Sabotage

by Karen King

  ‘Hello, Mr Smythe. I thought you were out for the day.’

  What? He’d come back!

  ‘I am, Mrs Carter, but I’ve forgotten something,’ Mr Smythe replied. Then, to my horror, I heard him pounding up the stairs. I couldn’t let him find me here, not after his threat last night. I snapped the book shut and dived under the bed, wriggling out of sight just as I heard his footsteps outside the door. Too late I realised that I was still holding the book. What if he’d come back for that?

  ‘Why is the door to my room open, Mrs Carter?’ Mr Smythe demanded.

  Oh sugar, why hadn’t I closed the door? Please don’t tell him you sent me to put some clean towels in here Gran, I begged silently.

  ‘I’ve just cleaned your room and was about to bring you some more refreshment supplies. I see you’re almost out of coffee and milk,’ Gran called up the stairs. She always left a kettle and cups, plus tea, coffee, milk and sugar so the guests could make themselves a hot drink in their room.

  ‘Thank you, that’s very much appreciated,’ Mr Smythe replied.

  Holding my breath, I listened as he walked across the room, opened the wardrobe and rummaged inside. Then he took something out, closed it again and walked back across the room. Great, he was going. I relaxed a bit and waited for him to go out and close the door so I could make my escape.

  Suddenly, I heard a yap and the patter of doggy feet bound across the room. Oh no, it was Fluffy! And she’d sussed me! She started sniffing under the bed, yapping away. Then she started wriggling under it. Damn that dog, why did she always have to be such a nuisance? She was going to give me away. My heart was pounding in my chest so loud, I was sure it was echoing around the room. So, how was I going to get out of this one without getting into some serious trouble?

  ‘Get out of there!’ Mr Smythe sounded quite hysterical. ‘Mrs Carter. Would you kindly get your dog out of my room?’ he bellowed.

  ‘I’ll get her, Auntie Sue.’ It was Max, thank goodness.

  I heard him run into the room. ‘Fluffy, here girl!’ He bent down to get Fluffy, who had now wriggled right under the bed. His eyes widened when he saw me staring up at him. I put my fingers to my lips and tried to edge away from the yapping dog.

  Luckily, Fluffy much preferred Max to me, so came out happily and went back downstairs with him. Mr Smythe went to follow Max out of the room, but just then, his cellphone rang. I groaned inwardly as he sat down on the bed to answer it. I hoped he didn’t talk for long. My eyes and nose were itching like mad. Any minute now I was going to sneeze. I pinched my nose tight to hold it back.

  ‘Neil?’

  Could this be the same man he’d been talking to the other day?

  ‘Yes, I got it checked. It’s authentic.’

  I couldn’t make out the reply, but was sure they were talking about the bracelet.

  ‘Good. Then it’s time we made a move and approached the old man with an offer. Yes, yes, I’ll do it. I’m the nearest, after all, and I’m a bit more persuasive than you, if I say so myself.’

  He finished the phone call and finally left the room, closing the door behind him just as I couldn’t hold back the sneeze any longer.

  ‘Atchooo!’

  I froze as I heard the door open again. He’d heard me! I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead as I closed my eyes and braced myself for the inevitable.

  ‘You can come out now, he’s gone.’

  Phew! It was Max. I scrambled out from under the bed and brushed myself down. ‘That was a really close shave!’

  ‘What on earth were you doing under there?’ asked Max.

  ‘Let’s go up to my room and I’ll tell you. I don’t want to hang about here for a minute longer.’

  I told Max about Mr Smythe’s threat and the phone call I’d heard him make. ‘So you see, Mr Smythe and his friend must be looking for Roman ruins. And now I’ve found that bracelet, they think that some ruins are buried under Old Joe’s cottage,’ I explained.

  ‘Wow!’ Max looked at me with saucer eyes. ‘We’ve been learning about the Romans at school. How cool that they might have actually lived here.’

  ‘There’s another thing ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Mr Smythe and his friend haven’t approached Old Joe with an offer to buy his cottage yet, Mr Dawson can’t have anything to do with them and this Roman stuff – so why does he want to buy the cottage?’

  We decided to go and visit Old Joe that afternoon to see if he knew any more about why Mr Dawson wanted his cottage.

  ‘I’ve had a visitor,’ Joe said as soon as we arrived. ‘Real smart looking man, he was. Said he was calling on behalf of Mr Dawson. Offered me even more money to buy my house,’ he sniffed. ‘I refused, of course. This is my home, I said. You could offer me all the money in the world and I wouldn’t sell it.’

  ‘What did the man say then?’ asked Max.

  ‘Just went off in a huff and said I might regret turning down such a generous offer. Some people just can’t understand that money can’t buy everything.’

  ‘What did the man look like?’ I asked.

  Joe thought for a minute. ‘Tall, dark-haired, very smart, spoke like he had a plum in his mouth.’

  Definitely not Mr Smythe then. I looked over at the field. Mr Smythe was nowhere to be seen – but then he wouldn’t be, I suppose – it was Old Joe’s place he was interested in now.

  ‘Have you found out any more about the bracelet?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s a Roman one,’ I told him, briefly explaining about finding the book in Mr Smythe’s room. Then I told him about the phone call I’d overheard.

  ‘I think you’ll be getting a visit from My Smythe soon,’ I told him. ‘He and his friend are convinced that there are Roman ruins buried below your land, with lots of valuable relics.’

  ‘So now there are two people after your cottage,’ Max said. ‘Maybe Mr Dawson has heard about the ruins too, and that’s why he wants to buy it.’

  ‘You know, my father was very interested in the Romans,’ Old Joe said. ‘There’s still a pile of his old journals and books in a trunk in the attic – and maybe some of my grandfather’s too.’

  ‘Can we have a look at some of the journals?’ I asked. ‘We might find something interesting.’

  ‘Of course, but I’m warning you, the attic is full of cobwebs and dust and who knows what else.’

  I shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Max.

  Joe was right, the attic was dusty and full of spiders. It was also full of old trunks, clothes, pictures and books. Mom would love this stuff, I thought, stopping to look at a painting of a beautiful autumn woodland scene. It looked like it had been painted hundreds of years ago.

  ‘Hey, look at this!’ Max swooped on a black bowler hat and put it on, but it fell down over his eyes.

  Joe laughed. ‘All you need is a walking stick and moustache and you’d be a proper Charlie Chaplin.’

  ‘Charlie who?’ we both asked.

  ‘Charlie Chaplin,’ Joe replied. ‘He was a comedian when I was a lad.’

  Joe scanned the dark, dusty room. ‘Grandad’s trunk is here somewhere,’ he muttered.

  ‘What does it look like?’ I asked.

  Joe frowned. ‘Dark wood with black leather straps going across it, from what I can recall.’

  Finally, we found it, pushed against the far wall near the window. We spent a good couple of hours browsing through it. There were lots of faded family photos – Joe got quite nostalgic looking at them – and letters that his dad sent to his mom when he was away fighting in the War. Joe wouldn’t read them though (he said it was snooping). Among a pile of dusty books, there were three about the Romans. We took one each and flicked through them. I saw a section on jewellery and eagerly scanned for a picture of my bracelet.

  ‘This is it, this is my bracelet!’ I shouted, pointing at the picture. ‘It says here that it was made of solid gold and only worn by the nobility.’
I looked up. ‘Gosh, it must be really valuable.’

  ‘Maybe not … it could just be a copy made out of some cheap metal,’ Joe said.

  He was right, there was no way of knowing if the bracelet I found was real or not. If only I’d kept it.

  ‘And just because you dug up one Roman bracelet doesn’t mean that there’s a Roman village underneath my land,’ he continued. ‘It could be a one-off. Someone might have lost it and it’s been there ever since, until your machine picked it up.’

  It was a possibility, but Mr Smythe clearly believed that there were valuable Roman artefacts under this land and that’s why he wanted to buy the cottage. And Mr Dawson must think there’s something special about the place, or why would he offer Joe such a vast amount of money?

  Chapter 6

  Dirty Tricks

  ‘You know, some of that stuff could be really valuable,’ I told Joe, as we clambered down from the attic. ‘Gran watches these programmes on TV where people take things they’ve found in their attic to be valued, and sometimes they’re worth thousands.’

  ‘I don’t think my family’s old junk will be worth that kind of money,’ Joe said. ‘But I think I ought to sort it out and get rid of some of it. It’s been there for years, gathering dust.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Max offered.

  ‘Me too, I said. ‘My folk’s tour has been extended, so I might be here some time.’ My parents were touring Europe with the musical show they star in. It was turning out to be a big success – which is beyond me because I thought it was utterly cringe-worthy.

  ‘Thank you, I’d appreciate that,’ Joe said. ‘How about starting tomorrow? Might as well get cracking while you’re both on school holidays.’

  As Joe pushed open the kitchen door, we couldn’t believe our eyes as a huge torrent of water came pouring out, swishing around our ankles.

  ‘What the ...’ he exclaimed.

  The kitchen was swimming in water. The big wooden door must have kept it back a bit, but now the water was spilling out into the hall.

  ‘Did you leave the tap on?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I think it must be a burst pipe.’ Old Joe rolled up his trousers to his knees. ‘Can you kids go and get the broom and mop and bring them round to the back door. You’ll ruin your shoes if you go through the kitchen.’

  Our trainers were already pretty wet, but we ran out of the front door, leaving Joe to wade through the kitchen. Outside, something in the distance caught my eye. I glanced over at the woods and glimpsed someone running between the trees. Whoever it was, they were wearing something that sparkled in the sunlight. Puzzled, I stared after them, but the figure quickly disappeared from view.

  ‘Come on, there’s the broom, and there’s a mop and bucket too!’ Max shouted.

  I seized the broom and ran to the back of the cottage with it. The back door was wide open now and water was flooding out over the step and into the garden. Inside the kitchen, Joe was on his knees, wrapping something around a pipe.

  ‘We’ve got the mop and broom,’ I said. I slipped off my trainers and waded across the kitchen to him – thank goodness I’d worn shorts that morning instead of my usual jeans. ‘Want me to start sweeping out the water?’ I asked.

  ‘No thanks, Amy, I’ll do it.’ Joe straightened up. ‘Looks like I’ve got a burst pipe. I’ve turned off the stopcock to halt the water flow. Now, let’s clear this mess up so that I can see what damage has been done.’ He took the broom from me and started sweeping the water out of the kitchen.

  Max and I helped the best we could, using the mop and another broom we found, but it took ages to clear up. Then Joe phoned the plumber, who said he wouldn’t be able to come out until later that day.

  ‘Best not to turn the water on until then,’ Joe said. ‘I think I’ve bandaged the hole in the pipe, but there could be another hole somewhere else.’

  ‘Don’t pipes usually burst in the winter?’ I asked. ‘Something to do with freezing and expanding?’ Summers were real hot back home, but the winters were freezing and my folks were always worrying about the pipes bursting.

  Joe nodded. ‘So they do. I’m not sure how it happened. Old pipes I suppose.’

  It all seemed rather suspicious to me. Had someone sabotaged Joe’s pipe deliberately? They could have got into the cottage while we were up in the attic. We must have been there for at least two hours, and we wouldn’t have heard anything up there. I suddenly remembered the figure running into the woods.

  I mentioned my suspicions to Max as we were cycling home.

  ‘But why would anyone want to sneak into Joe’s cottage and burst his pipe?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Think about it,’ I told him. ‘Joe gets offered big bucks for his house. He refuses to sell, then things start going wrong; his roof leaks, his pipe bursts ...’

  ‘And those yobs let his chickens out ...’

  I’d forgotten all about those troublemakers. Had they got something to do with this? Were they sabotaging the cottage because Old Joe reported them to the police? The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that someone was targeting Joe. Well, I wasn’t going to stand by and see the old guy bullied. I was determined to find the culprit and put a stop to it.

  Back in my room at Gran’s, I thought about how to tackle the problem. It wasn’t the same sort of case as finding out who’d taken Fluffy – but it was a bit like finding out who’d been sabotaging our baseball games back home in the US. I’d solved that one. I just had to approach it logically.

  The first thing to do, I decided, was find out who Mr Dawson was and if he had any connection with Mr Smythe. I could do a search on his name, of course, but I’d need his full name and would only get results if Mr Dawson had a web ‘presence’ like a website, a business or had been in a newspaper or something else that a search engine could pick up. If he was a rich holidaymaker who’d taken a fancy to Joe’s cottage and wanted it for a holiday home, then I wasn’t likely to find out anything interesting. I’d have to ask Old Joe for the man’s initials and address, then I might be able to do some research.

  Another important thing to do was to keep notes. My favourite TV detective, Vince Bronson, was always telling Mac, his sidekick, to make a note of everything, no matter how unimportant it seemed ‘because you never knew where a clue might be hiding’. I took out my notepad and lucky green pen, turned to a clean page and started to write:

  My gut instinct told me that this wasn’t a coincidence, and, as Vince says, when you’ve got no proof, go with your gut instinct. I put the notepad and pen away then went downstairs to see if Gran was around. She might know something more about this Mr Dawson character.

  Chapter 7

  The Mystery Woman

  Mr Winkleberry was back. He was in the private lounge, sitting on the sofa real close to Gran, telling her all about his visit to see his friend.

  ‘He lives in this remote cottage near the cliff edge,’ he was saying. He stopped and greeted me with an icy glare when I came in, as if I was the lodger here, not him. Well, okay, I was a lodger too, I guess, but at least I was family. I had more right to be in the private lounge than he did.

  ‘Did you want something, Amy?’ he asked, his left eye twitching as usual.

  ‘No,’ I said, sitting down on the chair right opposite them. I picked up the newspaper – Mr Winkleberry’s favourite broadsheet – and idly flicked through it. I was annoying them, but I didn’t care. I was going to wait here until Mr Winkleberry left the room so that I could talk to Gran.

  It was a bit of a highbrow paper, all about financial news, company mergers and stocks and shares. Just the sort of boring stuff I’d expect Mr Winkleberry to read.

  Then something caught my eye …

  PODCAST 2

  Go to www.amycartermysteries.com/sabotage-2

  Robert Dawson. Could that be the same Mr Dawson who offered to buy Old Joe’s land? The question was, did he want the land badly enough to try and drive the old man ou
t?

  I thought about how much money Mr Dawson would make if he built a few houses on Old Joe’s land and the field next to it. Dad was always saying how expensive house prices were in the UK, especially in tourist areas like Cornwall. But then, according to the websites I’d looked at, ancient Roman jewellery and other stuff could fetch huge amounts of money too. So, both Mr Dawson and Mr Smythe could make a lot of money from getting their hands on Old Joe’s cottage and the land surrounding it.

  ‘You look miles away, Amy. Have you found something interesting in that paper?’ Gran asked.

  ‘Er … no.’ I hastily folded up the paper and put it back on the sofa. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all. I’m hungry. Is it okay if I make a sandwich?’

  ‘Well, I expect it will be peanut butter and jelly as usual?’

  ‘You got it.’ Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a glass of strawberry milkshake was my most favourite meal ever, much to Gran’s disgust. She was always trying to persuade me to eat something healthy, like salad. Healthy it might be, but tasty it definitely wasn’t.

  I’d just finished lunch when Max turned up. I filled him in about the newspaper article. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on Old Joe’s cottage,’ I told him. ‘Then we might catch one of them in action.’ It should be easy to do now that we’re helping Old Joe to sort out his attic. I was looking forward to that. Old stuff fascinated me. It was mind-blowing to think that zillions of years before I was even born, people lived without TVs, computers, cars, or even indoor bathrooms. Incredible!

  We decided to go back that afternoon and tell Old Joe what we’d found out about Mr Dawson. When we got there, Jack the builder was looking at Old Joe’s roof.

  ‘It’s an expensive job, I’m afraid,’ he said when he came back down the ladder. ‘Even if I cut costs to the minimum it’s going to be a couple of grand. There are quite a number of tiles missing on your roof, you know. I’m surprised you haven’t had any trouble with it before now. When did you last have it looked at?’

  ‘Not for some years,’ Old Joe admitted. He looked quite worried. ‘I haven’t got that kind of money, Jack.’