SWAGG
Book 1: SPOOK
By Jill Marshall
First published by Jill Marshall Books 2020
Copyright © Jill Marshall 2020
The right of Jill Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand
ISBN 978-1-99-002401-6
Cover Design by Katie Gannon
Illustrations by Madison Fotti-Knowles
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Deep undying gratitude to Levana, Madison and Katie G for your amazing talent and for stepping into the breach; to friends and family on both sides of the world for putting up with me and putting me up; to K and JJ for inspiring me always, and to all those JB fans who told me they wanted to be or even are Jane Blonde, and wanted to see her again. It’s been a long time, but here you go.
For the young readers of the world who might need something new to chew on in these strange locked-down times. Stay safe, stay well, and enjoy.
Chapter 0 Prologue
Gideon Flynn watched from the shadows.
The machine dominated the room completely, as brooding as an armoured tank sitting in a garden shed.
Beyond its cylindrical surface, at the distant end of the tube, Simone Varley was being ushered into a chair – a simple, plastic garden chair, as if she was at a barbeque. It seemed unbecoming for a woman of her age and status, but there was a special reason for not offering her anything more substantial to sit on. Any hint of metal on the chair - even a tiny amount in the castors - would cause chaos. Because, basically, the machine would eat it.
Now, though, it was about to devour a whole man.
Head first.
The MRI specialist positioned Trent Varley, Simone’s husband, on the machine’s sliding flat-bed. He smiled efficiently at the woman. After all, he must have done this procedure a thousand times. Probably as straightforward a process as running his Audi through a car wash, thought Gideon.
Of course, all the other times the doctor had done this would have been in an open hospital environment, while this was in a private facility. The set-up was flawless, however, and no doctor in the world would have had a bad word to say about it. Nor would they be complaining, of course, about the bonus in their pay packet.
HOST really was an extraordinary organisation to work for.
The MRI consultant spoke in his calming, airline pilot, “everything’s fine here” voice. ‘Now, Mrs Varley, at this point we normally tell our patients that they’re going to have to keep very still for up to an hour,’ he said. ‘But I gather that won’t be necessary in your husband’s case?’
Simone Varley shook her head, her neck flushing as she swallowed back tears.
‘That’s precisely why we’re here, Doctor Barnes,’ she said. ‘Nobody has been able to explain this paralysis that’s taken over his body. The nausea. The muscle spasms. We’re really hoping …’
She stopped, overwhelmed, clutching a handkerchief to her face to hide her grief.
Doctor Barnes held up a hand. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Mrs Varley. Your husband’s in the best possible place, with the finest brains and expertise right on hand.’ Behind the glass in an enclosed office from which the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner would be operated, a row of familiar faces nodded to Simone. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.’
‘And you’ll be here the whole time?’
‘Right there, just the other side of that panel.’ Doctor Barnes smiled confidently. ‘Trust me. This is very routine. Now it will be extremely noisy, so we’ll put plugs into Mr Varley’s ears - assuming that he can still hear anything.’
Simone Varley gulped furiously, stemming the flow of tears. ‘I don’t think he can,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t responded to any sound for days. Oh, do make him better, Doctor Barnes. He’s my rock. My lodestone.’ She gulped back a terrible sob.
From his secret hiding position, Gideon Flynn could have sworn he saw a tiny flicker of movement across Mr Varley’s eyelids, but his wife was gazing imploringly into the doctor’s placid face and didn’t notice.
‘It’s all right,’ said Doctor Barnes, looking a little alarmed at Mrs Varley’s increasingly emotional outbursts. ‘Let’s get it over with, shall we?’
Ripping two sterile ear plugs from their packaging, the doctor stuffed one into each of the patient’s ears and then proceeded to tweak Trent’s gown, checking he was in a comfortable position on his back, with no danger of anything getting caught in the machine’s innards.
Satisfied, he tore a second set of ear plugs from the paper strip. ‘The noise is incredibly loud even if you’re sitting outside the machine, so you’re going to need these.’
‘Thank you. You’re very considerate.’
‘Not at all … oh!’ As he handed over the small packet of ear plugs, the doctor stopped short. ‘We mustn’t leave that in here,’ he said. ‘The magnetic force of the MRI is immense. It can pull oxygen tanks right out of their housing and into the scanner, so it would make very short work of that little piece of jewellery.’
He pointed to the offending article.
It was a ring – not Mrs Varley’s wedding ring, which she’d obviously remembered to remove, but a larger signet ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The stone in its centre glowed like a sunset - some kind of ruby – while the band itself was chunky, dark and heavy, like something a Viking might wear. It looked oddly out of place on Mrs Varley’s slender finger, especially as she appeared to be wearing very fine latex gloves beneath them, as if she possibly had some issues with her skin.
She started out of her chair, spreading her hands wide as she twisted at the band on her finger. Once more, Gideon thought he saw Trent Varley’s eyelids squeeze tight.
‘Goodness,’ the woman exclaimed. ‘How could I have forgotten? I … I’m so sorry. Do I need to leave the room?’
The doctor smiled. ‘Not at all. I’ll just take it outside for you now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘All set?’
‘Yes.’
Doctor Barnes slipped the ring off Mrs Varley’s shaking finger and into the pocket of his white coat. She returned his pleasant smile, her eyes drifting across the faces behind the glass partition.
Finally, thought Gideon.
‘Okay. We’re ready for lift-off,’ said the doctor with over-the-top chirpiness. ‘We’ve checked all Mr Varley’s clothing, so he’s good to go. And you’re quite sure there’s nothing internal that’s made of metal? No clips from heart surgery or brain aneurysms?’
This time he was sure. From his dark hiding place in the furthest corner of the room, Gideon caught a flash of white as Trent Varley’s eyes edged apart the tiniest fraction.
‘No.’ Mrs Varley shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘I think that’s a bit of a lie, Simone Varley,’ muttered Gideon under his breath.
In fact, he didn’t
just think it. He knew it. There was definitely metal in Trent’s body.
And his wife knew it too.
As Doctor Barnes exited the room to install himself among the Varleys’ associates in the glass cubicle, the woman scratched at her finger where the ring had been sitting. Then, under her breath, she whispered something.
The sound was overshadowed by the deafening noise of the machine thundering into life, so Gideon couldn’t work out what she’d said. Instead he heard the doctor speaking to Trent Varley who lay trapped in the belly of the MRI machine. Like Jonah inside the whale, thought Gideon with the tiniest burst of satisfaction. What was that song he’d sung at school? ‘Go down, Jonah, deep in the ocean. Go down, Jonah, far from the shore.’
Dr Barnes was fiddling with something in the other room. ‘Okay, Mr Varley, not sure if you can hear me, but we’re going to take a number of images. Each cycle will take about six minutes. Nothing to worry about. It will all be over before you know it.’
With a clunk and a screech, the scanner started its routine in earnest, beeping with the regularity of an oversized heart monitor, blasting sound even to the corners of the room where Gideon crouched, hidden from sight. Derrrm dem derrrm dem dem. What was that? Dub step, he realised. The rhythm was as infectious and tuneless as the drum and bass music of the nineties and noughties.
He almost felt like dancing, until he realised he could hear another sound.
Laughter.
Only for a moment, and more like an escaped breath than a full giggle, but it was definitely laughter.
And the only person it could have come from was Trent Varley’s own wife.
He’d expected to feel very differently about Trent Varley, but suddenly, he felt a huge pang of sympathy. The woman was a monster, just as he’d thought.
What was it she’d said? He was her rock, her lodestone. Well, he knew exactly the kind of rock Simone Varley liked, and poor Trent wasn’t it.
But at long, long last, Gideon Flynn finally knew what he was searching for, and that he had to make his move now.
With a violent shudder, he sank back into the shadows and waited for his moment to escape. The last time had been an accident. This time was … too awful to think about. But think about it he must, because the plan had to go into action. Now.
Chapter 1 – A Chilling Message
Janey Brown ambled home after double English at Everdenn, trailing a stick along the fences down her street and wondering just what on earth had happened to her life lately.
She knew the answer. Precisely nothing. Nothing was what had happened to her life lately.
And she was starting to tire of it.
It used to be an adventure, her life, to rival anything that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer or Harry, Ron and Hermione could ever come up with, and now it was … well, fine. Ordinary, and fine. Ordinary and fine and kind of flat, if she was honest. Rather like Janey’s hair.
She grabbed the end of a tendril of said hair as it floated past her in the breeze, attempting to analyse the colour. Sort of dark blonde. Maybe honey on a sunny day. There was nothing wrong with that – she remembered a time when it had been just dull, mousey brown, all the time. She’d learned to combat that herself with a toner from the pharmacy, so that at least it was glossy and healthy-looking and shot through with natural highlights. And she could always use straighteners, curling wands, rollers, trips to hairdressers, and any number of tricks and treats that her family had given her for Christmas to make her hair more interesting if she wanted.
Not so long ago, though, her hair had been blonde. Blonde with a capital B. A gleaming, platinum ponytail, thick and lustrous and useful, whenever she took a trip through the Wower which spat her back out into G-Mamma’s lab as sensational spylet, Jane Blonde.
There had been many amazing missions with her crazy, wanna-be-gangsta SPI Kid Educator and her growing network of spy-friends, and none so amazing as the adventure that placed Janey Brown firmly in the heart of her staggeringly great family: Mum and Dad; Uncle James; Uncle Sol and Aunt Maisie; and her irritating but brilliant cousin, Alfie. After years of it being just Janey and her mum, this was an adventure in itself.
And for a long time, that had been enough. Over many, many months, she’d got to know them all both individually and as a strange and wonderful group. She’d gone to a normal school doing normal things with her normal friends and her normal (ish) cousin, and for the first time, Janey Brown had been IN - not a member of the totally in-crowd, as such (and she didn’t think she’d really want to be) but with a set of close friends including Tish and Leaf and Alfie, who were fun to be around and made her feel like she herself was fun. They didn’t remember at all how wild they used to be when she knew them first, but they were still great company. There were good grades to enjoy, wins for the athletics team even without her Fleet-Feet super-powered spy-shoes, and a growing sense of just being at one with the world – no, not just with the world, but at one with herself. No longer two people, Blonde and Brown, but one strong individual, with all the best parts of both and the sum of the parts being bigger than the whole and all that deeply philosophical stuff they were being taught about in their ‘mindfulness’ classes at school.
Meanwhile G-Mamma, AKA Rosie Biggenham, had been leading an interesting double-life as a singing octopus called The Bigg Squid, at the same time as keeping Janey supplied with enough gadgets (homemade) and training (home spun) to single-handedly thwart the next world war, if it ever came about.
Which, of course, it didn’t.
Which, of course, was great. Nobody wanted war.
But a little tiny bit of fighting somewhere … a miniscule morsel of some kind of skirmish or combat to deal with … well, right now, thought Janey, that wouldn’t go amiss. Even just some in-fighting between different spy organisations would be welcome. After all, it was the kind of thing she used to do in her sleep – or rather, when she was meant to be asleep but was instead SATISPIing her way around the globe, battling baddies.
These days, the most mysterious thing to happen was that her new jeans had been lost among the laundry just when she’d intended to wear them for ‘own clothes’ day at school. Dull. Really dull.
It was ironic, really. Before her spying time, she’d been pretty much afraid of everything. Janey Brown was rather afraid that not being afraid of anything might be even worse.
She stopped short as her trailing twig caught in the fence and the silliness of her own internal discussion smacked her between the eyes.
‘You’re afraid not to be afraid?’ she asked herself aloud. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No. Talking to yourself,’ said a newly deep voice that had only just broken, and still came out with the odd squeak that made her giggle. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Alfie popped up from behind the fence, still holding the stuck end of Janey’s twig. So that was why it had got caught.
She swatted him around the head. ‘You maniac. Were you lying in wait for me or something?’
‘Yep.’
Swinging his long legs over the fence, her cousin shoved Janey across the path so that he could fit onto the pavement beside her.
‘The parents are all going to some concert or other, if you remember,’ Alfie said, ‘so I’m keeping you company until they’re back. Aren’t you the lucky one?’
Janey sneered, although she was actually very pleased not to be spending the evening on her own. Now she’d have an actual distraction from finishing her English poetry assignment, instead of getting herself into a tizz by leaving her homework to the last minute - for no good reason other than to feel some mild buzz of excitement at doing something even a tiny little bit reckless.
‘Aw. Do I have to babysit for you?’ she said airily.
‘I think I’m the one who has to babysit.’ Alfie hunched over till he was down on Janey’s level, then performed a very insulting and startlingly accurate imitation of her voice. ‘Ohhh, I’m afraiiiiid! I’m afraid to be home on my oooooown even t
hough I’m totally old enough. I’m afraiiiiiid to be all alooooone in a big dark house with –’
‘Alfie,’ said Janey sternly, ‘you’ve got that completely wrong. I was saying the opposite of that. I’d love to be in on my own, all alone in a big dark house with no electricity and nasty noises coming from the basement. I’d love to be scared out of my wits, to be perfectly honest.’
‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.’ Alfie stared down at her from his great, lanky height – he must have shot up by a whole half-a-body in the last year. ‘You’re very strange, and I can’t believe we’re related.’
Neither can I, thought Janey. However, she didn’t bother to explain to him that for a long time, he’d been first an enemy and then her co-spylet and buddy, until she’d done some creative looping of time and he’d turned up as her cousin. After the crazy looping, she’d spent many hours trying to catch him out, seeing if he really remembered anything about their past activities working for Solomon’s Polificational Investigations (SPI). Even though he’d always been a very good spy and wouldn’t have given anything away easily, she knew that by now she’d have found some tiny Achilles heel, some chink in his armour to get him to confess if he had any recollections of his spy past. He never did. It was definitely sad but true: Alfie was no longer an agent. He was just a tall, irritating, sarcastic relative who happened to be in her class and was also a very good friend. Her best friend, in fact.
And that was great. Really great. Would she go back to the old days though? Just at that moment, she wasn’t at all sure …
As if to prove how flat her life was and how annoying he could be when he really tried, Alfie spent the evening skulking around the house after her, turning out lights and flicking the curtains to try to scare her. When that didn’t work, he upped his efforts, disappearing outside and scratching down the windows with a garden fork while he made wailing noises and shouted, ‘No, no! Don’t murder me!’ When even that failed, and Janey just carried on eating the pizza they’d been allowed to order, he rummaged through her parents’ DVD collection until he got hold of the scariest film he could find, and switched off all the lights so it was pitch black.
S*W*A*G*G 1, Spook Page 1