by Lauren Child
When Ruby got home the main house phone was ringing. She answered, ‘Dentures dental service, you got tooth decay, we got pliers.’
‘Excuse me?’ said the voice of Elaine Lemon. ‘I was trying to get hold of Ruby, Ruby Redfort?’
‘I can’t help you there, lady,’
‘Are you sure? I wanted to offer her some babysitting at his little birthday party, she adores my baby boy, Archie.’
‘That sounds unlikely.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘What I’m saying is, you dialled an incorrect number.’
‘But that can’t be, the Redfort number is programmed into my speed dial.’
‘Look, Cookie, unless you got some kind of toothy emergency, I’m going to have to ask you to clear the line.’
Mrs Lemon hung up and Ruby switched the phone so it went direct to answer machine.
Mrs Digby peered around the kitchen door. ‘Child,’ she said, ‘I’m sure the king of mischief himself could learn a thing or two from you.’
It was just as Ruby was changing into her nightwear, an over-sized T-shirt with superhero written across the front, that Archie Lemon’s face popped into her head.
Why? she wondered. What are you trying to tell me, brain?
Somewhere deep inside her mind a thought was trying to connect with another thought. When Ruby was very small she had sometimes liked to imagine that there was a tiny person, a little file clerk in her head, filing facts and sifting through ideas, collecting up stray thoughts and joining them all together. When she was struggling to remember something, she would imagine this little figure going off to search for it in one of the many filing drawers.
She hoped the tiny clerk might return with something soon.
She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then she washed her face, examined her newly mended arm, and her recently injured foot – the scar was almost gone. She massaged it with some baby oil that Mrs Digby had bought for the purpose, and then suddenly there it was: the brain clerk had found what she needed – Archie Lemon and Nileston Thompson.
Both babies, both crawlers, both grabbers.
The tie was in the dog bowl because Nileston had put it there. The tie should have been where Mr Thompson had left it, which was most likely not in the closet as he had claimed, but on the floor of Nileston’s room. Therefore the card would have been left on the floor on top of the tie.
Nileston must have grabbed the card when he grabbed the tie, so where it was now was anyone’s guess. It was only a theory of course, she couldn’t prove it. . . at least not unless she went over there and searched the place. Of course she could wait until dawn, she could call someone right now, tell them her theory, but she felt the need to do it herself. It was her theory after all.
She wondered what Hitch would say, and decided it was probably best not to imagine.
Ruby changed into her climb gear: black clothes, free-climbing shoes, climbing gloves and a pouch of chalk dust belted around her waist. She took off her glasses and switched to contacts, clipped her hair in place with her barrette and found a warm woollen hat – it was bound to get a little chilly thirty-seven storeys up. She decided she would take the same route the window thief had taken, figure out how he did it, and at the same time avoid the security guard sitting outside the apartment door – she was pretty sure there would be a security guard and she just hoped he wasn’t authorised to use the Thompsons’ bathroom.
She took a deep breath. She was going to climb the outside of an apartment block.
A little voice in the back of her mind said, This is exactly the kind of dangerous stunt Hitch was warning you about. If he finds out you might as well wave bye bye to Spectrum.
Ah shut up, little voice, thought Ruby.
Chapter 32.
Mr Potatohead
IT TOOK RUBY APPROXIMATELY TWENTY-THREE MINUTES to reach the Warrington Apartments on Avenue Walk. When she got there she found a place to hide her skateboard, behind a low stone wall to the side of the building, then looked for the easiest way to make her ascent without being spotted.
It wasn’t exactly an easy climb and even as she hauled herself up the outside of the building, she tried not to dwell on the possible challenges to come, not least how she was going to bluff it if the security guard decided to pop into the apartment and have a check around. The wind was howling outside the Warrington, fluttering her hair, and it hampered her progress; on the other hand it meant everyone had their shades drawn and no one would hear her.
Arriving at the thirty-seventh floor, she looked down at the teeny cars and the few tiny night-time sidewalk walkers below. The air was a little on the chilly side and she had to admit she wasn’t exactly comfortable, but nor was she fearful. She felt sort of in her element crouching there on that windowsill. She hoped it was the baby’s room she was peering into – give it a go, she thought, and she set about opening the window, using the laser-cutting device on her Escape Watch, she was in in a matter of minutes. She landed softly on carpeted floor.
There was no doubt about it being Nileston’s room – it reeked of baby lotion and talcum powder and all that other gunk people smeared their babies with. First she headed for his cot, methodically looking in between the bedding and even under the mattress. Then she searched the floor, under the shelves, anywhere that was in baby reach, nothing above a couple of feet. After thirty-two minutes she got lucky while she was rooting through the toy hamper next to the window.
It was underneath Mr Potatohead.
‘Bingo!’ she whispered, as she pulled out a slightly chewed little white card.
Ruby made it down to the street without so much as a graze, retrieved her skateboard and began wending her way through the streets, still busy even though the hour was late. She stopped only to get her bearings, looking around to try and get a steer on the best route home. It was when she looked up northwards that she saw him.
A tiny figure was walking across the sky.
The skywalker.
When the cab driver had mentioned him the other day on the way to St Angelina’s she hadn’t taken much notice, it sounded like the product of someone’s wild imagination or a film festival stunt. But now she thought, What if the window thief and the skywalker are one and the same? What if he doesn’t just climb – what if he walks a high wire too?
She watched the little figure. He was headed towards the seedier part of downtown Twinford, away from the smart set.
Where are you going?
He wasn’t so far away, but as she made it further into that part of the city where the apartments became offices and the buildings became taller and denser, she began to lose sight of him. She wasn’t exactly sure but she thought he was walking the gap between the Luper Building and the Carrington Apartments, or was it the Berman Block? She managed to sneak into the main entrance of the Luper, taking the elevator as far as it went and continuing on up the stairs and out onto the roof. Now she could see clearly: the building the skywalker was headed to was neither Carrington nor Berman – it was the Hauser Ink offices.
She could see where the high-wire cable stretched, and in theory she could follow, but the gap between the roof she stood on and the roof he was walking to might as well be a mile apart. Her balance was good and she was not afraid of heights, but she knew her physical limits. There was no way she could walk a hundred feet of steel cable.
Ruby watched the tiny figure as he crossed the barely visible wire. He was mesmerising. It was almost like watching a dancer, so precise, so confident, and for just a moment the beauty of the spectacle became the only thing and Ruby quite forgot why she was there. She shook herself – Get a grip Rube. He had almost reached the other side. Should I follow him? This was the closest she had come to their thief – assuming of course that he and the skywalker were indeed one and the same.
The skywalker was tantalisingly close – others had seen him stepping across clouds and air, but no one had got near to catching him. This was Ruby’s big chance. If she
followed then she would be able to identify him – find out if he was their guy. If so, she could inform the Spectrum team – it wasn’t like she planned to wrestle him to the ground or anything.
She walked over to the wire. He doesn’t know I’m here, so long as it stays that way then I am perfectly safe. She thought about that statement for a second. So long as I don’t fall, she amended. She thought about Beetle and the thrill he got from dangling from cranes and lampposts – he wouldn’t think twice, so neither would she.
No sweat, she thought.
She wasn’t unduly worried about the possibility of falling because her finger grip was strong and she knew that if she kept very calm and focused she would be able to grip the wire and make her way across by edging along one hand over the other. In other words she would hang on to the tightrope like some kind of monkey rather than step across it. She might be fearless but she wasn’t crazy.
She waited until the skywalker had reached the opposite roof and then stepped onto the parapet where the high wire connected to the building. She dusted her hands in chalk and, taking the cable in both hands, slowly lowered herself down until she was hanging from the wire. Then she began to edge out across the void. She was soon dangling several hundred feet above the dark streets. It felt OK. She was confident. She would not fall. The sirens below were not reacting to her daredevil act, they were simply the unharmonious music of the city’s streets.
She kept her focus forward just as she had been taught by coach Norov in gymnastics. Her nerves were steel and her confidence unwavering. She was a good halfway across when all that changed. She began to feel a movement in the wire.
What was happening?
Did it matter? Not at that exact moment. All she knew was she needed to get to the other side as fast as possible. Don’t panic but speed it up. She started moving fast, hand over hand. But it soon became clear, as the movement in the wire became more and more dramatic, that something was very wrong. The wire was going to snap. She would have to abandon it before it abandoned her.
Otherwise you’ll hit that wall like a wrecking ball.
She braced herself, waiting for the cable to be completely severed from its anchor, waiting for the moment when she would be swung at great speed towards the Hauser Ink Building, knowing that if she timed it right she would survive, knowing if she timed it wrong she would smash into the wall or be dashed onto the sidewalk below. No second chances; make it or die.
Snap.
The wire gave, and Ruby swung at alarming speed towards the Hauser Ink Building. She was planning to leap onto the large ledge just above the Hauser’s vast central window. All she had to do was time it right.
The air rushed past. The building rushed closer.
Not yet. . .
Not yet. . .
Now.
She let go.
She wasn’t even close to making it.
Chapter 33.
A miss is as good as a mile
RUBY’S LEAP WAS AN AMBITIOUS MOVE – the kind of stunt that needed practice.
And Ruby had had very little practice at swinging from buildings on wires.
So where did she land? In true comedy style (not that Ruby was close to laughing), her fall was broken by a flagpole, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, she was lucky enough to grab the flag as she began her descent to sidewalk level. Now she was hanging on with one hand and looking down at the red and white lights of the tiny cars on Ink Street. More movies than she could recall titles to had a scene like this. She gripped the tough fabric and worked her way steadily up the cloth until she was finally grasping the flagpole it was attached to.
Ruby thanked her lucky Redfort stars that her death-defying window-ledge encounter at the Sandwich Building had in some way prepared her for this moment.
It wasn’t easy to edge her way back to the building, the flag was billowing and enfolding her in its massive stars and stripes but, undeterred, she gradually manoeuvred herself closer to the building’s ledge, where she hoped there might be an open window.
She heard a voice.
‘Kid, where exactly are you, my radar has you placed at 300ft above street level, please don’t tell me you are on some rooftop?’
‘I’m not,’ Ruby replied in the rather strangled voice of one who is hanging by two hands over a 300-foot void. She couldn’t have been more surprised to hear Hitch’s voice crackling out of the fly barrette and she couldn’t have been more grateful either.
‘You don’t sound all right, are you all right?’ Hitch asked.
‘Um,’ said Ruby, ‘kinda. It depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
‘Whether there is a window open on the fiftieth floor of the Hauser Ink Building.’
‘Jeepers Redfort, do you ever obey orders? I’m coming to get you – just stay there!’
‘I’ll try,’ said Ruby, her strangled voice betraying the strain of her predicament.
By the time Ruby reached the building, her fingers were feeling the strain. She let herself down onto the ledge, finally daring to let go of the flagpole. There was no window. So she pressed her body firm against the Hauser’s bricks and prayed the wind would not change direction while she waited for Hitch to come get her. She looked up when she heard her name being called. ‘Grab this and I’ll haul you up.’
He sounded ticked off and Ruby had half a mind not to catch the rope but instead sit the night through and figure out another way down.
But, she thought, whatever storm was coming her way she was going to have to face it sometime or other, and besides, it was cold up on that ledge. She grabbed the rope, slipped her foot into the foot loop and was pulled back to safety.
She was met by a very unhappy-looking Hitch.
‘So why were you tailing me?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t, I was just testing the transmitter function on my watch and guess who pops up on my radar?’
Stupid Redfort, you should have left the fly barrette at home!
‘I can probably explain,’ said Ruby.
‘You always can.’
‘I think someone just tried to kill me.’
‘You’re looking at the next guy in line – I just happened to be having dinner two blocks away with a very charming meter maid.’
‘Look, the thing is. . .’
‘Let’s be clear on one thing Redfort, don’t say one more word.’
Ruby nodded.
Hitch was winding the rope back. She waited for him to gather up his rescue kit and then, in complete silence, she followed him back in through the roof-hatch door, and all the way down the stairs to street level.
Ruby said nothing, not in fact because Hitch didn’t look like he had lifted the no-talk ban, but because she really couldn’t think of anything worth saying.
She picked up her skateboard from where she had abandoned it outside the Luper Building, but Hitch had already hailed a cab, and was directing her into it.
‘Go home Redfort,’ he said. Then he slammed the cab door and walked off in the direction of the restaurant and his no doubt rather cold supper.
The voice cooed
down the line. . .
‘I’ve been following you.’
Silence.
‘That’s right, and not in the papers.’
‘But you don’t know what I look like.’
‘Why would that matter? You make a real spectacle of yourself. I’ve got to hand it to you, it’s quite a show you put on.’
Silence.
‘I’ve seen you walking on air, I’ve watched you disappear, but I’m right behind you and getting closer.’
‘I told you, you’ll get what you want when I’ve completed my task.’
‘Too late Birdboy, I don’t like to wait and I’ve been waiting a long time.’ Laughter spilled down the line. ‘But you know what, it’s more fun this way, like a little old game of hide-and-seek, and I’m coming to get you buddy, you can be sure of that.’
Chapter 34.
; A turn for the worse
CLANCY WAS IN SURPRISINGLY GOOD SPIRITS THE NEXT MORNING when he arrived at Twinford Junior High. He had been concentrating on his invisibility all week and it appeared to be working – he was certainly less visible than he had been the day before or the day before that. He had toned down his ‘look’ and had become ‘regular’ – neither eccentrically obvious, nor eccentrically bland.
Red and Elliot walked right past him at the bus stop and Del stood two places ahead of him in the canteen queue without noticing he was there. Vapona Begwell didn’t even hurl one insult his way for the whole entire basketball game and Vapona never missed a chance to bait him. He was feeling confident and relaxed, at one with the world.
In contrast, Ruby was in a complicated mood that morning. She barely spoke a word before leaving the house and headed for school without breakfast. Rare for Ruby not to feel hungry, rare for Ruby not to feel like talking. Clancy, a sensitive kid, tuned into her awkward state of mind at once and decided it might be wise to give her some space. He didn’t mind. Things were going his way and Clancy had not encountered the gorilla boy once since his first day back at school. He had seen the guy plenty of times outside the gates hanging with his crowd, but the gorilla had never spotted him. However, this good feeling was not to last and things took a turn for the worse in the afternoon.
Clancy walked into his history class, a little late due to a problem with his locker combination, and by the time he reached class, all the desks near the window and the back of the room had already been taken. In fact only two places remained, both in his least favourite positions: front and centre. Reluctantly he sat himself down and took out his books. He was just lining up his various pens and stuff when the door opened.
‘And you are?’ said the history teacher.
‘Bailey Roach,’ said a voice.
‘Well, Mr Roach since you’re new to Twinford Junior High I won’t wail about your being late. You do know school began on Monday?’
