Catch Your Death

by Lauren Child

  Back in her bedroom Ruby printed out every one of the little photographs taken at the 1770 launch the previous night. They were the size of small Polaroid prints, about two inches by three inches. She looked at them all very closely, but could see nothing to get suspicious about. She looked especially carefully at the pictures she had taken of the Madame Swann collapse, but again she drew a blank. All she saw were men and women dressed up to the nines, smiling and clapping, having a good time, people turning, people looking shocked, people moving in to help: in other words, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Ruby’s examination of the photographs was interrupted by a piece of toast which was left outside her door. She read it, then gathered the pictures into her satchel and pulled on her boots and headed back to the city toddler park.

  Oh brother! she thought. I hope Bugwart isn’t around.

  She didn’t feel the day could get much worse, but, as it turned out, the night was young and there was plenty of time for things to hit a lower low.

  Chapter 27.

  ‘SO REDFORT, WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM LAST NIGHT’S SURVEILLANCE?’ LB was looking at her intently like she needed an answer that would tie everything up and allow her to close the file and move on.

  ‘I found out that Mrs Gruemeister is allergic to shrimp and so is her cousin Sybil. Jeff, the pianist, really wished he’d learned to play the flute and a few of the guests thought Madame Swann shouldn’t have worn mink with that outfit and several thought she shouldn’t have worn a dead bird on her head,’ replied Ruby. ‘Including me actually.’

  LB picked up the red perspex file – Ruby’s file. ‘If you’re trying to tell me something of interest, then might I ask you to get to the point?’

  ‘What I’m trying to say,’ said Ruby earnestly, ‘is that I saw nothing. At least nothing that adds up as any interest to you, and I’m good at looking for details: dull conversations at boring parties are a specialty of mine. But I could make no connection between what I saw and heard and what we’re looking out for.’

  ‘So you didn’t notice the host collapse to the floor,’ said LB.

  ‘Well, I was coming to that,’ said Ruby. ‘I think there’s something a little off about Madame Swann.’

  ‘What do you mean by “off“?’ said LB.

  ‘I guess fake is what I mean. I wouldn’t put it past her to fake a faint to get people talking about her,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean she made all the papers, didn’t she? They barely mentioned the whole deal about the Gem Festival.’

  ‘So you think there’s nothing more to it?’

  ‘I’m not saying nothing for sure, I’m saying nothing I could see, but I need to keep looking,’ said Ruby.

  LB placed the file back on her desk.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘where next?’

  ‘The footage, the close-circuit TV, there must be something that could tell us what’s been going on with the thefts,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Froghorn has been over that with a fine toothcomb,’ said LB, looking over at Blacker. ‘At least that’s what I understand?’

  Blacker gave a nod. ‘I set him up with a ton of tapes and he’s been looking through them all day every day, but there’s no sign of anyone robbing the place.’

  ‘Yeah, but is he actually looking?’ said Ruby. ‘I mean really looking? I hate to criticise anyone’s reputation here, especially someone with such white teeth and shiny hair, but I have noticed that he kinda lacks patience.’

  LB gave Ruby a look. ‘Yes, I’m aware of how you feel about each other.’

  Ruby gave a mock shocked look. ‘Well, I knew I didn’t like him, but I always thought he was very fond of me?’

  ‘Redfort, cut the baloney and tell me what you want,’ said LB.

  ‘I’d like to take a look at the tapes myself,’ replied Ruby.

  LB turned to Hitch who had just arrived.

  Hitch, without more than a second’s pause, said, ‘Let the kid take a look; if there’s something to see, she’ll spot it.’

  ‘OK,’ said LB, ‘I’ll let Froghorn know – by the way, have you seen my Paris paperweight? It appears to have gone missing.’

  In response to this Hitch merely raised an eyebrow.

  When they were out of earshot, Ruby asked, ‘So what’s the whole deal with this paperweight?’

  ‘Sentimental,’ said Hitch. ‘It was the first thing Bradley Baker ever gave her.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ruby.

  After a short walk down the lower-floor corridor, Hitch and Ruby arrived at the tape room. In the glass sound booth was Agent Miles Froghorn, watching the small screen in front of him as he sipped a wheatgrass shot.

  ‘Two of my favourite things combined,’ muttered Ruby. ‘An unpleasant person drinking an unpleasant drink.’

  ‘Play nice Ruby, you know LB likes her agents to be the best of friends.’

  ‘So why doesn’t she keep him out a my way, in another part of the building. . . or planet?’

  ‘Because this is his detail and, if you wanna get involved here, you’re gonna have to do things his way.’

  But Froghorn was perhaps even less pleased to see Ruby than Ruby was to see him. He didn’t want this upstart in his office, making comments about the way he was conducting his work. What LB saw in her, he did not know. He observed that she had another of her vulgar T-shirts on: make mine a donut.

  It was so disrespectful.

  After more than three hours of watching, something finally happened. The screen seemed to flicker.

  ‘What was that?’ said Ruby.

  ‘What do you mean “what was that?” The screen flickered; it happens on these store cameras – someone jolts it and it moves.’

  ‘Who would jolt it?’ asked Ruby.

  He gave her a pitying look. ‘How would I know little girl? But I’ll take a wild guess and say a store assistant?’

  Ruby looked at the plan of the shop floor: each security camera was marked on it and this camera, camera 12G, was placed up high, about twenty feet above the floor.

  ‘Must be some tall store assistant,’ she said.

  ‘So it’s not a store assistant,’ said Froghorn.

  ‘So then what is it?’ said Ruby. “Cause it doesn’t look like interference to me.’

  ‘Now you believe you’re an expert on surveillance-camera footage?’ said Froghorn.

  ‘No, I don’t think I’m an expert at sitting in front of a TV screen and watching footage of shoppers shopping; that’s what you do.’

  The insult didn’t pass Froghorn unnoticed. ‘Great to know you think you might be good at something Redfort, because I hear the whole survival training didn’t go so well.’

  ‘I’m glad you care enough to take an interest in my training.’

  ‘I heard you failed,’ said Froghorn.

  ‘And who did you hear that from, the Twinford Knitting Circle?’

  ‘It’s all around Spectrum,’ said Froghorn, ‘the talk of HQ: “Will little Ruby Redfort get canned?”’

  Ruby imagined clonking Froghorn on the head and, by conjuring this picture, managed to keep her composure.

  ‘All I was suggesting,’ she said calmly, ‘is that this could be a flicker caused by something moving very close to the camera lens.’

  ‘All right, so let me put it this way little girl,’ said Froghorn, ‘what could it possibly have to do with the robberies?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Ruby, trying her very hardest not to call the potato head sitting next to her a potato head.

  ‘So why don’t we continue with the job in hand and not waste time.’ Froghorn said this in such a patronising tone that Ruby found it hard to keep from calling the potato head beside her something a whole lot worse than a potato head.

  They watched for another hour and Ruby couldn’t help circling back to the flicker.

  ‘Froghorn’ – she remembered the silent G this time – ‘would you mind just at least replaying that tape again?’ She hoped that the correct pronunciation of his name might make him
more compliant.

  ‘Just to remind you, because you seem a little out of your depth here, we’re looking for a thief, not evaluating the camera quality of Melrose Dorff’s security system.’

  ‘What’s wrong Froghorn, having a bad hair day?’

  Instinctively, Froghorn neatened his hair.

  ‘You’re so busy telling me,’ said Ruby, ‘that you’re the expert here, the expert at sitting on your smug butt watching a little screen, that it hasn’t occurred to you that you might be missing something, yet I don’t hear you coming up with one possible suggestion that might help us solve this case. And by the way, sure, I might have flunked survival training, but at least I got to go out and try for it. I don’t see anyone trusting you to survive in the great outdoors buster, no doubt because you wouldn’t be able to manage three minutes without your skincare regime, let alone three days without food, shelter and clean undershorts. You don’t know squat about squat and I don’t care how big your IQ is, you’re still the biggest duh brain I ever had the misfortune to meet, so I would suggest you ram your—’

  Just before Ruby could finish making this suggestion, Hitch entered the room.

  He looked from one to the other. ‘Do I sense an atmosphere?’ Neither of them spoke. ‘I think I do. . . perhaps we should all take a little break.’

  He led Ruby out of the room and along the corridor. ‘Come with me kid before you say something stupid on top of all the stupid things you’ve no doubt already said.’

  ‘So how is the perfume trade?

  I see you have a new fragrance out and I was curious about the name – 1770? Are you sure that shouldn’t be 1970?’

  Madame Swann gasped. How did Lorelei know?’

  ‘Oh dear, poor Madame Swann, you thought I wouldn’t find out. Tut tut, never kid a kidder.’

  ‘What do you want Lorelei?’

  Lorelei von Leyden toyed with her drink. ‘Nothing much really, I just need you to teach me something is all.’

  ‘And what could I possibly teach you? I taught you everything I know and you treated me like dirt.’

  Lorelei shrugged. ‘Not quite everything; there was something you neglected to share.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘It concerns a certain process, an extraction of smell.’

  Madame Swann’s face hardened.

  ‘You tell me how to do that,’ said Lorelei, ‘and I’ll keep your little secret safe.’

  Chapter 28.

  RUBY SENSED THAT HITCH WAS UNUSUALLY ON EDGE as they walked down the corridors. Something was on his mind, bugging him. Ruby was aware that he had had a meeting with LB and she wondered if LB had said something to unsettle him – whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing.

  When they got to the orange door of the gadget room, Hitch said, ‘Now kid, I need to step in here, for just five minutes. Do you think you can stay out of trouble for three hundred seconds?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Ruby. ‘You suggesting that I might touch something?’

  ‘No,’ said Hitch, ‘I’m suggesting that you might steal something like all those times before. Just try and keep your hands in your pockets until we get out.’

  They made their way through the corridors and punched in the code and entered. There was no sign of anyone, just a note on the workbench at the far end of the room. Hitch picked it up, frowned and said, ‘OK, so I need to go into the back room and search through some boxes until I find what I’m looking for – you sit tight.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m picking up the Bradley Baker watch,’ said Hitch.

  ‘I should say it’s totally my business,’ said Ruby. ‘LB gave that watch to me.’

  ‘No,’ said Hitch, ‘LB requested that you keep that watch; it’s yours to use in the field until she says otherwise.’

  ‘Now you’re nit-picking,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Now you’re getting on my nerves kid,’ said Hitch.

  ‘I was only saying,’ said Ruby.

  ‘And I’m saying two words: zip it.’

  Ruby snapped her mouth shut and gave him a cross-eyed look.

  ‘Better,’ he said. ‘Your watch, aka Bradley Baker’s watch, has been fixed up and should be somewhere in the back room, but I’m not sure exactly where, so while I go look, you stand still.’

  Hitch disappeared and Ruby walked up and down, peering into the cabinets, most containing what appeared to be mundanely ordinary objects.

  She was just taking a look at the parachute cape again when she noticed something gleaming on the floor just under one of the cases. She walked over and picked it up – it was a silver cufflink, one of Hitch’s, though she hadn’t noticed it drop. She stood up and banged her head as she did so. It was then that she discovered that displayed in the case next to the lost cufflink was a whole series of objects that related to being lost and getting found.

  One of the very dullest was simply a small white and green striped canister. It looked a lot like a tube of mints – in fact, very much like an old-fashioned-style packet of Fresh Breath Mints. The label next to it said:

  GROUND GLOWS [Taken out of commission in 1962] To be used when trekking at night in uncertain terrain. Help the trekker retrace his/her steps, or a specified ally to follow the same route. Made up of two parts: flat glow lights and discreet shoe fix activator. Instructions: attach activator to footwear and dispense glow discs as you walk. Discs will only light up when in range of the activator. Multiple activators can be issued, for example to a fellow agent wishing to follow the same trail.

  There was a warning, but the ink was smudged and Ruby couldn’t make out all that it said, just:

  WARNING! after heavy rainfall they can ra c an nr ia e

  These seemed like clever little illuminators because they had the advantage of only being useful to the user. They were very discreet and very handy if you happened to want an agent to follow your trail at a later time without tipping off an enemy tracker. No doubt they had aided the rescue of more than a few Spectrum agents over the years. Ruby wondered why they weren’t issued as general survival kit; it would save a whole lot of bother – at least to her.

  She looked at them for the longest time, well, actually, only about 3.5 minutes, but it seemed a long time as she stood there, thinking about what the right thing to do might be.

  It turned out the right thing to do was to borrow them without telling anyone. She didn’t want to involve Hitch because he shouldn’t be implicated, just in case trouble was caused and also (and perhaps more importantly) because he might stop her. Ground glows were just the thing she needed and therefore they seemed to be a very sensible thing to take with her. I mean how dumb would it be if I got lost and some whole mission got blown when, if only I’d been carrying ground glows, everything woulda been fine?

  There was also the small matter of LB, who would no doubt be firing Agent Redfort if she slipped up again during basic training. That decided it: Ruby put the ground glows in her pocket; after all, they had been taken out of service so who was really going to care?

  ‘What are you up to kid?’

  Ruby, caught off guard, jumped.

  ‘I found your cufflink!’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t lost a cufflink,’ said Hitch. He took it from her. ‘That’s Bradley Baker’s cufflink.’ He looked puzzled. ‘How did that wind up in here?’

  It wasn’t until much later that Ruby got back to watching the store security tapes. She had snuck back to the room where she and Froghorn had been working.

  She got in easy enough: she remembered the sound each numeral made when pushed. The trickier part was finding the microtapes themselves: she had no idea where Froghorn had put them. After a little rummaging, she began to realise that they must still be loaded into the microtape reader. Of course Froghorn had activated the security code on the number pad and of course this was known only to Froghorn. What could it be?

  She looked
at the pad for a moment, and noticed that four of the numbers were a little more worn than the others: they had a sort of sheen from being repeatedly pressed. Naturally Froghorn would be too arrogant to change his code.

  1, 2, 7 and 9, thought Ruby. But in what order?

  Then she smiled. It had to be 1729. The smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Just the kind of number a geeky desk agent like Froghorn would choose.

  Of course, because Froghorn was Froghorn, she couldn’t ask him which tape the flickering thing had shown up on. He was never going to help her out like that.

  She got lucky after approximately two hours and fifty-five minutes. She slowed the tape down and enhanced the image as much as she could; it was pretty blurry, but was clear enough for her to be sure.

  ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s a bird.’

  She called Blacker and filled him in.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

  The thing Ruby most liked about Blacker was that he was just not interested in giving her a hard time about minor misdemeanours. For instance: gaining entrance to a locked office without permission; sitting at someone else’s desk and breaking into their password-protected computer.

  ‘Thought you might need one of these,’ said Blacker, passing her a jelly donut wrapped in a serviette. He pulled up a chair next to hers.

  ‘There it is,’ said Ruby, freezing on the distorted image of a bird.

  ‘So we have an intruder,’ said Blacker.

  ‘But it doesn’t help us a whole deal,’ said Ruby, ‘I mean not as far as the robberies go.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Blacker, ‘but it does mean that there’s a lapse in security. I mean somehow that bird got into Melrose Dorff and I would doubt it was through the revolving doors, so we’re probably looking at a window or a roof.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Either way,’ said Blacker, ‘we should get down there tomorrow and tell them they’ve got something flapping around in store.’

  Chapter 29.