She walked slowly back upstairs. Where was he?
The sound of singing was coming from the living room – it was her mother’s voice.
‘Oh my Ruby, your mother’s jewel,
You lie there still as a tidal pool.’
Ruby entered the room and saw her mom sitting on a chair rocking a sleepy baby; it was the neighbour’s kid. Her mother smiled and said in a hushed voice, ‘Babysitting Archie. Elaine had to get her hair done; an emergency.’
‘A hair emergency?’ said Ruby.
Sabina held her finger to her lips. ‘He’s so cute. Wanna hold him?’ she asked.
‘Ah, not right now,’ said Ruby. ‘You seen Hitch?’
‘Not all day,’ said her mother. Then she started up with the lullaby again – it was the one her mother used to sing to her when she was small.
‘When the stars begin to fall,
You will hear the ocean call.’
By the time Ruby had reached her room, the song had caught and was playing round and round in her head and like a fly buzzing in a sealed room she couldn’t get rid of it. She had heard the song sung to her so many times when she was little that she knew it off by heart even though she hadn’t heard her mom sing it for many years. Round and round it went.
When you hear that whispered sound,
You will know that you are found.
A golden bird guards over you
My little gem my words are true.
Ruby shook her head, as if it might be possible to shake the song out of her brain.
She needed to make contact with Hitch – she had to tell him about Fornetti’s book. It had to be relevant, didn’t it? This sea monster – it could be what had killed Agent Trilby; it could be what had scared the sharks. Something struck her: it was probably what her parents had seen too, when they were floating around the Sibling Islands. Hadn’t they said that Pookie got covered in indigo ink?
Ruby was just about to try contacting Hitch again when she saw a message sitting there on her desk. It was a collection of musical notes, a piece of music. At the top of the page, written neatly in ink pen, was a message from Hitch:
Chime just broadcast one last unusual piece of music.
This is it.
Ruby quickly decoded it and saw that the musical notes read:
I will meet you at Far-West Point in the caves of Horseshoe Bay; wait there for my arrival. Stay put until I come.
There will be no further messages.
Underneath, Hitch had written:
See you when things are all tied up, sit tight till then.
Ruby sat back in her chair. So that was where Hitch was. The case was wrapped up. Spectrum had gone to arrest the pirates and whoever was on their way to meet them, the mastermind behind the whole operation. She breathed out a long sigh, but not one of satisfaction: something was still bugging her.
She looked at the spiral list, working her way through each incident, each clue.
The whispered sounds came from the giant sea creature, the creature that had bothered the dolphins, killed the sharks, the killer whale and most probably the diver and the fisherman.
The stranger was Francesco Fornetti, marine expert, who wanted to keep a low profile due to events that had seen him ridiculed; he had put two and two together and was tracking the sea creature – presumably to prove a point.
The pirates wanted the treasure from the so had kept boats out of the Sibling waters by blocking maydays and by sending cargo ships off course. A cleverer guy than they were knew how to do this and it was this guy who was in charge of the whole operation, issuing orders via code. One of the pirate crew was capable of code-cracking, more brain than brawn. The pirates were able to dive the wreck and retrieve the treasure because the currents had calmed.
The currents had calmed because of the asteroid. This change to the seas had in turn changed the behaviour of the marine life, crabs, gulls and fish etc.
She exhaled a deep breath. Basically, it all added up. Made perfect sense, all neat and tidy. Well, almost – there were a few unanswered questions, a few loose ends. Problem was Ruby didn’t like loose ends.
This Fornetti fellow, why is he trailing me? If he’s a good guy, then why doesn’t he just come right out and say what’s on his mind?
This evil genius, this so-called mastermind, would he really be satisfied with the treasure? Was that really enough? Once everyone had taken a cut, it wouldn’t amount to much.
And that last Chime code, what was he doing relaying such a very obvious message? Yes, it was coded, but once deciphered, it was hardly cryptic. All the previous communications had been pretty tough to understand so why was this one so simple? And why go silent for so long after Kekoa and Ruby dived the wreck?
Is there something I’ve missed?
Ruby picked up her satchel and dug out the three tapes Hitch had given her – of the strange static that had been heard on Chime Melody. Maybe she had overlooked something. She slotted two of them into the stereo’s double cassette player, the third she clicked into the portable cassette machine on the floor. Then she played each one in turn. She listened, concentrating hard, using all her powers.
Nothing. No underlying voices, no secret message, no code whatsoever. OK, she thought. The static is just static.
She couldn’t concentrate properly, that darned lullaby was going round and round on a loop, occupying her brain.
Oh my Ruby, your mother’s jewel,
You lie there still as a tidal pool.
When the stars begin to fall,
You will hear the ocean call.
When you hear that whispered sound,
You will know that you are found.
A golden bird guards over you
My little gem my words are true.
Ruby gave in to it, letting the lullaby wash through her; it was calming somehow. She even began to sing it out loud. She had never thought too much about the words – you don’t when you’re a newborn baby, they are just sounds sung to soothe, and as you get older, like nursery rhymes, you don’t question them. It’s all about the rhythm and not the meaning.
Finally, she came out of her trance: she needed to talk things through with someone, someone who would listen.
She plucked the receiver from the squirrel in the tux and dialled Clancy’s number.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You’re there.’
‘How dya know it was me?’ said Ruby.
‘Rube, it’s kinda late. Who else is it likely to be?’ said Clancy.
‘You wanna get over here?’ It was a demand rather than a question.
‘When?’
‘Like now bozo.’ She returned the receiver to the rodent and pressed the call button on the rescue watch. It should reach Hitch immediately – but it didn’t. She pressed again, this time contacting Buzz.
‘I ne
ed to speak to Hitch,’ she said.
‘He’s not contactable,’ came the reply.
‘Blacker then.’
‘Not contactable.’
‘LB?’
Buzz inhaled, but Ruby got there first.
‘Don’t tell me, not contactable?’
‘Correct,’ said Buzz. ‘Can I assist you with anything else?’
‘No,’ said Ruby. ‘You’ve been super, just super.’
She lay back in the beanbag. Spectrum seemed satisfied with how things had turned out so why wasn’t she? Couldn’t this whole case simply be about a few gems and some gold coins? Was she overcomplicating things by insisting that there was more to it?
Unable to let it go, she turned the tape machine back on, switching from one to the other, round and round, but it was still all static, just static… until she heard another sound, a loud tapping, coming from the window.
Ruby looked up. It was Clancy. She got up and released the catch on the sill and the huge glass pane swung open. He pushed himself through – arms first – and ended up sprawled on the floor. Not very dignified.
‘That’s no way to come in through a window,’ said Ruby.
‘Sorta lost my balance,’ said Clancy, rubbing his knee. ‘So what’s on your mind?’
‘A few things actually,’ said Ruby. ‘There’s this first thing that doesn’t make sense.’
‘Hit me with it,’ said Clancy, flopping down in the beanbag.
‘Why would someone go to all the trouble of devising a super smart code which even when translated is super cryptic – and then just when they’re almost home free, they blow it by being unnecessarily obvious? Why would they do that?’
‘Human nature,’ said Clancy. ‘Criminals’ remorse, they want to get caught. It’s like in Crazy Cops, Dirk Draylon always says that criminals want to confess, they can’t help themselves.’
