The Littlest Detective in London

by Suzy Brownlee

  ‘Once, when I was a little girl like you and I was sad, my grandfather gave me an old book. And there was a special poem in that book.’

  ‘Really?’ said Clemmy, ‘Can I see it?’

  Mummy had smiled and said: ‘It’s quite a hard poem to read, and of course you can see it, but I can tell you the message right now.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Clemmy had asked excitedly.

  ‘Okay, but you have to listen carefully.’

  Clemmy had held her breath.

  ‘It says, if you have courage, you can achieve anything.’

  Confused, Clemmy hadn’t understood. ‘What does that mean Mummy?’

  But Mummy wouldn’t tell her. ‘When you are old enough, you will know.’

  Today, dealing with Natasha, Clemmy finally understood what that poem meant.

  Taking out the old book, Tales of Forever, she touched the cover gently. Then she opened it to her favourite poem. It was called Quella.

  She loved reading the poem, and even loved the strange markings her mother had written all over it, although she didn’t understand them.

  Then she traced her finger down the poem, and there five lines down, the words jumped out at her. They were the very words that Clemmy had seen at the old spies’ house!

  Careful little elves walk

  Slowly, slowly

  Careful little elves! The exact words that were on the old spies’ house. Seeing her mother’s pencil markings, Clemmy was sure that there had to be some connection between that house and her Mummy’s disappearance. But how? Mummy didn’t even know Mrs Mac. Daddy had found the old babysitter last year, from a chocolate-smudged ad pinned to the library notice board.

  Yet those markings appeared on that book the day she disappeared. If Clemmy could discover what Mummy’s other markings meant, she might be closer than ever to finding her.

  Unfortunately at that moment that seemed as hard as trying to find Mrs Mac in the Harrod’s Food Hall.

  Chapter Six

  Origami Pete nearly to the rescue

  THE NEXT DAY CLEMMY FOUND THE DOOR to Mrs Mac’s flat open, so she walked in without knocking, and seeing the kitchen unusually unoccupied, she padded quietly down the hallway towards the spare bedroom.

  There was a sight to behold – Mrs Mac storing something in a plastic bag in the attic space. She was precariously balanced, her spindly thin legs shaking unsteadily on a rickety chair.

  Clemmy wondered whether or not she should offer to hold the chair, in case Mrs Mac fell off. But she figured that if she did, Mrs Mac would discover that Clemmy knew about the evidence.

  Before there was a chance to get a better look at what Mrs Mac was up to, the sound of a rather loud car pulling up in the street outside stopped her. Clemmy went to the living room window and looked down at the road below.

  ‘Uh oh!’ She could see a man being pushed into the building by none other than a young girl with long dark hair topped with a white flat cap – a girl who looked exactly like Natasha Commonov.

  Clemmy panicked. Natasha had help now. Things were definitely getting worse.

  ‘Mrs Mac, Mrs Mac!’ Clemmy screamed, realising there was no time to be subtle.

  ‘Who is that?’ Mrs Mac appeared in the living room. ‘Oh, Clementine. Thank goodness. You had me worried. Why didn’t you ring the doorbell when you arrived?’

  Clemmy grabbed Mrs Mac’s hand. ‘Quick, let’s go. She’s coming.’

  ‘Who, dear? Who is coming?’

  ‘Natasha Commonov, and this time she has help.’

  ‘Boiled sweets and radish! Not you too! I told Ludwig and I’ll tell you the same. That girl is in boarding school in Slakistan! Besides, how do you know about her?’ Mrs Mac peered sternly at Clemmy.

  Pulling her by the hands, Clemmy told her there was no time to explain now.

  ‘I promise you, it’s her!’

  ‘Clementine Bird stop being silly this instant. I am busy, you know.’ Mrs Mac shook herself free. ‘Now, where was that block of chocolate I had to, er, taste before I give it to Lucinda for her birthday.

  … In a police car somewhere in W2 ...

  Origami Pete still could not believe that a couple of kids would plan a bombing.

  ‘Where is the phone registered, Stu-san?’

  ‘Slakistan. MI5 thinks it might be connected to an international crime family known as Commonov.’

  Origami Pete looked surprised. ‘I thought the only Commonov left was in jail.’

  ‘Vlad? He is, we checked.’ Stu was scratching his head. Pete had obviously done his homework. ‘Maybe it’s a mistake. Or a joke?’

  Suddenly, the radio crackled into life.

  ‘Pete and Stu, you there?’

  ‘Ah so, Radioperson-san,’ said Origami Pete. Stu glared at him in disgust.

  ‘That phone you gave us. We want you to check out the addresses in that message. They belong to retired spies. Ask if they are okay and see if they know anything about the phone and its contents.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Stu. ‘Just give us the first address.’

  The voice on the radio shuffled some papers around and said: ‘A Mrs Mackleberry at Flat 6, 32 Hays High Road, Bayswater.’

  ‘On the way, Radioperson-san,’ said Origami Pete, giving the thumbs up to his grouchy partner.

  … Trapped in Mrs Mackleberry’s flat …

  Clemmy had no idea where they could go. Either they could jump out the window and fall to certain death four floors down, or run out the front door, into the arms of Natasha and the man who was with her. The thought of the man made Clemmy shiver. Any man who was working for Natasha Commonov was bound to be big and scary.

  Mrs Mac was still in the spare bedroom, fiddling with something under her bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Clemmy.

  ‘Er, re-packing Lucinda’s birthday present,’ said Mrs Mac, wiping a smudge of chocolate from her mouth.

  Clemmy gasped. ‘You’re not getting a gun?’

  Mrs Mac tut-tutted. ‘Of course not. Far too dangerous to have guns at home, dear.’

  ‘A knife?’ asked Clemmy.

  ‘Clementine Bird, what kind of person do you think I am?’

  ‘A retired British spy?’ replied Clemmy.

  ‘Yes, but I was a dignified spy. I didn’t go around stabbing and shooting people.’

  ‘There,’ she stood up, satisfied with her task. ‘Looks just like a new packet, don’t you think?’

  Clemmy wanted to ask how Mrs Mac had protected herself at work, but a thunderous knocking on the front door distracted her.

  ‘It’s her,’ whispered Clemmy.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Clementine. It can’t be the Commonov girl. It’s probably the postman. It is my birthday soon, you know. I am expecting a few cakes. There is a very tasty Hungarian torte that a friend in Budapest is sending me.’

  Clemmy hoped that Mrs Mac didn’t have a heart attack when she discovered who was at the front door. A little scared, she stood off to the side of the door, and watched as Mrs Mac opened it, leaving the chain on.

  ‘Ello Mrs Mackleberry. May I speak with you?’ A young female Slakistanian voice.

  Clemmy’s heart was pounding hard. Her hand crept over her mouth. She didn’t want Natasha to hear her breathing.

  Mrs Mac slammed the door shut.

  ‘Honeycomb and carrots! You were right, Clementine Bird! That girl out there looks exactly like Natasha Commonov!’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Clemmy whispered, not at all overjoyed at being right about Natasha. She was more worried about what Natasha would do when she caught her.

  ‘Leave her to me,’ said Mrs Mac, pushing Clemmy into the bathroom and telling her to lock the door. ‘I am sure that I can reason with her. She is, after all, a mere girl.’

  ‘Wait, Mrs Mac …’ Clemmy knew that Natasha couldn’t be reasoned with, and calling the police was really the only option, but Mrs Mac was shooshing her with her hand.

  ‘Go, go. It will be al
right.’

  … A few moments later …

  Natasha and her henchman had tied Mrs Mac to her stove with a piece of grubby old rope.

  Mrs Mac decided that Natasha was definitely a chip off the old Commonov block. She was far ruder than her father, and her father was ruder than a streaker at a football final!

  ‘Right, old lady. I want to know two things. I want to know where zat busy little body is, and I want ze evidence you have regarding my father.’

  Mrs Mackleberry was rather surprised by Natasha’s appearance. She was certainly beautiful, and her clothes were clearly the finest stolen money could buy, but there was something in those clear almond eyes that made her appear much older than her fourteen years. This girl, without a doubt, could easily run the Commonov crime family without breaking a fingernail.

  ‘I said, I want ze girl, and I want ze evidence.’ Natasha was annoyed at having to deal with the batty old woman. Kids and old people – no wonder Father had always talked about retiring to the middle of a jungle in South America. Ferocious snakes and spiders would surely be easier to deal with.

  ‘Evidence? What evidence?’

  Natasha leaned over and put her face close to Mrs Mac’s.

  ‘Just tell me where it is or I will turn on ze gas to zis stove, then light a match and blow up zis building – with you in it.’

  ‘The girl is not here. She’s at school. And there is no evidence.’

  Natasha reached over and swivelled one of the buttons on the top of the stove. A hissing sound revealed the gas was definitely escaping.

  Mrs Mac realised she had to do something, and fast. ‘I don’t have it, dear. I burnt it years ago.’

  ‘Really? Well zat is not what I hear.’ Natasha swung around and poked the chest of the man who was helping her.

  ‘Get moving, look for it.’ Small, bedraggled Hench shuffled off towards the bedrooms.

  In spite of her predicament, Mrs Mac found the slight, spindly man amusing.

  She recalled that Vladimir Commonov had surrounded himself with tough, beefy-looking men. Who was this scrawny person Natasha was with?

  ‘That’s not a nice way to speak to him dear. What’s his name?’

  ‘Hench,’ said Natasha, replying automatically. Then: ‘It’s none of your business whether I am nice to him or not. All you have to worry about is keeping me happy so I don’t blow you up into a thousand little pieces.’ She looked Mrs Mac up and down. ‘Or in your case, a trillion little pieces.’

  Mrs Mac wondered if she could manoeuvre her considerable bulk so that she could turn the gas off with her teeth. She prayed that Clementine Bird would stay well hidden in the small bathroom.

  ‘You should be careful, dear. You could blow yourself up too.’

  ‘Do you zink I am afraid to die, old lady? After what you did to my father, I don’t care about anything except freeing him.’

  ‘You can’t free him if you are dead.’

  ‘Then you had better tell me where ze evidence is, hadn’t you?’

  …In Mrs Mac’s bathroom …

  Clemmy could hear everything, because the walls in Mrs Mac’s flat were paper thin.

  Gosh, that Natasha is really crazy. She perched on the edge of the bath. Think Clemmy, think! At one end of the flat was the henchman, ominously called Hench, who was ransacking Mrs Mac’s bedroom. At the other was crazy Natasha. Either way she was likely to get caught in a nutcase sandwich.

  ‘Courage,’ she reminded herself of Mummy’s poem. ‘I am not going to allow that Slakistanian crime bimbo to decide if and when I die!’

  Looking around, she noticed a strange little fitting on the ceiling. A smoke detector. Clemmy knew about those. Daddy had one in his office, and apparently they were quite easy to set off.

  ‘You don’t want to set them off by mistake, Clem. The fire brigade charges businesses lots of money for false alarms, you know.’

  In Daddy’s building, the fire brigade came when the alarms went off. So if she set the alarm off in this bathroom, Natasha might just be scared off by loud, red fire engines.

  But how to set it off? She needed something to burn. What in this bathroom would make that smoke detector start screaming?

  Looking in the drawers by the sink, Clemmy searched through the messy contents.

  Stockings? No.

  Makeup? No.

  Ugly plastic shower cap? Definitely not. Clemmy opened the next drawer and there was a small packet of matches from a restaurant. Perfect. She wasn’t allowed to play with matches, but she was sure Daddy wouldn’t object if she could save the lives of everyone in the building.

  Clemmy took the matches and stood on the bath, but there were a least two metres between her and the smoke detector. Something else to stand on, that was what she needed. But apart from the toilet, which was too far away from the detector and quite immovable, there was no way to reach the detector. She had to burn something that would cause loads of smoke.

  But there was nothing in here that would burn. Unless ...

  Clemmy looked above her and there, hanging on the shower rail, was the hugest pair of white underpants she had ever seen. A label stuck to them said: WARNING, HIGH FIRE DANGER.

  Clemmy smiled. Perfect. She pulled them down from the rail, put them in the bath, right under the tap, so that they wouldn’t start a real fire, and quickly lit a match.

  … Back in the kitchen …

  Natasha was fuming. ‘It must be here. It must.’

  Hench shrugged. ‘Can’t find it.’

  ‘I told you dear, it doesn’t exist,’ said Mrs Mac, twisting in the rope and trying to keep her face away from the gas.

  Turning to Mrs Mac, the girl grabbed the old woman’s arm. ‘And I told you, I don’t care what you zink. Now, be quiet.’

  All of a sudden, a piercing shriek had them all covering their ears.

  ‘What is zat?’ screamed Natasha at Mrs Mac.

  ‘That would be the smoke alarm,’ said Mrs Mac with a smile, knowing exactly who had set it off. She had clearly underestimated her young charge.

  … Outside the Bayswater building …

  ‘Can you hear that?’ asked Stu.

  Origami Pete was already out of the police car and running for the stairs. ‘Come on, Stu-san. It’s coming from the fourth floor. Flat 6!’

  The two policemen jumped the stairs two at a time. So concerned were they about a possible fire, and the rampaging tenants who were racing down the stairs in panic, that they did not notice a pretty fourteen-year-old girl and her puny companion slink past towards the exit.

  … In Mrs Mac’s flat …

  Hearing the front door open, Clemmy turned on the taps in the bath to put the burning underpants out, then snuck out of the bathroom and into the outside hallway just in time to see Natasha and her friend racing down the stairs. Running back into the flat, she found Mrs Mac tied to the stove.

  ‘Turn off the gas and untie me, Clementine. There are scissors over there on the counter top.’

  Clemmy opened a window, turned off the gas and freed Mrs Mac – then realised there was something she needed to do, right away.

  But the screeching alarm was so piercing Mrs Mac was calling for Clemmy to get downstairs immediately. She didn’t want the fire brigade to arrive and ask why they hadn’t bothered to leave. And she certainly couldn’t tell them about the Commonovs. That was a matter for the Retired Spies Network.

  Clemmy, however, had other ideas. She needed to find that shirt, because Mrs Mac clearly couldn’t be trusted to hold onto it herself.

  ‘Clementine Bird, get out of this flat at once!’

  Gosh, thought Clemmy, what will I tell her?

  ‘I um, er, need the toilet.’

  ‘Now? You’ve been stuck in there for ages.’

  ‘I’m busting! I couldn’t go before or that Natasha might have found me!’

  They were interrupted by a knock and the sound of the door knocker falling off. Mrs Mac sighed as she headed for the door.

>   ‘I hope that girl and her friend haven’t returned. She really is most unpleasant.’

  At the door stood Origami Pete and another policeman.

  Pete bowed deeply. ‘You look very white, Ma’am. Are you alright?’

  He looked around the flat and saw Clemmy standing by the bathroom. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Clemmy put her finger to her lip to warn him to not mention their meeting at the store.

  ‘Why did he bow like that?’ Mrs Mac looked at Stu, confused.

  Origami Pete bowed again. ‘I am Japanese, Ma’am. Pete Oshaberi.’

  Berry? Mrs Mac decided not to pursue the topic. All this talk of berries and Japan was making her hungry.

  Origami Pete pointed to Clemmy. ‘Is this your granddaughter?’

  ‘Who? What? Oh no. That is a child I babysit. Clementine Bird.’

  ‘Is there a fire in here, Ma’am?’ asked Stu, walking in and out of the rooms nearest the front door.

  ‘No dear. Just a misadventure, I am afraid.’

  Pete peered at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ said Stu. ‘We were on our way here to ask if you had any odd visitors lately? Anything out of the ordinary happen? Strange phone calls maybe?’

  ‘Ab-so-lut-e-ly’, piped up Clemmy.

  The two policemen looked at her.

  Mrs Mac glared at her.

  Oops. Clemmy slapped her hand against her head. ‘Silly me, I mean, absolutely not.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Stu, frowning at the nine-year- old imp. ‘I hope that if something were wrong, you two would tell us, wouldn’t you?’

  Mrs Mac chuckled. ‘Now come on officers, what would an old woman and small child have to hide? I was cooking eggs and I set the alarm off – that’s all.’