The Minivers Fight Back Book 2

by Natalie Jane Prior

  ‘This is really too easy,’ said Bridget. She leaned over the railing and called down to Mo, who was waiting below. ‘Hey, Mo – we’ve got another prisoner. Come and tie her up, would you? Any idea where we go now?’

  ‘It’s this way,’ said Tania. She hurried through the main office to the DJ’s booth. Music was playing on the overhead speakers and Caroline’s cans lay abandoned on the sound desk. Fiona took off her backpack and slung it to Tania. Carla was already putting on the headphones and tapping at the announcer’s microphone.

  ‘Let’s get rid of this rubbish,’ said Carla. She pushed the Eject button on the Toe Rags and tossed the disc over her shoulder. Tania handed her a CD from Fiona’s backpack and Carla looked at it in satisfaction. ‘Miniver Dreaming – my favourite,’ she said and, slotting it into the machine, she started talking rapidly into the microphone.

  ‘Sorry for that break in transmission. You’re now listening to Radio Free Minivers! That’s right, not Minivers Free Radio, but Radio Free Minivers, the station that wants to see the Minivers set free. Stay tuned for non-stop Minivers songs, and coming up, a special broadcast from our mystery guest. She’ll be arriving at the studio shortly. Right now, here’s Emily Miniver with her first solo hit, “I want to be a star”. Hope you’re listening, Emily. From your friendly DJs, Carla and Tania, and all at Radio Free Minivers – Minivers Forever! We love you!’

  The sound of Emily’s thin, pure voice poured out of the wall speaker. Fiona heaved a sigh of relief. She left the new DJs to their announcing and went back into the main office. Caroline was now lying on a sofa, tied up and gagged, but still unconscious. Mo and Bridget had dragged the unpleasant Simon up the stairs and were lashing him to a chair.

  ‘Radio Free Minivers?’ he sneered. ‘Oh, please. Spare me. What sort of kooks are you?’

  Bridget loomed menacingly over him. ‘Shut up, weed,’ she said. ‘We need your help, and you’d better cooperate. A transmission’s coming in soon from the studio at Miniver House, and we need you to patch it through to the broadcast frequency.’

  ‘Me?’ said Simon. ‘No way! I’m not helping the Minivers. I hate them. Mingy little maggots. Let ’em rot, that’s what I say.’

  ‘My mum and I are founding members of the Minivers Fan Club,’ said Fiona, furiously. ‘You’d better watch what you say, or you’ll be sorry!’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What are you going to do to me?’ jeered Simon. ‘Call me a weed? Go and eat some spinach and come back when you’ve grown muscles.’

  ‘He thinks we’re not serious, Fiona,’ Bridget remarked. ‘Well, he’ll learn. Go and stand by that stereo. Take these earphones and plug them in, that’s right. Simon,’ she went on, turning to him, ‘I see from your T-shirt that you’re a Tracy T fan.’

  ‘I might be,’ said Simon sullenly. ‘She’s better than the Minivers, that’s for sure. She’s a real woman, Tracy. And her band’s awesome.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The Vampire Girls,’ said Bridget, with a faint sneer in her voice. ‘In that case, I can see why you’re not so keen on our non-stop Minivers Marathon. Pop the earphones on him, Fiona. That’s right. Now turn it up a bit, so he can hear our broadcast better.’

  Simon turned a little pale. ‘You don’t have to, really.’

  ‘I think we do,’ said Bridget. ‘Can’t quite hear that, Fiona. Think I must be going deaf. And a bit more … What’s that song? Isn’t it “Misty-Eyed Miniver”? Ah, that’s better. Can you hear that, Simon? Fiona, can we go a bit further? I don’t think Simon can hear.’

  ‘No!’ Simon shook his head and writhed in the chair. ‘Stop! Stop, it’s awful!

  ‘I think it’s marvellous,’ said Fiona warmly. ‘I wish we had a stereo like this at home. It can go up three more notches, Bridget; do you want me to make it louder?’

  ‘No, stop!’ yelled Simon. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. The transmission – when’s it coming through? Just let me know and I’ll do it for you, only please, turn that hideous noise off!’

  ‘Turn it down, Fiona,’ said Bridget. ‘And get on the radio to the Control Van. As soon as Rosamund’s in position, we’re ready to move.’

  Papa King’s office was on the first floor of the Artemisia Palace, in the private wing where its owner now lived in the twilight world of the very ill. It was a handsome room, with rich carpet, walnut panelling, and windows that opened onto a hidden courtyard filled with gardenias and white roses. The heady scent of the flowers floated up from the garden, but there was, nevertheless, something cold and unlived in about the room’s grandeur. The Walnut Office had been abandoned since Papa King had suffered his stroke. Though it was regularly cleaned and dusted, nothing could make it look as if its owner was coming back.

  Madame stood behind the desk, her hand on the leather chair back. A strange mixture of emotions ran through her shrivelled heart. Part of her felt satisfaction, a sense of unpleasant righteous triumph, that she could now move in here without anyone uttering a protest. Fighting against this, however, was a disagreeable memory of the last time she had stood in this very room. She had been on the other side of the desk, then, and her father had been sitting in the chair on which her hand now rested. It had been a short, but deeply humiliating interview. Madame could not forget how frightened she had felt throughout it.

  ‘You really are a contemptible creature,’ Papa King had said. ‘I can hardly believe you’re my daughter. Is this really the best you can manage?’ He picked up the forged will, which Madame’s mother Susan had tried to put in the Most Secret Room. Madame had said nothing. She had been terrified that Papa King would order her death, under secret orders. It was what his mother, Queen Rosamund would have done, she knew. Instead, Papa King had told her to leave. ‘I never want to see you again,’ he said, as she left the room. ‘Make sure, Karen, that I don’t.’

  Tears of rage and mortification sprang to Madame’s eyes. Forgetting that there had once been tears in Papa King’s eyes, too, she yanked back the leather chair and sat down at the desk. To the right of the pen tray was a photo of Rosamund and Emily Miniver in a silver frame. Madame snarled and swept it violently onto the floor.

  There was a soft tap on the door. Madame hastily composed her face into a more queen-like expression and called out to Adelaide to come in. The secretary’s eyebrows lifted at the sight of the broken photo frame, but she made no comment.

  ‘Madame? Ron Burton’s here with the prisoner.’

  ‘Send them in.’

  Adelaide opened the office door wide. Ron entered, accompanied by two other security guards. The three men were literally dragging the most filthy, abject figure Madame had ever seen. It was wearing what looked like dark jeans and a black T-shirt, but the shirt had lost a sleeve, and the person inside it was wet and slimy with filth. Madame wrinkled her nose. Ron and the guards did not look particularly clean either, and one guard had a bloody nose. There had obviously been a fight.

  Madame looked her prisoner over. She felt savagely pleased, and a little excited. She was very glad indeed that Ron had not been gentle.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked severely. ‘He stinks. Where did you find him?’

  ‘Culvert. Behind the Royal Artemisia Hospital. He fell in while we were chasing him. Almost got away.’ Ron spoke in snatches: it had evidently been an effort to get the prisoner up the stairs. He let go of his arm. Titus sagged and went down on one knee, breathing heavily.

  ‘The hospital?’ Madame stood up behind the desk and, unconsciously copying Adelaide, walked carefully over to Titus. His hair was gummed to his head with mud, he had a black eye, and a split lip that was so swollen and bloody that Madame could not help wondering whether he had lost a tooth. Serve him right, she thought, her fear of that morning giving way to indignation. Serve him right.

  ‘You can leave now,’ she said to the other security guards. At a nod from Ron, they dropped Titus on the carpet and departed. Doing her best not to wobble on her unaccustomed high heels, Madame crouched disdainfully beside him.

>   ‘Well. Look at you,’ she said. ‘Mr Clever, himself. Only you were rather too clever, weren’t you, Titus? You thought I didn’t know what you were up to. You thought I was stupid. Well, the tables are turned now, aren’t they? I’ve been one step ahead of you all the way, you filthy traitor.’ She spat the word right in his ear, but Titus neither recoiled, nor gave any sign of even hearing. Madame had been ignored for too much of her life to put up with such behaviour now. She grabbed hold of Titus’s collar, and for a moment it looked as if she wanted to hit him.

  ‘Don’t ignore me like that,’ she hissed. ‘You’re nothing, do you hear me? Until I scooped you up, you were scum in the gutter. You listen to what I’m saying –’

  ‘No. You listen to me.’ Suddenly, with one swift fluid movement that sent Madame flying backwards, Titus rose to his feet. His face was terrifying, and Madame gave a squeak. Ron took a hasty step forward and made as if grab Titus in a headlock, but the prisoner rounded on him so swiftly that Ron, too, could not help stepping back. It had taken three men to overpower Titus in the hospital culvert. Even in his injured state, Ron did not want to take him on alone.

  ‘Coward!’ shouted Madame. ‘Guards! Help me! Help me!’ She scrambled to her feet and ran behind the desk. Titus followed and Madame shrieked. She snatched a lamp off a side-table and struck out wildly, but Titus dodged the blow calmly and grabbed the lamp from her hand. As he did, a small object on a chain swung out from under the neck of his T-shirt. Madame screamed.

  ‘The key! He’s got the key!’

  ‘Yes. I have, haven’t I?’ said Titus. ‘Do you want to have a closer look?’

  ‘Stop him!’ yelled Madame.

  Titus rounded on Ron. ‘Lay a finger on me,’ he said menacingly, ‘and you’ll never find out where the Most Secret Room is.’ He waited for his words to sink in, then turned to Madame. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Sit down, and do exactly as you’re told.’

  13

  Rosamund Jriumphant

  The Artemisia Royal Palace was surrounded by elegant gardens and fenced off from the public by a thick hedge and wrought-iron gates. Behind it, about five minutes walk from the main building, was Miniver House. Most visitors thought the Minivers’ old home was like something out of a fairytale. It was a long low building with turrets at the corners like a castle, and it was painted the prettiest shade of pale pink imaginable. Inside, the fittings and furniture were exactly the right size for its tiny owners. For most of Rosamund’s life, and all of Emily’s, Miniver House had been a haven of peace and comfort. Now, it looked like something out of a nightmare.

  Gibraltar and Rosamund crouched in the shadow of the big murraya hedge, staring across the lawn at the floodlit front of the house. Since Miniver House had been taken over by Operation Miniver, security had been tight. Only a few weeks before, Emily had been chased through the grounds by Ron’s guards and nearly caught. Tonight, though, things were different. The guards who should have been patrolling the property were gone, and the whole place had an eerie deserted air. Even the sentry box at the main gate was empty, with nothing but a lowered boom gate to stop intruders. Ever since she had been kidnapped, Rosamund had been longing to go back home. In her wildest dreams, she had never expected it would be like this.

  Gibraltar’s dark eyes fixed watchfully on the floodlit terrace. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he muttered. ‘Where is everybody? Even at this time of night, there should be some guards on duty.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a trap?’ Rosamund whispered.

  ‘It might be. But how would the people inside know to expect us?’

  Emily’s voice sounded softly on the radio receiver in Gibraltar’s ear. ‘Control Van to G-Team. Control Van to G-Team. B-Team has safely attained its target and begun transmission. Report your status. Over.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Rosamund. ‘We can’t pull out, it’s too late.’

  ‘If anyone’s watching, they’ll see us the moment we set foot on that terrace,’ said Gibraltar. ‘But people rarely challenge someone who’s acting confidently. I think we should just walk up to the house, and if we’re seen, we’ll have to brazen it out.’ He touched the transmit button on his headset. ‘Emily? Are you listening? We’re going in; over and out.’

  Gibraltar slung down his backpack and unzipped it. Rosamund stepped inside and crouched down, for once not grumbling about being shut up in the dark. She was genuinely too frightened, and as Gibraltar set out across the grass, she cringed in the bottom of the bag, and tried not to feel as if she was going to be sick. Bump, bump, bump. The backpack banged against Gibraltar’s back as he walked purposefully over the lawn. Oh, why wasn’t he going faster? Rosamund put her hand into her pocket and felt her speech, folded up and ready to deliver when they reached the studio. If they reached the studio. She began to sweat, as though the terrace floodlights were shining right inside the backpack and giving her presence away.

  Gibraltar went up a couple of steps. There was a slight pause, and Rosamund heard the crack of breaking wood as he jemmied open a door. The backpack was quickly swung down, and a moment later she scrambled out into a familiar hallway, the one which led from the side entrance of Miniver House.

  ‘We’re in!’ Rosamund whispered incredulously. ‘I didn’t think we’d make it.’

  ‘No one even tried to stop me,’ said Gibraltar. ‘But I’ll have been recorded on the security cameras, so we mustn’t waste any time. Come on.’ Beckoning her on with his jemmy, he padded down the hall. It led to the main entrance, and on the way they had to pass by a normal-sized doorway. It was the conference room, where Rosamund and Emily had once met the press, and given parties for other celebrities. Its door was ajar, and when Rosamund peeped around it she saw the room beyond was full of office furniture and desks, all empty. A lonely girl sat at a switchboard, reading a novel. She was wearing a pair of headphones, which had evidently muffled the sound of their arrival.

  Gibraltar put his finger to his lips and drew Rosamund swiftly away.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Rosamund hissed.

  ‘Answering the Minivers’ Hotline, of course. Didn’t you see the sign?’ He pointed. Sure enough, a laminated sign on the door read Operation Miniver. It was too far above Rosamund’s eye level for her to have noticed.

  ‘That is Operation Miniver? I thought it was meant to be huge!’ Rosamund was incredulous. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Apparently not here. Come on. We must get to the studio, quickly, before anyone sees us.’

  They hurried on through another door, this time Miniver-sized, so that Gibraltar had to stoop. It led to the front hall, where a flight of polished stairs swept up to the floor above. Rosamund stopped. Her broadcast, and everything else they were here to do, was forgotten in the shock of the ruin in front of her. The barbed wire and floodlights in the garden had not lied. Miniver House looked like it had been through a war.

  ‘What have they done?’ she exclaimed in a stifled whisper. The lights were switched off, but the outside floodlights cast a moon-like glow over the wreckage of her beautiful home. ‘Where are my pictures – and all the furniture? Everything’s gone. Someone’s stolen it!’ Her thoughts were flooded by a terrible vision of Madame, holding a giant garage sale of miniature belongings. It was so clear that for a moment, Rosamund was unable to stir. Then Gibraltar was urging her up the stairs, his long legs taking the tiny steps three at a time, and Rosamund reluctantly followed him, trying not to see the torn wallpaper, the dirt and rubbish, and the filthy slogans painted on the walls outside what had once been her bedroom. At the foot of the turret stairs, she trod on something hard and heard it snap under her foot. It was a gold CD, ripped out of its frame, and thrown like an abandoned frisbee onto the floor.

  If Artemisia was ever ruled by Madame, thought Rosamund, the whole city would soon look just like Miniver House. As she followed Gibraltar up the turret stairs, a dreadful possibility struck her for the first time. Their whole plan depended on the studio being in a usable cond
ition, but what if it, too, had been ransacked? The equipment it contained was valuable and it would be just like Madame to steal it. When they reached the top of the spiral staircase, however, the studio door was safely locked. Someone had pinned another notice above the doorknob. It read:

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Gibraltar and quickly forced the lock. Rosamund followed him into the room. She saw immediately that her fears were unfounded, for the studio was almost exactly as she and Emily had left it. No one had stolen the equipment: in fact, it was clearly in use. Great loops of tape hung over the backs of the chairs, and there was an empty coffee cup and several CD singles on the table next to the sound desk. Rosamund picked one up and dropped it instantly, as if she’d been burned. It was ‘Miniver Morning: Unmasked’. Someone had used their very own studio to make a mockery of her and Emily, and from the look of the work in progress, there was more of the same to come.

  ‘Leave that!’ ordered Gibraltar. He shut the door and bolted it, and Rosamund sat down, relieved after so long to be sitting in a chair the right size for her. She heard Gibraltar talking rapidly on the radio to Emily, telling her that they were in position and ready to go. Rosamund put her hand into her pocket for her speech. A sick feeling rose suddenly in the back of her throat. She felt again, then jumped off the chair and started rattling through Gibraltar’s backpack.

  ‘Gibraltar. My speech – it’s not here! I can’t find it! It’s gone!’

  ‘What do you mean, Rose?’ said Emily. ‘It can’t have gone. You can’t have lost it.’ She was sitting crouched over the radio on the caravan table. Until this moment, her job had been dull and seemingly pointless. Now Rosamund’s voice came crackling almost hysterically over the air.