The Case of the Vanished Sea Dragon

by Gareth P. Jones

  ‘That woman’s not my mother!’ exclaimed Holly.

  Her dad looked at her sadly and said, ‘I wasn’t talking about Bridget. Your mother would never have approved of this kind of behaviour.’

  He closed the door behind him.

  Holly sat down on her bed and stared at the door. Tears built up in her eyes. She tried to hold them back but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t crying because her dad had shouted or because she was grounded or because she had lost Mrs Klingerflim’s book. She cried because it was the first time her dad had spoken to her about Mum since the funeral.

  Willow climbed out from under the bed and jumped into Holly’s lap, letting out soft comforting miaows.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On a list of all the places in the world a Mountain Dragon is safe, a densely populated capital human city in the south-east of Britain wouldn’t rate highly, and yet safe was exactly how Dirk always felt in London. It was his home, his patch. These rooftops were his playground.

  ‘I still do not understand why we are coming back to this noisy humano nest?’ said Alba.

  ‘You don’t need to understand,’ said Dirk, landing on an old-fashioned red-brick library at a busy crossroads. ‘You need to keep quiet and stay close.’

  He stood on his hind legs and worked out the best route. The lights changed and he leapt across the road, stopping on the roof of some flats above a row of shops. He looked back at Alba. She stared nervously down at a mother and two children coming out of the library, all clutching books to their chests.

  ‘Come on,’ mouthed Dirk.

  Alba closed her eyes and made the jump, flying over the road, landing with a loud THUD on the roof.

  ‘Frank, did you hear that? It sounded like something just landed on the roof,’ shouted a woman’s voice.

  ‘It’s probably those blasted squirrels,’ another responded. ‘I’ll get the broom.’

  Dirk grabbed Alba by the scruff of her neck, pressing his nose against hers.

  ‘Will you be careful,’ he whispered angrily. ‘Keep your eyes open at all times. Use your wings to land gently. The roofs are your friends. Use them for cover. Now, come on.’

  Dirk ran along the rooftops. He knew that Alba and London didn’t mix well but he had no way of shaking her off and he needed to look at that book. He had no idea how, but the late Ivor Klingerflim had collected a lot of information and he hoped there was something in Dragonlore that would help him find a Sky Dragon and solve this case.

  Dirk paused on a rooftop by a grassy roundabout near a row of shops. He looked down at the shoppers in the high street. Humans’ love of shopping had always fascinated him. As far as Dirk could see shopping was a kind of hobby, and yet, looking down at the people trudging from store to store, they didn’t appear to be enjoying themselves much. Big droplets of rain began to fall and the already disgruntled shoppers groaned and put up umbrellas.

  The rain gave Dirk and Alba enough cover to move more quickly across the city. It wasn’t long before they were soaring through Dirk’s open office window.

  Inside, Dirk pushed the window shut and picked up the remote control, out of habit pointing it at the TV, before remembering that Alba had smashed it.

  ‘What does it do, this lights and noises box of yours?’ asked Alba.

  ‘It was a television,’ replied Dirk pointedly. ‘And before you broke it, it told me what was going on in the world,’ he said, even though he spent much more time watching old detective films and reruns of cop shows than news programmes or serious documentaries.

  Looking around the room he realised that Mrs Klingerflim had tidied up. There was no sign of the book but on the desk was a note, written on the back of the one he had left her. It read:

  Mr Dilly,

  I’m out until later tonight. I have tidied

  up. Don’t worry about the rent. Oh, and I

  have lent dear Ivor’s book to Holly. What

  a lovely girl. So polite.

  Yours,

  Mrs K

  ‘I’ve got to go out,’ said Dirk, putting the note back on the desk.

  ‘I will be coming with you,’ said Alba.

  ‘Not this time. The city isn’t safe for you. You can’t blend and you don’t know these roofs like I do. You’re a quick dragon and you’re in good shape, but for me this is a full-time job.’

  ‘But I must stay with you at all times.’

  ‘Listen to me, Alba. We will find the Sky Dragon and we will find your sister, but I can’t risk you out there again. Besides, I’ve got to go and visit a humano. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’

  ‘Meet a humano? That would not be good.’

  ‘OK, so stay here,’ he replied. ‘Keep the blinds down and don’t answer the door to anyone. If anyone knocks, I’m not in, you’re not in, there’s no one here, OK?’

  ‘OK, I understand,’ said Alba. She picked up a tin of beans. ‘Can I eat some of your crunchy shelled food?’

  ‘Knock yourself out, but you might want to try using this?’ Dirk threw something at Alba.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Alba.

  ‘It’s called a tin opener,’ he replied, moving the blinds out of his way and leaping out.

  Across the road from Holly lived a nosy old woman called Mrs Baxter who spent her days sitting by her window, behind her net curtains, watching every single event in Elliot Drive and noting them down in her diary. If Mr Perry at forty-seven got an extra pint of milk delivered, or if Mrs Standen at forty-one had a longer than usual conversation with the postman, it went down in Mrs Baxter’s diary.

  She had noted that Holly Bigsby at forty-three hadn’t left the house at all since she and her father had been spotted stepping out of a very expensive-looking silver car on Saturday. A blond-haired boy about her age had visited every day but had been sent away.

  However, like all suburban gossips, Mrs Baxter assumed that the most interesting events involved humans and therefore occurred at street level. Had she looked up at the roof, she would have seen a dragon squeeze through Holly’s window. Instead, she was busy jotting down how Mr Mynard at number thirty-eight had left his car headlights on and would probably find in the morning that his battery had gone flat.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Holly, throwing her arms around Dirk’s soft green belly. ‘I kept trying to call.’

  ‘I’ve been out of town on a case. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘So you didn’t come to see me,’ said Holly, unable to hide her disappointment.

  Dirk lifted her chin with his paw. ‘I’m sorry, kiddo, I’ve been wrapped up in this case,’ he said.

  ‘What’s it about?’ she replied.

  ‘Well, the newspaper headline would be “Sky Dragon kidnaps Sea Dragon”,’ said Dirk.

  ‘Cool,’ said Holly. ‘What are Sky Dragons like?’

  Dirk told Holly what little he knew about Sky Dragons and then said, ‘The problem is they’ve been living in the clouds for a long time. No one knows much about them. I was hoping I’d be able to find something that might help in Mrs K’s book.’

  Holly looked away. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Oh doesn’t sound good,’ said Dirk, picking up Willow, who had been rubbing herself against his leg, and stroking the cat.

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ Holly admitted. ‘It was confiscated.’

  ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘Well … Yes.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll swing by and grab it,’ said Dirk.

  ‘It won’t be that easy,’ said Holly.

  ‘Come on.’ Dirk spread his paws and grinned. ‘Remember who you’re talking to here.’

  ‘It’s been confiscated by the seventh richest man in the world, and is being kept in the upstairs office of a high-security animal experimentation lab,’ said Holly.

  Dirk laughed. He put Willow down. ‘So you’ve been busy, then?’ he said.

  Holly told Dirk everything that had happened over the last two days. She told him about Brant Bu
chanan, her dad accepting a job for Global Sands, and the conversation she had overheard about the AOG Project.

  ‘He must be after the QC3000,’ said Dirk.

  ‘That’s what I thought but why would a billionaire businessman want a weapon?’

  ‘I can think of lots of reasons,’ he replied. ‘For a man like that, business is war. So how did he end up with the book?’

  ‘I wanted to find out what they were up to, so I broke in, but I got caught.’

  ‘They didn’t see you blending, did they?’

  ‘No, but I got taken upstairs and they took away the book as a punishment.’

  ‘You think he knows what the book is?’ asked Dirk, nervous about a human with so much wealth and power possessing a book that told the truth about dragonkind.

  ‘I don’t think so. He just thinks it’s a stupid book for kids.’

  ‘Tell me about the security.’

  Holly recounted everything Mr Buchanan had told her about the building and how she had got in with Archie’s help.

  Dirk thought for a moment. ‘We’ll need a distraction,’ he said.

  ‘Archie could help again,’ suggested Holly.

  ‘No, the security guard might recognise him. Besides, I don’t want any more humans knowing about me. We need someone he won’t recognise, someone we can trust,’ said Dirk, looking at her with a knowing wink.

  ‘I’ll make the call,’ replied Holly, understanding instantly what that wink meant. ‘What time?’

  Dirk looked up at Holly’s wall clock. He scratched his head uncertainly.

  ‘Here, try this,’ said Holly, showing him her watch.

  He read the time: 19:01.

  ‘Hey, digital,’ said Dirk, smiling. ‘How far’s the lab?’

  ‘It’s about half an hour on the bus.’

  ‘Tell him we need the distraction at a quarter to eight.’

  Holly nodded and stepped out to make a phone call. As he waited, Dirk checked out her room. He had never been in it before. Everything was brightly coloured and all very Holly. On her desk were bits of paper with pencil-drawn pictures. He picked one up and recognised it as himself. He pulled open a drawer and saw the Shade-Hugger claw that they had discovered on their last case together. Dirk had forgotten all about it. She must have held on to it. It was against Dragonlore to let a human have any evidence of dragon existence, but if anyone could be trusted with it, it was Holly.

  When she came back in, he said, ‘I’m sorry I never returned your call.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘You’re here now.’

  ‘Won’t your parents come and check on you?’

  ‘No. My dad’s out and his wife has a friend coming round, so she’ll spend all evening drinking wine and smoking cigarettes in the garden.’

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  Across the road, Mrs Baxter was watching Mr Winter from number forty-five, who was having a very intimate conversation with a young blonde woman in a short skirt who certainly wasn’t his wife. Taking down a full description of the woman, Mrs Baxter completely failed to notice the dragon slipping out of Holly Bigsby’s bedroom window, dropping his tail down, hoisting the girl on to his back and disappearing across the rooftops.

  Chapter Nineteen

  With Holly’s arms clung tightly around his neck, Dirk scampered across the row of residential roofs, expertly negotiating every aerial or satellite dish in his way, stepping on chimneys to gain extra height, flying from street to street, over gardens and backyards, before coming to a halt on a rooftop by the high street.

  ‘There’s a bus coming,’ said Holly.

  ‘Quick, blend with me,’ ordered Dirk, turning roof-coloured.

  Holly focused on what it would feel like to be Dirk’s back blended with the roof tiles and vanished from sight just as the bus stopped next to them. She saw that its top deck was level with the roof where they were hiding.

  The bus indicated right and pulled out.

  ‘That’s the problem with buses,’ said Dirk. ‘The top decks are ideal places for dragon-spotting.’

  ‘So how do we avoid being seen?’ asked Holly.

  ‘We do what everyone else does,’ he replied. ‘We catch it. Hold tight.’

  Dirk leapt off the roof, spread his wings and landed gently on top of the moving bus, gripping tightly with his claws.

  Through the upstairs window of his house overlooking the high street, an overweight advertising executive was trying out the new running machine his wife had bought him, when he noticed a dragon with a girl on its back landing on top of a passing bus. He stopped the running machine, rubbed his eyes and looked again to find the bus still there but the dragon and the girl gone. Deciding that exercise clearly didn’t agree with him, he went downstairs to the kitchen, where he found a large tub of strawberry-cheesecake-flavoured ice cream and a big spoon.

  When the bus stopped outside the Global Sands laboratory, Dirk flew over the silver gates and landed on the flat roof of the lab. He poked his head over the edge and looked through the window at the office.

  ‘It’s empty,’ he said.

  Holly checked her watch. ‘It’s almost time,’ she said.

  Dirk got into position and pulled out a black sphere about the size of a golf ball from behind his right wing.

  ‘Hold this,’ he said, handing it to Holly.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, inspecting it.

  ‘It’s a retroreflective camera-neutraliser. It sends invisible infrared lasers to block the security cameras.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it,’ he replied, flicking out the claws on his right paw, checking the sharpness of each on his teeth, then plunging them into the roof. With the claws on his left paw he began to cut a hole.

  ‘Mr Buchanan said nothing could cut through this roof,’ said Holly.

  ‘Buchanan has obviously never come across a dragon claw,’ said Dirk.

  Once he had made the hole, he pulled the piece of roof away. The polystyrene ceiling of Brant Buchanan’s office was divided into square metres. Carefully he lifted one away, revealing the room below.

  ‘What time are we on?’ he asked, taking the black sphere off Holly.

  ‘Thirty seconds,’ replied Holly. ‘I’ll see if he’s there.’

  She crawled to the edge and looked over. In the alleyway, a man in a baseball cap was standing in front of the back door to the lab. The man checked his watch and swizzled his baseball cap around, revealing the well-worn face of Ladbroke Blake, the private detective who had once been hired to follow Holly and, ever since, helped her out whenever she most needed him. The baseball cap replaced his usual wide-brimmed hat. In place of his trench coat was a lurid red puffa jacket and in his hands was a large pizza box. He glanced at his watch, chucked a piece of gum into his mouth and pressed the intercom buzzer at precisely 19:45.

  ‘Aye?’ Hamish’s voice came through the Intercom.

  ‘Free pizza,’ said Ladbroke, chewing the gum, speaking in a strong cockney accent.

  ‘Ah didn’t order a pizza.’

  ‘Nah, mate, it’s part of a promotional campaign. It’s free, ain’t it.’

  ‘Ah can’t go opening this door for a free pizza. Ah’ve got my job to think about here, laddie,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Fair enough, mate. I’ll see if anyone else wants this free haggis pizza, then.’

  ‘Did you say haggis pizza?’ said Hamish, suddenly sounding interested.

  ‘Yeah, it’s one of our specials, sounds disgusting if you ask me.’

  ‘Ah’ve never had a haggis pizza.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Ladbroke.

  ‘Well, Ah am a wee bit peckish. Stay there, Ah’m coming now.’

  Ladbroke glanced around him. On the phone Holly hadn’t told him where she would be or why she needed him to act as a distraction, and he hadn’t asked. Holly always got the feeling that Ladbroke Blake had seen a lot more of the world than most people.

  She nodded at Dirk and he dro
pped the camera-neutraliser into the room, waited for a second of two, then jumped in after it.

  Dirk landed in a crouching position and quickly took in the layout of the office. Behind him was the glass desk. In front was the purple sofa. There was a door to his right, and on the ceiling were three cameras. He hoped the camera-neutraliser was working, otherwise the security guard was in for the shock of his life when he looked at the monitors only to find a dragon creeping around the room.

  Holly’s head appeared at the hole in the roof.

  Dirk straightened up and grabbed her, lowering her down into the room.

  ‘We need to be quick,’ he said. ‘Where’s the book?’

  ‘In the desk,’ replied Holly, pointing to the glass desk, where the book was clearly visible in the drawer. She rounded it and tried to open it. ‘It’s locked,’ she said.

  Dirk slid the polystyrene ceiling square back over the ceiling and said, ‘Go and keep a lookout while I pick the lock.’

  Holly made her way down the stairs. At the bottom she stopped. She could hear footsteps. She looked through a glass pane in the door and saw the lithe grey figure of Weaver striding down the corridor, heading her way. She dived back into the stairwell and he walked straight past. She crept back out into the corridor. Weaver had gone into the room full of animal cages that she’d seen on her last visit.

  Holly found the window that looked into the room. The bright overhead lighting flickered on and she saw Weaver carrying a plastic container with air holes along the top. He placed the container on a counter and pulled out what appeared to be a remote control from his pocket. He pressed a button. The container opened automatically and six white mice filed out, each walking to its designated cage. They were wearing the same metallic collars she had seen on the tabby cat.

  Holly was distracted by the door at the end of the corridor opening again. Brant Buchanan entered, carrying a silver case in his right hand. His mobile phone rang and he paused to retrieve it from his pocket with his spare hand, giving Holly enough time to get out of the corridor and back up the stairs without being seen.