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Blink and You Die
Lauren Child


Say goodbye to Ruby Redfort: every smart kid’s smart kid. The mind-blowing conclusion to the thrilling series by award-winning author Lauren Child.Ruby Redfort: undercover agent, code-cracker and thirteen-year-old genius – you can count on her when the ice starts to crack.All good things come to an end… Ruby Redfort is running scared, a whole bunch of people want her dead and worst of all one of them is on her team. But just who is this agent of doom?You can run, Ruby, but you can’t hide…























Copyright (#ulink_5c48b1f2-d7f7-5a50-bdee-6c00ce5bcb7c)


First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

For Ruby Redfort games, puzzles, videos and more, visit:

www.rubyredfort.com (http://www.rubyredfort.com)

Visit Lauren Child at www.milkmonitor.com (http://www.milkmonitor.com)

Copyright © Lauren Child 2016

Series design by David Mackintosh

Illustrations © David Mackintosh 2015

Illustrations of characters in end material © Lauren Child

Map layouts by Martin Brown

Map illustrations © Emily Faccini

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007334285

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008190156

Version: 2017-04-04




















Contents

Cover (#u51927b45-1288-57c0-841b-b618e41c6e0c)

Title Page (#u3ffb10d6-614f-5102-a400-f119e90f8680)

Copyright (#u230e65b3-e6de-59b6-8dad-77ccd7d51b2f)

Dedication (#u764beffa-8e61-5802-b8c2-eeac627fcc27)

Epigraph (#ue7b0f07f-b639-5e26-91cb-5cd192d77bc0)

Maps (#u0f50209e-aed9-5826-bbee-18e9e4ec2b0e)

The buried fear (#u02d9f327-514b-5d9f-b19b-a7390f7c5721)

An ordinary kid (#ube8cdf51-a0dc-5485-a8a0-883b405fafa5)

Chapter 1. A window on the world (#ue41f2784-8105-5b89-b88f-fa61202baefa)

Chapter 2. Long distance (#u2cf50b4e-05f8-548b-b5f9-a7ee6fac2092)

Chapter 3. Catching up (#u4970ca6c-5766-57de-9a81-4a842b745046)

Chapter 4. Baby Grim (#ue67a2a88-2b60-59ab-89e0-3e6d4b2d8f16)

Chapter 5. Snakes and mushrooms (#u5c35ed6e-fec4-54ec-a937-a80ff4b49ee8)

Chapter 6. Larger fish to fry (#udbf11cef-d674-5084-8444-67430ddfdbeb)

Chapter 7. One bad apple or two? (#u4f85302c-00ec-5b24-9842-4da2cdba6444)

Chapter 8. Little green men (#u383c19e3-58db-5a11-a849-7f926f074a33)

Chapter 9. Lucite (#u36550665-7239-551d-a308-05423f4978af)

Chapter 10. The stars above (#u5da01ee3-7c2a-5c77-9cba-a8f3363ada6d)

Chapter 11. Act normal (#ubefe4b54-44d1-542d-8c4f-73a1ccedffdd)

Chapter 12. Ghost Files (#ucfcec629-52f5-5164-b8a8-cd6c166f0a55)

Chapter 13. Sprayed and delivered (#uf5eb300c-0682-5f19-ad93-8e81e2e7f76f)

Chapter 14. The wrong kind of snow (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15. Thirty Minutes of Murder (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16. Look under V (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17. Evil all around (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18. Location unknown (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19. Minus 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20. Hold your breath (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21. C.O.L.D. (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22. Something remembered (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23. A man’s best friend (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24. Hypocrea asteroidi (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25. Mushrooms from Mars (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26. The trolley problem (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27. À la mode (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28. Nothing but glamour (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29. Yellow notebooks (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30. A stroke of luck (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31. Place of death (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32. Hit and run (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33. One and the same (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34. I remember nothing (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35. Who to tell? (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36. Loveday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 37. A safe house (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 38. Lost and found (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 39. Cousin Mo (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 40. On the cards (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 41. What we know (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 42. Chasing a shadow (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 43. What to do if You are Caught in an Avalanche (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 44. Buried alive (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 45. Cold comfort (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 46. Run (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 47. On thin ice (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 48. Sorrow (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 49. We wish you a merry Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 50. Even the mundane can tell a story (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 51. The fly barrette (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 52. Instinct (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 53. Nothing is completely safe (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 54. All systems are down (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 55. Make like bananas (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 56. The Eye Ball (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 57. A man about a dog (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 58. No Rule 81 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 59. Follow me (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 60. Hanging on by an eyelash (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 61. Blink and you die (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 62. 1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Two lucky escapes (#litres_trial_promo)

Heroics (#litres_trial_promo)

The oak on Amster Green (#litres_trial_promo)

A badge of approval (#litres_trial_promo)

Team players (#litres_trial_promo)

Crime pays (#litres_trial_promo)

A note on the Prism Vault codes (#litres_trial_promo)

Picture this (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Special thanks (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)











































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IT HAPPENED ONE BRIGHT APRIL DAY when the child, then barely five weeks old, was sleeping. The world crashed down and the baby opened its eyes, but there was only darkness to see. The walls were packed around it, almost touching, and the doors and the windows all gone. The baby cried out, but no one came. It screamed and clenched its furious fists, trying in vain to push at the tomb of rubble, but nothing happened. Its little mind began to panic, its eyes closed shut and its heart began to hurt.

She was alone and no one would ever find her.

The baby had been left in the care of the housekeeper, who had just put some cookies to cool on the porch when, without warning, the ground began to shift and the buildings began to shake, trees creaked and then cracked. Some of them – the big oak on Amster Green – stood firm, others – the giant cedar of west Twinford – fell.

Sidewalks buckled and streetlights toppled. The earth tremor lasted just a few seconds and Twinford City escaped by-and-large unscathed – a few buildings needed repair, but remarkably no one, not a soul, lost their life. The townsfolk mourned their fallen trees, but counted their blessings: no one had died. There was only one real casualty; the Fairbank house on Cedarwood was completely destroyed. After 200 years of standing just exactly where it was, looking out across the ever-changing townscape of west Twinford, this historic house was gone.

It was the housekeeper who dug the child out with nothing but ‘the hands God gave her’. This woman had endured more than earthquakes in her time and no mere earth tremor was going to have her standing by while an infant lay buried, perhaps dead, perhaps alive. By the time the baby’s parents returned to their home, now a wreckage of wood and brick, their daughter was lying in the housekeeper’s lap quiet as a lamb and smiling up at them. Everyone was very relieved, their little girl saved, not a scratch to her perfect face, no damage done.

Or so they thought, for in that baby’s head a tiny kernel of fear had lodged, a fear which would grow and grow until in her thoughts a monster lurked.







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WHEN RUBY REDFORT WAS THIRTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS, she found herself confronting the biggest dilemma of her short life. On the desk was an apple split in two. In her hand was a tiny piece of paper.

On the paper were printed two small letters; small letters which spelled something so vast and so terrifying that it made her eyes water.

The letters told of betrayal and murder.

It was the Count who had planted suspicion, posed the grim question and introduced the poisonous thought that the untimely death of Spectrum’s most valuable agent, Bradley Baker, might have been ‘arranged’.

‘The question is,’ he’d said, ‘who pulled the trigger?’

It was the apple, the messenger of doom, which held the answer.

If Ruby was to believe in its truth then life had suddenly become dramatically more dangerous. She looked down at the paper inscribed with the initials of the woman who called the shots, who held the lives of so many in her hands.

The boss of Spectrum 8.

LB.

Ruby looked into darkness and wondered who she could trust.

Trust no one, she thought.














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RUBY REDFORT WAS PERCHED ON a stepladder looking out of the high landscape window which ran the length of her room. The window was designed to allow the light in rather than to provide a view of the street below, but today it was the view Ruby was interested in. She was looking down at the network of roads and alleys, contemplating the scene below. Mrs Beesman was wheeling her shopping cart down one of the back alleys which ran between the rows of houses. The cart was filled with several cats and some jars, saucepans and a whole lot of random junk. A few of the cats appeared to have socks wrapped around their middles, presumably to keep them warm. Mrs Beesman herself was wearing several coats and a fur hat with earflaps, ski gloves and an extremely long, moth-eaten scarf. Mrs Beesman tended to wear a coat in all weathers, but today, bundled up as she was, suggested that it was a pretty chilly morning. As the old lady trundled past Mr Parker’s yard, so his dog Bubbles began to bark.

On Ruby’s lap was a plate of pancakes: her second serving and it was still only 6.47 am. Ruby had been away from home for the whole of November, and the housekeeper had missed her more than she would ever say. The minute Ruby had walked through the door Mrs Digby had reached for the batter and the skillet and while she flipped pancakes so they chatted. Their conversation had been interrupted by an urgent call from Mrs Digby’s cousin Emily and Ruby, knowing the time these phone calls often took, had carried her breakfast on up to her bedroom.

The pancakes were lasting longer than usual because Ruby’s eating was interrupted by her neighbourhood observations. Every few minutes she would put down her fork and take the pencil from behind her ear and make a note in the yellow notebook which lay in her lap. It was surprising how much was going on out there given the time of day. Ruby had taken up the yellow notebook habit when she was four years old and she now had 625 notebooks full of the exciting, interesting, ordinary and often dull happenings that had occurred in the world around her. She stored the 624 notebooks under the floor, the 625th she kept hidden inside the door jamb.

Ruby had returned unreasonably early that December morning from what she referred to as the ‘dork pound’ and what the organisers would call Genius Camp ‘for the mathematically gifted’. As far as Ruby was concerned, it was four weeks of her life she would never get back. It had been no walk in the park, not because the work had been particularly hard, but because some of the kids enrolled in the course were, well, not particularly nice, and some of them were a whole lot worse than that, namely Dakota Lyme. Ruby had run into Dakota not so long ago at the October mathletics meet, one of the less pleasant days of Ruby’s (on the whole charmed) life. Ruby had found herself going head to head with the objectionable girl in the final round of the one-day competition, and for all the trouble it had caused her, Ruby would have gladly conceded victory and walked away from the whole stupid circus. However, she won and took the consequences, which were a lot of abuse and a nasty encounter in the mathletics meet parking lot. One of the problems for Ruby was that her brilliant brain brought her a lot of attention, attention she really didn’t want, nor, given her status as an undercover agent, need.

Mr Parker came out onto the lawn to shout at Bubbles. The sound of his voice was a whole lot more unpleasant than the sound of the dog’s barking.

Ruby’s life as an agent was no picnic, but then that was hardly a surprise given the kind of people one was inclined to run into during the day-on-day battle of good v evil. Evil, a much overused word in Ruby’s opinion. Not every person who committed a crime was evil, and only rarely (extremely rarely) would one consider them through and through bad with not an iota of goodness in them. But when it came to the Count, Ruby would have to concede that if there was any good in him then it was too small to see. Blame it on a bad childhood, a life gone wrong, his ma and pa’s genes, blame it on the weather, but whatever the reason, it didn’t change the facts – goodness had deserted him utterly, and his soul had gone to rot. Around this monster of a man swirled a murky soup of the vile and the unhinged, all eager to do his dirty work. The plots they hatched and cruelties they inflicted were dark enough to give Wonder Woman herself reason to keep the nightlight lit. So how did a thirteen-year-old school kid from Twinford hold her nerve? Well, no one had promised her it was going to be easy. But what scared Ruby more than the cruel ones, more than the Count even, was the force behind it all, the one who pulled the strings. Because there was someone, and according to the Count it was this someone who wanted Ruby dead and caused the Count himself to shudder.

And one should always, in the words of Mrs Digby:

Fear the wolf that other wolves fear.

Ruby watched as a removal van turned the corner and made its way down Cedarwood Drive. It stopped outside the grey clapboard house, the oldest house on the street. It seemed it was about to become vacant once more. As far back as Ruby could remember, no one ever stuck around long enough to make the house a home.

Ruby Redfort was a girl who embraced change and was not fearful of a little adventure, but lately she wouldn’t mind if the whole world stood still.

A car drove by. It stopped at the junction; the driver wound down the window and threw a soda can onto the street.

October had been a busy month. Her life as an agent at the most secret of secret agencies – known only to those in the know as Spectrum – had been dominated by the growing sense that somewhere in Spectrum’s subterranean corridors there lurked a mole. Ruby had felt the steely looks as the eye of suspicion was trained on her. She had been interviewed by the head of Spectrum 1, Agent Delaware, and it had not been a comfortable experience, particularly when with a steady gaze he had uttered the words, ‘I could be staring into the eyes of a traitor right this very moment and not know it.’ But Ruby shouldn’t have taken it personally – it was simply protocol. Every agent in Spectrum was under suspicion, every single one of them interviewed, investigated and scrutinised. No one had been identified as the mole, no one had been cleared; the tension in HQ was palpable.

As October brought in the storm winds, so the Spectrum investigation brought an uneasy atmosphere which crept through its halls, seeding suspicion and mistrust. And for Ruby everything was beginning to settle at LB’s door.

A builder’s truck manoeuvred its way down the street and pulled up outside the Lemons’ house, blocking part of Cedarwood Drive. An angry driver began honking his horn, but the truck didn’t move. The driver got out of his car, the truck driver out of his truck, and they began shouting at each other. The shouts of the men in the street masked the sound of footsteps on the roof above her. It was only when the hatch opened that Ruby realised that someone was up there.

‘Who’s there?’ cried Ruby, the ladder rocking dangerously as she turned to look.

‘Ah,’ said Hitch. ‘It looks like you’re back.’

‘Jeepers! Ever think of knocking?’ scolded Ruby.

‘A bit weird isn’t it – knocking on the ceiling?’ said Hitch. He had a tool belt around his waist and a reel of cable slung across his shoulder.

‘What are you doing up there anyway?’

‘It’s a long story and I’ll fill you in on it when I’ve got time, but I ought to get going.’

‘You don’t want to hear the latest?’ she asked.

‘Itching to hear your news kid, but it’s a pleasure I’m going to have to put on hold.’ He opened the window and climbed out onto the ledge.

‘Doors too good for you, are they?’

‘I hadn’t realised you were so hung up on the rules,’ said Hitch as he disappeared from view. ‘Good to see you kid,’ he called.







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RUBY HAD BARELY REPOSITIONED HERSELF on the stepladder when there was a knock at her bedroom door. Her husky dog Bug got to his feet and ambled over.

‘Is that you?’ she called, slipping the notebook under her behind.

‘Who else would it be?’ came the reply.

‘You may enter,’ Ruby called.

‘One day you’ll break your neck,’ said the housekeeper walking into the room.

Ruby looked down to see Mrs Digby, holding a tray and scanning the floor for empty mugs and dirty plates.

‘That’s not a very cheery greeting,’ said Ruby.

‘It won’t be a very cheering sight if it happens,’ said the old lady. ‘Nor if that butler falls off the house,’ she said, peering out of the window at Hitch. ‘Is he after squirrels again? Or is it window weevils?’

‘Who in only knows?’ said Ruby.

‘What are you doing up there anyway? Spying on folks, I’ll warrant.’

‘Watching,’ corrected Ruby.

‘Same thing,’ sniffed the housekeeper. ‘Never was there a child as curious as you.’

‘Did my folks have a late night or something?’ said Ruby, looking at her watch. It was rare for them to lie in; they were what Mrs Digby called ‘early birds’.

‘If you want the answer to that question then you’re going to have to dial long distance,’ said Mrs Digby.

‘Huh?’ said Ruby.

‘Paris, France,’ said the housekeeper, ‘that’s where they are.’

‘They are?’ said Ruby. ‘Why?’

‘That butler friend of yours talked them into it.’

‘Hitch?’ said Ruby, like the Redforts had a team of butlers.

‘He thought they needed a vacation; why I don’t know since the only vacation they could use is a vacation from vacations.’ Mrs Digby tutted. Just thinking about the number of trips that pair made could make her travelsick.

‘So when are they home?’ asked Ruby.

‘Day after tomorrow. They wanted to be back in time for your return, but apparently all the flights were chock-a-block.’

‘I’m sure Hitch could get them home. He’s pretty good at persuading airline people to do what he wants.’

‘Well, he failed this time,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘but I guess even he doesn’t have much hold over the weather.’

‘The weather?’

‘Blizzards,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘Paris is under several feet of snow.’

‘Is that so?’ said Ruby. ‘How long are they expected to—’ She broke off, her attention caught by something else. ‘Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, peering at the old lady, ‘something has happened to your face.’

‘Well, that doesn’t sound quite polite,’ said the housekeeper.

‘I mean you look different.’ Ruby stared hard at her. ‘Tanned!’ she said, finally figuring out what had changed.

‘Well, since you ask, I’ve been cruising.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been cruising around the Caribbean.’

Ruby looked stunned.

‘On a boat.’

‘I know what a cruise is,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m just interested to understand how you got to be on one.’

‘I won it fair and square.’

‘Won what?’

‘A cruise.’

‘How?’

‘In a competition. I won it and took Cousin Emily along with me.’

‘What competition?’ asked Ruby.

‘Well, that’s the curious thing,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘I don’t exactly remember entering one, but I suppose I must have, and you know what they say …’

‘What?’ said Ruby.

Mrs Digby looked at her conspiratorially and said, ‘Don’t ask too many questions or they’ll find you out.’

Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘You mean they might have made a giant mistake and given you a prize you didn’t actually win?’

‘I’m not saying it’s not impossible,’ said Mrs Digby.

Mrs Digby’s view on keeping one’s mouth shut was similar to Spectrum’s number one rule: KEEP IT ZIPPED. Ruby herself had a little book of rules, 80 of them to be accurate – it was a magenta book with the word ‘Rules’ printed on it in red. While the housekeeper busied herself collecting the rest of the dirty crockery, Ruby was left to her thoughts and she was surprised that one of her thoughts was, I wish my folks were home. Ruby was an independent kid; she didn’t need people around her all the time for comfort or security. She had what Mrs Digby called inner reserves, by which she meant a strong sense of who she was, but for some reason today sitting up there on that stepladder, Ruby just felt a strong need to see her mom and dad. The house felt not so much quiet without them, as actually: empty.

‘By the way,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘I hate to be the one to tell you, but that Archie Lemon busted into your room and ate some of your books.’

‘What? You’re kidding?’ said Ruby.

‘Before you get all animated about it, I should just say, it wasn’t while I was watching him.’

‘So who was?’ asked Ruby.

‘That would be his mother, Elaine. She was over visiting your mom and neither of them realised he had made a crawl for it – up all those stairs too.’

‘How did he manage that?’

‘They’re over-feeding him is my guess,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘Who would believe such a tiny person could cause such havoc, but don’t worry, I cleaned it all up, wiped the dribble off your books and put ’em all back.’

‘Gross,’ said Ruby.

‘I’m not disagreeing with you.’ The housekeeper turned to leave. ‘Glad to have you back child.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ve missed you a bunch, you know that.’

Ruby returned to her musings.

As Ruby ran through all the various things that had happened since March, some nine months ago now, she began to see how time was running out and maybe not just for Spectrum – perhaps for her too.

She was beginning to tune into something that was driven neither by fact nor logic, it was more of a Clancy Crew hunch type of a thing. Just a feeling that whatever trouble was out there, it was now headed her way and about to come knocking at her door.













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AT 3 PM RUBY HEARD A SCRATCHING at the door.

‘Bug, is that you?’

She was answered by one short bark.

‘OK, I’ll see you by the back door.’

She pulled on her boots, coat and hat, wound a scarf around her neck, and climbed out of the window.

Bug was waiting patiently outside for her, and together they set off down Cedarwood Drive, turned right on Amster and continued on as far as the Donut Diner. She left the husky by the coat rack and he settled down for a nap.

It was medium busy, not too crowded, but as usual there were plenty of customers. Marla, the owner, waved to Ruby as she walked through the door.

Ruby took up a seat at the counter where Clancy was already waiting: in front of him, two mugs of ginger tea and a couple of apple donuts.

Ruby unzipped her coat, to reveal a T-shirt which read: happy to be here

‘What’s with the tea?’ asked Ruby.

‘My sister Amy has a cold, my sister Lulu has a cold, my sister Nancy has a cold, my sister Minny has a cold, my dad has a cold.’

‘Jeepers,’ said Ruby, ‘sounds bad.’

‘Drusilla says due to the high levels of antioxidants in ginger, ginger tea can strengthen your immunity, warding off infection, and I’m trying to remain uninfected,’ said Clancy.

‘But why do I have to drink ginger tea?’ asked Ruby. ‘It’s you Crews who are the ones harbouring the plague.’

‘Who knows who it will strike next; you go down sick, there’s more of a chance I go down sick, and I don’t want to go down sick. Christmas is my favourite time of year.’

Ruby sipped her ginger tea. When Clancy was in this frame of mind it was easier to fall in behind than argue it through.

‘By the way, long time no hear,’ said Clancy.

‘I wrote you: you didn’t get my postcards?’

‘I got ’em,’ said Clancy. He thought for a moment. ‘How come you typed them?’

‘I didn’t want anyone to recognise my handwriting,’ said Ruby.

‘Is that why you signed them Aunt Mabel?’ asked Clancy.

‘I was trying to keep incognito.’

‘Well, it brought up a few questions with my mom, I can tell you that.’

‘What was she doing reading your postcards?’ said Ruby.

‘People read other people’s postcards,’ said Clancy. ‘They’re postcards, no envelopes, the mailman can read them if he chooses to, I mean if he happens to be particularly bored.’

‘So,’ said Ruby, ‘what did she want to know?’

‘Why this Aunt Mabel, who she didn’t know even existed, was recommending thermal socks. I mean if you were planning on using a code then why didn’t you use the regular one?’

‘Because if I had written a postcard in gobbledegook then that would have looked really suspicious. This way it looks like I am writing to you about normal stuff.’

‘Since when is it normal for an aunt who doesn’t even exist to write me about thermal socks?’

‘OK, you have a point, I went too much into character, but can we get back to the point?’

‘Which is?’

‘I did keep in touch.’

‘But you didn’t tell me anything, not really, only that something had happened and it was hard to explain in writing.’

‘Well, it was.’

‘In that case, why didn’t you call?’

‘It wasn’t so easy,’ said Ruby, biting into one of the donuts. ‘They had this whole lockdown thing going.’

‘Since when was Genius Camp so high-security?’

‘It was more like boot camp, if you really wanna know – anyone caught out of their study area or generally not complying with mathletics rules was threatened with disqualification.’

‘Seriously?’ asked Clancy.

‘You bet seriously,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, you had to ask to use the payphone – you know it actually had a padlock on it.’

‘When did you ever take notice of petty rules? Or locks for that matter … Plus I thought you would have wanted to be disqualified and get sent home early.’

‘I thought about it, believe me, but then you know I felt bad for my mom and dad. For some reason having a daughter who is a major dork brainiac means something to them.’

‘That was your reason for staying?’ said Clancy. ‘Since when do you care so much about your parents’ dreams of a “show and tell daughter”? Forgive me, but I just don’t buy that.’

‘OK, so not just that. I had my reasons for sticking around, and one of them was the Pink Pixie. I swear I woulda walked had it not been for that box of crackers.’

‘You mean Dakota Lyme?’

‘Yeah, her,’ said Ruby. ‘Boy, she was so crazy for winning, her eyes almost popped out of her face – you remember how she tried to injure that kid, Ward Partial?’

‘Yeah, I read about that,’ said Clancy. ‘Don’t tell me she did it again.’

Ruby nodded her head. ‘Only worse this time. That poor Partial kid was at breaking point. You know, for a dweeb he’s actually kinda OK, plus he’s only eleven. He can’t handle the pressure.’

Clancy nodded. ‘So what happened?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time, but suffice to say, I stuck it out.’

‘You know what?’ said Clancy.

‘What?’ said Ruby.

‘You’re all heart.’

Ruby took a big slug of her drink. ‘Well, I couldn’t abandon him, could I? Let her go ahead and make mincemeat of him while I swanned off back to Twinford. You know what, this ginger tea’s not bad.’

‘What is bad is the hogwash you’re spouting,’ said Clancy. ‘Would you quit feeding me this garbage and actually tell me why you left town?’

Clancy had a way of sniffing out the baloney, and he knew there was more to Ruby’s little math vacation than the tale she had been telling him. Since when was it necessary for her, the brightest kid in Twinford Junior High, to go away for a four-week intensive math and science camp?

Ruby looked him dead in the eye, plucked a serviette from the dispenser and carefully wiped her hands.

‘You promise not to get all flappy?’

‘Why would I get flappy?’ replied Clancy.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘if you want to know so bad, I’ll tell you.’

Clancy waited.

‘It was all down to Hitch. It was him who was keen I should go, it was him who came up with the idea and wanted me to hunker down at geek camp,’ said Ruby.

Clancy looked confused. ‘Hitch is interested in your mathematical development?’

‘Hitch is interested in me continuing to breathe,’ said Ruby, ‘and I’m kinda interested in the same thing. The geek camp was just a way of getting me away and out of Twinford while he assessed the situation and made things secure back home.’

‘Assessed what situation?’

‘The situation regarding who might want me dead.’

Clancy let go of his donut and it splashed into his tea.

‘Clance, are you OK?’

‘Hitch thinks you’re on some kinda hit list?’ said Clancy, his voice unsteady.

‘Well, maybe …’ she said.

‘That’s why you were in the middle of nowhere for four whole weeks.?’ He paused. ‘But are you sure it’s safe for you to be home?’

‘Safe as it’s ever possible to be,’ said Ruby. ‘So long as I stay inside the house for the rest of my life everything should be fine.’

‘It’s not funny Rube.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m not really laughing, you know that, don’t you?’

‘So is it the Count?’ asked Clancy.

‘Well, a month ago I would have said yes,’ said Ruby. ‘But the last thing he told me down in that crypt was that he had decided not to kill me.’

‘Why?’

‘Apparently he changed his mind.’

‘He actually said that?’ asked Clancy.

‘He said it was in his best interests for me to keep on breathing.’

‘Well, that’s kind of worrying, don’t you think?’ said Clancy.

‘Why?’ asked Ruby.

‘Because it sounds like there might be some other crazed killer out there.’

‘Yeah, well, I think there is,’ agreed Ruby.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Clancy.

‘I’m telling you now,’ said Ruby.

‘So?’

‘So what?’ said Ruby.

‘So the other thing you’re not telling me.’

‘What thing?’ said Ruby.

‘I don’t know,’ said Clancy. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

‘OK …’ she said, ‘but don’t get all worked up … you gotta …’

‘I knew it!’ he said. ‘Something happened, didn’t it? It was just after I got outta hospital, after the Halloween pageant, the day before you went off to camp, am I right, am I, am I right?’ Now he was beginning to flap.

‘Clance, you promised you wouldn’t flap.’

Clancy ignored her and continued flapping.

‘Look Clance, the thing is …’

But he wasn’t finished. ‘Something spooked you, really spooked you.’ He was getting all dramatic now, Ruby hated when he got all dramatic – at least, hated when he got dramatic about things that were actually already dramatic.

‘Then you suddenly took off without a word. I knew there had to be a bigger reason than hanging out with nerds at some crummy nerd camp and I knew there had to be a bigger reason than just the usual Count encounter.’

‘Just the usual Count encounter …?’ spluttered Ruby. ‘The usual—’

‘So what was it that spooked you just after Halloween?’ interrupted Clancy.

‘Well, it wasn’t any kids dressed up as ghouls, I can promise you that,’ said Ruby.

‘That I figured,’ said Clancy. ‘But why didn’t you tell me what happened, you know, after … that night in the crypt –’ his voice was a little shaky now – ‘with the undead and … and, you know –’ he paused, before whispering – ‘the psychopath.’

‘Just a regular Tuesday night in Twinford.’

But Clancy was in no mood for making light. He was just looking at her, waiting for her to spill the beans.

She breathed in a long slow breath, exhaled and stared back at him.

‘Well, I was going to tell you, of course I was, but I needed time to think.’

‘About what?’ asked Clancy.

‘Everything,’ she replied. ‘It’s a big deal what I know, and I haven’t told a soul.’

‘No one? But you musta told Hitch?’

Ruby shook her head.

‘Blacker?’ asked Clancy.

‘No one,’ said Ruby.

‘So,’ said Clancy, ‘what is it?’

‘Not here,’ said Ruby, looking around. ‘Let’s move to that booth in the corner. I don’t want to risk being overheard – you know, walls have ears and all that.’

They slid off their stools and took their drinks over to the other side of the diner where the lighting was dimmer and the customers fewer.

‘So,’ said Ruby, ‘ever heard the phrase “a bad apple”?’







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CLANCY DID NOT HAVE TIME to answer Ruby’s question, nor to wonder what apples had to do with anything, because they were interrupted.

‘Hey! Ruby!’

The voice came from across the busy diner and belonged to Elliot Finch.

‘You’re back,’ he called.

Ruby peered at her reflection in the chrome serviette dispenser. She nodded. ‘It would seem so.’

Elliot tapped his head and said, ‘I saw Bug lying by the diner door and I thought to myself, Ruby must be in here somewhere.’

‘Quite the little Sherlock Holmes,’ said Ruby.

Elliot slid into the seat next to Clancy. ‘So how’s the fruit baby?’

‘What?’ said Ruby.

‘He’s talking about the Lemon,’ explained Clancy.

The Lemon was Archie Lemon, one-year-old son of the Redforts’ neighbours Niles and Elaine Lemon, and a baby very lucky to be alive. Had it not been for Ruby’s decision to use him as a prop in the Halloween parade, Archie Lemon would have been asleep in his bedroom and the Twinford Tornado would have taken him with it when it whirled into the Lemons’ home, destroying Archie’s room. However, Archie had survived and his parents could not thank Ruby enough. In fact, it was getting to be a problem.

‘It must be cool,’ said Elliot.

‘It’s not,’ said Ruby.

‘Being a hero’s not cool?’ said Elliot.

‘I’m not a hero,’ said Ruby.

‘You saved that kid’s life,’ said Elliot.

‘I borrowed that baby because I needed him to play the part of Baby Grim in the pageant. I needed him because I wanted us to win. If we had won, we would have got prize money. That’s not heroic, it’s self-serving.’

‘But you saved his life,’ insisted Elliot.

‘Luck,’ said Ruby. ‘Coulda been the other way around, coulda been the tornado hit the pageant and it would all have been my fault and they woulda hated me for all eternity.’

‘Life is fickle,’ said Clancy.

‘People are fickle,’ corrected Ruby.

‘Still, it must be great, his parents thinking you’re a hero, even if you’re not … technically, I mean.’

‘It’s a pain in the butt,’ said Ruby. ‘Elaine calls round all the time asking me how I am.’ She sighed. ‘And she keeps giving me stuff.’

‘She’s giving you stuff?’ Elliot’s eyes grew big. ‘Like gifts and things?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruby.

‘Oh boy,’ said Elliot, ‘I would love that.’

‘Would you?’ said Ruby. ‘Really? Cos I got a whole bunch of super ugly sweaters you can have: pink ones, purple ones, kitten ones …’

‘That’s what she’s giving you? Sweaters? Why sweaters?’ asked Clancy.

‘Her sister owns an “ugly knitwear” business,’ said Ruby.

‘Too bad,’ said Elliot.

‘Look, the point is not what she’s giving me, but that I don’t want her to give me anything.’

The bell over the diner door jangled and in walked Mouse Huxtable.

‘You’re back!’ she mouthed.

Ruby nodded. ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

‘Well, you’ve been missed, that’s for sure,’ said Mouse. ‘Mrs Drisco’s been real grouchy.’

‘Why’s that?’ said Ruby. ‘I would have thought she would be happy to see the back of me.’

‘I think she misses the banter,’ said Mouse.

‘So what’s school been like since I left town?’ Ruby yawned.

‘Well,’ said Elliot, ‘it’s been a real hotbed of finger-pointing since you were cleared of trying to wreck Del’s life.’

‘I don’t think you can say “hotbed of finger-pointing”,’ said Mouse. ‘It doesn’t make a lotta sense.’

‘No,’ agreed Clancy, ‘it doesn’t sound right somehow.’

‘Like you can talk,’ said Elliot. ‘What was it you said the other day …’

Mouse broke in, ‘The point is, Elliot, Ruby’s off the hook and in the clear, everyone thinks it was someone from the outside, i.e. not a student at Twinford Junior High.’ She shook her head and looked at Ruby. ‘Boy, I guess someone really hates you out there.’

‘My money’s on Dakota Lyme,’ said Elliot.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Ruby, who knew for a certainty that it was not. ‘You gotta be careful making allegations against people, however objectionable they might be.’ It was actually the vengeful Lorelei von Leyden, mistress of disguise, who had set Ruby up as saboteur. Dakota Lyme was just a fall-guy.

Clancy checked his watch. ‘Yikes, I’d better get going. I have to pick up a load of cough syrup for my sisters or I’ll never hear the end of it – and I mean literally: cough, cough, cough.’ He pulled on his coat. ‘That thing we were talking about before, Rube, we’ll catch up first thing, OK?’ He shot her a look and she nodded.

‘OK,’ said Ruby.

Ruby hung out for another half hour before she headed off. She didn’t feel like going home just yet, so she turned the corner at Green Street and made a left at Main until she reached Ray Penny’s second-hand bookstore.

On a winter’s evening, with its cosy lighting and tropical heating (Ray hated to be cold), Penny Books was a pleasant place to kill time. The store was unusually busy today. Perhaps due to the warmth, and the fact that Ray wasn’t much bothered by making a sale, a lot of folks used the place like it was a library.

Ruby browsed the graphic novel shelves; apart from shuffling footsteps as customers edged around bookstands, all that could be heard was the classical music playing on Ray’s turntable and the sound of turning pages. Ruby stepped past a bearded guy who was sitting on a stool looking at a book with a beige cover.He wasn’t browsing, he was most definitely reading. In another corner was a boy flicking through a comic while he snacked on a flapjack.

Ruby herself settled down with a pile of Space Creep novels and began working her way through them. A moment later she was roused from her reading by the sound of falling books. Through a gap in the shelving, she could see part of a face, serious and intense. It belonged to a young woman who was clutching a pile of poetry books, and continuing to browse even though her arms were already full. Too full. Every now and again one of the poetry books would slide out from the pile and hit the floor and she would mutter, ‘whoops’ or ‘darn’ or ‘for flip’s sake!’

After the fifth drop, the guy with the beard looked up and said, ‘Here, let me help you with those.’ He put his book down on the stool and took the stack of paperbacks to the front desk.

The young woman was very grateful. ‘Thanks a lot, that’s so kind, thank you, real nice of you, thank you again.’

Ruby was curious to know what had kept the bearded man so enthralled for the past forty-four minutes and sauntered over to take a look. The object of interest turned out to be a book entitled Fascinating Fungi.

Ruby didn’t doubt that the study of fungi might be fascinating, but this book was not presented in a way that would entice the casual browser. With its old black-and-white photographs and dense text, you really needed to be a total fungus nut to want to pick it up. But as Mrs Digby would say, ‘it takes all sorts’. Ruby had never been a big fan of edible fungi, and even when in a survival-type situation hadn’t been overjoyed to see one. However, the poisonous kind interested her quite a lot.

Ruby knew a great deal about poison in all its various forms, and her knowledge in this area had grown in recent weeks due to a series of attempts on the life of the Mongolian conservationist Amarjargel Oidov, organised it seemed by the Count and presumably his employer. No one exactly understood why Oidov had become the target of a murderer, but it seemed likely that it was connected to the ancient and previously undiscovered species of snake she was seeking to protect. The reptiles were an incredible yellow and marked with delicate diamonds of colour. The skins would fetch high prices in the fashion trade and the venom might also be of interest to toxicologists.

Coincidentally, one of the unusual things about the snake was that it feasted on mushrooms. Why the snakes were of interest to the Count, or indeed the Count’s boss, was still an unknown.

Ruby checked her watch: it was getting late and probably time to head home. She thanked Ray, who merely raised his hand in a lazy ‘bye-bye’, and Ruby pushed her way out into the cold night air.







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IT WAS ANOTHER COINCIDENCE that when Ruby returned home that evening it was fungus that was the main topic of conversation.

Mrs Digby was staring hard at a very ancient-looking recipe book and appeared unusually flustered.

‘So what are you looking to cook?’ asked Ruby, peering over the housekeeper’s shoulder.

‘Your mother wants me to rustle up this particular stew – she’s got her mind set on it, but I’ll be darned if I will ever find the ingredients.’

‘Maitake,’ Ruby read. ‘What are maitake?’

‘Hen of the woods,’ said Mrs Digby.

‘Chicken?’ said Ruby.

‘Mushrooms,’ said the housekeeper.

‘What’s the big deal with mushrooms all of a sudden?’ said Ruby. ‘They seem to be popping up everywhere.’

‘Everyone’s gone mushroom crazy, including your mother, and I can’t get my hands on a single one of these rarer breeds.’

‘Breeds?’ said Ruby. ‘Do mushrooms breed?’

‘My point is, there’s been a run on them, and it’s all to do with those darned vipers.’

‘What vipers?’ asked Ruby.

‘Those ones that were on the TV.’

‘You mean the yellow snakes?’ said Ruby. ‘The ones that were exhibited at the Geographic Explorer awards?’

‘Those are the critters,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘There’s been nothing but chatter about them, all the while you’ve been away – on the radio, on the television networks, in the newspapers.’ Mrs Digby reached for the Twinford Hound and slid it across the counter. ‘I don’t mind telling you, I wish those slitherers had never been discovered.’

‘I expect Amarjargel Oidov feels the same,’ said Ruby, thinking back to the conservationist’s almost-murder. Oidov had made a full recovery, but it had been a close call. Now Ruby could see, as she scanned the evening paper, that the prize-winning conservationist Oidov was working alongside the scientific institute, and they were together:

‘STUDYING THE YELLOW SNAKES, THEIR DIET AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT, WHICH REMAIN A CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET.’

It was their diet, which included a rare and unnamed mushroom with rumoured life-enhancing powers, that had sparked this fad for unusual fungi.

Ruby read on.

‘THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME IS BEING CONDUCTED IN SECRECY. THE SCIENTISTS ARE WORKING WITH A HIGHLY QUALIFIED DIETARY EXPERT FROM SEVILLE, SPAIN.’

Ruby had a pretty good idea who this dietician might be.

Mrs Digby continued to burble on about the snakes. ‘They say those reptiles hold a secret, but if you ask me the only secret they hold is how to get you dead lickety split – one bite and you’re a goner.’

‘Plenty of snakes will get you dead,’ said Ruby. ‘Though you’re right about the venom; it is unusual. The skins are kinda spectacular too. I mean there are plenty of people who might want to bump off Oidov and turn her yellow snakes into handbags.’

‘Just the thought of it makes me queasy,’ Mrs Digby shivered. ‘What I would kill for is a half-pound of these hen of the woods.’

‘Have you tried the grocers on Green Street?’

Mrs Digby rolled her eyes. ‘You think I was born this morning?’ she said. ‘If Green’s stocked such a thing then I would go to Green’s, but these are no ordinary mushrooms.’

‘So maybe the farmers’ market would have them?’ suggested Ruby. ‘They have pretty exotic vegetables.’

‘These are exoticker,’ said Mrs Digby.

‘Exoticker?’ repeated Ruby.

‘More exotic,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘More exotic than what the farmers’ market sell. These you have to forage for and even then you gotta be lucky, and I don’t have the time to be lucky nor the inclination to go roaming through the forests of Minnesota trying to spot a hen of the woods.’

Ruby shrugged. ‘So substitute.’

‘What with, might I ask?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby. ‘How about button mushrooms?’

Mrs Digby shook her head. ‘What you don’t know about cooking is a lot.’

Which was true.

The phone rang and Ruby picked up.

‘Pest control, we spray you pay.’

‘Hey Ruby, it’s us! We’re in Paris!’

‘Mom?’

‘Oui, but of course.’

‘Ciao ciao Ruby!’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘How are you?’

‘Well, the weather here is très froid you know, and there’s neige.’

‘What? You mean snow?’

‘Uh huh, lots and lots of neige, the airport is still closed.’

‘So when are you likely to make it home?’

‘Ooh la la – heaven only knows.’

‘Would you like to talk to Mrs Digby?’

‘Oui, yes, if you please s’il vous plait.’

Ruby handed the phone to the housekeeper and left them to it.

Maybe she’d have a go at solving Mrs Digby’s fungus problem.

Ruby might not know a lot about how to get her hands on a hen of the woods, but she knew someone who probably did.







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IT WOULD BE BETTER NOT TO LET MRS DIGBY know who Ruby was planning to call; it would almost certainly put the housekeeper in a very sour mood.

Ruby climbed the stairs to her room at the top of the house and there used her private telephone line to make the call. She had quite a collection of phones in all shapes and designs. From lobster to squirrel, donut to clam shell.

She picked up the squirrel and dialled.

‘Hola,’ said the voice at the end of the line.

‘Hey there, Consuela, it’s Ruby as in Redfort,’ said Ruby.

‘Don’t tell me, you’re sick because you’re eating all that garbage food. I bet you have pimples.’

‘No,’ said Ruby, checking her face in the mirror.

‘It’s your eyesight; you’re not eating your kale?’ said Consuela.

‘Well …’ said Ruby.

‘You got bad vision because you don’t eat your kale,’ said Consuela.

‘I have bad eyesight because of genetics,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m all with you on the good diet theory, but eggs is eggs and facts are facts.’

‘Facts you know, and yet still you eat all that junk,’ said Consuela. ‘So why are you calling?’

‘I just wanted to congratulate you on your new job.’

Silence, then, ‘What new job is that?’

‘I read you are working for the scientific institute, so I guess you’re looking at the diet of those snakes.’

Silence.

‘What snakes?’

‘The yellow snakes.’

‘That was not in the paper,’ said Consuela. ‘This is all on the low down.’

‘Downlow,’ corrected Ruby.

‘Downlow, low down, is no matter, what I am saying is it is not to be chitter-chatted about.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby, ‘I just sort of figured it out.’

‘Well, I hope you will figure out how to keep your mouth shut,’ said Consuela. ‘So why are you calling when I’m all busy and up to my eyes cooking?’

‘I thought you might be able to help me with an ingredient.’

Ruby explained and Consuela listened and then thought about it, clucked her tongue and told Ruby to hang on and hung up.

While Ruby waited she took the opportunity to look up in her encyclopaedia just what might make these mushrooms worth the trouble.

Maitake: (also known as Hen of the Woods or Ram’s Head) a choice delicacy, known to have many health benefits, including boosting the immune system and improving blood pressure. Grows in large circular clusters of spoon-shaped caps at the base of oak trees, grey on top and white beneath. September-November. Spores when magnified are elliptical and smooth.

Makes a nourishing and meaty mushroom stew.

Twenty minutes later, Consuela called back with a name.

‘You have to go to Mo’s store, he’s … what do you say …’

‘A mycologist?’

‘A heart pounder.’

‘Say again?’

‘Que guapo.’

‘Really?’

‘I asked him out and guess what he says – “maybe”. What good is maybe! His store is Daily Supplies in Little Mountain Side,’ she said. ‘No one else will have them, not late in the year as it is.’

‘Where’s Little Mountain Side?’ said Ruby.

‘Look it up,’ said Consuela. ‘I got larger fish to fry,’ and the call was over.

After supper Ruby did just that, first checking the map that covered the walls of the guest bathroom off the downstairs hall – no sign of Little Mountain Side.

Must be out of town, she thought.

She went into her dad’s home office and found a map of the surrounding area and spread it out on the desk. It was not, as she had expected, somewhere near Little Bear, nor was it to the north-east in the Wolf Paw range. Little Mountain Side turned out to be quite a way south of Ridgepoint, which was probably why Ruby had never heard of it: to get there meant a detour off the Pine Forest Pass as the town was tucked away on the far side of the second Sequoia Mountain.

Mrs Digby had recently given up ‘getting behind the wheel of an automobile’ due to the ‘volume of numbskulls on the roads’, (her words) and so unless she could find someone willing to pick the mushrooms up for her, it was going to be a morning’s bus ride for the old lady.

Ruby thought for a minute.

Maybe I’ll do her a good turn, make that bus trip myself, discover a new part of the world and clock up some girl scout points while I’m at it. To be honest Ruby could use the good press; after she’d been caught up in a street brawl (not her fault) and had been issued with six hours community service, her angel status had waned. The chance saving of Baby Lemon had restored a little of her good-kid status, but topping it up would do no harm.

If she was honest this was only part of the reason for making the trip. There were tales about the Sequoia Mountains which more than piqued her curiosity. Rumours of unidentified flying objects and little green men appealed to Ruby Redfort, and while she doubted any of them were based on fact, she wouldn’t mind taking a look for herself.

That decided, Ruby kicked off her shoes, switched on the portable TV and slumped into the beanbag, clicking through the channels until she reached Horror on 44.

A dark-haired girl dressed in a check shirt, jeans, but no shoes, was sitting at home with her dog. She was listening to music on her record player, and the dog was asleep. The girl sipped lemonade while flipping through a comic. Then all of a sudden the hound began to howl.

‘Hey there, Rex,’ said the girl, ‘what are you barking at?’ She stared into the dark.

‘There’s nothing out there.’ The dog continued to whimper.

The camera panned out of the window and into the woodland. In the darkness something moved.

Ruby looked over at Bug. He was fast asleep, no howling, no whimpering.

Her thoughts strayed to the strange happenings of recent weeks.

She picked up her pencil.

To date there were three known dangerous criminals wanted by Spectrum 8:

The Count: a psychopath, thief and murderer with no real motivation for his evil deeds, other than the prevention of boredom and the pursuit of pleasure. What Ruby now knew for sure was that he was working for someone else, and what he had recently imparted during their crypt encounter was that he wasn’t particularly keen on the arrangement any more. However, what wasn’t clear was how he had come to be in the power of another, nor who that individual could be.

The Australian: a close acquaintance of the Count and equally ruthless.

Ruby was not sure what drew these two together, but guessed they had known each other for more than a few years. It would seem the Count had requested the Australian’s assistance to help tie up loose ends; they trusted each other, and from the way the Count had talked, he had great respect for her.

Lorelei: estranged daughter of the Australian and sometime employee of the Count. Lorelei was a law unto herself, that was beyond doubt now. She had gone rogue, betrayed the Count twice (there would be no third chance) and was hell-bent on raining havoc and destruction on those who strayed across her path – which put Ruby well and truly in the firing line.

Then of course there was the mole, the double agent, the traitor, puppet master, bad egg, bad apple … Call them what you liked, someone was pulling the strings; the question was, who?

And the Count was scared.

Not exactly a soothing thought. What kind of soul could make a soulless monster tremble?

The girl on the TV was getting twitchy: she was beginning to feel sure something was lurking out there in the darkness.

Ruby got up and went over to her own window and stood there looking out into the black. Somewhere something evil lurked. It was a big wild world and this dark soul could be a thousand miles away. They could be watching from Mars or they might be just around the next bend in the Dry River Road. However, what seemed most likely of all, was that this enemy was already within and stalking the corridors of Spectrum.

The sixty-four-thousand dollar question was:

This dark soul, could it really be LB?

HQ was on high alert, Spectrum 1 was in charge of the investigating team, security had been ramped up to carmine level, protection at Spectrum 8 had never been higher, but it was hard to feel reassured. After all, how does one protect oneself when the evil lies on the inside? From the safety of Green-Wood House, Ruby considered her options.

When you are written large on a psychopath’s hit list, do you:

A: Stay indoors, turn the locks, switch off the lights, hide under the covers and wait for someone else to do something?

B: Brush up on your kung fu moves, wrap up warm, get out there, root out trouble and save yourself?

She tapped her pencil against her head.

The idea of being a sitting duck until another agent pulled the clues together, identified the mole and rounded up these murderers was not an appealing one.

‘Sit tight’ was a Spectrum watchword, but as far as Ruby could tell, this was no time to be taking orders from Spectrum.

She smiled sadly.

It could only be option two.

Death or glory, she thought.


Meanwhile –some eleven anda half years ago …


… the guy lying on the side of the road looked up at the old man and saw the fear in his face.

‘Am I … alive?’

The old man nodded. ‘It would seem so.’

‘You … OK …?’ stammered the guy. ‘You … look … like you’re … gonna … faint.’

The old man was shrugging off his jacket. He pulled a penknife from his pocket and he began cutting at the sleeve of his own shirt, tearing it right off and wrapping it around the bleeding guy’s leg.

‘My name, should you be wondering, is Lenny Rivers.’ He was working quickly but methodically, binding the wound tight, trying to stop all that blood leaking onto the road.

‘Pleased to … meet … you … Len …’

‘So what hit you friend, a truck?’ The poor guy was a real mess, the worst thing Lenny had ever seen, except for that time when he’d found a hunter who’d been attacked by a bear. That fella hadn’t made it. ‘Was it one of those haulage trucks smashed into you?’ he asked.

The guy smiled faintly. ‘The fun … the funny thing … is … I … don’t re-mem-ber.’

‘Musta been going at a fair old lick,’ Lenny tutted. ‘Either didn’t see you or just decided to leave you for dead.’

‘I guess,’ said the injured guy, his eyes closing slowly.

‘Hang in there,’ said Lenny, more to himself than to the half-dead fellow lying there on the ground. He’d do what he could, but this poor soul’s ticket was punched, Lenny Rivers was sure of that.

‘So what do they call you?’ Lenny asked.

One thing Lenny Rivers knew for a certainty was, he’d want to hear his name spoken aloud one final time if he was about to float heavenwards. But the wounded man was already slipping away, his focus gone. ‘Hey there son, don’t leave me, tell me what you go by.’ Lenny gently tapped the injured man’s bloodstained cheek. ‘Stick with me pal, you must have a name, right?’

The guy’s eyelids flickered and opened one last time. He was staring beyond Lenny as if his eyes saw some other figure standing behind him. ‘Loveday,’ he said. ‘It was Morgan … Loveday.’







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THE SOAP RANG IN THE BATHROOM the next morning and Ruby spat out her toothpaste and picked up.

‘So what were you going to tell me?’ asked Clancy. Ruby could hear his little sister Olive in the background, talking to someone.

‘Who’s there with you?’ asked Ruby.

‘Olive,’ said Clancy.

‘But who’s she talking to?’ asked Ruby.

‘Buttercup,’ said Clancy.

Silence.

‘Her doll,’ said Clancy.

Ruby listened for a moment. ‘Jeepers,’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ said Clancy. ‘So what were you going to tell me?’

‘Well, I’m not going to say it over the phone, am I, buster?’

‘Of course you’re not, bozo. I was wondering if you’d like the pleasure of my company, plus if I have to listen to more of this dolly talk I’m gonna go crazy.’

‘Anyone would,’ said Ruby. ‘Is she like this most days?’

‘Try every day,’ said Clancy.

‘I’ll meet you in a half hour, usual place.’

The usual place was the tree on Amster. They met there when they wanted to be completely alone and out of sight. It was December and the tree’s branches were bare and so the oak would not provide any cover, but at least sitting high in its boughs meant they were a long way from eavesdroppers and interrupters. It was as they sat up in the oak that Ruby filled her friend in on everything she had omitted to tell him before.

‘LB killed Bradley Baker?’ said Clancy.

‘That’s what the Count told me,’ said Ruby.

‘Are you actually serious?’ asked Clancy.

‘Serious as the look on your face,’ confirmed Ruby.

‘But … I mean, really? I mean … kill him? How?’ asked Clancy.

‘What you have to ask yourself is why,’ said Ruby.

‘Why?’ said Clancy. ‘Why is why the question I have to ask myself? Why not – can you get me outta Twinford as quickly as possible? Followed by, could you call the sheriff’s office right away? Because those are the questions I would be asking if I just found out that the boss of the secret agency I worked in had murdered her best friend and not just some average Joe either, not that that would make it all right or anything, but we are talking about Bradley Baker, legendary agent of Spectrum 8. So if LB did that then yes, can you get me to a safe house and could you call the sheriff would be my first two questions.’

‘Well, thank goodness you’re not me, Clance, because both of those questions are dead ends. For one: who’s actually going to believe any of this? And for two: if LB is really his killer then how far am I gonna get before I end up going the same way as Baker? I mean think about it, Clance, she runs a team of highly trained agents, secret agents who are capable of –’ she drew her finger across her throat, before adding – ‘secretly.’

Clancy opened his mouth to speak, but could not think of anything cheerful to say.

‘So what you gotta look at,’ said Ruby, ‘is the whole big picture. My boss might well be a traitorous killer: she has the means, the power, possibly a motive, but before we absolutely totally conclude she is a traitorous killer, we need to examine the evidence. For example, what do we know about Bradley Baker?’

Clancy shrugged. ‘He was the youngest spy Spectrum ever recruited, super respected and well-liked, and he was the most talented code breaker and agent they ever had.’ He stole a sideways look at Ruby. ‘No offence, Rube.’

‘Don’t sweat it bozo, I hear it all the time.’

‘And,’ continued Clancy, ‘he was killed in a plane crash.’

‘Which it seems was no accident,’ said Ruby. ‘Nor was it at the hand of the enemy, but rather by the hand of his most loyal ally.’

‘And let’s not forget fiancée,’ added Clancy.

‘So now what we got to look at is who exactly is feeding us this information,’ said Ruby. ‘Who is the deliverer of this sad and bad news?’

‘The Count,’ said Clancy. ‘At least, it was his apple.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, ‘it was his apple, and he wanted me to find the note.’

‘So,’ said Clancy, ‘so you’re asking, do you think we should consider him a reliable source? Maybe he just wants us to believe LB is a murderer. He could be just making the whole thing up?’

‘Yeah, and the truth is, I can’t say I know him well enough to know,’ said Ruby.

‘You do know him well enough,’ said Clancy. ‘You know him well enough to know that you can never know him.’

‘What?’

‘I’m saying he likes to move the goal posts, he sorta enjoys playing with people, creeping them out, just for fun and also, you know … killing them.’ Clancy shivered.

Ruby stared into the distance. ‘Yeah, he does like to mess with people’s heads; once he’s planted an idea, you just can’t shake it. He knows how these thoughts grow, how they take off in different directions – you don’t exactly know what they mean or even what you’re scared of, you just keep running with it.’

‘So what has he got you thinking?’ asked Clancy.

Ruby paused before speaking. ‘What he’s got me thinking is, what if Bradley was not all that he seemed; what if he were the so-called bad apple?’

‘You suggesting he wasn’t the super talent everyone thought he was?’ asked Clancy.

‘No, I think we can accept that Baker was the super talent that everyone drones on about, but if he was such a talented agent then he may also have had a talent for espionage.’

‘Huh?’

‘What I’m suggesting here is, was he leading a double life?’

Clancy was looking at her, his expression one of puzzlement.

Ruby spelled it out: ‘Do we know which side he was really on?’

‘Oh,’ said Clancy, ‘that … that wasn’t something I was even thinking about.’

‘So let’s just say he was a double agent, LB woulda had to kill him for the sake of Spectrum, for the sake of this country –’ she stretched her arms out wide – ‘the world even.’

Clancy let out a heavy sigh. ‘I’d feel a lot better if that’s how it was.’

‘It could have been that LB knew what nobody else knew: that he was a phoney, a fraud, an imposter.’

‘Like some kind of mole, you mean?’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Ruby.

‘Boy, it sure makes you think,’ said Clancy. ‘Imagine finding out that your best friend, most loyal ally, is a total fake, not to mention murderer.’ He looked at Ruby. ‘Though I have to say, Rube, if you turn out to be an evil genius, I can’t see myself killing you. I kinda like your company.’

‘I appreciate that Clance, I really do.’

‘Still, I think LB had guts to do what she did,’ said Clancy. ‘If Baker was a bad egg, she did the right thing.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, contemplating this for a moment, ‘but what if he wasn’t? What if it was the other way around?’

‘Jeepers, I was just beginning to relax,’ said Clancy.

‘Yeah, well, don’t, cos what if it was Bradley Baker who was the good news in this story and LB eliminated him so she could get on with her plot to take over the world or steal the moon or whatever?’

‘The moon?’ said Clancy. ‘Can you even do that?’ He was on his feet now, as if he needed to be ready for what might be coming.

‘Geez, Clance, it was just an example, how should I know what she’s got planned?’ Ruby paused, sorting through the thoughts that were flickering in her brain: the cyan, the indigo, the ruby eyes of the Buddha, the 8 key, the yellow snake. ‘If I could figure that out, and how it all links together, the thefts and the murders, the mole within Spectrum, well, then I might know what to do.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Clancy, ‘if you knew all that then you could just amble downtown and knock on Sheriff Bridges’ door and hand him the evidence.’

Ruby sighed. ‘Like that’s gonna happen.’

‘But meanwhile, you figure one of them has to be a bad seed?’ said Clancy. ‘Either it’s Baker or it’s LB?’

‘Or it’s neither?’ offered Ruby. ‘Unless of course,’ – she looked at him out of the corner of her eye – ‘they were both bad apples.’

Clancy made a face like he wished she wouldn’t say these kinds of things.

‘Look, could you give me a break here Rube? I can only cope with one double agent at a time.’

She thumped him lightly on the arm. ‘Take it easy,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I think it’s probably either Baker or LB, and let’s hope it’s Baker, right?’

Clancy nodded. ‘Because if it’s Baker then LB is on the level.’

‘Only thing is,’ said Ruby, ‘if LB isn’t the bad apple then who is, who’s the one pulling the strings?’

Clancy gave her the pained look again. ‘I don’t want to think about that right now.’

‘Yeah, well, time’s running out. Whoever is behind this whole series of events has a master plan and I get the feeling we’re heading towards the end game.’

‘So what’s your next move?’ asked Clancy.

‘I guess I need to find out more about Bradley Baker. I mean I know precisely zero about him other than what a great guy, what a smart agent, how we all wish he’d come back, but if I could dig down to what made him tick, what thoughts were whirling round that super-brain of his, and of course exactly how and why he died, then I might know more about LB.’

‘So ask around,’ said Clancy.

‘What, are you kidding? People don’t talk about Bradley Baker. They sorta mention him, how brilliant he was, but they don’t actually really say anything.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘No, if I started in asking a lot of questions then I would have to explain why I wanted to know, and then I would have to get into the whole bit about LB maybe being a murderer and I get the feeling that’s not gonna go down too well.’

‘You mean it might get you dead. If she’s a cold-blooded murderer, is that what you’re saying?’ said Clancy.

‘That is the worst case scenario,’ said Ruby, ‘and me dead is something I’m trying to avoid.’

‘You could tell Blacker?’ suggested Clancy. ‘You trust him, right?’

‘Sure, but this is not the same, this is me telling him not to trust his boss, and if you were asking, do I trust him not to go right ahead and speak to LB about my concerns? That would have to be a no. Blacker is loyal to Spectrum, loyal to the core, and I would have a pretty hard time convincing him that his boss is a bad egg or apple or whatever. People generally don’t like to believe they have been putting their trust in, and generally assisting, a dangerous psychopath.’

‘But her name was inside a bad apple,’ Clancy reminded her. ‘Blacker can’t ignore that.’

‘And who put it there?’ said Ruby. ‘The biggest bad apple of them all. Everyone knows the Count would be happy to see Spectrum destroyed.’

‘You have a point,’ said Clancy.

‘I know,’ said Ruby.

‘So you need to find someone who will talk.’

‘Who exactly?’

‘What about Froghorn?’

‘What about him?’ said Ruby.

‘Do you trust Froghorn?’

‘I trust him not to push me off a cliff or under a bus, but that’s about it.’

‘But do you trust him to tell the truth?’ asked Clancy.

‘Froghorn? Oh, he just loves to tell it like it is,’ said Ruby. ‘He’s like a regular truth trumpet.’

‘So ask him,’ said Clancy. ‘I bet you he’ll talk. He’s dying to rub your nose in the whole Bradley Baker legend, I bet you anything he’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, just to make you feel small.’

‘You know what Clance, that’s not such a terrible idea.’

He smiled. ‘Really?’

She gave him another friendly punch to the arm. ‘Nice going, Crew.’ She looked at her watch and then began to climb down the oak.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Little Mountain Side,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘It’s in the Sequoia Mountains, wanna come?’

‘Why would I wanna go to the Sequoia Mountains?’

‘Are you kidding? The Sequoia Mountains are a UFO hotspot,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m hoping to spot one on my way through.’

‘You’re looking for unidentified flying objects?’

‘Mushrooms,’ called Ruby.

‘Same to you,’ shouted Clancy.


SomehowLenny Rivers got the dying guyto the hospital in Ridgepoint beforethe dying guy actually died …


… the old man was relieved, not because he thought the fellow had a hope in Christmas of seeing Christmas, but because he didn’t want to see it happen. It was too sad, the idea that this Morgan Loveday could just pass away without a friend to hold his hand, die all alone on a deserted road or in the back of some stranger’s truck. Well, it was too tragic to contemplate.

It hadn’t been straightforward getting to the hospital. There had been some kind of incident on Pine Forest Pass, a cordoned-off road which Lenny had ignored – he’d had no choice.

Drive on, he thought, and have a chance of delivering a man with a pulse.

Turn back and he might as well have driven straight to the undertakers.

When Lenny Rivers handed him over to the ER team, Morgan Loveday was still breathing, but who knew for how long? Lenny gave his number to the triage nurse.

‘Would you mind calling me?’ he asked. ‘When he … you know, when … if … well, call me, his folks might want to speak to the guy that found him.’

‘Of course,’ said the nurse. ‘I promise I’ll call you when the time comes.’







(#ulink_1cd3cf5f-c6a5-519a-883f-51fef6f35a56)


DESPITE HIS RESISTANCE, Clancy Crew did join Ruby on her mission to find mushrooms. It took her no more than ten minutes of persuading before he reluctantly agreed. It took a lot longer than that to reach Little Mountain Side, but the journey was not the tedious experience Clancy had expected. As the bus wound up high into the Sequoia Mountains, the scenery became more and more spectacular, the great red trees rising from the rock. As the woodland thinned, they were confronted by staggering views to the south and west and far away in the distance one could just about see the ocean.

When at last the bus pulled up in Little Mountain Side there was no missing the perfect prettiness of the town either, perched high up there on the south side of the mountain, the sun slanting through the trees. As they stepped off the bus, Ruby and Clancy breathed in the mountain air; it was pretty good.

‘Sure doesn’t smell like Twinford,’ said Clancy.

‘You can almost taste the trees,’ said Ruby.

By the side of the road was a sign that read:

FRIENDLIEST TOWN IN THE NORTH-WESTERN MOUNTAINS AND ‘FREE OFSERIOUS CRIME’ SINCE 1951.

‘That’s reassuring,’ said Ruby.

It didn’t take long to find Daily Supplies.

The man behind the counter looked somehow familiar, but Ruby couldn’t place him. She decided that he probably just had one of those faces, even-featured, nice looking, a friendly kind of appearance (at least what she could see of it under the beard), older than her dad and perhaps a tad taller.

He waved at them as they walked in, but continued chatting to a customer at the counter and ringing up groceries.

Ruby and Clancy checked out the shelves while they waited. They were stocked with a lot of interesting and unusual things. However, they had no luck finding the maitake mushrooms.

The customer finally paid and exited the shop, and Clancy and Ruby walked up to the counter.

She looked at the storekeeper and then figured it out.

‘Oh, I got it.’

‘Got what?’ asked the storekeeper.

‘Where I saw you before,’ said Ruby.

‘You’ve seen me before?’

‘Yeah, in the bookstore.’

‘In Mountain Books?’ he asked, pointing in the direction of the bookstore across the street.

‘Ray Penny’s bookstore,’ said Ruby, ‘in Twinford – you were reading a book on rare fungi. I mean you must have read the entire book while you were there.’

‘It was a cold day and I was waiting for my truck to be fixed,’ he said.

‘You often in Twinford?’ asked Ruby.

‘Rarely.’

‘You ever been to Penny’s before?’

‘Never,’ said the guy. ‘At least, not that I recall.’ He paused. ‘You ask a lot of questions,’ he said. He looked at Clancy. ‘She always this curious, your friend here?’

‘Curious is a nice word for what she is,’ said Clancy.

The guy smiled at that.

The bell above the door jangled and a burly man strode in, a shock-haired baby on his back.

‘Hey, Mo,’ said the man. ‘How’s the old leg doing?’

‘Limping a bit in this cold weather. You know how it is.’

‘You got those Brazilian beans in yet?’

The storekeeper reached behind him and took a package from one of the shelves and stood it on the counter top. ‘Anything else for you Sven?’

The man took out a newspaper. ‘Seven down,’ he said. ‘Mix cantaloupe citrus.’

The storekeeper frowned. ‘How many letters?’

‘Five.’

‘I’ll give it some thought.’

‘Thanks,’ said the guy.

‘Anything besides the beans?’

The man shook his head. ‘Just the coffee, that’ll do it.’

‘How are you there, Spike?’ The storekeeper directed this question at the baby and it gurgled and looked very pleased.

‘See you around, Mo,’ said the man as he turned to leave.

‘See you Sven, see you Spike, don’t be strangers.’

When they reached the door the storekeeper shouted, ‘Lemon! Anagram of melon, from cantaloupe.’

‘Of course! Can’t think how I missed it,’ called Sven.

The storekeeper turned to Ruby. ‘He’s a cryptic crossword nut,’ he explained. ‘So what can I help you with?’ he asked.

‘That’s your name?’ asked Ruby. ‘Mo?’

‘It’s what everyone calls me.’ He looked at her. ‘So what do they call you?’

‘Ruby,’ said Ruby.

The storekeeper shrugged. ‘I had you down for something more edgy,’ he said.

‘What, like Spike?’ suggested Ruby.

He shrugged again. ‘You could carry a name like Spike,’ he said.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s how I meant it,’ said Mo.

‘So this is my pal Clancy.’

Mo nodded. ‘Good to meet you, Clancy – what can I do you two for?’

‘Hen of the woods,’ said Ruby.

‘You’ve left it a bit late in the season,’ said the storekeeper.

‘I have?’ asked Ruby. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure,’ said the guy. ‘It’s one of the few things I know something about.’

‘You seem OK at crosswords,’ said Clancy.

He smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s the other thing …’ he said. ‘So the maitake season is from late August to late November and I usually order in from my mushroom lady out in Minnesota.’

Ruby looked disappointed enough for the guy to reach for a pen and paper.

‘I’ll make a note and see what I can do, you might get lucky. It’s been a pretty weird season, weather-wise,’ he said, turning to the calendar hanging on the wall. ‘She won’t be around until next week; can you hang on a day or two?’

‘I guess,’ said Ruby, ‘but it’s a long way to come for a bunch of fungi. I don’t spose you’re going to be visiting Twinford this week?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Mo. ‘It’s noisy and full of people.’

‘That’s what I like about it.’

‘Each to their own,’ said Mo. ‘A nice quiet life is what suits me.’

Clancy was beginning to think it might also suit him. He liked it up here with the trees and the condors and the lack of serious crime since 1951.

Ruby sighed. ‘I’ll do my best to make it back, but could you maybe call me when you’re certain you got them?’

‘Sure,’ said Mo, ‘give me your digits.’

Ruby scribbled down her number and the guy pinned it up on the pinboard behind him.

‘Is there anything to see in this town?’ asked Clancy.

‘More than you’d think,’ said Mo.

‘My friend here is keen on UFOs and little green men from Mars,’ said Ruby. ‘Anything like that around?’

‘Call in at the Little Green Diner. They do a mean Space Burger, ask for a side of Mars fries and tell Silas that Mo sent you and he’ll give you a deal.’

As they were going out the door they heard the phone ring; Mo picked up. ‘How many letters?’ he said.

Ruby could see that for Clancy stepping into the Little Green Diner was pretty special. It had been wallpapered in space pictures: Apollo 13, the space craft which made the ill-fated third manned trip to the surface of moon, took up most of one wall and a possible UFO sighting filled another.

Ruby and Clancy walked up to the counter.

‘Mo said to say he sent us,’ said Ruby.

‘Oh, he did, did he?’ said Silas. ‘So I guess you’ll be getting a deal.’

‘Have you ever seen a UFO Rube?’ asked Clancy, not waiting for an answer. ‘I think I saw one once, took a photograph too, but my sister Lulu says it was actually a Frisbee and to be honest there’s no telling.’

‘I think you’d know,’ said a small, thin guy sitting at the counter. ‘When I saw my first UFO, I was in no doubt about what I’d just been witness to.’

‘Well, hang on a tiny minute, Walter,’ said the enormous man who sat on the stool next to him. ‘The thing is, no one exactly knows what they are looking for, so it’s easy to get it wrong.’

‘I’m not disagreeing with you there, Duke, but when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one, and I’ve seen two.’

‘It’s true,’ said Duke, ‘he’s seen a couple.’

Clancy was all ears. ‘So what did it look like?’ he asked.

‘How you’d expect,’ said Walter. ‘A craft unusual in appearance, moving pretty fast across the night sky, bright lights, no markings.’

‘How do you know it had no markings if it was dark and moving at speed?’ asked Silas, who had doubtless quizzed Walter about this many times before.

‘I know what I saw,’ said Walter, crossing his arms.

‘Why do you think Little Mountain Side attracted so many UFOs?’ asked Ruby.

‘Because of the space base,’ said Walter.

‘Space base?’ asked Clancy. ‘There was an actual space base here?’

‘No,’ said Silas.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Walter, ignoring him. ‘It was some kinda space operation? In the Sequoia Mountains.’

‘It was an energy plant,’ said Silas.

‘Oh yeah, so how do you explain all the comings and goings, all the activity?’ said Walter.

‘There were more than a thousand people working there, what do you expect?’ said Silas.

‘I’m not talking about any power plant,’ said Walter, ‘I’m talking about something covert here, you know –’ he leant in close – ‘to welcome the aliens.’

‘Really?’ said Clancy.

‘That’s what they say,’ said Duke.

‘Who says?’ asked Ruby.

‘No one,’ said Silas. ‘This is Walt talking garbage, as usual.’

‘He’s not a believer,’ said Duke, pointing his thumb at Silas, ‘that’s his trouble.’

‘Likes to cash in on it though,’ said Walter, holding up a flying saucer serviette.

It was actually all good-natured banter, and clearly had been said a thousand times before.

‘So if there was a space base somewhere here on this mountainside, then why doesn’t anyone talk about it?’ asked Clancy.

‘It was all very much on the downlow, if you know what I’m saying,’ said Duke. ‘Not for civilians to know about.’

Silas shook his head. ‘You guys and your conspiracy theories. It’s a bunch of hogwash. Sven’s father worked at the plant for a whole number of years and he never once mentioned little green men from Mars.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he,’ said Walter.

Duke nodded his head. ‘That’s right, Walt. Sven’s dad would have signed some official secrecy document, everyone who worked there would have.’

Walter nodded gravely and Silas chuckled to himself.

‘I promise you this: if a Martian ever walks into this diner, I’ll shake him by the tentacle and give him a side order of fries on the house.’







(#ulink_df1cd557-3aad-5128-82a6-2830efbbbf36)


IT WAS DISAPPOINTING TO RETURN to Cedarwood Drive empty-handed, but Ruby had enjoyed a more than interesting day, and Clancy, with all this new information about space craft and aliens, could not be shut up. They caught the bus just as it was about to pull out of the stop, clambered on, taking seats towards the back away from the other passengers. Not that it was crowded: there were only seven other people taking the Mountain bus back to Maple Falls.

Ruby had a small, spiral-bound notepad and she was staring hard at a list of things set neatly out down the page. On one side:

What I know

And on the other:

What I don’t know

Some of the things had been crossed out, and moved from the don’t know column to the do know column.

Why Buzz was called Buzz, for example.

‘Why is Buzz called Buzz?’ asked Clancy.

‘It’s not as exciting as you think,’ said Ruby.

‘What, it’s some kinda nickname?’ asked Clancy.

‘Less exciting,’ said Ruby.

‘It’s her actual surname?’ said Clancy

‘Less interesting than that,’ said Ruby.

‘I give up,’ said Clancy.

‘It will disappoint you to know,’ said Ruby.

‘Try me,’ said Clancy.

‘They’re her initials, Brenda Ulla Zane.’

‘Oh, that’s kinda disappointing,’ said Clancy.

‘I told you,’ said Ruby.

‘It’s just totally obvious when you think about it.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby.

‘Mind you, there’s only one Z,’ said Clancy.

‘Yeah, but you would still call her Buzz, one Z or two.’

‘I guess.’ He looked back at her list.

One object, the 8 key, had been crossed out altogether and replaced with:

The Lucite key-tag.

‘The Lucite key-tag,’ read Clancy. ‘What key-tag?’

‘The key-tag that was attached to the 8 key,’ explained Ruby.

‘Why are you suddenly interested in that?’ asked Clancy. ‘I thought it was all about the Spectrum security key?’

‘I figured it had to be the key-tag that was of interest. I mean the locks were all changed as soon as the key went missing. Unless the whole point of the theft was about rattling the whole of Spectrum by proving security was so weak that anyone could break their way in, then stealing the key served no purpose whatsoever.’

‘So what’s the purpose of stealing a Lucite key-tag?’ asked Clancy. He frowned before adding, ‘By the way, what is Lucite exactly?’

‘You know, like Perspex or Plexiglas – Lucite is just a trade name. It’s acrylic. Or, if you want to get technical, Poly methyl methacrylate, a transparent thermoplastic, shatter-resistant, lightweight alternative to glass.’

CLANCY: ‘So it was light?’

RUBY:‘Well, not light light, but not as heavy as glass.’

CLANCY: ‘Was anything written on it? A number? An image?’

RUBY: ‘Nothing I could see.’

CLANCY:‘So what makes it interesting?’

RUBY: ‘Nothing.’

CLANCY: ‘Nothing?’

RUBY: ‘Nothing except for who it belonged to.’

CLANCY:‘So who did it belong to?’

RUBY: ‘Bradley Baker.’

CLANCY:‘Really? You know this? Like for sure?’

RUBY: ‘Not actually, and not exactly for sure. I guess I’m guessing in a way, but it just stands to reason, cos LB told me it was a memento, that someone gave it to her when she was a child, and I sorta figured the person closest to her was Baker.’

CLANCY: ‘Why not her dad, or her mom or maybe her grandpa? I mean it could even have been her junior karate master, he was important to her, no? Or her trombone teacher, if she ever learned trombone, that is.’

RUBY:‘I don’t imagine she did.’

CLANCY: ‘Whatever, my point is, it doesn’t automatically follow that it had to be Bradley Baker who gave her the key-tag. It could have been a person of influence.’

RUBY: ‘OK, you’re right, it doesn’t, but you see, well, I kinda have this strange feeling that it was.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you think I’m losing it?’

CLANCY: ‘Nah, you’re listening to your gut feeling and …’

Pause.

CLANCY: ‘I actually think you’re right.’

Another pause.

CLANCY: ‘Well, almost right.’

RUBY: ‘Almost?’

CLANCY: ‘You’re saying that the boss of Spectrum 8 was given this key-tag by her best friend when he was a kid?’

RUBY: ‘Yes, LB said it was sentimental.’

She stopped talking. And then her eyes widened like she was seeing something.

It was unusual for Ruby Redfort to feel like she was the last one in the room to see the gorilla. It was more unusual still for her to feel like a complete and utter chump, but this was that moment.

RUBY: ‘What a bozo! LB wouldn’t use some old key-tag given to her years ago to attach something as valuable as the 8 key, a coder key. Spectrum is a professional outfit, LB’s a professional agent, she hasn’t got time for this stuff.’

She looked at Clancy.

RUBY: ‘That’s what you were going to say, right?’

CLANCY:‘I wouldn’t have called you a bozo, but yeah.’

RUBY: ‘How did I swallow that garbage?’

CLANCY: ‘Quit beating yourself up, everyone screws up once in a while – if we’re talking about me, that would be most days.’

RUBY:‘Yeah, well, you saw through LB’s lie right away, why didn’t I?’

CLANCY:‘Because why would you? You had no reason to doubt her two months ago. Plus, when LB told you this story you had just survived being dropped from a high building. Your mind was on other things, i.e. wow, I’m not dead.’

RUBY: ‘Life and death – being thrown from high buildings – I’m supposed to be able to deal with things like that.’

CLANCY: ‘Yeah, I’m sure it’s all part of the job, but don’t you see, at that moment, right at that particular instance, this whole key-tag tale was just a detail. LB mentions it in passing and why wouldn’t you believe her? Like I said, back then you trusted her completely, if she told you the same story today you’d probably question it.’

He was right about that.

‘So how do you think she did end up with the key-tag?’

‘Beats me,’ said Ruby.

Silence.

CLANCY: ‘Just one thing I don’t get: if LB is the overarching villain and she is the one commissioning the Count to acquire all these truth serums and cyan scents and stuff, then explain why she would go to all the trouble of stealing her own key-tag?’

RUBY:‘That’s easy. She wants to throw Spectrum off the scent. You see, everyone gets paranoid about moles and double agents. They’re all busy wondering who it could be, but no one’s gonna point the finger at her.’

CLANCY:‘Seems kinda far-fetched.’

RUBY: ‘Everything’s far-fetched.’

CLANCY: ‘OK, but what if LB isn’t the bad guy here, then what?’

RUBY: ‘Then I guess I’m right, there is more to that piece of Lucite than meets the eye.’

Clancy took another look at the list of unknowns. ‘So what do you think the deal is with the Jade Buddha? I mean the cyan scent and the truth serum make sense. What criminal wouldn’t want a scent that can lure anyone anywhere? Or a drug that can make anyone blab the truth. But what does the Buddha have to do with any of it? What’s with that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby, ‘but I think that Buddha holds one pretty big secret, and personally I think the eyes have it.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s in the eyes of the Buddha,’ said Ruby.

‘Isn’t that just some old legend?’ said Clancy. ‘Look into the eyes of the Jade Buddha at midnight and halve your age and double your wisdom … I mean what fool believes in that nonsense apart from your dad … no offence intended.’

‘None taken, Clance. What I’m saying is, I have no idea what the Count read when he shone that light into its ruby eyes, but I’m guessing he was able to see something, a symbol, or even a code maybe.’

‘So can’t you get someone to look into its eyes for you?’

‘It’s back in Khotan,’ said Ruby. ‘Who am I going to ask?’

‘Can’t you phone someone in China?’ suggested Clancy.

‘What, just telephone China and say, “Please take a look at the eyes of the jade Buddha of Khotan”?’

‘Not just anyone,’ said Clancy. ‘Obviously it will have to be someone working at the Khotan museum.’

‘It’s not as easy as that. I still got to figure what that laser light device was, the one the Count used to read its eyes, it wasn’t any regular flashlight,’ said Ruby. ‘And then I have to convince someone at the museum to go and do it.’

‘Get someone else to phone the Chinese, like Blacker or someone?’

‘I’m not authorised to investigate anything,’ said Ruby. ‘If I ask someone to put a call through to the Chinese then I’m basically involved in an investigation and only senior agents are permitted to access anything.’

‘So ask a senior agent?’

‘What, like LB?’ said Ruby. ‘How many ways have I gotta say it, Clance? I don’t want LB to know that I might be onto something if it turns out that she is the something I’m onto.’

‘Right,’ said Clancy unsteadily, ‘I guess not.’

‘I need to know what happened between LB and Baker. If she killed him then why did she kill him?’

‘If only you could trust LB then you could ask her.’

Ruby sighed. ‘If I could trust LB then I would feel better about a whole lot of things. I might even be able to sleep at night.’

‘So you’re going to have to talk to Hitch. You trust him, don’t you?’

‘A hundred per cent,’ said Ruby, ‘but I’m not so sure he’d give me the time of day if I asked, so Hitch, you think LB might be a murderer? And to be truthful, I’m not sure I even want to go asking that particular question, at least not until I have a whole lot more information up my sleeve and possibly a hideout or some sort of weapon.’

‘Are you scared?’ asked Clancy.

Ruby looked into the darkness. ‘You bet I’m scared. If I wasn’t, I’d have to be crazy.’

‘So what are you gonna do when you next meet her face to face?’

‘Hold my nerve, I guess. The thing is not to let on; act normal.’

This was actually a Ruby rule. RULE 51: WHEN YOU DON’T TRUST THE OTHER PLAYERS, ALWAYS PLAY YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST.







(#ulink_75d18795-746e-500b-8e44-0298d9db2b6d)


‘THE WANDERER RETURNS,’ said Mrs Digby as Ruby walked in through the kitchen door. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Trying to solve your hen of the woods problem.’

‘Well, knock me down with a feather,’ said Mrs Digby, who looked genuinely astonished. ‘Any luck with that?’

‘I got a lead on them,’ said Ruby.

‘From whom?’

‘You gotta understand, I gotta protect my source, but suffice it to say, the wheels are in motion and there’s a good chance I can get the mushrooms to you by the end of the week.’

‘Nice work,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘You earned yourself a cookie, cookie.’

‘Just one?’ complained Ruby.

‘Don’t want to spoil your supper,’ said Mrs Digby.

Ruby looked at the table, set for two.

‘Hitch is coming?’ Ruby asked.

‘He better be, I’ve made enough stew to feed an army.’ She reached for a ladle, but was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. ‘Well, howdie, stranger … What? … I can’t say I approve … it’s not good for you to skip meals, did your mother never tell you that? You’ll be jumping into an early grave … I’ll leave it in the warmer, if the dog doesn’t get to it first.’ She put down the receiver.

‘He’s not coming?’ asked Ruby.

‘He said he had to get off somewhere in a hurry; something about a friend of his with a broken-down car.’ The housekeeper sniffed disapprovingly. ‘He’ll not be long for this world if he doesn’t take the time to eat.’

‘I didn’t know he had any friends,’ said Ruby.

‘Too many friends, if you ask me,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘He certainly didn’t seem one jot put out by my going off on that cruise. He couldn’t pack me off quick enough.’

‘Yeah, well, at least you wound up in the Caribbean,’ said Ruby. ‘He packed me off to spend a month in the back end of nowhere.’

The housekeeper picked up the dog bowl and served a generous portion to Bug. ‘Anyone would think he wanted rid of us,’ she said.

Ruby decided to get an early night: she needed to catch up on her sleep and if she hit the hay early then she might clock up a round ten hours. That would have been nice, but in the end all she managed was an uneven five. First of all came the phone call from Paris.

‘Hey, Ruby, it’s us!’

‘Bonjour, Mom, bonjour, Dad. Quelle heure est-il, by the way?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Almost lunch time, what time is it with you?’

Ruby reached for her watch.

‘Three in the am.’

‘Oh, Rube, you should really be asleep,’ said her mother.

‘Yeah, you might want to try calling a little later, six hours maybe, either that or a whole lot earlier, there’s a nine-hour time difference – that’s nine hours behind.’

‘Oh, I thought Twinford was nine hours ahead,’ said her father.

‘Other way around, Dad.’

‘In that case, sleep tight!’ said her mother.

‘Bon appétit,’ said Ruby.

An hour later and she was woken again, this time by the sound of a fly. Judging by the insistent racket it was making, it was in its death throes, and was making a noise like it might be buzzing about on its back, legs in the air.

Still caught in sleep, Ruby attempted to bat it away, but her hand hit the edge of something solid and her eyes blinked open to find, not a noisy upside-down insect, but her Spectrum Escape Watch vibrating on the nightstand. Words in green blinked at her from the face on the dial.

A message from Hitch.

City planetarium 04.35 Row F seat 6

It was four am, really not a good time to greet the day. But if Hitch was planning on taking her into HQ to meet with her (possibly) murderous boss, then four am was as good a time as any.

Ruby reached for her glasses, struggled to her feet, fell over, cursed, hobbled to the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and peered at herself with bleary eyes.

Redfort, you have to pull it together, she told herself.

Ruby decided the only way she could wake up would be to stand under the shower. This she did, and it did the trick. She peered out of the window into the still-dark morning. Cold, she thought, colder than yesterday. The temperature was really dropping.

She dug out some thermal leggings and pulled her jeans on over them, found a thermal undershirt, a T-shirt with the words, don’t wake me printed across the front, a black zip top and a snow parka and earmuffs. Snow was not forecast, but the air had turned icy. When she was ready, she picked up her backpack, tiptoed down the stairs and out of the front door. The only people riding the subway from Green Street were nightshift workers and early birds.

She arrived at the planetarium and was surprised to find the doors open and a guy selling tickets. She had been prepared for a little breaking and entering.

She went up to the booth. ‘What’s the deal?’ asked Ruby.

‘What do you mean what’s the deal?’ said the young man in the ticket booth.

‘How come you’re open? It’s four-thirty in the am.’

‘It’s to celebrate the anniversary of last year’s moon landing, you know, Apollo 17?’ said the guy.

‘I hate to burst your balloon, but you know you’re early?’ said Ruby. ‘The anniversary is December seventh.’

‘Yeah, we do know that, but a lot of people want to come so we’re doing a whole month of events,’ said the guy, pointing at the huge poster framed there on the wall. ‘There’s a whole deal of stuff going on. You might have heard, the Observatory on Meteor Island is building a new telescope … it’s been in the news, you know: Planet Twinford – 1974’s City of Space?’

‘But it isn’t 1974,’ said Ruby.

‘Yeah, but it will be in like four weeks,’ said the guy. ‘You really haven’t heard anything about this?’

Ruby was looking blank. Then, ‘Oh yeah, I think maybe my parents were invited to something spacey, what was it?’

‘Could it be the Galaxy Concert? Or the Astro Lectures? Or the Deep Space Gala?’ suggested the guy, before adding a little sarcastically, ‘what planet have you been on, man?’

‘Planet Geek,’ said Ruby. ‘I guess you might have a ticket for me, in the name of Redfort.’

The guy shuffled through his stack of prepaid tickets and handed her an envelope.

‘Enjoy!’ he said.

Ruby opened the door to the auditorium and tiptoed quietly down the steps. All the seats in the middle section were taken but towards the edges there were plenty of empty seats. She found F and began sidling along the row.

She sat down. All the seats around her were unoccupied and there was no sign of Hitch.

Mr Punctuality appeared to be late.

She began to watch the show and quickly became absorbed by the commentary.

‘Hey,’ said a voice.

RUBY:‘Jeepers! I didn’t hear you arrive.’

HITCH:‘You seem tense, kid.’

RUBY:‘Well, now you mention it …’

HITCH: ‘By the way, have you eaten breakfast?’

RUBY: ‘What, are you kidding? It’s not even five am.’

He handed her a paper bag.

‘Thanks,’ she said. She pulled out a donut.

HITCH: ‘From Blacker.’

RUBY:‘What’s he doing up at this hour?’

HITCH: ‘It’s all hands on deck while there’s a madman at large.’

Like every other member of the audience his eyes were trained on the ceiling, where the night sky rotated slowly above them.

Hitch pointed up at a cluster of stars. ‘That’s Hercules, right?’

Ruby tutted. ‘Orion,’ she said.

‘You sure?’

‘Course I’m sure,’ said Ruby. ‘I read up on all that stuff about a billion light years ago when I was five years old. I can draw you every constellation going – blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back.’

‘That sounds like quite a party trick,’ said Hitch. ‘Who could know when that talent might come in handy.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Ruby. ‘What are we doing here anyway?’

‘Oh, you know,’ said Hitch, ‘it’s very soothing contemplating the stars, don’t you think?’

‘I guess,’ she said, giving him a ‘what’s got into you?’ look.

‘So how was geek camp?’ he asked.

‘Geeky,’ replied Ruby. ‘So you been busy?’

‘Pretty busy, at least up until your parents flew to Paris. Boy, do they have a social life!’

‘So what made you think they needed a vacation?’

‘What makes you think it was my idea?’

‘Mrs Digby told me it was.’

‘Well, I have got to admit, they were driving me a little crazy. Do you have any idea how many parties they attend?’

‘I’ve been living with them the past thirteen years – what do you think?’

‘So you understand,’ said Hitch.

‘More than anyone,’ said Ruby. ‘I also understand Mrs Digby mysteriously won a free cruise round the Caribbean, what I don’t understand is how?’

‘I know, who would have guessed?’

‘Not her, that’s for sure,’ said Ruby.

‘Life is full of surprises,’ said Hitch.

‘So what, you felt like you wanted the place to yourself?’

‘We needed to make some adjustments to the house, add some security features,’ said Hitch.

‘For my sake?’

‘For all your sakes.’

‘You think my folks are in danger?’ asked Ruby. ‘Mrs Digby even?’

‘I wouldn’t fancy anyone’s chances if they were to go after Mrs Digby.’ He smiled. ‘But yes, I just don’t want any of them to become any kind of target.’

‘You think that could really happen? Really, I mean?’ asked Ruby. ‘The Count knows that my parents aren’t involved in Spectrum; they aren’t exactly agent material.’

‘You’re missing the point, kid. If the Count has a mind to rattle you, or worse, destroy your world, he knows how to do it. He knows where you live, he knows what makes you tick,’ said Hitch.

‘Meaning … he might make an attempt on their lives?’

‘Meaning, it’s possible.’

‘Hence the safety upgrade.’

‘Hence the safety upgrade.’

‘So what are you going to do when they get back?’ asked Ruby, ‘I mean you can’t stop them going out?’

‘I’ll do my best, kid, anything I can to ensure their safety and I’ll try my darndest to keep them from knowing anything about it.’

‘So what did you tell them? About the house, I mean?’

‘I didn’t want to get them all in a stew about it, so I got a friend of mine who happens to be in construction to persuade them that the windows needed replacing. He told them they had a bad case of window weevils.’

‘How did he convince them of that?’

‘Sprinkled a bit of glass dust around the place and loosened one of the window panes; they got the picture.’

‘Glass dust?’ said Ruby.

‘They were very concerned,’ said Hitch.

‘I’ll bet,’ said Ruby. ‘Since when was it possible for a weevil to eat through glass?’

‘I know,’ said Hitch, ‘alarming, isn’t it?’

‘And Mrs Digby?’ said Ruby.

‘It was a big job and I didn’t want her picking up on what was really going on. She has eyes like a hawk. I told her I had changed the locks and upgraded the alarm system because I had mislaid a set of keys but I kept the real reason from her.’

‘Well, so far you seem to have succeeded at keeping her in the dark. Mrs Digby thinks you packed her off because you wanted to have a high old time with your friends.’ She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I told her I didn’t think you had any friends.’

‘One day I’ll introduce you to one of them,’ said Hitch.

‘Mrs Digby probably thinks you sent my folks to Paris because you couldn’t handle their crazy social life.’

Hitch winked at her. ‘I’m a trained agent, I can handle any party they throw at me.’ He paused. ‘Speaking of training, right now we have to get our skates on.’

‘Why? Where are we going?’

‘A date with LB,’ he said.

He caught the expression on her face. ‘Jeepers, kid, relax a little. Anyone would think you were about to meet with the Grim Reaper.’







(#ulink_a0246f30-e218-520e-bc89-c5e023d33f1f)


THEY PARKED THE SILVER CAR down a side street and walked perhaps another two hundred yards.

‘Here?’ asked Ruby.

‘Here,’ said Hitch.

‘So you meant literally,’ said Ruby, ‘actually get our skates on?’

They were standing in midtown outside the ice rink on Bowery.

‘No, not actually.’

‘But this is the way into Spectrum?’

‘It is today,’ said Hitch.

‘So why did you get me crossing town to meet you at the planetarium when you coulda just told me to make my way to the ice rink?’

‘I like that place,’ said Hitch.

‘The planetarium?’

‘Yeah, like I said, I find it soothing.’

Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever floats your boat.’

They pushed through the turnstile and headed to the skate room, a labyrinth of shelves and cubbyholes each holding a pair of skates, too many to count. At the far end of this room was a door without a handle, and pinned to it was a poster of a skater mid-twirl. The skater looked happy, unaware that her tooth had been blackened by the casual swatting of a fly now squashed onto her picture-perfect smile. Hitch pressed his thumb into a barely visible identity scanner and the door clicked open. The door led to some stairs, the stairs led to Spectrum.

Once in the atrium they made their way across the vast space to the place where the Spectrum coordinator sat.

Nothing had changed, at least nothing had changed as far as the eye could see, but the atmosphere was very different. Breathe deeply and one could practically choke on the tension.

Buzz was where she always was, seated in the middle of the great round desk just off the main hall. Coloured telephones encircled her, and Ruby guessed that a web of wires and cables must trail around her feet. And though the administrator’s expression was as blank and unsmiling as always, in some strange way it was a relief to see her. That said, Ruby had no desire to hang out with the woman – she could bore you to death, if nothing else.

There was no ‘how are you’, no ‘we’ve missed you’, not the briefest snip of small talk, all Buzz said was – ‘LB will see you now.’

And Ruby felt her limbs become heavy as she walked the short walk to her boss’s door.

This time it wasn’t the fear of failure or of getting fired that made Ruby Redfort dread coming face to face with LB – this time it was a fear of getting found out. What if LB knew what she knew?

Ruby was grateful to have Hitch with her, though felt no certainty that he would take her side if he had to choose between her truth and his boss’s.

LB was looking steelier than she had done five weeks ago. The signs of fatigue and stress were gone and had been replaced by a cold, unwavering determination. Perhaps she was eating an iron-rich diet, as Consuela would no doubt recommend, or perhaps she had been working on her martial arts. Ruby had heard it rumoured that the Spectrum 8 boss was no slouch in this department, having studied karate in Japan under the great master, Funakoshi. It all seemed very unlikely to Ruby, who had never seen LB outside the walls of HQ, let alone out in the field. It might simply be gossip or it might be a very tall tale, but Agent Holbrook had told her that LB was the only Spectrum 8 agent to have mastered the deadly wrist grasp otherwise known as the ‘assassin’s handshake’.

None of these assertions were exactly comforting at this moment.

LB waved at her to sit down.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ asked Hitch.

Stay, thought Ruby, for Pete’s sake, stay.

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ said LB. ‘Would you give me and Redfort five minutes?’

‘Of course,’ said Hitch, stepping out.

Ruby had a strong desire to jump up and follow him. But she kept her face composed and herself in her seat.

LB waited for the door to close behind Hitch before addressing Ruby.

‘So you’re back, Redfort,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Ruby.

‘How was it?’

‘It was OK,’ said Ruby.

‘I hear you kept your head down and your nose clean.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruby.

LB peered at her from over her glasses.

‘What, no smart remark?’

Silence.

‘I’m beginning to wonder if they sent you to Swiss finishing school by mistake. I know I should be relieved, but it’s making me feel uneasy.’

Redfort, you’re acting weird, pull it together!

LB leaned forward. ‘Is there something wrong? Something you want to share?’

‘I’m not giving you half my donut if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘That’s more like it. I thought for one horrible minute I was speaking with some Ruby Redfort doppelganger – I don’t know, Lorelei von Leyden in disguise, maybe.’

‘It would be a tough act to pull off,’ said Ruby. ‘I like to think that when they made me they broke the mould.’

‘So do I,’ said LB sourly. She cleared her throat. ‘As you might have heard, Spectrum 8 has handed much of its operations activity to Spectrum 1, just while we try to figure how far this contamination has reached, and which agent if any is responsible for leaking information to the Count.’

‘Right,’ said Ruby.

If LB was bluffing then she was a seriously cool customer. ‘A large number of our department have been suspended until we have clarity on this issue. Spectrum 7 agents will replace them until we have located our mole.’

‘So am I being suspended?’ asked Ruby. She paused, thought about where she had been. ‘Was I suspended? What I mean to say is, was geek camp really a way of getting me out of the picture? So you could check me out?’

‘Yes, but if it makes you feel better, we were as much concerned for your wellbeing as we were that you might in some way be leaking information.’

‘You thought I might be leaking information?’

‘You can see our point of view here, I’m sure. On the one hand, we were suspicious that the Count would keep you alive – we had to ask ourselves why –but on the other, we were concerned that he might change his mind. He doesn’t always abide by logic. And besides, his employer presumably still wants you dead, assuming that story is true, though when it comes to the Count one should never assume anything. Whatever else he is, he is predictably unpredictable.’

‘So now what?’ asked Ruby carefully. ‘Am I trusted employee or traitor?’

‘Quit being so dramatic, Redfort, you’re neither; no one ever thought you were a traitor – a blabbermouth perhaps, there was always a chance of that.’

Ruby opened her mouth to object, but LB raised her hand.

‘I never said you were, Redfort, I said there was a chance that you had brought this whole craziness to our door, but I concede that’s unlikely. There’s no evidence for it.’

Well, that was a relief.

Though what followed was not.

‘You, like every other agent in Spectrum 8, will be taken off duty. Eight is effectively closed to all lower-level agents. For all but vital access to our departments, permission must be given by a senior agent. My feeling was that your training should also be suspended until we have this security mess under control.

‘However,’ she paused and sighed, like what she was about to say was a great effort to her, ‘Hitch has persuaded HQ that it might be wise to keep up the survival skills. He seems to think you need all the protection you can get, and though you are no longer a functioning field agent or coding agent, after much consideration, I am persuaded he is right. We have a duty of care and I have to concede that it is our responsibility to protect you. As such, you will remain in Spectrum as a trainee agent. Under our careful supervision.’

Ruby tried to smile. ‘That’s good to know,’ she said.

A month ago, she’d have felt that LB’s office was the safest place on this earth. Now she couldn’t help feeling she was a fly, about to be swatted.

Problem was, she had no idea who was holding the swatter.







(#ulink_b47c7720-d18b-54b3-ba57-2b7f805865ac)


RUBY WAS JUST TRYING to figure out where Hitch might have got to when she spotted a note on the table in the waiting area.

Meet me in Froghorn’s coding room –he will be expecting you.

She was surprised that he had arranged for them to meet there, and it was odd that Froghorn had agreed to it – with the exception of Blacker, Froghorn generally made it clear that no one was welcome in his coding room. Seeing him so soon after she had stepped back into Spectrum was an unpalatable idea, but then she remembered Clancy’s words – ‘talk to Froghorn, I bet you anything he’ll tell you whatever you wanna know, just to make you feel small.’ It was true, Froghorn couldn’t resist bragging about all the secrets he knew, and let’s face it, she thought, he loves nothing better than to drone on about the late great Bradley Baker.

All I gotta do is get him talking, that’s not so difficult.

Knowledge was her only weapon, the only superpower she really had. And if she was going to find out the truth about how Spectrum’s most revered agent met his end then Froghorn was her only option.

The door to his coding room was unlocked, so she was puzzled when she discovered it empty of people. Miles Froghorn was usually very careful about security. Ruby took the opportunity to have a snoop around and she found a lot of interesting things.

There were numerous files stacked neatly on tables, and code books marked with post-its and bookmarks, and notes carefully written in ink. There were several books on data transmission, particularly error-correcting codes that allowed computers to know whether there were mistakes in information they received. It was a subject that fascinated Ruby.

She flipped open a book.

Parity bits are one of the simplest systems for ensuring error-free transmission of binary data. Note though that as they indicate only whether the information contains an even or odd number of 1s or 0s, they are vulnerable to bits in the chain being swapped rather than lost, which is something they cannot …

She stopped reading when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor. She moved away from the table and listened, but whoever it was walked right on by. She continued to peruse Froghorn’s papers. There was a whole hand-written list of what must be ideas for locking devices: swipe card, iris lock, thumbprint, keypad, image lock, bolt key, 5 key, pressure key, voice key.

It rather looked like he had been working on some sort of multi-coded security system, because there was a diagram which was basically three squares arranged like an upside-down L, with letters and numbers marked at particular intervals, and to the side of each of the blocks: E1 E2 E3. In the middle of the third square he had written FC1 FC2 FC3. Next to these were six small pieces of coloured paper; each one was labelled with one of the sets of letters on the diagram, E1, E2, E3 etc., and on each paper was written a word or words, some crossed out, some replaced. E1, for example, said: MUSCA. E2: SWAT; E3: TRANSMISSION, F1: THE SPECTRUM. FC2 said: ROTOR MACHINE and then this was crossed out and had been replaced with CHROMATIC. FC3 was just a?






It looked as if he had been trying to figure out the best method of securing each part of a building, or series of rooms.

There was a beep on Ruby’s watch and she very nearly jumped out of her skin. A YELLOW FLY, meaning ATTENTION! A message flashed across the screen.

HUGE MISTAKE, I MEANT TO SAY MEET ME IN FROGHORN’S OFFICE! IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE MADE IT INTO HIS CODING ROOM THEN GET OUT!

PS MEETING CANCELLED.

Ruby did as instructed and got out of there quick, just in time as it turned out, because as she speed-walked along the corridor she ran into Froghorn coming the other way.

‘Oh, you’re back,’ he said slowly, drawing the words out as if he’d just found something unpleasant on the underside of his shoe.

‘Hey, Froghorn,’ she said, deliberately ignoring the silent G so the word ‘Frog’ sounded out very clearly. His irritation could not be missed.

‘What a shame, did kiddie camp not work out for you?’

‘Genius Camp, you mean?’ said Ruby. ‘Yes, that was fun, but you know what they say, too much fun can get you bored, so I guess it’s good to run into you.’

‘I thought it was going to be a bad day,’ said Froghorn. ‘Viridian days are always a total drag.’

‘What are you bleating on about – viridian days? Jeepers, Froghorn, maybe you need to leave the building for an hour or two.’

‘I would if there was anyone who could possibly handle my job, but since we lost Lopez we’ve had a tough job recruiting anyone with half a brain.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Bradley Baker again, you guys seem to think the sun shone out of him.’

‘The sun did shine out of him,’ said Froghorn. ‘That’s exactly it, he was a sun ray. And even though he’s dead and gone to grey he never was and never will be some pale imitation of an agent, some little girl living a little pastel-pink life.’

‘Boy, Froghorn, that’s a very colourful picture you paint. So if you’re saying Baker was sunshine yellow and I’m insipid pink – which, by the way, I take great exception to – then what are you? Potato-head beige?’

‘I’m someone authorised to be here, what are you? Some little girl who needs to go back to school?’ He checked his watch theatrically.

‘No one said that about Bradley Baker and wasn’t he just some little kid when he started out?’ said Ruby. Her comment had the desired effect.

‘Bradley Baker was never just some little kid. He was extraordinary, a talent the like of which we will never see again.’

‘What is it with you guys and Bradley Baker? I’ve yet to hear one actual thing which makes this bozo so different from anyone else.’

Froghorn stepped back like he’d been slapped. ‘What?’ he said.

RUBY:‘You people talk about him like he’s some kinda super-agent, but he took orders same as you, same as me, same as every agent in this building.’

FROGHORN:‘Baker took orders because it was his job to take orders. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of making his own decisions.’

RUBY: ‘So you’re saying he did make his own decisions?’

FROGHORN: ‘Of course he did, he was highly qualified, lived by his own rules.’

RUBY: ‘So he was a maverick, a renegade … took authority into his own hands, that sorta thing?’

FROGHORN: ‘No! That’s not what I’m saying, not at all! He never did anything to undermine the agency.’

RUBY:‘I don’t get it, now you’re telling me he was a zip-it and toe-the-line type of a guy? Make your mind up, Froghorn, either he had guts and initiative or he was just another listen-up-and-do-as-you’re-told team player.’

FROGHORN:‘The sheer magnitude of what you don’t know about Agent Baker’s guts and heroism would fill this atrium. Baker was an agent in a million.’

RUBY (YAWNING): ‘Yeah, right, so everyone keeps telling me, but it all sounds like a lot of hot air if you want my opinion.’

FROGHORN: ‘No one wants your opinion.’

RUBY: ‘Yeah, and why is that? I’m guessing because no one is tough enough to hear the truth.’

FROGHORN: ‘And what is that “truth”?’

RUBY: ‘Simply that there are other agents just as talented as him.’

Froghorn narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you actually suggesting that you are even close to being in the same league as Agent Baker?’

Ruby made a face to suggest, maybe she was. Froghorn’s reaction was as she’d hoped – very gabby. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’ They were heading in the opposite direction now and Ruby had a job to keep pace with him. When he reached his office he opened the door and waved her in with an irritated gesture.

Her visits to this room were rare and usually very brief, so it wasn’t perhaps so surprising that she had never before noticed how everything was colour-coded, and not just in a Spectrum way, but in a Froghorn way. His calendar for instance: Mondays green, viridian green, Tuesdays yellow. December dark blue.

Froghorn looked like he was wearing a brand-new suit. It was ever so slightly shiny and he had a new shiny steel pen to match; it was attached to a silver cord which hung around his neck. Who does that? she thought. Who actually wears a pen? OK, Mrs Drisco does, but she’s Mrs Drisco, what else would you expect? But this guy should know better. Boy, is he ever a potato head.

FROGHORN:‘You think that cracking a five-way-thought code which led us to prevent the leaking of secret government dossiers isn’t of value?’

RUBY: ‘Of course it’s of value, I’m just saying, is it remarkable? I mean he was a code cracker, right, so wouldn’t that be all in a day’s work to someone of his agent rank?’

FROGHORN:‘So how about confronting the Count when he was a junior agent, getting up close and personal with this monster and living to tell the tale? He was the first Spectrum agent to walk away with his life.’

RUBY: ‘What, you mean like I did?’ She studied her nails. ‘More than once actually.’

FROGHORN: ‘You got lucky, little girl, hardly heroic. Baker was captured by the Count and rescued by the Spectrum special agent squad.’

RUBY: ‘I rescued myself, surely that counts for something.’

FROGHORN:‘State of the art Spectrum gadgets are what allowed you to escape.’

RUBY: ‘Isn’t that how Baker got himself out of trouble a whole bunch of times? I’m sure he would have been toast without the Escape Watch.’

FROGHORN: ‘He was issued with them; you took them without permission.’

RUBY: ‘So that’s the difference between being a hero and not being a hero – a signature on a slip of paper?’

FROGHORN: ‘If you want to be a Spectrum agent then you have to behave like one.’

Ruby had quite a few things she wouldn’t have minded saying in reply to this patronising remark, but was aware that it might not serve her well to get Froghorn so mad that he slammed the door in her face.

RUBY:‘So name an occasion where Baker actually went above and beyond his job description.’

FROGHORN: ‘You think that leaping from an aircraft without a Spectrum aero-pack in order to save a fellow agent from certain death doesn’t make him a hero?’

RUBY: ‘Can I ask, was the plane moving at the time?’

FROGHORN: ‘Try fourteen thousand feet. And it wasn’t a regular plane.’

Ruby shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Froghorn, I mean, is jumping without a parachute really such a big deal?’

FROGHORN:‘You should try it sometime.’

RUBY: ‘Maybe I will.’

FROGHORN: ‘I’d be thrilled to arrange it.’

RUBY:‘If there was actually any evidence that Baker had actually done it then I would be only too happy to give it a try.’

FROGHORN:‘You should read the files; what’s contained in them would make your head spin.’

RUBY: ‘Oh, so there are files?’

FROGHORN: ‘Of course there are files!’

RUBY: ‘OK, so I’ll read them.’

FROGHORN:‘You don’t have authority to read files, least of all the Ghost Files.’

RUBY: ‘Ghost Files?’

Silence.

RUBY:‘Oh, come on, Froghorn, you’re making this up. Ghost Files?I mean Spectrum’s not gonna use a dumb name like that.’

FROGHORN: ‘You know so little of Spectrum. You arrive here thinking you’re some kind of wonder-child, but you’re not even a shadow of Agent Baker.’

RUBY: ‘Show me the files and I’ll devote some minutes to reading them.’

FROGHORN: ‘It would take you more than a few hours to read a list of his achievements.’

RUBY:‘So point me in the right direction and I’ll get started.’

FROGHORN:‘Why would I ever tell you where the Prism Vault is?’

RUBY:‘Why would you, when you don’t know?’

FROGHORN: ‘Of course I know. I’ve just this week completed the task of updating the code lock system.’

So that’s what he’s up to.

But what she said was, ‘So where is it?’

FROGHORN: ‘Like I’d ever tell you.’

RUBY:‘You should, it might help me understand this little love-in Spectrum has with old Bradley.’

FROGHORN:‘If you ever see the inside of that place then I’ll eat my hat.’

RUBY:‘Really? I’ll work on it then, I’ve always wanted to see someone eat their hat.’

FROGHORN: ‘I’m sure one of your kindergarten friends would oblige – little kids are always eating things they shouldn’t.’

RUBY: ‘You not concerned that someone might crack your new vault codes?’

‘No, little girl.’

‘No, and why’s that?’

‘Because first you’d have to understand what code you are dealing with and that’s something you aren’t ever going to know.’

‘Even if you made it there,’ continued Froghorn. ‘Even if you figured out the location, you would still require permission to get inside, and we both know that’s never going to happen, or you would need to get hold of a Superskin.’

‘What’s a Superskin?’ asked Ruby.

‘Exactly,’ said Froghorn. ‘Then you would need to hold your breath for at least three minutes and we both know you have no talent for that, am I right?’

Boy, is this guy’s colour potato-head beige.

‘Even if you punched in the correct door code and got inside the vault, even if you did all that, just how many layers of files could you reach? One? Two?’

‘Um,’ said Ruby, ‘is there a three?’

‘Layer three you might as well dream about because there’s not a chance you’d make it into that.’ As he said ‘three’ he gripped the steel pen and turned it round and round in his hand.

‘Careful with that,’ said Ruby. ‘You don’t want to strangle yourself with that little necklace of yours.’

He suddenly looked awkward, self-conscious even, and he barked at her, saying, ‘All file layers are code-protected. I set them myself … think about it, little girl.’

‘Oh, believe me I am,’ said Ruby. ‘So you say breath-holding’s involved; is this vault underwater or something?’

Froghorn’s mouth snapped shut. He had said too much. He began fiddling with his stupid neck pen, nervously wrapping his tie round and round as he tried to backtrack. ‘Dream on, you’ll never lay eyes on the Ghost Files, let alone read them.’ He was confident about that, Ruby could see it: the look on his face said the Prism Vault is nowhere you’ll ever go.

‘You sound very certain,’ said Ruby.

‘I am,’ said Froghorn. ‘I spent a lot of time coding those files and I did an excellent job.’

‘I’m sure you did your best, Froghorn, but remember what they say: pride comes before a fall, or wait a minute, is it once a potato head always a potato head? I can never remember.’







(#ulink_5a621317-de17-5da4-b3d6-fbabcf3823e5)


AS RUBY WAS EXITING FROGHORN’S OFFICE, an announcement sounded over the tannoy:

RUBY REDFORT, REPORT TO RECEPTION.

When she reached Buzz’s desk, she was told in a bored tone to report to the gadget room.

When she got there, she found Hal standing next to a bicycle.

‘So here you go,’ said Hal, stepping aside. ‘I’ve been working on it for a while.’

‘For me?’ asked Ruby.

‘No one else in Spectrum rides a bike,’ said Hal.

Ruby smiled. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘It’s got a few features you won’t be used to,’ said Hal. ‘The tyres are of course unpuncturable, and the frame super-reinforced, but it’s the bike’s ability to grip the road surface which is what makes it special.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It’s very hard to fall off. As with a motorcycle, you can lean pretty low to the ground and so long as the wheels keep turning, the tyres grip the road and you stay on the bike.’

‘Well, that sounds cool,’ said Ruby.

‘It is,’ said Hal. ‘Spectrum gadgets are 99.999 per cent reliable and this bike is no exception.’

‘So what about speed?’

‘It has speed, that goes without saying,’ he said. ‘You just have to decide when you’re going to use it. It won’t be continuous, but you might get ten minutes of hyper-speed every forty.’

‘So what’s this?’ asked Ruby.

‘That’s a bell,’ said Hal.

‘And what does it actually do?’ asked Ruby.

‘It rings,’ said Hal. He demonstrated.

‘Oh,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s not one of its special features,’ said Hal.

‘I guess not,’ said Ruby.

‘Obviously we’ll give it a finish, make it some pretty colour.’

‘Green,’ said Ruby.

‘Pardon me?’ There was a deafening grinding sound coming from the workshop at the back. ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ said Hal. ‘I better go check out what’s happening in there. Look, we’ll have the bike sprayed and delivered,’ he said.

When he was gone, Ruby found herself alone in the gadget room. Of course, she took the opportunity to have a look around. There was something very particular which she hoped she might find, something which would be invaluable to a person seeking to break into, say, a file room.

As luck would have it, she spotted it almost immediately.

THE MICRO-READER: Hold device five inches from document and press red button. Up to 1500 images can be stored. The device doubles as a projector: press the green button to view your images on a screen or any suitably smooth wall or pale surface.

Checking first that Hal was still otherwise engaged, she pocketed the small object, no bigger really than a large pencil sharpener.

She was just thinking of reaching into one of the other low glass drawers when she heard someone cough. She stood up quickly, which caused her to bump her head.

Ouch.

‘Hey, Ruby,’ said Blacker, ‘are you OK? I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

‘Oh … no, you didn’t,’ she said. ‘I mean sort of, but hey, yes, I mean hello.’

For a second she was afraid he’d seen what she’d done, but he smiled. ‘Nice to have you back, Ruby, though actually it’s my job to wave you bye-bye, I’m afraid.’

‘What?’

‘There’s to be no wandering the corridors unaccompanied, so Buzz sent me to escort you on your way out.’

‘You’re serious? You actually are kicking me out?’

He shrugged and smiled again. ‘Not me – a Spectrum command from the top.’

Ruby gave him a puzzled look.

‘LB,’ he explained.

‘OK,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll go quietly.’

Despite the fact that he was there to march her from the premises, Ruby was glad to see Agent Blacker: he was a reassuring presence, and there weren’t so many living creatures you could say that about these days.

As she and Blacker walked to the exit, Ruby struck up a conversation about the Prism Vault.

‘Have you ever read the Ghost Files?’ asked Ruby.

He stopped for a moment and looked at her. ‘Who told you about the Ghost Files?’ he asked.

‘Froghorn,’ said Ruby.

Blacker frowned. ‘He’s getting blabby.’

‘What I’m wondering,’ continued Ruby, ‘is if Spectrum don’t want anyone to read these files, as in ever, then why not just erase them?’

‘I’m surprised Froghorn didn’t tell you,’ said Blacker. ‘Ghost Files can’t be erased; they are triple secured and locked so far down in the Prism Vault that you may need a password from God himself. But they cannot be deleted. Spectrum files are created that way.’

‘But they can be read?’

‘They can be read if you are authorised to read them and if you have code clearance to enter the Prism Vault. Of course, if you had code clearance they’d fly you there in the Spectrum helicopter.’

Why does one need a helicopter to get there? wondered Ruby. ‘What if you don’t have code clearance?’ was what she asked.

‘Then you’d be needing flippers or some kind of submersible.’

‘It’s located in water?’ said Ruby.

‘It’s no secret that the vault’s in a watery location,’ said Blacker.

‘Would that be in a lake? Or in the sea?’ asked Ruby.

Blacker cocked his head to one side and looked at her like he was trying to gauge where this conversation was going.

‘So how does one go about getting hold of a helicopter?’ asked Ruby.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Blacker. He was laughing, but he wasn’t entirely sure she was joking.

‘Of course I’m kidding,’ said Ruby, flashing him the Ruby Redfort I’m just a kid smile. ‘Has anyone ever helicoptered you in there?’ she asked.

‘No, mam,’ said Blacker. ‘Don’t like helicopters. And there’s no way I’m putting a Superskin on, not unless I have to.’

‘They make you feel claustrophobic?’

‘No, they’re just a heck of a struggle to get in and out of.’

‘So what exactly is a Superskin?’

He smiled again and shook his head. ‘If you’re lucky you’ll never need to know.’

When Ruby stepped out of Spectrum headquarters it was into an entirely different landscape. No more grey – this one was bright white, the sidewalks already an inch deep in soft snow. She pulled her hood up, zipping the snow parka so her face was framed by its fur. She looked towards the sky, mouth open, and felt the snowflakes melt on her tongue. By the time she reached home the snow was already an inch deeper.




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