by Lauren Child
‘No, not really Clance, but don’t just assume that someone’s not listening just because they look like they’re not listening.’
It was one of her rules and an important one.
RULE 9: THERE IS ALWAYS A CHANCE THAT SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS WATCHING YOU.
Or, in this case, listening.
Ruby had ignored the rule a few weeks ago and had ended up tied to a chair by an evil Count and almost buried in a ton of sand, all because someone had been listening in while she yacked away on the telephone to Clancy. She had every right to be cautious, even though the woman in question was actually Mrs Frast from her mother’s bridge club. However, the worry of being overheard only made up part of her reason for keeping it zipped; the truth was that what Ruby really wanted to do was sit in her room and give the briefing some clear thought, puzzle it out.
‘Look Clance, don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need to sit and churn a few things over, you understand, don’t ya?’
‘I guess,’ said Clancy.
They finished their drinks and Ruby cycled on home.
She walked into the house and up the stairs to the kitchen. She was pretty hungry and something smelled good. Mrs Digby was nowhere to be seen. But on the bright side, there were some home-made pizza slices, just cooked, on the table and a note which said, Dig in why don’t you.
There was a PS. It said, Mrs Lemon called again, she wants you to sit for that fat baby of hers. I told her you had an infectious skin condition and it didn’t look like it would clear up for a week or two.
Ruby smiled. ‘Nice going Mrs Digby.’ She loaded her plate with pizza and poured some banana milk into a glass, then, holding an apple in her teeth, she manoeuvred her way up to her room. She closed the door firmly behind her, retrieved her yellow notebook and set about making lists, and then used the elements from the list to make a spider-map. She always found it useful to see problems visually.
First she drew a picture of a diver; he was at the top of the page. Then she wrote three headings across the paper.
One said:
CONFUSED SHIPPING.
Spidering out from that heading she wrote every single incidence of confused shipping she had learned of in LB’s briefing.
The next heading said:
UNUSUAL MARINE ACTIVITY.
There were a lot of these too.
The last heading read:
SEA SOUNDS.
Spiralling out from this were all the names of the people who had heard the strange whispering in the ocean.
And then a question:
ARE ALL THESE HAPPENINGS CONNECTED?
Ruby sat staring at her own question for some minutes before catching sight of the time. She quickly reached across and switched on the portable TV set that sat on her bedroom floor. The title music to Crazy Cops blared out and the face of Detective Despo filled the screen. She sank down in her beanbag and let her mind concentrate on the life and death matters of a fictional cop.
The great advantage for Detective Despo was that he had a team of TV writers who made sure his cases were all tied up neatly by the end of each sixty-minute episode. Right at that moment Ruby envied him; she couldn’t help wishing that she had a writer on-board to make sure her latest case came out right in the end, but regrettably for her, she didn’t live in a fictional world.
Mrs Sylvester was up on deck,
as indeed were all the other passengers,
though she was a good deal more
hysterical than most and was
screaming…
‘Pirates! Pirates! They’ll rob us blind, cut our throats and leave us for dead! They’ve already thrown that poor dog overboard.’
On hearing this, Mr Sylvester fainted.
This all provided an excellent distraction, one that Sabina Redfort made good use of. She very quickly and very quietly made her way to the wheelhouse, snatched up the ship-to-shore radio and sent out a mayday call to the coastguard.
‘Mayday, mayday, this is the Golden Albatross, are you receiving me? Over.’
She got no reply, but she wasn’t going to give up – someone was bound to pick up the distress signal sooner or later.
‘Mayday, mayday, this is the Golden Albatross, are you receiving me? We are in deep over-our-head trouble. Over.’
Still no reply. This was very odd. The coastguard were meant to answer immediately. Sabina’s voice rose louder.
‘Mayday, mayday, I repeat, are you receiving me? Over.’
‘Yes,’ said a voice – unfortunately not a voice from the radio, but rather a deep voice from just behind her. ‘It’s certainly over for you lady!’
Sabina spun around and there, standing a few feet away, was a smartly dressed young man who looked like he would be more comfortable in an office than on the deck of a pirate boat; he did not look one bit like the murderous type. However, the man at his side did. He was smiling, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth, some chipped, some missing. He was a small man, but he seemed to easily occupy the cabin with a monstrous malevolence.
In his hand was a very shiny and very sharp-looking knife.
‘I was just… trying to cancel a… dental appointment,’ stammered Sabina, not at all sure what she was saying – but she was staring at the man, and dental hygiene was the first thing that had come to mind.
The man sniggered cruelly. ‘No need for teeth where you’re going.’
Sabina didn’t like the glint in his eye – he was obviously a man who enjoyed throwing dogs into the ocean, no doubt women too. He grabbed her arm and pushed and dragged her back to the deck.
‘Watch it, would you Captain Hook; you’re wrenching my arm out of its socket.’
‘No need for arms where you’re going,’ laughed the pirate. Then he spied the gem on her finger. ‘Now give me your ring!’
Sabina shook her head. ‘But this is a family heirloom, it belonged to several of my great-grandmothers, and if you think…’
‘You hand it over,’ growled the pirate, ‘or I’ll kill everyone on-board.’
‘But… it won’t come off my finger,’ protested Sabina.
‘No need for fingers where you are going!’ he said, flashing the knife.
Goodness, thought Sabina, there’s not going to be much of me left.
‘Let me cut it off, save you the struggle.’ He laughed again.
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Sabina, clenching her fists. The pirate lunged towards her and Sabina lashed out, clocking him on the jaw; Sabina Redfort packed quite a punch and the ring, which was diamond, gashed a scarlet ribbon across the pirate’s cheek.
‘Oh my, that was an accident,’ said Sabina a little nervously. ‘I was about to say, if you want this ring, you had better get me a little soap and water.’
The pirate didn’t look like he was about to oblige, but then he grinned.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here’s the water; good luck finding the soap.’
And with that he picked her up and threw her overboard.
Brant Redfort, horrified, bellowed, ‘Honey, don’t think of drowning, I’m coming to save you!’
And he swan-dived from the bow of the boat and disappeared beneath the waves. The pirates, sensing they had in some way failed to create an atmosphere of blind terror, began shooting into the water. They continued to shoot for some minutes, wanting to be sure that these two have-a-go heroes would never resurface.
‘We won’t be worth much to you if we’re all dead!’ screamed Mrs Sylvester. ‘Hostages have to be alive, remember.’
‘Who said anything about hostages?’ snarled the pirate.
This had the desired effect and all the remaining passengers trembled and awaited their fate.
Chapter 15.
Clutching at straws
RUBY WOKE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING to hear her radio making an unpleasant noise, like an orchestra tuning up. She lifted her head wearily from the pillow and through the blur of her poor eyesight saw a grey furry shape.
‘Bug
,’ she groaned. ‘You wanna switch that off?’ It was a trick of his to step on the set, turning it on – it usually got Ruby out of bed.
The dog bumbled over to where she lay and licked her nose.
‘Cut it out, would you Bug?’
She dragged herself up, and tripped over the happy husky and landed on her behind. Darn it! She crawled over to the set and blindly fiddled with the dial.
‘If you’re gonna switch the radio on, at least tune it to something that sounds like a tune.’ To her surprise she found it was tuned. Mrs Digby had obviously been in with the vacuum since the dial was set to easy-listening Chime Melody. However, the track that was playing was anything but easy listening: it sounded like a whole bunch of grasshoppers were playing badly tuned violins.
Jeepers, is that enough to give anyone a sore head.
Ruby looked at herself in the mirror.
‘I guess I’m up,’ she muttered. She showered and dressed and fixed her barrette in her hair, and looked at herself in the mirror.
Better, she told herself. She pulled on a T-shirt that said wake me if things get interesting.
School that day basically involved trying to coax Clancy out of packing his bags and heading for the hills.
‘I think I should just get outta here, make a run for it,’ he said. He seemed to mean it. ‘I won’t survive two minutes in the ocean, not two minutes.’
‘Clance, you’re overdramatising – the worst that could happen is you get stung by a jellyfish.’
‘A jellyfish!’ squealed Clancy, by now flapping his arms furiously. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. No, I’m gonna head for Colorado – it’s landlocked. I could camp out for a few months until this whole thing blows over.’
Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘Clance my friend, you’re beginning to lose it. It’s just a school swimathon.’ But Clancy Crew could not be calmed.
‘You know how I am about jellyfish; if I get stung, I’ll most likely have an allergic reaction and sink.’
‘You can borrow my Spectrum anti-sting canister, how about that? That’s gotta reassure you,’ said Ruby.
By Thursday, Clancy was worse – he was hardly able to speak and in physics class when Mr Endell asked him what he would do if an asteroid struck earth, Clancy replied, ‘Thank my lucky stars.’
Elliot tried to jolt him out of it by making him laugh, but most of his jokes seemed to revolve around some poor bozo meeting a gory end and so his efforts resulted in Clancy Crew sinking lower into his sweater. He actually looked like he was shrinking.
By Friday, Clancy had adopted the demeanour of a condemned man. He had stopped wrestling with his fate and seemed to accept that there was no way out; he was going to have to swim that swimathon even if it meant swimming heroically – or perhaps weeping like a coward – towards certain death.
After school, just as Clancy was leaving for home, Ruby caught up with him.
‘Hey Clance, do you want me to come over?’
Clancy shook his head. ‘Nah, that’s all right Rube, I gotta get my sleep; it’s my only chance.’
‘You know you’re not gonna die Clance; you’re being awful pessimistic.’
‘Can you guarantee that?’ asked Clancy, searching her face for assurance. He wanted to believe her, he really did.
‘I gave you my anti-sting; there’s no way you can die of a jellyfish attack,’ said Ruby.
‘I know,’ said Clancy. ‘But there’s worse than jellyfish out there.’
As she looked into his desperate eyes, she thought of that old saying – a drowning man will clutch at straws. Clancy needed a straw right now, one that he could put all his faith in: RULE 20: NINETY PER CENT OF SURVIVAL IS ABOUT BELIEVING YOU WILL SURVIVE.
Ruby reached into her inside jacket pocket and unclipped something from the lining.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘why don’t you take this? It’s the luckiest thing I got.’ She handed him a tiny tin badge. It seemed to be totally plain, just an ordinary white pin-badge, until you held it in your hand and felt something embossed on its surface. Ruby had found it when she was just a little kid, next to the sidewalk on Cedarwood Drive. She had kept it all these years – she wasn’t exactly sure why. She usually had it pinned to the inside of her jacket, a habit started when she was a toddler aware that her mother would consider a pin-badge a hazard and so take it away. Now she was grown there was of course no need to hide it, but it had become a ‘thing’ – something she did – and so the badge remained out of sight. ‘Just don’t lose it and give it right back, OK?’
Clancy looked at this small object lying in his hand. He believed her about the luck, Ruby could see that in his eyes. This tiny object might just save my life. That’s what he was thinking. ‘Really?’ he said and his face looked brighter. ‘I can borrow it?’
‘Yeah, take my good luck why don’t you.’
He smiled. ‘Thanks Rube.’
She walked off, then stopped and called out, ‘So remember, if anyone’s gonna get chomped tomorrow, it’s me!’
Ruby was slowly cycling her way home when she noticed the stranger standing on the corner of Bamboo and Rose. She had seen him a few times now without really taking notice, but this time she was taking notice: Twinford was a big place, but this guy seemed to be frequenting a lot of the same places Ruby did.
Is he tailing me?
She had first seen him soon after the dolphins took up residence in Twinford harbour. This weathered-looking guy. Last week she had spotted him on the corner of Amster, drinking small cups of rich black coffee. He wore a hat and sunglasses (even though the sun had already sunk low in the sky). He was tanned and lithe, but the hair that stuck out from under his cap was grey and he looked like he had seen many a scorching summer’s day, his skin leathery and worn. She had spotted him in the middle of town too, outside the library and then again down near the harbour.
Nothing to be suspicious about, you could say, but Ruby had picked him up on her internal radar and once she had seen him a couple of times, she realised she was seeing him over and over. She had never observed him with anyone nor had she heard him speak, not even to the waiter at the coffee shop. When he ordered, he pointed; when he thanked, he nodded; when he paid the check, he paid silently, and left with a wave of the hand.
OK, so there was no law against drinking small cups of coffee in the Full-O-Beans coffee shop, but though Ruby had never caught him looking in her direction, she had this weird feeling that this man was watching her, like he knew who she was. If she was right about that, then what was he doing? And was she in danger?
Why would he be tailing me? she thought.
For now, she couldn’t do anything more than add him to her list.
Once back in Cedarwood Drive, she scooted up the stairs to her room. She retrieved her yellow notebook and leafed through, finding the ‘stranger’ sightings and marking them on her city map. Having stared at the map for some time, Ruby put down her pen, folded the paper and returned it to her hiding place. She went down to the kitchen to find Mrs Digby and food.
She found Mrs Digby boiling pasta and scolding the radio.
The radio presenter was saying:
‘WE AT CHIME MELODY APOLOGISE FOR THE INTERFERENCE TO OUR BROADCASTS DURING THIS PAST WEEK. WE ARE TRYING TO CORRECT THE PROBLEM. MEANWHILE, DON’T GO TWISTING THAT DIAL, WE’LL MISS YOU.’
‘They shoulda sorted the issue before now,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘It’s more than an old person can stand, this squawking coming at you every time you step into your kitchen – no wonder my noodles are overcooked.’ She twisted the tuner to Twinford Talk Radio.
‘SO BETTY, I HEAR YKK 672 IS ABOUT TO PASS PRETTY CLOSE TO EARTH?’ ‘THAT’S RIGHT KEN.’ ‘BETTY, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE ASTEROID COULD BE INTERFERING WITH CHIME MELODY 204 FM?’ ‘INTERESTING THEORY KEN, BUT I DON’T THINK THE SCIENTISTS WOULD AGREE THAT THE TWO THINGS ARE RELATED.’
‘Asteroid, my foot.’ Mrs Digby clunked the off switch with her ladle and went back to salvaging her noodles
.
But Ruby’s mind was no longer on food; it was far too busy trying to decide if Ken might just be right. Maybe the asteroid did have a part to play in this whole mystery.
Or maybe it was just a cold bit of rock floating through space, and Ruby was no closer to working out what in tarnation was going on.
Ambassador Crew
did not consider himself the
type of man to be commandeered
by pirates – it just wasn’t in his
game plan...
The captain of the Golden Albatross – a cowardly little man – might have surrendered immediately, but Ambassador Crew was no coward and he would not give in so readily.
He had had enough of dancing to their tune. He stood up from where the Twinfordites were huddled and strode out to confront the head pirate. He drew himself up as tall as he could. He towered above these scoundrels and it made him feel confident. He would get what he wanted – he always did.
‘This will not stand – do you hear me? I insist that you release me and drop me back on terra firma – I have a job and it’s an important one. Oh, and these people need to get home too.’ He waved his hand, indicating the cowering cruise passengers. ‘Some of them have jobs and most of them have commitments of sorts.’
The pirates merely laughed.
‘Who is this bozo with the snapped arm?’ jeered the pirate with the poor dental work. He was pointing at Ambassador Crew’s plaster cast – an injury sustained in a squash match.
‘Now, just look here—’ began Ambassador Crew.
The pirate snarled a menacing snarl that came from deep inside. ‘You are not the boss of this boat, I am, and if I say you need to keep your big mouth shut, you shut it – understood?’
Ambassador Crew glanced at the silver knife glimmering in the pirate’s hand, and he kept his mouth firmly shut.