Dawn Undercover

by Anna Dale

  ‘Good this, isn’t it, Dawn?’ he said. ‘A week ago, I was a probationer … and now, Red says that I’ve been such a help with Operation Question Mark that he’s going to take me on at P.S.S.T. permanently!’

  ‘That’s great,’ Dawn said warmly.

  After everyone had been given a pass, including Peebles and Haltwhistle, they all trooped along a maze of corridors. Dawn noticed that all the doors which they went by did not have any handles. Instead, there were strange pieces of flared metal sticking out of them, which looked like trumpet-shaped flowers.

  Philippa stopped outside a door marked ‘Deputy Chief’, leaned close to one of the ‘flowers’ as if it were a microphone and said, ‘Tiddly-om-pom-pom.’ Then she swallowed hard and straightened the torn sleeve of her jacket. ‘This is it,’ she said to the surrounding group. ‘I’m going to give myself up.’

  Dawn appreciated that Philippa must be feeling a fair amount of trepidation. When the rest of S.H.H. found out that their Chief was the daughter of Murdo Meek, and that she had lied and connived for him, there would be an almighty uproar.

  ‘Don’t forget to mention all the good things you did,’ said Dawn, remembering how Philippa had done her best to keep Angela safe from Meek, and how she had risked her life to allow Dawn to escape. ‘Good luck,’ she added, and she reached out and squeezed the Chief’s hand. (Just a normal squeeze – no message in Morse code this time.)

  A man with wiry black hair and perfect teeth opened the door and looked, with some astonishment, at the mob in the corridor.

  ‘Hello, Mike,’ said Philippa. ‘Do you mind if I have a word?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mike, staring with bafflement at Haltwhistle and Peebles.

  Philippa turned back to the others and suggested that they might like to proceed to the visitors’ lounge. Then she entered the Deputy Chief’s office, followed by Red and Larry (whose hat and earplugs had, at last, been removed).

  ‘Cor, what a spread,’ said Nathan, sinking into a leather armchair. In his lap he rested a plate piled high with food.

  ‘Rich pickings, indeed!’ said Jagdish, crunching a chocolate finger with relish.

  Dawn nibbled a vol-au-vent and looked for somewhere to sit. There were several sofas and armchairs in the visitors’ lounge but, with so many people converging on the room, an empty seat was not easy to spot.

  ‘Over there, below that oil painting,’ said Edith, her sharp eyes locating the only available space.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Dawn, heading over to the vacant chair.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing about S.H.H.,’ said Socrates, chomping his way through a large pork pie. ‘They really know how to treat their guests.’ He took a few more bites, then frowned and shook his head. ‘Murdo Meek, eh? Thought he was as dead as a doornail these past ten years and all the time he was living it up in a little Essex village. I wouldn’t half like to know how he did it.’ Socrates gazed expectantly at Angela. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘If you’re asking me how he managed to get out of that freezing cold river,’ she said, ‘you’re going to be disappointed with my answer. I don’t have the faintest idea.’

  ‘Er … I think I can help you,’ said Dawn. ‘Philippa explained it to me.’

  Every face in the room turned towards her (except Haltwhistle’s which was buried in a bowl of cocktail sausages).

  ‘Out with it, then,’ said Socrates.

  Dawn took a deep breath. ‘They planned it between them,’ she said. ‘When Meek realised that he couldn’t shake off Angela, he rang his daughter and asked her to help him.’

  ‘Ordered her, more like,’ growled Socrates. ‘Knocked me for six when she told me that old ratfink was her dad.’

  Ignoring him, Dawn continued. ‘When Philippa –’

  ‘She was “Pip” then,’ said Socrates.

  ‘All right.’ Dawn sighed. ‘When Pip got to the warehouse, she volunteered to guard the back entrance. Meek was waiting for her there. He told her that he’d been thinking of retiring and that if she helped him to escape, just this once, he’d promise to disappear for good.’

  ‘So, how did they do it?’ asked Jagdish.

  ‘Pip put on Meek’s scarf and overcoat,’ said Dawn. ‘Then she fired her gun at the lamp behind the warehouse, so that it would be too dark for anyone to see properly.’

  ‘The gunshot!’ said Angela. ‘Yes, I remember that. Then she phoned us to say that Meek had overpowered her and was making for the footbridge across the Thames.’

  ‘Pip ran to the footbridge, dressed in Meek’s clothes,’ said Dawn. ‘Then she took them off, wrapped them round a block of concrete –’

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Socrates. ‘The bridge was being repaired and it was like a minefield to cycle across. Buckled my front wheel and almost went over the handlebars.’

  ‘Shh,’ said Edith.

  ‘Pip dropped the whole lot in the river,’ said Dawn. ‘The concrete block hit the water with a mighty splash and sank to the bottom, but the coat and scarf floated in the water so that when Red shone his torch on them, you all believed that Meek had drowned.’

  ‘When, in actual fact, he’d sneaked back into the warehouse and left by the front door,’ guessed Angela.

  ‘Clever,’ said Socrates. ‘V-e-r-y clever.’

  ‘Yes,’ piped up Felix, helping himself to a handful of grapes, ‘but I bet I would have figured it out.’

  At the headquarters of P.S.S.T., a party was in full swing in the Top Secret Missions room, later that afternoon. What had started out to be a debriefing session had descended into a celebratory shindig. Having been promised a substantially higher budget for the rest of the year by Mike Lejeune, the new Chief of S.H.H., Red had stopped off at a posh patisserie on the way back to the Dampside Hotel and bought a selection of their finest cakes.

  ‘If I could have your attention,’ said Red good-naturedly. With a handkerchief he wiped the remnants of a cream puff from his lower lip, and rose out of his chair. ‘Button it, please, people,’ he said more sternly, and the chattering and laughing gradually ceased.

  ‘Be upstanding,’ said Red, and chair legs scraped as everyone got to their feet. ‘I’d like to propose a toast,’ he said, raising his teacup. Bone china cups were lifted all around the room. ‘To a courageous young lady who has not only completed her first mission successfully – and bagged the most elusive villain of them all – but has saved our beloved P.S.S.T. from being disbanded.’ Red cleared his throat. ‘To Dawn,’ he said.

  ‘To Dawn!’ said everyone, after which they took a noisy gulp of tea.

  Nobody had ever toasted her before. Dawn was quite overwhelmed.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, her cheeks flaming. ‘I’ve loved working with all of you.’ Her eyes roamed around the room, moving from face to face. Finally, her gaze rested on Haltwhistle. ‘Well …almost all of you,’ she said, and grinned.

  The merrymaking continued until every crumb of cake had been eaten. Then Emma produced her car keys and jingled them.

  ‘I think it’s time we got these kids home,’ she said.

  Declining a lift, Felix and his granny explained that they would much prefer to walk. Angela had been cooped up in Philippa’s attic for several weeks and she was looking forward to giving her legs some exercise. Before they left, Angela invited Dawn to tea on Saturday afternoon, to which Felix and Haltwhistle were also invited. Touched that Felix actually appeared quite pleased at the prospect of seeing her again so soon, Dawn offered him her hand.

  ‘Goodbye, brother Wayne,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have wrapped up my mission without you.’ (She could, of course – and would probably have done it an awful lot quicker if Felix hadn’t been there, but Dawn was too nice to ever admit it.)

  ‘No problem,’ said Felix, looking very pleased with himself. He shook her hand and Haltwhistle licked her knee, in perfect unison. ‘So long, Kitty Wilson,’ he said.

  A little while later, Dawn said a final farewell to Kitty Wilson, too, when she gave
back the sky-blue suitcase which she had taken to Cherry Bentley and retrieved her red case from the bottom of the wardrobe in room four. She opened it and smiled when she saw her name drawn in felt-tip on the inside of the lid.

  ‘I’m me, again!’ she said.

  There was a small space next to her mushroom-coloured knee socks which caused her quite a bit of heartache. Dawn paused for several minutes before putting some of Kitty’s clothes into the case, which Izzie had insisted she should take with her. Alongside these, she squeezed a cheque from P.S.S.T. presented to her by Red for ‘a job well done’.

  Before she closed the lid, Dawn put one more item inside it: a gold-plated fountain pen which Socrates had given her as a parting gift. She had found his last words to her slightly hurtful.

  ‘I dunno quite what’s happened to you, Dawn,’ he had said, ‘but you seem to have lost your knack for going unnoticed. If you want to be accepted for another P.S.S.T. mission, you’ll need to undergo some serious retraining.’

  Dawn shut her case and thought about what Socrates had said. She realised that he was right. Somewhere along the course of Operation Question Mark, she had ceased to be invisible – and, unlike Socrates who had found this development rather disappointing, Dawn found that she was secretly thrilled by it.

  Hearing Emma calling her from the corridor, she hurried towards the door, and in less than a minute they were stepping out of the lift and walking over to the reception desk. Edith’s piercing eyes watched them draw nearer.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Dawn politely.

  Edith nodded. ‘I hope you’ve had a pleasant stay,’ she said – and smiled for almost a tenth of a second.

  Peebles was sitting on the hotel guest book, with his paws tucked underneath him. A rumbling noise emanated from him when Dawn began to stroke his head. It was the loudest that she had ever heard him purr.

  ‘Jump to it,’ said Emma pleasantly, ‘or we’ll hit the rush-hour traffic.’

  Dawn gripped the handle of her suitcase and followed Emma outside. Parked in front of the hotel was the two-seater sports car, its dark green bonnet glinting in the sunshine.

  ‘Hello-o,’ hollered Dawn through the letterbox of number eight, Windmill View. She pressed the doorbell for the second time, and before she could press it yet again, the door flew open.

  ‘Have a bit of patience, can’t you?’ said Dawn’s mother. She was wiping her floury hands on her apron. ‘I’m in the middle of baking a cake. My daughter’s coming home today. Good heavens, Dawn, is that you?’

  ‘Of course it’s me,’ said Dawn, grinning broadly. ‘Hello, Mum!’

  Beverley Buckle put her head on one side. ‘Your hair’s all short … and your clothes are new … and there’s something else different about you.’

  ‘I’m still the same old Dawn. Are you really making me a cake?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said her mother. ‘It’s called a devil’s food cake. My boss gave me the recipe. Keeps asking me if I’ve tried it out yet. When I got the phone call saying that you’d be home tonight, I thought I’d give it a whirl … as a welcome home sort of thing.’

  ‘Can’t wait to taste it!’ said Dawn. Even though her stomach was filled to the brim with tarts, scones and buns from the patisserie, she was determined to force down a slice of her mum’s cake, somehow or other.

  ‘Wotcha, kid,’ said Jefferson Buckle, appearing at his wife’s shoulder. ‘Get on all right, did you? Good. When you’ve dumped your bag, why don’t you pop down to the cellar? I’ve got a new cuckoo clock that’ll take your breath away.’

  ‘Great,’ said Dawn. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute but first I want to say Hi to Gramps.’ She squeezed past her parents and went into the living room, expecting to find her grandfather sitting in the dark in front of his favourite electrical appliance. ‘Where is he?’ said Dawn, her voice stricken with panic. The curtains were pulled back, the armchair was empty and the television set was switched off. ‘Where’s Gramps?’ she said, returning to the hallway. Tears sprung to her eyes.

  Her mother seemed reluctant to meet her gaze.

  ‘Something … hasn’t happened to him, has it?’

  ‘No, no … nothing like that.’ Beverley gave an exasperated sort of groan. ‘He wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Dawn.

  ‘Your grandfather’s gone to buy you a present.’

  She tracked him down outside the toy shop. He was wearing a vest, tatty old cords and a pair of carpet slippers. His forefinger kept jabbing at the windowpane, as if he were trying to decide which of the toys to choose.

  ‘Hello, Gramps,’ said Dawn, slipping an arm through his.

  ‘Oh, darn it,’ he said. ‘You’ve gone an’ caught me in the act. S’pose your mother let the cat out o’ the bag, did she?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dawn. ‘You really don’t have to get me a present, Gramps.’

  ‘Well, I’m goin’ to … see?’ he said. ‘ So, what do you fancy, Dawnie? That tiger isn’t bad … but I was sort o’ leanin’ towards the elephant.’

  Dawn bit her lip. ‘Would you mind ever so much if I didn’t have a toy, Gramps?’

  ‘Not want a toy?’ said Ivor, staring open-mouthed at his granddaughter. ‘Why ever not?’

  She wanted to tell him that no other toy could possibly replace the one she had lost – but she didn’t.

  ‘Because,’ said Dawn, looking desperately around her, ‘I’d rather have a … a pet, if that’s all right.’

  ‘A pet? Where’m I goin’ to get one o’ them?’

  ‘From over there,’ said Dawn, pointing to a shop called Bertha’s Beasties which was situated across the road.

  Dawn chose a rabbit. Not a cute, baby one with snowy fur and droopy ears that her grandfather was besotted by – but a half-grown, brown buck.

  ‘What d’you pick him for?’ said Gramps.

  For a moment or two, Dawn wasn’t sure why that particular rabbit had caught her eye. He was rather a plain fellow with ears that didn’t seem to know at which angle they should be pointing. Halfway through a shrug, Dawn realised what it was about the rabbit that she’d found so arresting.

  There was something distinctly Clop-ish about the way he looked at her.

  Afterword

  A soft-hearted judge presided over Philippa Killingback’s trial. She was given a big slap on the wrist and a whopping fine but escaped a prison term.

  Murdo Meek was locked up for an impossibly long time. His jailors were told to throw away the key.

  And Pilliwinks was sentenced to life in a tortoise sanctuary in Cornwall.

  Glossary

  Acronyms

  S.H.H.

  Strictly Hush-Hush

  P.S.S.T.

  Pursuit of Scheming Spies and Traitors

  A.H.E.M.

  Acquisition of Hugely Enlightening Material

  C.O.O.E.E.

  Covert Observance and Obstruction of Enemy Espionage

  P.U.F.F.

  Procurement of Useful Facts and Figures

  C.L.I.C.K.

  Creation of Ludicrously Ingenious Codes and Keys

  P.I.N.G.

  Production of Incredibly Nifty Gadgets

  The Cumberbatch Alphabet

  (Conceived by Stanley Cumberbatch in 1981)

  Armpit

  Flip-flop

  Bungalow

  Gunk

  Chutney

  Hurrah

  Doodah

  Idiot

  Egghead

  Jellyfish

  Key-ring

  Sausage

  Leotard

  Tracksuit

  Muesli

  Unicorn

  Nasturtium

  Voodoo

  Onion

  Wednesday

  Puddle

  Xmas

  Quicksand

  Yo-yo

  Roundabout

  Zilch

  Morse Code

  (Invented by Samuel Morse in 1872)

  . = dit (shor
t signal)

  - = dah (long signal)

  A

  .-

  N

  - .

  B

  - . . .

  O

  - – -

  C

  - . – .

  P

  . – - .

  D

  - . .

  Q

  - – . -

  E

  .

  R

  . – .

  F

  . . – .

  S

  . . .

  G

  - – .

  T

  -

  H

  . . . .

  U

  . . -

  I

  . .

  V

  . . . –

  J

  . – - -

  W

  . – -

  K

  - . -

  X

  - . . -

  L

  . – . .

  Y

  - . – -

  M

  - –

  Z

  - – . .

  Full stop (AAA) . – . – . -

  Apostrophe (AMN) .– - – -.

  Question mark (IMI) . . – - . .

  End (AR) . - . – .

  Spying Terms

  Agent

  another name for a spy

  Assignment

  another word for Mission

  Briefing

  a meeting where instructions for a Mission are given

  Cipher

  a secret way of corresponding where letters are swapped with other letters so that the message is impossible to read without the aid of a Key