by Lauren Child
‘Sure it worries me, someone is trying to kill my mom, bozo.’
‘But why would anyone want to kill your mom?’ said Clancy. He had a weird look on his face like he was trying to get her to see something he could see already.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby, ‘because she wears nice clothes, runs the Twinford charity committee … I mean, why would anyone want my mom dead?’
‘So maybe they didn’t,’ said Clancy. ‘Maybe it was an accident.’
‘You’re saying someone accidentally got a poison substance into the fibres of her dress?’
Now Clancy was looking at her like she had lost a marble or two. ‘No, duh brain, what I’m saying is that part was not the accident, the accident was your mom putting on the dress in the first place.’
‘I hate to admit this, but I have no idea what you are saying.’
Clancy unzipped his backpack and pulled out a large brown envelope. He slid out a colour photograph: it was of him, his father, the mayor and a tall woman in a red dress with a yellow snake coiled around her arm. The tall woman was Amarjargel Oidov, and the dress she was wearing was exactly the same as the one her mother had worn, only it was a good deal shorter and a good deal tighter.
‘This was taken that night after Amarjargel Oidov had won the Explorer Award.’
Clancy looked at her.
Ruby’s face went from complete bafflement to total understanding. The photo in the newspaper! She had known there was something about it, but it had been in black and white, and had also only shown the people from the waist up – which was why Ruby hadn’t made the connection. Now she saw the scene in full colour – it was staring her right in the face.
‘Amarjargel Oidov is wearing the same red dress,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said Clancy.
‘But it’s shorter than my mom’s dress,’ said Ruby. ‘It doesn’t fit right.’
‘Exactly,’ said Clancy.
‘Because it’s not her dress,’ said Ruby.
‘Exactly,’ said Clancy.
Ruby remembered her mother complaining about the cocktail crime scene – how she and one of the honoured guests had been wearing the same gown.
‘So no one wanted my mother dead. They wanted Amarjargel Oidov dead.’
‘I would guess so.’
‘Clance, for the second time, you’re a genius.’
‘Or maybe you’re a numbskull,’ said Clancy.
‘Whatever,’ said Ruby, ‘the big question is: where is Amarjargel Oidov?’
There was a knock
at the door of room 21 …
… Amarjargel Oidov supposed it would be room service. She was looking forward to her cup of English Breakfast tea. However, when she opened the door, instead of a person with a teapot on a tray she was greeted by a pleasant-looking man holding a bunch of flowers. He was smartly dressed in a green florist’s apron and was wearing white gloves. The gloves seemed odd somehow; they didn’t go with the gardener’s apron.
‘Amarjargel Oidov?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said smiling.
‘Flowers for you,’ he said.
‘How beautiful,’ she said touching the unusual purple blooms.
‘You should smell them,’ said the florist, ‘really breathe in that scent.’
She smiled at him. He had a nice face, sweet looking.
‘Who sent them? I had no idea anyone knew where I was staying.’
‘The card’s in there somewhere,’ said the man. ‘It might have slipped down between the stems. If you feel around for it, I’m sure you’ll find it.’ He turned to go. ‘Enjoy!’ he called as he walked back along the corridor.
Chapter 28.
Touch and go
RUBY PRESSED THE EMERGENCY CONTACT DEVICE ON HER WATCH and waited for Hitch to pick up the distress call.
HITCH: ‘Kid? You in trouble?’
RUBY: ‘You gotta find the snake woman.’
HITCH: ‘Sorry?’
RUBY: ‘Amarjargel Oidov, she’s the one.’
HITCH: ‘The one what?’
RUBY: ‘The one they were trying to kill.’
HITCH: ‘You know this?’
RUBY: ‘If I’m wrong, I’ll eat my sneakers.’
She could hear Hitch feeding the information back to Froghorn and then Froghorn’s reply, distant but clear: ‘She was staying at the Twinford Grand but she checked out yesterday morning.’
‘So call every single hotel in this city until you find her,’ said Hitch.
There was the sound of phones being dialled and agents’ voices as the whole Spectrum 8 team was mobilised.
‘Nice work kid,’ said Hitch.
The line went dead.
An hour later, while Ruby sat in her biology class watching caterpillars inch around a large glass jar, a team of agents and police, medics among them, were running down corridors and jumping in cars.
‘Ruby you seem distracted?’ said Mrs Greg.
‘Sorry ma’am, I’m just wrestling with the big question,’ she said.
‘The meaning of life?’ asked the teacher.
‘That kind of thing,’ said Ruby.
One car pulled up in front of the boutique hotel just across from the zoo.
One man and one woman jumped out and ran into the building.
‘Could you contact the guest in room 21?’ said the man to the concierge.
The phone rang but there was no reply.
‘Could you unlock her room for me?’ said the man.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said the concierge.
The woman flashed a police badge and the concierge nodded.
‘Right away.’
Ruby pretended to watch the caterpillar chomp through a small green leaf, but though her eyes were trained on it, her thoughts were elsewhere.
The lock turned and the man, the policewoman and the concierge entered the hotel room.
What they found was a dark-haired woman lying on the floor. Grasped in her hand was a flower. She appeared to be unconscious.
‘Be careful,’ said the man, ‘it’s highly likely she has been poisoned.’
The policewoman spoke into her radio device.
The medical team arrived on the scene, but the woman could not be brought round.
Amarjargel Oidov was carried out.
Ruby stared at the creature in the jar.
A message flashed up on her watch.
>> AO ALIVE.
And then,
>> CONDITION CRITICAL.
And finally:
>> POISONED.
Chapter 29.
A pig's tie
BEYOND THOSE FEW WORDS THERE WAS NO NEWS, not a bleep from her watch, not a crackle from her fly barrette. It was full-on radio silence. She sent a message but what came back from Spectrum was a wait for briefing symbol, i.e. don’t call us, we’ll call you.
When the school bell rang, Ruby grabbed her coat and caught the first bus home, not even a minute of locker-side chat. She was anxious to know what was happening with the snake woman. Had Spectrum made any progress figuring out who the poisoner was, and in a way more importantly, why this conservationist had been the victim of attempted murder? Just what was it that made her a target? Were the snakes with their fluorescent skin valuable to someone?
When Ruby arrived home the first thing she did was check to see if Hitch was in his apartment: he wasn’t. She was not surprised. There was a poisoning maniac loose in the city – it would be strange if Hitch was sitting at home twiddling his thumbs.
She walked back upstairs. She could hear the radio playing in the kitchen. It was tuned to Chime Melody. The music stopped and the top-of-the-hour news broke in:
NEWS TODAY ON THE HOUR EVERY HOUR, THIS IS JUDD JERRAD TELLING IT LIKE IT IS. TODAY, THE PRESIDENTGETSBEHINDTHEMARSSPACE PROGRAM. WILL WE SOON BE WELCOMING LITTLE GREEN MEN TO OUR PLANET? ARE TEMPERATURES RISING IN THE ARCTIC AND WHAT WILL IT MEAN FOR PENGUINS?
It’s polar bears, you dufus. Jeepers where
do they find these clowns? thought Ruby.
A JAILHOUSE FOOD FIGHT PROVIDES COVER FOR A BOLD ESCAPE, AND THE WARDEN IS LEFT WITH EGG ON HIS FACE.
Really, this is the best you can come up with Judd?
EXPLORER-AWA RD-WINNER AND SNAKE PROTECTOR, AMARJARGEL OIDOV, FOUND POISONED IN A HOTEL ROOM. WE ASK, WAS SHE BITTEN BY HER OWN DISCOVERY? AND FINALLY, A FIRE AT A TWINFORD HAIR SALON. DID SOMEONE FORGET TO UNPLUG THE HEATED ROLLERS?
The Chime Melody news was light when it came to information – and facts, come to that.
‘Hey Ruby, is that you?’
‘Yeah Mom, I’m home,’ she replied, but kept walking, ‘just going up to my room, I have a ton of homework.’
‘I don’t know how you fit all that learning into your brain,’ called her mother. ‘I swear I don’t remember a thing from my school days.’
Ruby walked into her room and closed the door behind her. There was a post-it note stuck to the top of her desk, obvious enough for her to find but not so obvious that anyone would know what it meant.
There was a drawing of a fly buzzing around an apple, and on the apple, making up the stalk and leaf, was the number 155.
The message was from Hitch, and Ruby knew exactly what he was trying to say. She pulled Pick Your Poison from the shelf and turned to page 155.
‘Wolfsbane, also known as monkshood {aconitum} is a flowering plant found mostly in mountainous regions of the northern hemisphere. The roots and leaves contain the alkaloid pseudaconitine, a deadly poison. Once swallowed or absorbed through the skin, this substance can kill within hours, or instantaneously in the case of large doses. Cases have been recorded of fatalities due to handling the plant without gloves, as the pseudaconitine is very easily absorbed through the skin. The risk of death increases with the amount of the poison ingested or absorbed – milder cases can be treated with drugs or electrical stimulus to counteract the heart arrhythmias caused by the toxin.’
So Amarjargel Oidov had been lucky once, but this time the poisoner had got his victim. Whether she made it through depended on how much wolfsbane had made it into her system.
In the kitchen Ruby found Mrs Digby chatting to her mother, who was sitting at the counter reading the newspaper, looking almost like her usual self.
‘I hope I’m going to feel fit enough to take that trip next week.’
‘What trip?’ said Ruby.
‘Oh, hey Ruby,’ said her mother. ‘I was just talking about that trip to Washington, you know the Crews are going and those Explorer Awarders.’
‘You mean the environmentalists?’ said Ruby. ‘They’re going too?’
‘Yes, those guys,’ said Sabina. ‘I’m actually pretty thrilled to be asked, it’s such a surprise.’ Ruby wasn’t surprised; her parents were invited to everything, why not to the White House?
‘Hanging out with the president,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll guess you’ll be getting all dressed up for that.’
‘Well, I should think so,’ said Sabina. ‘It’s a reception at his house. Although I’m going to avoid the canapés and I certainly won’t be buying my dress from Bergwend-Nyle not after the mess they made of those alterations, boy was that ever a pig’s tie.’
‘Pig’s ear,’ corrected Ruby.
‘That too,’ said her mother.
Hitch called an hour later. He spoke to Sabina and she listened carefully before saying, ‘You know what, I’m going to trust you on this. If you think it’s a good idea then so do I.’
She put the phone down and turned to Ruby.
‘Hitch wants you to meet him.’
‘Where?’ asked Ruby.
‘The Dime a Dozen,’ said her mother.
Hitch wasn’t actually waiting for Ruby in the Dime a Dozen, but then she hadn’t expected him to be. She stepped in behind the flyspray and walked down to Spectrum HQ.
He was there in the atrium talking to Buzz – when he saw Ruby he pointed to the elevator.
‘So what did you say to my mom?’ she asked as they headed to level 4.
‘I told her I was going to take you to a self-defence class.’
‘In the Dime a Dozen?’
‘I told her I was picking up some groceries en route.’
‘And where are we actually going?’
‘To a self-defence class, aikido actually, but it’s the same general ballpark. I figure you could use some defence skills, with Baby Face still out there.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ruby.
They stepped out of the elevator. As they walked they talked.
‘So any word on the poisoner?’ asked Ruby.
‘We think our florist was Baby Face Marshall,’ he said. ‘The bellhop at the hotel gave a pretty good description.’
‘But why Marshall?’ asked Ruby. ‘Why would he want to poison a conservationist who’s just looking to protect some rare snakes?’
‘As yet we have no idea.’ He sighed. ‘Baby Face, we can be pretty sure, is just some hired hand. He has experience using toxic substances and we can be fairly sure he is also the poisoner who laced your mother’s gown with methanol. But when it comes to why, we are just left guessing. The snakes are valuable of course and their skins alone would fetch large sums of money on the black market, and then there’s the venom,’ he said.
‘But killing Amarjargel Oidov isn’t going to get you to the snakes,’ said Ruby. ‘I thought she’d kept their location a secret?’
‘She has,’ said Hitch, ‘but we can’t dismiss the possibility that Marshall has somehow got his hands on this information – with her gone, it could be open season on these reptiles.’
‘So who do you think Baby Face could be working for?’ said Ruby.
‘The sender of the muffins,’ said Hitch. He smiled because it sounded sort of funny, though the situation was far from being any kind of laughing matter. ‘Someone wanted to use his services and they took great pains to get him here, smuggled in some pretty state-of-the-art equipment to bust him out.’
‘Yeah, about that,’ said Ruby. ‘Who would Baby Face have to know to get hold of a gadget like that? I mean, we know he’s worked for the Count but even the Count can’t lay his hands on this kind of hardware, can he? I mean, it’s not the basic file in a cake, is it.’
‘That, kid, is undoubtedly true,’ replied Hitch.
They walked in silence for a minute until Ruby asked, ‘Is she gonna be OK, the snake lady?’
‘Her chances are 50/50,’ said Hitch. ‘Not such great odds.’
They were now at the end of a corridor. Hitch opened the door and they walked into a dojo. The walls of the double-height room were Japanese screens which gave the space both light and a certain tranquility. In the centre of the floor was a large mat. There was a small notice on the wall and Ruby had to get close to see what it said.
Rules of Aikido:
1. Proper aikido can never be mastered unless one strictly follows the master’s teaching.
‘So who’s the aikido master?’
‘That would be me,’ said Hitch.
Chapter 30.
Soft defeats hard
‘THOUGH I SHOULD MAKE CLEAR,’ Hitch continued, ‘I didn’t write these rules.’
‘That I know,’ said Ruby. ‘They were written by the Aikido Doshu.’ Though she had never actually studied aikido, the rules posted on the wall were familiar to her. Martial arts were just another subject Ruby knew a whole lot about.
2. Aikido as a martial art is perfected by being alert to everything going on around us and leaving no vulnerable opening (suki).
3. Practice becomes joyful and pleasant once one has trained enough not to be bothered by pain.
4. Do not be satisfied by what is taught at the dojo. One must constantly digest, experiment and develop what one has learned.
5. One should never force things unnaturally or unreasonably in practice. One should undertake training suited to one’s body, physical condition and age.
6. The aim of aikido is to develop the truly human self. It should n
ot be used to display ego.
‘That last rule, rule six, might be a good one for you to try and master,’ said Hitch. ‘Go suit up.’
Ten minutes later they were standing facing each other, each now wearing the traditional martial arts uniform of the gi, white cotton belted jackets with loose pyjama-style bottoms and the hakama sort of skirt-like trousers worn over the top of the gi. Ruby was unsurprised to see that Hitch’s belt was black.
‘Aikido,’ began Hitch, ‘is a Japanese martial art created in the 1920s by—’
‘Morihei Ueshiba,’ said Ruby.
‘Very impressive,’ said Hitch. ‘So you will also know that ‘Morihei Ueshiba believed that in fighting you should harmonise with your opponent rather than try to defeat them through force or power.’
‘I’m not sure Vapona Begwell is much into harmony,’ said Ruby.
Hitch said, ‘Yes, well, that’s kind of the point of the lesson. People sub-divide martial arts into hard and soft. Some believe that striking the first blow is all-important, some that you must continue to strike until you are in no doubt that you have overcome your opponent.’
‘If you think someone’s gonna kill you, isn’t that the sane thing to do?’ said Ruby.
‘What I am going to teach you, kid, is how to beat your opponent by avoiding their strikes. In aikido, we are working with the idea that only soft can overpower hard. The example is often used of water and rock – water yields to rock and flows around it, but over time it will shape it. You can defeat your aggressor by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of their attack rather than opposing it head-on. You can learn how to deal with several attackers all coming at you at once, and train yourself to be alert, not just to what’s happening in front of you, but on all sides, even behind you. Aikido as a martial art is perfected by being alert to everything going on around you so you don’t leave youself vulnerable. Which is basically vital if you are an agent working in the field.’
