by Lauren Child
THE NO SHOW SHOES
Stan Barrell (42) was one of the crack security team guarding the door at the fateful moment when the shoes shuffled off.
‘It was like they were there one minute and gone the next. They were totally not there. The only thing that coulda taken them is a living breathing ghost.’
Really Stan? Have you given any thought to what you just said? Stan didn’t sound like he was the smartest security guard in the deck.
Many of the audience apparently agreed with Stan Barrell’s prime suspect suspicions.
SPECTRE UNDER SUSPICION
‘There is no other explanation for it,’ said Mrs Doris Flum from Garden Suburbs, South Twinford, who happened to be at last night’s Scarlet Pagoda costume extravaganza. ‘That theatre is haunted, always has been,’ she stated emphatically.
‘Why are we talking to Doris Flum, what’s she gonna know? And how can the theatre always have been haunted? Someone must have had to die there to haunt it; it wasn’t built haunted.’ Ruby was talking to herself out loud now and Bug the husky was looking confused. Was she talking to him, was she suggesting food? Nothing was appearing in his dog bowl and she hadn’t mentioned the word ‘walk’. Ruby didn’t notice the husky’s hopeful eyes; she was enjoying being irritated by the paper.
The Twinford Echo had a reputation for being a rather sensationalist and silly newspaper; fact wasn’t its strong suit. The only interesting thing it had managed to report concerning the event was that the pair of shoes – otherwise known as prop 53 – was the only thing to go missing, apparently stolen.
So why not anything else?
Ruby pulled her yellow notebook from her back pocket and made a note of this – it sure as eggs had to mean something.
She went back to flipping through the Echo and saw that the second biggest story was about the weather.
WAVE BYE-BYE TO HEATWAVE
Twinford’s heatwave set to end in dramatic style sooner or later
Who writes this stuff?
She read on. It was a fairly overblown piece about the usual storms that fall brought with it, only this year it seemed they were headed Twinford’s way a little earlier than expected. . . but maybe not, the meteorologists couldn’t agree. She turned the page and was faced with yet another picture of the mayor’s statue. The Twinford public were making their feelings known and some wiseguy had dressed it up to look like the Scorpion Spectre. The mayor was not amused.
MAYOR ABRAHAMS DOES NOT SEE FUNNY SIDE
The toast popped, and as Ruby extracted it from the slot and dropped it onto her plate she saw that it was toast with a mission.
Awake?
Good.
Test.
Imminent.
HQ.
Immediately.
‘Cut a kid some slack,’ moaned Ruby, ‘I haven’t had my breakfast yet.’
This was one of the downsides to having a toaster that doubled as a fax machine. Few people wanted orders delivered from their place of work direct to their kitchen table, but for Ruby it was an occupational hazard.
Ruby coated the toast in butter, stuck it between her teeth, picked up her satchel with one hand and her juice with the other and teetered downstairs to the lower ground floor. She could hear one of Hitch’s records playing on the turntable, the melody drifting out of the open door. She knocked and on hearing the ‘come in’ call, she entered.
The tiny apartment was, as always, ship-shape, not a strewn sock or dirty coffee cup to be seen. Didn’t matter what time of day or night, Ruby had never caught Hitch unprepared, asleep or even on the brink of dozing off.
‘Hey kid, you’re up early.’
‘Spectrum called,’ Ruby held up the toast.
‘Ah, the test,’ said Hitch. ‘You ready for it?’
‘My choice would have been to eat breakfast first,’ said Ruby, ‘but yeah, I’m eager.’
‘That’s good to hear, kid,’ said Hitch. He looked like he was going to add something but if he was then he changed his mind.
‘The thing is,’ said Ruby, ‘I don’t have my bike, so I was wondering if you could see your way to maybe driving me in?’ She gave him the Ruby Redfort slow blink and full-on eye hold – but it didn’t work.
‘Kid, it may come as a shock but I’m not actually employed by Spectrum secret services to drive you around. The job’s more complicated than you think.’
‘So how am I supposed to get to HQ immediately? It’s gonna take me three city buses and a twenty-minute walk.’
‘Take the subway from Greenstreet,’ suggested Hitch.
‘Greenstreet is closed for maintenance,’ said Ruby.
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. Isn’t that what we pay you for? Thinking.’
‘That’s what I was doing, that was me thinking you might give me a lift.’
‘Think again kid.’
‘So how do I make it into the Spectrum elevator, you never gave me the code.’
‘Sure I did,’ said Hitch.
‘You did?’ said Ruby.
‘Think about it,’ said Hitch, ‘I’m sure it’ll come to you. Just add it up.’
Chapter 12.
Skitching a lift
RUBY LEFT HIS APARTMENT MUTTERING TO HERSELF about the gross injustice of it and how it was tantamount to child neglect, etc., etc. She picked up her satchel, slung it across her chest and walked out of the front door slamming it behind her. She was working up to being in a bad mood all the way down the front steps, until she caught sight of Elaine Lemon, a woman to be avoided at all costs. Mrs Lemon was always trying to engage Ruby in conversation which was rarely anything but deadly dull and she pretty much always rounded up by saying, ‘So maybe you’d like to babysit for Archie, I know how much you two enjoy spending time together.’
This was not true: Archie was not quite a year old.
Did he even care who he was spending time with? And as for Ruby, was it possible to enjoy hanging out with a baby?
Ruby for one thought not, and so in an effort to avoid Mrs Lemon she completely gave up on her bad mood and ran as fast as she could down Cedarwood Drive. When she got well out of hollering range she slowed her pace to a brisk walk. As she made it past the O’Learys’ place, she couldn’t help but notice that yet again they were having building work done. They seemed to have the place remodelled at least twice a year. There was a skip piled with junk out in front and sticking out of it was what looked like a perfectly OK skateboard.
This was Typical of Britney O’Leary; she would try something for about a week, get bored and then move on to another activity. Ruby yanked the board out and set it on the ground. It looked fine. She stepped onto it; it felt fine.
Here was her transport. It wasn’t as fast as cycling or driving, but it was quicker than taking three buses and a three-block walk. Of course it would be quicker still if she grabbed the wheel arch of a moving vehicle. If that guy with the haircut could do it then she certainly could. Yes, she would skitch a ride.
Ruby had never actually tried it before. If she was totally honest this was because she had always thought it was a dumb thing to do; unless of course it was an out and out emergency type of situation or one wanted to end up in the emergency room. But things had changed; she had escaped from the mouth of death, felt its burning tongues of fire, but she’d come out of it unscathed, permanent injury-wise. She felt, well, invincible, and so skitching suddenly seemed like a very good way of getting around fast.
Ruby set off on her newly acquired skateboard and minutes later had grabbed hold of an unsuspecting car headed in the right direction and she was on her way. She travelled at high speed, a great deal faster than pedalling a bike – she only had to shift rides twice, when the cars she had chosen peeled off in the wrong direction, and she reached the Schroeder Building car park in very good time.
As she snatched up her board she couldn’t resist a smile – quite a blast; the wind in her face, the road speeding so close beneath her feet. Travelling at thirty
miles an hour without working for it, yeah, it was a blast all right. If she’d wiped out, it would most probably have been curtains for Ruby Redfort. . . but then, that only made her like it more.
She walked to the elevator, stepped inside and waited for the doors to close behind her. Now what? Now she needed to figure out the code that would take her to Spectrum.
She stood there thinking, If Hitch told me the code then it must have been when we arrived in the underground car park.
What did we talk about?
It couldn’t have been very interesting or she would have remembered. No, it was boring; Hitch was small-talking about the building. . . something to do with cars, and levels and floors.
She looked around – somewhere there would be a parking notice.
It was near the ramp where the cars came in.
Level capacity 500 vehicles.
There were 3 Levels so that meant 1500 cars. The Schroeder was seventy-seven storeys high. She knew that because everyone knew that; it had a big 77 above its entrance, the number referring to where the building was in the street and also to the number of floors it was made up of. She thought of what Hitch had said: add it up.
She added the numbers, 1500+3+77, stepped inside the elevator and tapped 1580 into the code panel. The door did not open.
‘What?’ said Ruby out loud. ‘Is this thing broken? How do I even call Spectrum maintenance?’ And that’s when she remembered that she needed to factor in the number of maintenance vehicles – Hitch had mentioned those too, but she couldn’t remember the exact number. This was somewhat of a pain since it involved counting the “maintenance reserved” bays but eventually she got there. Seventeen.
OK, add the maintenance vehicles.
She tapped in 1597 and the door opened.
‘Could he not have just reminded me?’ Ruby muttered. But she knew what his answer to that would be. Pay attention Redfort.
Despite the almost impossible feat of arriving barely twenty-seven minutes after leaving home, she was still met with an impatient look from Buzz, who told her to sit and wait until she was called.
‘Could I maybe go grab something from the canteen?’ said Ruby. ‘I skipped breakfast to be here.’
‘If you’re not here when they call you, it’s a fail,’ said Buzz.
Ruby rolled her eyes, and went and sat in the atrium for at least as long as it would have taken to eat breakfast.
‘Agent Redfort please make your way immediately to the rainbow office,’ came the robotic voice over the intercom.
Finally.
She stood up and walked back over to the circular desk where the mushroom woman sat.
‘Why the stupid announcement?’ said Ruby, ‘I’m right here – why does it have to be announced – it’s not like you couldn’t just wave your hand.’
‘It’s not my job,’ was all Buzz said by way of reply.
‘Jeepers,’ muttered Ruby. ‘You never, like, get tempted to go off script?’
‘The announcer announces, I answer calls,’ said Buzz, pushing a card towards Ruby. ‘And I issue directions.’
On the card were some words and some numbers:
Test candidate 45902314 take the elevator to grey zone where you will be issued instructions by the duty agent.
The duty agent turned out to be Froghorn, otherwise known as ‘the silent G’ – a nickname Ruby had given him because he was very particular about the pronunciation of his name, i.e. Frohorn not Froghorn, as it was actually written.
‘Hey Froghorn.’ She made the G sound very clear. ‘What are you doing on bozo duty, they still not forgiven you for lousing up the whole Melrose Dorff robbery case?’
Froghorn gave her a withering look. ‘Talking about lousing up, I heard you hurt your little arm. Did someone push you over at kindergarten?’
‘Er, no, I was walked over a cliff by a psychopath actually, what did you do during summer break? Give yourself an extreme manicure?’
Froghorn gave her a tired expression. ‘Little girl, if I had time to reply then I would, but I’m very busy here.’
‘If you could think of a reply, I’m sure you would, but don’t sweat it, I can see you’re real busy standing there behind a table.’
Froghorn smiled a tight smile. ‘So I hear you’re out of the Field Agent Training Programme if you flunk this test.’ He peered down at the slip of paper she was holding. ‘Test candidate 45902314. Will this be your lucky number? Or the digits that will keep you locked on the wrong side of “agent world” forever?’
‘Yeah well at least I have a shot; no one’s exactly falling over themselves to offer you one,’ said Ruby.
‘Why would I want one?’ snapped Froghorn. ‘HQ is where it all happens.’
Ruby made a point of looking theatrically around her. ‘Yeah, I can see it must be very thrilling sitting here behind this nice little desk in this cosy little room.’
‘Your test,’ said Froghorn flatly, and he handed Ruby a key attached to a yellow tag. On one side of the tag was the number 5, on the other a pattern of lines and circles. ‘Let’s hope it’s a nice quick one. Fail it and LB will have you kicked out of Spectrum before lunch. We don’t want to miss nap time, do we?’
Ruby yawned. ‘You might want to spend time working on your irritating remarks; that one’s getting kinda tired.’
Ruby walked back to the elevator bank and descended to yellow level, stepped out and walked the long curved corridor until the yellow keytag perfectly matched the yellow of the door. None of the doors were numbered so Ruby was unsure what the number 5 on the yellow tag represented. She turned the key in the lock and stepped into a strange inside outside room; an urban landscape of fake buildings and industrial machinery, cranes and water towers, fire escapes and alleyways.
She examined the maze-like pattern on the back of the tag – a map of sorts, she assumed: the five circles representing locations in the room, the zig-zagging lines, the route. She considered the tag’s printed number five. Five things, she concluded, the task is to retrieve five things.
There was no indication that she was up against the clock but she imagined she probably was, time was always a factor.
The task required her to make her way across the varied urban landscape. The lines on the tag gave her the necessary clue as to the direction she should go in; how she managed it was down to her.
And so she began. At first cautiously, assessing the terrain and planning the route that would take her to object one – a small bunch of keys; not easy to spot, particularly for Ruby whose eyes were not her greatest asset. The keys were lodged in a wall that she had to climb whilst contending with a fake rainstorm, which drenched her in under a minute – but even so it didn’t present too much of a challenge. Ruby slipped object one into her pocket.
One down, four to go.
The next was a yellow flashlight. It was perched on top of a shattered rooftop, the only way to reach it that Ruby could see was to climb the building’s crumbling walls. Bricks and plaster came loose as she made her way up and a whole section of roof fell away as she clambered onto the rafters, tiles and beams crashing down with the most almighty boom.
Oops, thought Ruby.
Ruby grabbed the flashlight and paused to take stock. The tag’s map indicated that she should make her way through the room beneath her and exit via a doorway into the adjacent building, but the room was now full of rubble and whatever doorway there might have been was gone. So she tucked the flashlight into her belt and found another route, much longer and more perilous and involving a certain amount of physical hard labour in order to uncover a trap door.
The third object was hidden in an underground space that Ruby had to crawl into on her stomach. She shivered at the prospect, Ruby being no fan of the small dark space. However, this was where the flashlight came into its own and Ruby traced the light across the walls, methodical in her search, and although she was not at all at ease she didn’t allow herself to become panicked (after all, RULE 19: PANIC
WILL FREEZE YOUR BRAIN).
However, she was aware of the time ticking by and was sure it had taken her longer than it should to lay her hands on the copper-coloured coin that was object three. She needed to speed things up and so rather than continue crawling through this long winding tunnel she decided to resurface and make her way at ground level, that way she could pick up the pace.
From looking at the map it seemed that the fourth object was on the other side of the urban set, so she headed for the water tower, which stood fifty feet in the air. It was a gamble but as it turned out it was a good gamble. Having climbed the fifty feet to reach the wide platform that held the tank, Ruby chose not to make the final ascent by way of the ladder propped against the tank itself but instead to free-climb up it, using the wooden bands around it for hand and footholds.
Ruby took off her shoes – they weren’t climbing shoes and she’d have better grip with her bare feet. She was a good climber, and she shimmied up in no time, never looking to left nor right. At the top she found what she was looking for – a small penknife fastened to the surface by a metal band. It took Ruby no time at all to figure out that the copper coin would act as screwdriver and she could use it to turn the screw and release the penknife. She stood there on the edge of the tank surveying the terrain. She could see object five – she didn’t need to check her map, it was suspended from a crane, a large silver cylinder gleaming in the light.
Ruby didn’t want to lose time by climbing down from where she was, but if she was going to reach the crane by jumping then she needed to be on the other side of the tank. The only way was to dive into the water and swim.
So she did.
Hauling herself out of the water, she barely paused before making the leap from water tower to crane. Her heart lurched as her fingers slipped – she threw up her other hand and gripped the metal and swung herself monkey-like along the crane’s arm.
She could see the cylinder hanging from the end on a sturdy rope. Fall from here and she might cause herself some damage – or certainly end up with more than a few bruises. But she wouldn’t fall. Reaching the crane’s end she pulled on the rope, then grabbing the cylinder she used the penknife to slice through its tether. The cylinder was a good deal heavier than she had predicted and also awkward to carry, her solution was to push it up her T-shirt which worked just fine.