The Secret Key

by Lena Jones

  ‘Liam, can I borrow your phone for a minute?’

  ‘Sure – what are you looking for?’

  ‘Oh, just something to do with the algae,’ I lie, taking it from him. Quickly, I search for Brianna’s social media account, where she posts all her photos. It’s all there for anyone to see – countless pictures of Brianna smiling, pouting, posing. She’s wearing all sorts of designer outfits, standing in front of palm trees or next to swimming pools. I scroll through them all, trying to decide if I’m imagining the hollow look in her eyes.

  ‘Find what you’re looking for?’ Liam asks, frowning a little.

  ‘Oh, uh, no …’ I say, closing the page and handing the phone back.

  I’m not ready to tell Liam about what happened with Brianna, or her promise to tell me more. I don’t know what I think about any of it. I think he would tell me not to visit her at home, but I’m curious to hear her story.

  The receptionist at the library recognises me.

  ‘Afternoon, Miss Agatha.’

  ‘Afternoon, Clive. This is Liam. Would it be all right for him to come in with me?’

  ‘Well, I really shouldn’t …’ Clive starts. He taps his nose and winks. ‘But so long as you don’t tell anyone …’

  ‘Thank you, Clive – I owe you one. Can we have a locker for our satchels?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He hands me a key, and presses the button to open the gate. We hurry in, place our things in the locker and practically run up the grand staircase. The portraits of the library’s illustrious patrons look down on us. We pass Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and, looking particularly disapproving outside the men’s toilets, Winston Churchill.

  We reach the second floor and go into the stacks where the books are stored. The stacks of the London Library are unlike any others – all the floors are made of cast iron, with slats for ventilation, so you can see several floors below and above you, and glimpse people passing underneath as they browse.

  ‘Wow,’ Liam says, looking up, then down. ‘I feel a bit dizzy.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it. Come on, follow me.’

  I move quickly, knowing already where I want to go. Halfway down the shelf of engineering periodicals, I find them – a dusty bundle of plans for the London water mains. As we browse, I can hear someone’s footsteps echoing through the iron frame above us, coming closer. They seem to stop, right above us, and I look up. Strangely, the lights for the next level are switched off. Though they can see us, we can’t see them.

  ‘There’s someone there,’ Liam whispers, flicking his eyes up.

  ‘I know,’ I whisper back. ‘Come on – these are all we need.’

  We gather the plans and hurry to the Reading Room. If there’s a crisis quietly spreading through the rest of London, you wouldn’t know it here. It’s quiet in the Reading Room, just like always. The leather armchairs are filled with ex-Oxford dons and retired politicians writing their memoirs. They’re not disturbed by the rising red gunge around them, but the arrival of a couple of thirteen-year-old schoolkids is greeted with frowns and murmurs.

  I sit down at one of the reading desks and lay the contents of the bundle out in front of us. Liam pulls up a chair next to me. There are more frowns as his chair legs scrape on the wooden floor. The first map I come to is an overview of the water supply for London, titled ‘Location of Ring Main Shafts and Tunnels’. It shows a rough circle drawn around the city, north and south of the Thames.

  I read the description of the supply pipe, called the Ring Main – a gigantic loop, eighty kilometres long, and two and a half metres in diameter, encircling all of London. Strung along the line are shafts connecting the pipe to the surface. This is where the problem must be – somehow the red slime has found its way into the Ring Main, pumping in an endless circuit around London like diseased blood around a body. But where has it come from? And how can it be growing underground, without sunlight, in the deep tunnels?

  ‘So this is where the slime is coming from then?’ Liam says.

  ‘I think so. But how is it getting into the pipes?’ I say, before someone shushes me.

  I rummage through the other papers, which are all plans for the shafts. There seems to be something missing. I check the index for what the bundle should contain, and tick off everything on the list except one – the schematics for the Brixton Pumping Station. I try to think of everything I know about Brixton. I know there’s a hidden river there, covered over by London’s expansion. Could that be important?

  ‘Come on,’ I tell Liam.

  It’s time to get home – Dad will be back soon, and I don’t want to disappoint him like I did yesterday. We trudge back on foot, tired and thirsty in the heat. But I’m also feeling a buzz of adrenaline. I’m getting used to it, ever since the masked biker skidded past me. Neither of us say much – we’re too wrapped up in our thoughts. All kinds of sirens are wailing in the streets around us – police, fire and ambulance. We pass two men yelling at each other in the middle of the road. The lack of water is making everyone crazy. Liam walks with me until he reaches his bus stop.

  ‘Before I go – about the symbol you showed me yesterday, the tattoo?’

  ‘Yes? Have you found something?’ I perk up.

  ‘No, the opposite – I looked at, like, the whole internet. Nothing. It looks like a key, but there are millions of pictures of keys out there. Are you sure you remembered it right?’

  I shoot him a withering look – my memory is photographic.

  ‘All right, hold your fire,’ he says, pretending to hide from my dagger-eyes. ‘Whatever it is, it’s a mystery to me.’

  ‘But that can’t be right – I feel sure I’ve seen that symbol before. Can you check one more time?’

  He grimaces. ‘Urgh … all right.’

  A bus pulls up.

  ‘See you soon,’ he says and waves, as he joins the queue to board.

  I wave back, then walk the rest of the way to Hyde Park. Police cars and ambulances speed in opposite directions, but there are hardly any cars on the road – people aren’t going out, aren’t going to work. Offices have no water for making drinks, flushing toilets or washing hands. Without water, London is starting to grind to a halt.

  It’s almost five by the time I get in, and I’m tired. It’s time, as Poirot would say, to sit back and use my ‘little grey cells’ to figure it out. Not wanting to waste time, I go straight upstairs, sit on my bed and close my eyes. Just a minute later, I hear the front door open, and the sound of Dad lugging something into the hallway.

  The front door closes, and I wait, listening to the sounds from the kitchen – a lot of banging about. Usually, Dad will call up the stairs, but he seems to be busy with whatever he’s doing. Feeling curious, I go to see what the commotion is. Peering round the doorframe, I see the worktop and kitchen table cluttered up.

  ‘Hey, Dad?’

  ‘Hmmf,’ he says, gripping a length of rubber tubing in his mouth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. I’m not used to doing the questioning. On the worktop next to the sink, seven demijohn bottles are lined up. Dad usually uses them for making fruit wines from rosehips and wild plums he gathers in the park, but now they’re full of the evil red slime. Each one is fitted with a valve to let air out but not in, and these are attached to rubber pipes that lead out of the window. Dad takes the tubing from his mouth.

  ‘It’s what you would call an experiment.’

  ‘Are you still trying to kill the algae?’ I frown, listening to the slow bloop-bloop sound of air bubbles passing through the valves.

  ‘Nope, I’ve tried everything – even the weedkillers and chemicals I swore I’d never use.’ He coughs drily and I’m worried about how long he’s been spending breathing in weedkillers and toxic slime.

  ‘But, if you can’t kill them, what’s all this for?’

  He turns to look at me for the first time, eyes pink and watering. ‘This stuff must be growing underground, right?’
>
  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, how? It doesn’t use sunlight to grow – so where does it get its energy from?’

  ‘So you’re … feeding it?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  He has a feverish look in his eyes – I’ve never seen him like this. Since Dad is usually so calm and quiet, I’ve always thought that I get my, ahem, obsessive nature from Mum. Seeing him here, taping up bits of pipe and painting each of the bottles black to keep the light out, I’m not so sure.

  ‘This one, I’m going to feed with plant matter – vegetable peelings and the like. This one, with meat – I’ve put a cut-up pork chop in there …’

  Dad is talking to himself as much as to me. I nod along reassuringly, as though he’s telling me he is the reincarnation of Julius Caesar, or that the royal family are giant lizards, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Finally, I make my excuses and go back up to my room. Everything is crazy, and Dad is acting crazy, and I need to be alone for a bit or I think I’ll go crazy too.

  I sit in my room for a long time, waiting until Dad thinks I’m asleep. All the while, I’m thinking about my next move, Changing Channel over and over again, going back to the places I’ve been in the last forty-eight hours.

  I’m in the hospital room, looking down at the professor’s red-stained shoes …

  I’m outside the RGS, with a rag clamped over my mouth …

  I’m in the park, watching in slo-mo as the motorbike roars towards me …

  Two things keep bothering me – the professor’s link to the crisis, and my conversation with Brianna in the toilets. Since the professor is unwilling to be questioned, I might as well go and see Brianna.

  Brianna Pike – heir to the Pike rubber glove fortune – lives in a townhouse on Cadogan Place. Brianna never speaks about her father’s rubber glove business of course – that would be too embarrassing for a pupil at St Regis. The house is known among the older students at St Regis as the ‘Party Palace’, though obviously I’ve never been invited. Her big brother – a former St Regis pupil – is famous for his lavish lifestyle.

  When I’m sure Dad will believe I’m asleep, I get dressed again. I get into my cut-off denim shorts and put on a red stripey vest top and my favourite blue creeper shoes. I pin my hair up and add a short ginger wig for disguise. If the mysterious biker is still around, I’d rather not look like myself. I slip my notebook and pen into my pocket. Then I open the skylight, get up on my chair and climb on to the roof. I move to where the tree reaches its branch and start climbing down. At the bottom, I dust myself off and check for onlookers, before running out through the back gate and into the park.

  I run as much of the way as I can, checking around me at every corner. I try not to allow my imagination to roam into the realms of fear – bogeymen are for children, I tell myself. The light is fading when I reach Brianna’s house, but at this time of the year it never gets totally dark – even in the middle of the night the sun barely dips under the horizon. The sky is full of pink-and-gold clouds, and you could have been forgiven for thinking that all is well – that this is a peaceful midsummer’s night.

  In the pit of my belly there is a churning unease – a feeling that, at any moment, a figure might drag me into the shadows. On the other side of the square is the Cadogan Hotel, where Oscar Wilde was arrested and dragged off to prison. For all the grandeur of the buildings, this seems a gloomy, haunted part of the city.

  I decide to watch the house for a few minutes before risking ringing the doorbell. I lean against the railings a little further down the street. The plants here are suffering from the water shortage. I take my notebook and pen from my pocket. A light comes on and off again in Brianna’s house, but that’s about it. If Brianna is up to anything shady, she’s being discreet. A motorbike drives down the street and stops a few houses past Brianna’s.

  I freeze.

  I watch as a man gets off the bike and walks up her steps. He’s still wearing his helmet, and is carrying something in front of him that I can’t see. I check my watch – gone ten o’clock. The man glances round, then tries the door handle. Finding it unlocked, he goes in.

  I stand for a moment, unresolved. Something is wrong. My heart is beating so quickly as I start to walk towards the house. Then my brain catches up. I have to hurry – Brianna might be in danger. I run along the street, up to the door, which is still ajar. As I run, the man emerges at the door, sprints the short distance to the bike, and rides off quickly.

  ‘Brianna?’ I whisper.

  I run up to the front door and try the handle, finding it still unlocked. I push the door back to reveal a checkerboard floor in black and white marble and a well-lit corridor. I step in and make my way down the hallway. Suddenly, I wish I’d told Liam where I’m going.

  ‘Brianna?’ I try again.

  There is a tiny muffled sound. My heart is racing. I walk a little way further down the hall, to a door that is slightly ajar. There is a light on in the room. I fling the door open to reveal …

  Brianna, looking like a startled deer, with a slice of pepperoni pizza in her mouth. She gulps the pizza down, not taking her eyes off me for a second.

  ‘Agatha, is that you under that wig? What the heck? You scared the bejeezus out of me!’

  ‘Oh, I’m …’ I look round, as though the explanation is behind me somewhere. ‘There was a man … he let himself in.’

  Brianna sighs, though I can’t tell if it’s relief or anger. We’re in a book-lined study, with leather armchairs and a huge fireplace. Brianna is sitting in a chair.

  ‘That was the pizza guy.’ She points to the open box on her lap. ‘Who did you think it was? A trained assassin?’

  ‘But he just let himself in!’

  ‘Yeah, I always leave the door unlocked for him.’

  ‘But anyone could just walk in here.’

  She grins. ‘And yet, you’re the first person who actually has, Agatha.’

  ‘You invited me, remember?’

  ‘Well, thanks for coming.’ She tucks her sleek hair behind one ear, trying to regain some lost dignity. Her composure is back. She wears the same, self-confident smile that she used to have. For a moment, I’m sure she’s going to kick me out of her house, the same way she would kick me out of the classroom if the CCs wanted it to themselves.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy are in Switzerland, but my brother should have been back by now – he must have met up with one of his girlfriends.’

  ‘How many does he have?’

  She shrugs. ‘I’ve lost count. They all seem like the same person to me.’

  Whereas you seem like several different people to me, I think to myself.

  ‘Want a drink?’ She walks to a colossal globe, which stands on one side of the fireplace, and pushes a hidden catch. The Northern Hemisphere swings up to reveal a cocktail cabinet.

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  She laughs. ‘It’s not alcohol, dummy! Look.’ She holds up a bottle of elderflower cordial and pours a glass.

  I decide to try the direct approach. ‘What were you going to tell me?’

  She stands still for a second, as if deliberating something. Then says, ‘You like investigating, don’t you, Agatha?’

  The question isn’t the usual accusation – that I’m a snooper, a nosy parker, so I nod. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well … I’ve never told anyone this … but well, so do I.’

  ‘You?’ I splutter. ‘YOU like investigating?’

  ‘Does it seem so unbelievable?’ She grins – an expression I’ve never seen on her face before. Then she looks bashful.

  I don’t know what to say. ‘Well …’

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ She makes for the bookcase at the back of the study, still cradling the tumbler of elderflower. The shelves look like all the others with a light switch next to them. Brianna flips up the casing of the light switch to reveal a security keypad, into which she punches a number. The bookcase clicks and swings smoothly back to reveal a hidden room. She t
urns to look at me out of the corner of her eye, as if to say, ‘Cool, huh?’ but I don’t comment.

  I hesitate for a moment. Do I really want to go into a secret room with a girl I don’t trust – a girl who I’m not sure I even really like?

  ‘Come on,’ she says. She catches my expression. ‘I promise not to feed you to the alligators I keep in the basement.’

  I can’t help smiling at that, although nothing about this weird encounter would surprise me. I follow her through the door and she turns the lights on. The room is small, barely more than a cupboard, but it has a desk and lots of shelves. The shelves are crammed with technology – gadgets from microscopes to battery-powered drones. There’s stuff that even I don’t recognise.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. I’ve always thought that Brianna was more interested in impressing boys than anything else. I didn’t expect her to have a secret lair. Well, not this kind of secret lair anyway. Perhaps something more with mood lighting and a minibar.

  ‘Yeah, I kinda cleared out the spy gadget shop in Covent Garden.’ She turns to me. ‘So what do you think?’

  I look around, trying to decide what I think.

  ‘What are these?’ I ask, pointing out what looks like the sort of thing a tree surgeon or gardener would wear to protect his eyes.

  ‘They’re night-vision goggles,’ Brianna answers me.

  ‘And this?’

  ‘A long-range listening device. Cool, huh?’

  I look sideways at Brianna. Am I hearing things right?

  ‘And is that actual luminol?’ I ask, pointing to a spray bottle. Police use luminol to detect where blood has been cleaned up in a room – it glows bright blue where the blood had been, revealing the gruesome spatters. I’ve wanted to get my hands on some for ages.

  ‘Sure.’ Brianna grins lopsidedly. ‘Ooh, and check out this robotic camera!’ She holds it out proudly.

  ‘This is all amazing.’ I choose my words carefully.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, clearly aware of what I’m not saying, ‘but I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘You’re wondering why I have all this stuff when at school I’m such an airhead.’