Catch Your Death

Clancy liked the sound of this; as a casual observer, he liked drama even if he didn’t exactly like to be in the middle of it himself. The forest fire challenge was only rivalled by the fear of attack by wild animals. Both sounded to Clancy like things to be avoided.

‘So what have I missed?’ asked Ruby. ‘I mean something must have happened these last three days.’

‘Our neighbour Mrs Gilbert’s spaniel, Gilbert, went missing.’

‘Mrs Gilbert’s spaniel is called Gilbert?’ said Ruby.

‘Yes, Gilbert Gilbert is what she calls him,’ said Clancy.

Ruby pondered this information with an expression of puzzled pity.

‘He was on his leash,’ continued Clancy, ‘tied to the fence, you know, so he could run round the backyard, but not actually get out of the yard – anyhow, he did.’

‘Did what?’ said Ruby.

‘Get out the yard, and the weird thing is he musta slipped outta his collar somehow ’cause Mrs Gilbert found it down the street, but there was no sign of Gilbert Gilbert.’

‘Quite the mystery,’ said Ruby.

Clancy smiled. ‘Isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Maybe you should alert Spectrum.’

‘Who’s Spectrum?’ said a voice.

They both jumped – Spectrum was not a word to be breathed in public and was not a word that Clancy was supposed to know, let alone utter.

Ruby looked up and saw the eager face of Elliot Finch.

‘TV show,’ she said.

‘Never heard of it,’ said Elliot.

Ruby shrugged.

‘But then you guys watch a lotta TV,’ said Elliot. He slid into the diner booth. ‘Where’ve you been anyway?’

‘Oh, here and there,’ replied Ruby.

Elliot eyed her. ‘You don’t look so good, kinda scrawny – what’ve you been eating?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘Just grubs and maggots, but I’m done with that diet.’

Elliot looked at her, unsure if she was joking.

‘You want a donut?’ said Ruby.

Elliot looked at his watch. ‘Sure, I could eat.’ He studied the menu. ‘You seen Mouse? I’m meant to be meeting her here; we were gonna play table tennis in Harker Park.’

Harker Square, or Harker Park as kids and locals often referred to it, was the smart square in the centre of town. It had clipped hedges and ornamental apple trees as well as huge dappled plane trees, rose beds and several fountains – some traditional, some very modern and surprising (surprising in that they suddenly spouted water high into the air when people walked by – a lot of people had complained).

The square was surrounded by smart shops and office buildings, all built in the art deco style. Harker Square was popular: it was pretty, sunny with plenty of benches and shaded areas, and had just acquired a permanent outdoor table tennis table and Elliot was making the most of it. Mouse was a pretty good table tennis player, championship good actually, and Elliot was getting her to teach him some moves.

When Mouse eventually showed, she had come with news.

‘Strangest thing – I got to Harker Park, but the ping-pong table is sort of gone, at least half of it’s gone, I mean totally wrecked; looks like something actually took a bite out of it.’

‘I bet it was that Flannagon kid,’ said Elliot. ‘I saw him and those boys he hangs out with hitting a baseball around the back alley behind the department store. I’ll bet they wrecked the table tennis table and then went to find something else to destroy. They broke a window with their baseball too. That Flannagon kid is some hitter.’

‘You saw them do that?’ said Ruby.

‘As good as,’ said Elliot. ‘I heard the sound of a ball hitting a bat and then I heard the sound of glass breaking, so it had to be them, right? I mean it’s always them.’

‘You got a be careful accusing people without being a hundred per cent sure,’ said Mouse. ‘People end up in the big house every day, locked up for crimes they never even committed.’

Mouse’s grandfather was a campaigner – he worked hard to protect ‘John Q. Public’s’ civil rights and so Mouse had grown up with strong feelings about fairness and justice. She didn’t much like Dillon Flannagon, but that didn’t mean he was guilty of every act of vandalism in Twinford County, though he did seem to be responsible for most of them.

In any case, it didn’t much matter if it was Dillon Flannagon or not: no one was going to be playing table tennis in Harker Park any time soon.

Elliot shrugged. ‘So what now?’

‘Beats me,’ said Mouse.

‘I’ll think I’ll order another waffle,’ said Ruby.

‘You have to be kidding,’ said Clancy.

But she wasn’t.

The department store’s stylish restaurant was busy and buzzing with fashionable Twinfordites

A young woman sat alone at a table, not concentrating on the menu she was supposed to be reading, but instead looking around her and glancing at the clock.

She took a small bottle from her purse and dabbed perfume onto her wrists; the smell of Turkish delight enveloped her and seemed to calm her. Her sharp blue eyes relaxed a little when she saw the young man zigzagging through the crowded room. He was casually dressed, unlike the other diners.

‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said.

‘I’m only two minutes late Lorelei,’ said the man, checking his watch.

‘Two minutes is two minutes,’ she asserted.

Lorelei von Leyden was elegantly dressed in grey. Her spiked shoes tapped on the floor under the restaurant table: she was nervous.

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked. ‘I thought everything was going to plan.’

‘I got a message,’ she replied. ‘I think. . . I think she knows.’

‘How could she know?’ he asked. ‘She can’t know; you’re just paranoid.’

‘You don’t know her like I do Eduardo. I know she knows, she always knows, she knows everything.’

The man tried to catch the waiter’s attention. ‘So what are you suggesting we do?’ he said.

‘Bring the plan forward; we need to get on with it – contact you know who, get him to deliver.’

She made to leave.

‘You not eating?’ said the man.

‘I have to get back to the day job,’ she said. ‘Besides,’ she sniffed the air, ‘I don’t think the food here smells so appetising.’

Chapter 13.

IT WAS LATE THAT SAME AFTERNOON and Clancy was walking beside Ruby, pushing her bike for her along Amster towards home. Her foot was really aching and she was finding it uncomfortable to put pressure on it. The heat had eased off a bit and reached a pleasant temperature, and they were talking about the upcoming vacation and how they were going to spend it.

‘My dad wants me to go on that camp out at Little Bear with the Wichitinos,’ said Clancy.

Ruby nearly spat her bubblegum. ‘You are kidding man? No way can you go!’

‘Of course not,’ said Clancy, a little offended that she might think he would willingly or even unwillingly attend Wichitino Camp. ‘They’d have to hold me at gunpoint.’

‘Jeez!’ said Ruby. ‘I’d never live it down.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ said Clancy. ‘It’s me who’d be on dork camp rubbing sticks together.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, ‘and think how I’d feel as your friend, knowing you were toasting marshmallows and singing “Kumbaya” with a lot of bozos in short pants.’

‘I’m sure they do more than toast marshmallows,’ said Clancy.

‘So now you’re defending the Wichitinos?’ said Ruby. ‘You don’t think it’s totally dorky after all?’

‘It’s total dorkdom,’ said Clancy, ‘that goes without saying. I’m just suggesting that there must be more to it than heating up marshmallows.’

‘Let’s drop it,’ said Ruby. ‘Neither one of us is going on dork camp, period.’

They continued in semi-silence until they reached the fork in the road and Clancy peeled off up Rose and Ruby got on her bike and freewheeled down Lime. When she reached the bottom, she saw Hitch waiting for her. He was standing by the car, drinking in the sun’s last rays.

‘Hey, that’s a coincidence!’ called Ruby, skidding to a halt by the kerb.

‘Not really,’ said Hitch, pointing to the keyring clipped to a whole bunch of other keyrings that dangled from her satchel. She hadn’t even noticed.

She was puzzled for a second and then it dawned on her.

‘A mini locator?’

He winked. ‘No flies on you kid.’

‘You saying I can keep it?’ asked Ruby.

‘A replacement for the one you lost at the museum that time. You’re lucky LB didn’t take it out of your pay packet.’

Ruby hadn’t exactly lost the original one; it had been sacrificed while assisting her escape, and the time Hitch referred to was an incident when Ruby very nearly lost more than a keyring.

The mini locator was a gadget dressed up as a kid’s word puzzle with little sliding letter tiles that, once arranged correctly, spelled HELP. Once formed, this word HELP would set off a flashing light on the ‘buddy’ locator, which in this case was Hitch’s watch. Then he would know not only that Ruby was in trouble, but also where she was. It had limited range, but when it worked it worked very effectively. It looked simple, and in a way was simple, but no one, not even the evil genius known to Spectrum as the Count, had spotted it.

‘So you think LB has forgiven me for losing the great Bradley Baker’s mini locator?’ said Ruby, her tone sarcastic.

‘She’ll forgive you when you prove yourself to be half as good an agent as he was,’ said Hitch. He seemed to enjoy winding her up on this subject. Bradley Baker was a Spectrum legend and although he had died in an accident many years ago his reputation for brilliance and bravery dogged Ruby every day of her Spectrum life.

‘So why are you here?’ she asked.

‘To take you in to HQ,’ he replied.

Ruby knew she was going to have to face the music sooner or later, but she had hoped for later. Not today, she thought. But all she said was, ‘So where is it this time? The way in, I mean?’

This could seem like a strange question given that Ruby Redfort had been into Spectrum headquarters on many occasions and had spent hours and hours there working on cracking complex codes, but the unusual thing about Spectrum was that it never stayed in one place for long, or at least the way in never stayed anywhere for long. The first time Ruby had entered was via a manhole; last time it had been through a door in the boiler room of the municipal swimming pool.

Hitch pulled up in one of the bays by the iron railings that surrounded Twinford’s Central City Park. He switched off the engine and opened the car door. ‘Here,’ he said.

Ruby slowly got out. ‘Where is here?’

Hitch pointed to the path. ‘You see where it bends and disappears?’

Ruby nodded.

‘To the right of it, over by that huge tree, can you see those boulders?’

Ruby nodded again. There were some large rocks which had been used to landscape the park, to make it look more natural, sort of New York Central Park style.

‘Behind them you’ll find the toddler playground,’ said Hitch. ‘You’ll work it out from there.’

Ruby looked at him, her mouth open.

‘Man! You are surely kidding?’

Hitch shook his head.

‘I’m thirteen – that playground is for babies; how’s it gonna look if I start swinging around on the jungle gym?’

‘That might look unusual for a kid of your age. But I’m not sure what that would have to do with finding the door into Spectrum.’

‘So where is it by the way, the door?’

‘You’ll work it out kid, that’s what we pay you for.’

‘I’ll bet it’s inside the caterpillar pipes, isn’t it? You guys really get your kicks making me do these dorkish things, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think you should take it personally kid. Just think of it as another test – how well can you act?’

‘Swell,’ said Ruby. ‘And I guess you’ll be taking a different route? No monkey bars for you.’

‘See you on the other side kid,’ said Hitch. He winked at her and walked across the road.

Chapter 14.

RUBY SHRUGGED AND WALKED ON DOWN THE PATH for all the world looking like a kid exploring Twinford Central City Park on a bright summer day.

She opened the gate to the toddler and children’s playground and pretended she was looking for an imaginary little sister. There were plenty of mothers and nannies all occupied with babies, wiping faces and pushing little kids on swings. No one was there to relax exactly; no one was reading a novel or simply hanging out in the sun, so the only way to blend in was to look like you might be minding a young child.

Ruby was right: the one place where it was possible for a concealed door to be hidden was, just as she had thought, inside the caterpillar pipes. She thanked the stars that there was no Wendy house – that would have been a humiliation too far.

Ruby fed herself into the wide metal tube like it was the most normal thing in the world. It was about twelve feet long and had other pipes wiggling off in different directions. It wasn’t at all dark because there were human-sized holes in the top of the tubes so the children could stick their heads out and call to mommy.

Right in the middle of the pipe’s curved wall was a little sticker of a fly. A small child was gently picking at it, trying to peel it off and no doubt eat it. (Little kids were always eating things that didn’t need to be eaten – survival camp would be a breeze to them.) Ruby surmised that access to Spectrum must be directly below the fly sticker and therefore directly beneath the sticker-eating kid.

The kid didn’t look like it was going anywhere; it seemed perfectly content sitting on its behind, mumbling away to itself.

It had been a long time since Ruby was a toddler, but one thing she still remembered was that little kids are easily bribed.

She took the packet of Hubble-Yum bubblegum out of her pocket and carefully placed a square of it in the kid’s view. The kid immediately began edging towards it, eyeing the gum greedily. It took a minute or so, but soon enough Ruby and the kid had switched places. Ruby felt around until she found the hidden latch; this she turned until a hole opened up big enough for her to fit through. She cautiously eased herself into it, half in half out, like a person getting into a cold pool, when suddenly she slipped, let go and fell down a long dark tube, the door clanking shut over her.

She felt like Alice in Wonderland must have felt as she tumbled and slid and finally fell out of the tunnel, landing in a pitch-black nowhere.

‘Oh brother,’ she whined.

‘You made it,’ said a voice through the dark.

Ruby shrieked.

‘I didn’t know you were afraid of the dark kid?’

‘You shouldn’t creep up on people like that man.’

Ruby was lucky that she couldn’t see him smile; that would have put her nose out of joint worse than it was already. Hitch took her arm and led her along while she fumbled for her torch – she needn’t have bothered. The corridor went from dark to light, from stone grey to vivid green in about five paces, and at the end was a door painted the exact same shade. Hitch punched in a code and the door swung gently open.

They stepped into the large Spectrum atrium with its spiralling black and white floor and its huge domed ceiling; on the far side was Buzz the telephone operator sitting within her circular desk, surrounded by a flock of coloured telephones.

‘Hey Buzz!’ shouted Ruby.

Buzz peered at her over her unfashionable spectacles, spectacles that had not become unfashionable, but just never had been and never would be. Buzz responded with a feeble raise of her hand.

‘Friendly as ever,’ remarked Ruby.

‘Ah, she’s not really a kid-person,’ said Hitch.

‘Is she even a person-person?’ said Ruby.

‘No, I wouldn’t call Buzz a put people at their ease type; that’s kind of the point of her really,’ said Hitch. ‘LB doesn’t want someone chatty; she wants someone efficient.’

They walked over to the desk and waited for Buzz to finish her conversation, if you could call it a conversation – it seemed to merely be a whole lot of yeses, noes and the occasional instruction.

Buzz replaced the receiver and looked up at Hitch. She almost seemed to smile, but it could have been an involuntary mouth twitch caused by the throat lozenge she was sucking.

‘LB has requested you wait outside her office,’ she said, picking up a red receiver. ‘She can give you four minutes.’ Buzz began speaking down the phone in Mandarin.

Hitch and Ruby made their way to the huge door beyond which lay LB’s office. They sat down on the stylish chairs arranged nearby and waited and then waited some more.

The intercom symbol flashed on Hitch’s watch.

He spoke into it, the voice came back in his ear and he winced, almost imperceptibly, but he did wince. He looked at her.

‘LB,’ he said. ‘She wants a word.’

Ruby stood up and waited for Hitch to follow, but he stayed right where he was. ‘You not coming?’

‘No, you’re on your own kid. She wants to see you alone.’

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ asked Ruby.

Hitch raised an eyebrow.

‘Oh,’ said Ruby. The eyebrow communicated a lot – it wasn’t going to be good news. ‘Does she want to congratulate me on my work in the training field?’

‘That’s what I like to hear, a good positive attitude,’ said Hitch. ‘Think happy thoughts.’

Ruby beamed him a big fake smile. She turned to go.

‘Oh and kid, just remember: don’t make it any worse than it has to be,’ he warned. ‘I.e. I would suggest you lose the limp.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ said Ruby, meaning it. She needed all the help she could get. ‘Wish me luck,’ she sighed, walking over to the large black door.

‘I wouldn’t rely on luck,’ said Hitch.

Ruby knocked, waited for the voice to call ‘enter’ and went in.

LB was sitting at her white desk, studying pieces of paper covered in dense notes. The all-white office gleamed; there was no colour at all in that room other than the red nail polish on LB’s bare feet, the red lipstick on her lips and the red perspex file on her desk.

The file related to Ruby – she had seen it before. It contained a lot of information, Ruby’s past and present, her talents, her successes, her faults and her failures, and it was, Ruby feared, her faults and failures that LB wanted to discuss.

‘So Redfort, I hear you screwed up.’

‘I think you’re putting a very negative spin on it,’ said Ruby.

‘Please feel free to convince me that there is a positive spin to your performance – based on the fact that you completed your task arriving thirteen hours late?’

‘Twelve hours,’ muttered Ruby.

LB checked the document again. ‘Oh yes, let’s be accurate: twelve hours, fifty-seven minutes and three seconds late.’

That sounded worse.

‘I rustled the horse OK, I swam over the river, didn’t drown – I was just a little tardy is all.’

LB looked down at her papers. ‘Let me check that. . . no, here it would suggest, and I quote Agent Emerson’s words: “You completed your mission unnourished, ate nothing for almost two days and arrived bewildered and exhausted.”’ She gave the papers a second glance. ‘Oh yes, and: “You lost some valuable kit.”’

Ruby was about to speak, but LB held up her hand. ‘One moment,’ she said. ‘I see you are a stickler for accuracy so let me check which items you actually lost.’ LB read through the long list of missing kit before saying, ‘That’s right. Everything you were issued with.’

There was no mention of having been found injured, bleeding and unconscious by Sam Colt, no mention of him dropping her off just yards from base camp because she was barely able to walk. So Sam bent the rules. Ruby had suspected as much. She owed him one.

‘But I arrived, didn’t I?’

‘If crawling into camp is arriving, then I guess you did,’ said LB.

LB raised an eyebrow.

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but LB clucked her tongue to indicate she hadn’t finished.

‘And, to cap it all, you got sick. How incredibly careless.’

‘I appreciate your sympathy,’ said Ruby.

‘Cut it out Redfort, and by the way I should warn you that I have a chronic headache so if I were you I’d keep it short and stick to explaining what in the name of stupid was going on.’

‘The thing is I wasn’t really hungry,’ said Ruby.

‘I think we all know that had there been a donut tree out there it would have been quite a different story,’ said LB. ‘You failed to forage, failed to eat, failed to nourish your brain, you lost energy and you couldn’t navigate your way back to base in the time allocated.’

‘Look, I wasn’t going to share this with you, but I sorta lost my glasses.’ Ruby hadn’t meant to bring this up, but she was getting desperate. Perhaps it would bring out LB’s sympathetic side.

LB looked at her quizzically. ‘Your judgement is way off Redfort, if you think that’s going to put you back in a professional light.’

‘Yeah, but the thing is, I’ve learned from my mistakes,’ said Ruby.

‘The point of the exercise is to prove that you don’t make mistakes,’ countered LB.

Ruby sneezed again. ‘But I rustled the horse pretty well. So I caught the flu. I made it back, didn’t I? Isn’t that the whole point – surviving?’

‘You nearly caught your death. What’s the point of a dead agent?’

‘But I didn’t, I survived.’

‘Only because Emerson waited around for twelve hours, fifty-seven minutes and three seconds to bring you in – in my book that’s called getting rescued.’

‘Sometimes people need rescuing. You’re telling me you’ve never been rescued?’ said Ruby.

‘Not because I lost my glasses,’ said LB.

‘It doesn’t have to mean everything,’ argued Ruby.

LB looked at her hard. ‘In Spectrum’s book it means failure; maybe you’re just not cut out for this.’

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

‘You want me to make my decision now,’ she said, ‘or after I’ve had a cup of mint tea and swallowed two aspirin?’

Ruby kept her mouth shut.

‘If you’d prefer me to spend time evaluating your rather desperate performance instead of making a judgement here and now, then I’d keep your mouth shut, firmly shut, as in clamped, closed, zipped.’

Ruby said not a word. LB looked down at her files.

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