Sleuth on Skates

by Clémentine Beauvais

  Sesame Seade

  Master’s Lodge

  Christ’s College

  Cambridge CB2 3BU

  UK

  So my pregnant duck quacked at me, and I was so happy to see her I quacked back, which surprised her a little. And then she joyously went on swimming, her little tail waggling from left to right like Mum’s forefinger when she says “Don’t do this, Sophie.” I followed her, searing through the black waters. A few minutes later she stopped in front of a pretty little back garden and jumped out of the water on to the mooring platform.

  I heaved myself on to the bank—my lower body still inside the canoe—and crawled on the grass where I struggled out of the boat in the manner of the hermit crab leaving its shell for a bigger one. I hid the canoe and the paddle behind a big bush of reeds and walked up to the back of cottage in my socks. The house was mostly dark, but one of the top floor windows was bathed in milky white light. I climbed on a compost bin and lifted myself up on the bow-window. The duck quacked at me in encouragement. The soft light from inside the house poured on to the window sill, painting it back to its daytime color—pink.

  I carefully folded my finger and, with the tip of the first knuckle, tapped the glass three short times.

  Inside, something ruffled.

  I tapped another three short times.

  Inside, something shuffled.

  I tapped another three short times.

  Inside, something scuffled.

  And suddenly the sash-window slid up, and I was dragged inside by powerful hands, which pulled me to a powerful chest, holding a powerful sword right under my little neck!

  (It was actually Jenna’s quite small hands, pulling me to her quite skinny chest, holding a pen-knife. But in the heat of the action, it feels much scarier.)

  “Who are you?” she hissed.

  “Sesame Seade,” I hissed back (my name is easily hissed).

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one. No one. Certainly not Cooperture.”

  She let go of me and turned me around. “You’re just a kid,” she observed, a bit baffled. “How did you get here?”

  “I canoed up the Cam.”

  Now I was inside, I could see where the white light came from—a phone on the desk. There was no other light switched on in the bedroom, which was a sweet little cottage bedroom with many flower patterns.

  Jenna Jenkins sat on the bed and sighed. “I’m not even surprised. I have no idea what’s going on these days.”

  “I’ve come to ask you about this whole affair,” I said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. “I know lots of things about what happened, but some pieces of the jigsaw are still missing.”

  “What do you know?”

  “You never went to London. You were kidnapped by Professor Ian Philips and his brother, Archie Philips, and spent three days in a broom cupboard at the Fitzwilliam Museum.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

  I went on, “Stacy Vance, your best friend, discovered that something fishy was going on at the computer science department—something which Archie Philips was involved in. She told you, and you started investigating the case for UniGossip. You found out that it had all to do with Cooperture’s plans to smother Cambridge colleges in banknotes, helped by Ian Philips who organized the meetings. And you were about to tell Jeremy Hopkins about it when you suddenly vanished. Three days later, you reappeared like nothing had happened and faked depression. As for Stacy, she’s now pretending there wasn’t anything weird going on at all, and planning to spend the end of the week cheerfully skipping across a stage in a tatty tutu.”

  Jenna was just looking at her fingers. I waited for her to speak, and finally she simply said, “What don’t you know?”

  “Well, for a start, I don’t know what Cooperture and the Philipses have actually done that’s so wrong that they need to convert a broom cupboard into a dark dungeon to lock up anyone who might have found out. Secondly, I don’t know how they managed to kidnap you. I also don’t know how you found out Cooperture were involved. Finally, I don’t know why you didn’t go straight to the police after being released by Professor Philips—if he truly released you, that is, and you didn’t run away.”

  “You’re not a bad sleuth, you know?” she mumbled. “OK, I’ll answer some of your questions. It all started one evening when Stacy decided to have a bit of fun breaking into password-protected parts of the computer science department’s network. She stumbled upon a piece of very suspicious software belonging to Archie Philips. She saw immediately that it wasn’t anything legal. And she decided to tell me about it.”

  “Why tell you and not the police?”

  “Well, see, she was stuck. Firstly, she’d found it illegally—it’s not exactly OK to break into protected bits of a network. But also, she didn’t know if Archie had been working on it for the wrong reasons, or if it was just an exercise in programming. So I decided to investigate. I went to the department to spy on Archie Philips, and after a while I overheard a phone conversation between him and someone else. Archie said that the software was now ready, and that his job stopped there—it was now the task of the other person, the one he was calling, to get Cooperture in touch with the colleges.”

  “Ian Philips! His brother.”

  “Yes. I guessed that when he said ‘Daddy would be proud of us!’ before hanging up.”

  “Sounds like a pleasant kind of family.”

  “From there, it was easy enough to find Ian Philips. Since he seemed to be the one who’d organized the whole project—he was the brain, and Archie the hands, if that makes sense—I phoned Ian. I told him everything I knew. Very smoothly and politely, he convinced me to come and meet him at the Museum. I arrived, he asked me to wait a minute in that little room. And then he simply closed the door on me. It wasn’t even a proper abduction.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “Because he didn’t want me around when Cooperture came. He and his brother kept me there until they’d left and all the deals were done and all the money had gone through.”

  “Why didn’t you just scream? If you could chomp on McVitie’s, you could have screamed.”

  “No, I had good reasons to keep quiet and just wait for my release. Let’s say we’d started to negotiate my silence.”

  “Negotiate? What do you mean?”

  “Right, I think you’re in need of good advice . . . Sesame, is that right? Sesame, I have no idea how you gathered so much information about this whole thing, but I seriously recommend you forget everything about it. They persuaded me to forget everything about it, too.”

  “Persuade you? How did they persuade you?”

  She laughed sombrely. “When you’ve got that sort of money, it’s easy to persuade a student who’s got a £90,000 debt and a brother in need of private care. When you’ve got that sort of money, there’s nothing you can’t buy. Not even silence.”

  “But what is it that they’ve done? Tell me—what is it that they don’t want anyone to find out?”

  “I thought you’d seen Stacy. She knows more or less what’s going on, even though she didn’t know it was linked to Cooperture until I found it out.”

  “She wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”

  “Of course she wouldn’t. If she opened her mouth, not only would she be in big trouble, but the show would also collapse. And Edwin would drag her name through the mud on the national ballet scene. And she’s very keen to become a professional ballerina, Stacy is.”

  “Well, if she won’t tell me, you’ll have to—what is it that they’ve done?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said, firmly shaking her head. “I can’t. That’s the price I paid for my release.”

  “Is Archie Philips involved in it? Or just his brother?”

  “Let’s not play riddles,” she replied.

  “Is it really illegal?”

&nbs
p; “Perfectly illegal.”

  “Is anyone going to die?”

  “No, it’s not like that. Listen, I said I didn’t want to play riddles!” she moaned, getting up. “It’s not like that—it’s not death, it’s not drugs, it’s not that kind of violence. I wouldn’t let it happen if it was that.”

  “So you think it’s not a very serious matter?”

  “I think,” she said carefully, “it’s not serious enough for me to reject an offer like the one they made me.” She walked around the room, checked her phone nervously. “I’ve said way too much already. I’ll stop here. Sorry to disappoint.”

  I stayed there another ten minutes, nagging her with questions—I thought I’d had years of practice with my parents—but it was as if her lips had been sealed with a C in a circle. Eventually, I gave up.

  “Right. I’ll see myself out.”

  “Suit yourself. And believe me, Sesame—I don’t think you’ll ever find out what’s actually going on, but if you ever do—just let it go, OK? Don’t think about it. It’s not worth putting yourself at risk for something that doesn’t put anyone in actual danger.”

  “Then what . . .?”

  “Just go.”

  I climbed over the window sill, leapt down to the moist grass, and went to fetch my canoe and paddle. When I looked back, I saw Jenna’s face at the window in the dusty white light. I waved to her, but she just closed the window and turned off her phone. The whole cottage went black.

  “Quack.”

  “You’re still here?”

  The pregnant duck accompanied me all the way back to Cambridge. Maybe as a mum-to-be she felt a bit protective of me. Or maybe she was just going back to Emmanuel College. I took the canoe, paddle and life jacket back into the hangar and put my roller skates on. The city was entirely asleep, and skating back I felt like I’d never been so loud in my life. Thankfully, no one opened their windows to check where the thundering noise came from. Even the gargoyles were slumbering instead of guarding the colleges.

  There was no police car in front of Christ’s, so I assumed my parents hadn’t discovered I was gone, for which I thanked whoever was in charge. I kicked off my roller skates, climbed up the tree, collapsed into bed, and dreamt of swans.

  IX

  When I stumbled into the living-room in the morning, Mum and Dad were emitting lots of wows and ahs. Assuming reasonably that they were meant for me, I said “Oh please, parents, don’t, it’s a bit embarrassing,”but I then realized that they were both looking at something on a table which was neither me nor a picture of me.

  “Ah, Sophie! Look at that,” said Mum. “We’ve just received a catalogue of a new range of mobile phones called Phone4Kidz!”

  “Phone4Kidz?” I repeated, horror-struck.

  “Look: phones which are especially designed for children like you! ‘No nasties in these kid-friendly phones that will keep your child in check and leave you worry-free!’ That’s just what we need.”

  I threw a disbelieving glance at the catalogue. The phones looked like walkie-talkie toys for three-year-olds. One of them only had four buttons: a green phone-shaped one to receive a call, a pink one with an M to “Call Mummy,” a blue one with a D to “Call Daddy,” and a black car-shaped one to “Call the police.”

  “Right, darling,” said Mum, “we’ll pick you up after school and take you to the Carphone Warehouse. Apparently they sell some of these phones . . .” she shuffled through the catalogue. “Yes, they do. And then we’ll have tea at Auntie’s! Just the three of us. It’ll be fun! What a lovely coincidence that we got this catalogue today of all days!”

  She babbled on about it, but it was as if her voice was coming from a distant galaxy. My brain had plucked one word out of her speech. Coincidence.

  As she slapped the catalogue back on the table, I noticed the green and white C in a circle.

  Coincidence.

  Heavily, I turned the catalogue around.

  Phone4Kidz are proud to be marketed by Cooperture Ltd, London.

  “Mum,” I said in a voice that was ridiculously high-pitched, “did you say you looked up mobile phones on the Internet the other day?”

  “Yes, I did a quick search.”

  “From here? From the College’s Internet?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Which keywords did you type in?”

  “Can’t remember, darling.”

  “I’m sure you can remember if you squeeze your eyelids shut and stick out your tongue like this, look . . .”

  Mum tried (she was in a good mood). “Oh yes, I typed something in the way of ‘Mobile phones suitable for children.’ But I didn’t look for very long, and we don’t need to worry about it now anyway. Get ready, darling, you’re leaving in half an hour. . . . What are you doing?”

  “Writing.”

  “Writing what?”

  “A letter.”

  “Is this really the right time? You haven’t even showered yet!”

  “Sorry, have to do it now.”

  “Who are you writing to?”

  “Leave her alone, Agnes, she’s allowed to have her little secrets,” chided Dad, craning his neck like an ostrich to look at what I was writing.

  But I’d finished. Swiftly, I folded the letter in three, slipped it in an envelope, and went and hid in the toilet to write the address:

  Jeremy Hopkins

  Gonville & Caius College

  I then ran to the Porters’ Lodge to drop the letter in the intra-university post box. It would reach Jeremy this very morning. Then he would know everything I knew. And he would run to the police and they would believe him (no one ever believes me, because apparently I have a considerable track record of lying).

  The last piece of the jigsaw had finally slotted into place.

  What Cooperture Ltd had asked colleges to install on their Internet servers wasn’t just an ad—oh, far from it—that was just what they’d told colleges. It was actually a spy—a piece of software that tracked all activity on computers to find customers for their brands. Hundreds of students and staff members were being spied on by Cooperture at this very moment—their activities filed, their tastes analyzed. And catalogues, adverts and promotional products were sent according to them.

  That was why Fiona the medicine student was now parading around with a medicine-themed hoodie! That was why the Happy Ducks catalogue had waddled its way through our front door just after Dad had researched ducks online! That was why the fatal flyer for farcical phones had fallen out of the heavens into my parents’ hands! All brought to you courtesy of Cooperture. Ka-ching! It was easy to see how Cooperture would quickly earn back all the dosh they’d dished out, and much more.

  The C in the circle was everywhere, like a little green eye, spying on all of us. Because of it, everyone in the university had become Cooperture’s prey. Because of it, Jenna Jenkins had had to give up on being a journalist, a ballerina, and a student. Because of it, my parents were going to buy me a phone that would make the entire world howl with laughter.

  And I was pretty sure all of these, especially the last, were completely illegal.

  “They’ll all rot in a rat-infested gaol!”I promised the College crest as I passed the gate.

  Not enough of a punishment.

  “They’ll all be hanged by the feet above a caiman-infested pool!” I promised the statue of Henry VIII as I passed by King’s College.

  Still wasn’t enough of a punishment.

  “Their eyes will be nibbled on alive by a horde of poisonous red ants while a goat licks their feet with her sandpaper-like tongue!” I promised the thousand bikes aligned inside Peterhouse College.

  And then I shook my fist at the Fitzwilliam Museum, inside which the two brothers were probably drinking champagne to their success.

  I was going to tell Toby and Gemma everything about my stupendous findings, but unexpectedly, I had to deal with two other problems.

  Firstly, Gemma: “I’m completely stressed out about tomorrow’s
performance. What if I get it all wrong? What if I forget how to play, how to speak, how to breathe, what if I throw up all over my cello? What if someone falls into the pit right on to my head?”

  Secondly, Toby: “Guess what! My dad’s been asked to prepare the buffet for the party after the show! It’s going to be awesome! Oh, I’m still not coming to the show, though. I’d rather eat a purée of my own bowels with chopped tarragon.”

  “OK, first things first: Gemz, everything’s going to be all right. You’re the Picasso of cello-playing. Everyone will give you a standing ovation at the end. In fact they’ll ask you to sign their bare chests after the show. Second things second: Toby, what’s that about? What after-party?”

  “Well, after tomorrow’s performance people will be heading to the art gallery at the corner of Jesus Lane and Sidney Street.”

  “I don’t know street names.”

  “The art gallery that had a painting of a naked man in the window last month.”

  “Oh, yes, that one!” (Mum and Dad kept finding excuses to go another route while that naked man was still in the window.)

  “Anyway, there’ll be a party there to celebrate the first night of the show! Dad’s been asked to organize the buffet. He’s being paid a lot for it!”

  “I bet,” I said somberly. I thought I could guess who was paying him.

  “You can come as my guest, Sesame,” said Gemma. “It’ll be fun! And you know what? Professor Philips will be there! I saw his name on the list. He’s a guest of Edwin’s dad.”

  “Yes, I’ll come along. I’ll definitely come along. Right. Will you listen to me now?”

  They listened intently, and I told them the whole story. Twice, since Toby didn’t get the idea the first time, but even then he said, “I can’t see what’s wrong with getting adverts for things you actually like, as opposed to adverts for snow tires or stair lifts,” and Gemma had to say, “Toby. Trust us. It’s not good.”