by Natalie Cox
About to slay a dragon.
I smile. Still the same old Rob.
Minecraft?
Yep.
Are you winning?
Need you ask?
Would you be up for an even more challenging task?
What sort?
An illicit one.
There is a long pause, presumably while Rob is hurling a flamethrower, and then my phone pings.
I’m listening.
* * *
Hackers are always up for a challenge—pique their curiosity and you’ve won. And because they are nonconformists, the more illicit the better, in hacker land. I knew Rob would bite, and a moment later he rings me. I give him all the details and he promises to get to work on it straightaway. Just as soon as he’s slain the dragon.
“How long will it take?” I ask.
“Dunno yet. A day?”
“Um. The thing is, the owner is due back tomorrow.”
“Then you might need to stall.”
Yikes.
The idea of stalling a woman like Camilla Delors makes my blood curdle. But hopefully it won’t come to that. I have total faith in Rob.
* * *
I pass a restless few hours with the dogs, who remain unsettled and needy. When I take them out to the paddock they bump around my legs like furry toddlers. Nick and Noel are grazing peacefully in the far corner, nibbling the bits of grass peeking out of the snow, but when we enter they trot gracefully over to us, stopping abruptly about ten feet away. I break the thin layer of ice that has formed on top of their water (whoops), then fork over some hay, which they chew contentedly, their jaws moving in a clockwise motion. I’ve brought a few small carrots from the kitchen and I feed them pieces, which they gingerly take from my fingers, staring at me with large glassy eyes. I have to admit they are rather adorable, with sweet, pointy ears and long bushy tails, not unlike those of a fox.
Later, after we’re inside, I ring my father on Skype to wish him Happy Christmas, even though I am no longer feeling very festive. When his face pops up on my screen, his expression immediately creases with concern. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”
I tell him about Judd and my frustrations with the police. I say nothing about Rob, but my father knows me only too well.
“Charlie, let the police handle it. This man could be ruthless.”
“Or he could be just a common dog thief.”
“‘He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.’”
“Um, are you channeling Kant there, Dad?”
“Yes. But I’m in complete accord with him on this point. He was a wise man, Charlie.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Have you spoken to your mother?”
“I sent her a text.”
“Charlie,” he admonishes.
“She’s half a galaxy away. Frolicking in the sun. Besides, it’s already Boxing Day in Australia.”
“Nevertheless, I’m sure she’d appreciate a call.”
“Fine. I’ll ring her.”
My father really is annoyingly reasonable.
* * *
An hour later, when I am just beginning to feel peckish, I hear a car door outside and in the next instant Hugo’s face looms large at the window. When I open the door, he beams at me expansively. “Happy Christmas!” He holds up a cling film–covered dish. “I brought a cheese plate.”
“Thanks. I was just starting to get hungry.”
“Actually, it’s for the dogs,” he confesses, stepping inside. “Malcolm is partial to Stilton,” he explains. “How are the alpacas settling in?”
“They aren’t.”
“Really? They looked very bonny just now.” He jerks a thumb toward the paddock.
“Hugo, you need to find somewhere else to keep them. Jez will hit the roof if they’re still here when she gets back.”
Hugo sighs. “I’m working on it. Give me a few more days.”
“How was Christmas with Constance and her family?”
“Fine. Apart from Uncle Claus, who got dressed up as some sort of hairy German devil-goat and then accidentally stabbed himself with a trident. Had to get an ambulance out to the house. And then Constance’s mother set fire to her hair when she lit the mulled wine.”
“Who lights mulled wine?”
“The entire German nation, apparently. Luckily the paramedics were good with burns as well as wounds. What about you?” He looks around the room, his eyes landing on Peggy. “How was canine Christmas?”
I quickly relate the tale of Judd’s theft and Mr. Mustache.
“Crikey! Good thing he didn’t steal the alpacas!”
Debatable.
Just then my phone pings with a text message. I am expecting to hear from Cal, but when I look down I see that it’s from Rob.
Yo! DVLA laughably easy to permeate.
Seriously? Are you in already?
Yep. Think I broke my own record.
What about the white van?
Have two good prospects.
I’m all ears.
Will send you data in a min.
You’re a star.
I’m a bloody constellation.
If you say so.
You owe me.
I consider this for a moment before replying.
Can I pay you in puppies?
* * *
“Hugo, I need to borrow your car,” I inform him as soon as I put down the phone. He frowns.
“Why?”
“Because the Škoda’s dead.”
Hugo glances worriedly out the window at his car. “You do realize it’s a vintage Ferrari?”
“Fine. You can drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“To get Judd.”
Hugo’s eyebrows shoot up with surprise. “Could this be construed as vigilantism?”
“Possibly.”
“Is that . . . prudent?”
“Maybe not. But if we don’t move quickly, we could lose Judd for good.”
“But this mustache chap. He could be dangerous.”
“I’m aware of that, Hugo.”
Hugo hesitates, frowning. “The thing is, valor was never one of my strong suits. At school I didn’t even play contact sports.”
“Relax. You’re just the getaway driver.”
“Let me get this straight: I stay in the car while you confront a dangerous criminal and recover stolen goods all by yourself?” I ponder this for a moment, then lift my chin stubbornly.
“Yes,” I reply. Really?
“With what, may I ask? Do you have some sort of weapon?”
I hesitate, Valko’s voice in my ear: Guns is better. I look around the room. There must be something I can use as a weapon. My mind races through the obvious candidates: knives, hammers, crowbars, cricket bats. The thought of carrying any one of these, much less using one, is frankly terrifying.
Then I realize that the perfect weapon is right under our noses.
chapter
23
It takes fifteen minutes, his favorite soft toy (a large, purple turtle) and a generous hunk of Stilton to coax Malcolm away from Peggy and the puppies. The Ferrari is only a two-seater, so Malcolm and I must share the passenger seat. I squeeze myself against the door so that his lanky body can squash in beside mine. He is so hunched over that his muzzle is practically plastered against the windscreen, and his doggy breath is hot and cheesy in my face. “Maybe we should put the top down?” I suggest, even though it is freezing outside.
“Good plan.” Hugo hits a button and the soft black top whines, then slowly folds back on itself. In another moment it is safely stowed and the three of us are staring up at the glorious night sky.
It’s a superb night for vigilantism.
Luckily we are warmly dre
ssed. Rob has sent me two addresses and we have already looked them up on Google Maps. One is in the village of Little Durnley, approximately eight miles to the south; the other is up on Dartmoor, about fourteen miles north and west. We head for Little Durnley first, hoping to get lucky, and anticipating that the roads on Dartmoor will be harder going with the snow. Our mood as we set out is unreasonably giddy, as if we’re on a grand tour rather than a covert and possibly dangerous recovery operation. Hugo begins to sing “White Christmas” and after a moment I join in. He glances over at me. “You’re not very musical, are you,” he remarks.
The roads are empty and we reach Little Durnley in less than fifteen minutes, by which time I cannot feel my face. We slow down as we enter the village and I direct Hugo. The address we are looking for is just off the high street, half a mile down a side road, and as we approach I spy a white van parked on the street in front of a small row house painted yellow. “There it is,” I say excitedly. We pull up alongside and I see large black letters painted on the side of the van.
ROYAL FLUSH PLUMBERS. NEVER RUN TO WASTE! CALL NOW!
Seriously?
“Wrong van,” I say with disappointment. Hugo is peering at the house, where an artificial white tree lit with blue lights looms in the front window.
“Just as well,” he says. “I don’t particularly care for their aesthetics.”
We are both half frozen, so we decide to put the top back on for the next leg of the journey. Hugo is forced to change into a lower gear as we head up onto the moor, as the roads here are still covered with snow, but I have to admit he is a skilled driver and the Ferrari handles surprisingly well. Around us the wind howls, occasionally sending up swirling coils of glittering snow, picked out by our headlights like wildly cavorting ghosts. The atmosphere is all very Wuthering Heights, and as we drive on in silence, our mood sobers. I track our progress on my phone, and as the blue dot approaches the circled red-dot destination, I feel a strong sense of foreboding. Malcolm, too, seems on edge, his eyes alert in the darkness and his brow creased with quiet alarm.
Suddenly, and without warning, my phone battery dies.
Nooooo. I am a triple idiot.
“Hugo, where’s your phone?” I say urgently.
“With Constance.”
“Why?!”
“Because she’s addicted to Candy Crush.”
“Why doesn’t she play it on her own phone?” I shout, practically hysterical.
“Because she’s a Luddite. And her phone is ancient.”
By now we have turned off the main road and are entering the small village of Hexmoor, which sounds vaguely ominous. Hugo slows to a crawl and drives past the village green. Without the aid of modern devices, we are forced to search the old-fashioned way: I peer out the window to the right, Hugo to the left, and Malcolm stares straight ahead with a look of focused intensity, even though he does not know what we are searching for. We loop round the green and turn down a side street, then circle back and try another, but find nothing. We crisscross the tiny village one street at a time, passing rows of silent stone cottages, Christmas trees sparkling in front windows, but we do not see a single white van.
“Are you certain it was this village?” asks Hugo dubiously. My mind flies to the red circle in my mind.
“Yes,” I say. Maybe?
“It’s not here,” he says finally, and I detect a note of relief in his voice. Just then I spot a small track leading slightly downhill through a forest on the edge of the village.
“Try there,” I say impulsively. Malcolm suddenly stiffens, his spine and ears erect, and as he does my heart begins to thump wildly inside my chest. Hugo bumps the Ferrari down the track carefully, as the snow here is untouched, and suddenly I see something far ahead in the distance—a tiny prefab bungalow with a dirty white van parked in front.
“Stop! That’s it!” I say excitedly. Hugo halts the car abruptly, his face suddenly ashen, and switches off the headlights. The lane is surrounded by a dark, scraggly forest of thin trees; the house, and the van are about one hundred meters ahead. “We’ll walk from here,” I tell him. “You turn the car around so it’s facing the right direction. But keep the headlights off.”
“OK,” he says, hesitantly. As I start to get out, he stops me with a hand on my arm. “Charlie, what’s the plan?” he asks pensively. I pause.
The plan?
I realize in that instant that there is no plan. I cannot simply march up to the front door and demand Judd, even with Malcolm’s imposing presence at my side.
“Let me go and have a look first,” I say finally. “Then I’ll come back here and we’ll make a plan.”
He considers this. “Promise?” he says. “No lone heroics?”
I nod and he releases my arm. I open the car door and slip out into the trees, skidding and sliding through the muddy snow toward the bungalow. Ahead of me the house is silent; there are two front windows, both with curtains drawn, and one of them is lit from within. As I draw near I hear the sound of a television through the thin walls. I circle around the outside of the house to have a look at the rear. There is a small paved area just outside the back door, which opens up into a large unkempt area of scraggly lawn surrounded by bushes and trees. Paw prints of all sizes dot the snow across the entire area. Clearly Judd isn’t the only one here.
I am just creeping toward the back door to see if it is locked, when suddenly I hear the sound of dogs barking inside. I freeze. I hear movement, then after another moment an outside light comes on, beaming straight down at me. I dive behind a thick hedge that runs down one side of the lawn and crouch down. At the same time I hear the back door opening. “Out, you lot. All of you,” says a male voice loudly.
Mr. Mustache!
I peek through the hedge and see him standing on the rear step, smoking a cigarette. In the next instant a large pack of dogs comes bounding out of the house in a blur. I count five in all: two whippets; one small, white Scottish terrier; a long-eared beagle; and a yellow retriever.
Disappointingly, none of them is Judd.
Where the hell is he?
The dogs instantly scatter around the garden to do their business. I watch through the thick hedge as the beagle slowly works his way toward me, sniffing. Eventually he reaches the hedge, then pauses to lift his leg against it. After he has finished, he stops, raises his nose in my direction and begins to bark repeatedly.
Nooooo. Bad dog!
“Barney! Shut up!” Mr. Mustache shouts from the step. The beagle stops barking, looks at me for a long moment, his nostrils twitching, then whimpers and wanders off to the other side of the garden. Mr. Mustache stubs out his cigarette and goes back inside for a moment, and I am about to sneak back through the woods to the car, when he reappears a moment later with a sixth dog on a lead.
Judd!
He bends down and unclips the lead, and Judd skips down the steps gracefully, like the triple champion he is. He wanders over to the other side of the garden and immediately lifts his leg against a shrub. I am wondering if I can call to him in a loud whisper, when suddenly I hear strange electronic music floating across the lawn, accompanied by a heavy bass and a gravelly male voice.
I’m sexy and I know it . . . I’m sexy and I know—
The music stops just as abruptly as it started.
“Yeah?” Mr. Mustache says into his phone. He turns away for a moment and steps back into the kitchen. Just then Barney the beagle comes back to the hedge, sniffing intently, and circles round the outside until he is standing right in front of me. He growls and I shake my head in horror, raising a finger to my lips (because all dogs understand the universal sign for shhhhh), whereupon Barney begins to bark with renewed vigor. In another instant the Scottie comes tearing round the hedge and joins him, growling and then yapping, and within seconds the other four dogs come racing around to join them, including Judd at the rear, w
ho hurls himself right past them, and flings himself onto me, licking my face. I grab hold of his collar and start to pull him away when suddenly I hear Mr. Mustache snarling.
“Oy! What’s all that noise! Get back inside! Now!”
I yank on Judd and begin to run back through the trees, awkwardly stooping over so that I can hold on to his collar. The other dogs are now in a complete frenzy of excitement; they circle along behind us, barking loudly and snapping at my heels. Mr. Mustache swears, then I hear the back door slam and his footsteps as he runs down the steps. I let go of Judd’s collar so I can run faster and shout for him to follow, and all seven of us go racing through the snowy woods, Mr. Mustache somewhere behind us. It’s dark and the branches whip across my face as I run, and I am just beginning to wonder if I am heading in the right direction when suddenly I see the blare of headlights come on ahead, and hear Hugo’s voice calling anxiously in the distance.
“Charlie?!”
I stumble toward the light, breaking free of the trees and practically launch myself out onto the track, where in the distance I see the silhouette of a man and a small pony in the headlights.
Malcolm!
I sprint the last hundred feet and hear Mr. Mustache in the woods behind me, calling to the dogs. “Barney! Duchess! Ralph! Kitty! Get back here!”
Kitty? What kind of person calls their dog Kitty?
“Charlie!” shouts Hugo. I look up and can just make out Hugo’s face, backlit with fear. Next to him, Malcolm stands tall, his head and ears erect, his enormous paws planted squarely in front of him. Suddenly Malcolm begins to bark, louder than I’ve heard him, woofing over and over in a massive baritone that rolls out across the forest. One by one the other dogs fall away as Judd and I race along toward the headlights. When we reach the car I hurl myself at it, yanking open the door.
“Come on! We’ve got to go!” I shout, and we grab Judd and Malcolm by their collars and heave them into the Ferrari, squashing their bodies into the middle of the front seat in a jumble of paws, limbs, muzzles, and tails, just as Mr. Mustache breaks free from the forest not fifty yards away.