by Lauren Child
‘You wanted to see me?’ she said, like butter wouldn’t melt.
‘Hey Ruby, sorry I missed you yesterday,’ said Blacker.
‘Yeah, you should be because you lost out on a pretty nice donut.’
‘That’s too bad,’ said Blacker.
‘Yeah, I nearly came down to your office and left it on your desk.’ She waited for a flicker of unease, but there was none. ‘I was halfway down there and then I decided to eat it myself.’
‘You probably did me a favour, Rube, I need to clean up my act as far as my diet goes,’ said Blacker.
‘Yeah, maybe you should,’ said Ruby. Boy, this guy, she thought, cool as a cucumber. She was trying to gauge what might be going on behind the eyes, but she could see nothing. He was talking the talk. Smiling the smile.
‘Good going on the Taste Twister decode. Froghorn passed it on. You know, he actually looked impressed – a rare sight, wish I’d had a camera.’
Ruby smiled back. ‘Woulda been a waste of film,’ she said.
‘Smart of you to figure out the lid of the bottle gave us the date of the pick up. It’s simple, but it’s the simple things which are so easy to overlook,’ said Blacker. ‘Just a shame we didn’t make it to the Twinford Mirror building in time. I went down there myself, but came back with nothing.’ He sighed heavily and then looked at her. ‘You were sure that was the original bottle top?’
Was he seeing through her or was he swallowing her deception in one easy bite?
Ruby shrugged. ‘There wasn’t another one if that’s what you’re asking. I mean the red hat guy could have swapped it I guess, but why? Why leave the bottle if he thought there was a chance it would be found?’ Not a flicker, not a blink. She wasn’t a bad liar either.
Two can play at this game, she thought.
‘That’s that then,’ sighed Blacker. ‘We had the location but we missed the pick-up.’
Ruby did a good job of pulling her face into an expression which conjured extreme frustration combined with downright disappointment.
Blacker’s watch beeped: he checked it, sighed again and said, ‘Look, I have to go, but keep me updated on this, OK? You see anything strange, I mean anything, and you contact me.’
Ruby nodded. She wasn’t going to feel bad about this. He didn’t trust her, so she didn’t trust him. But what she really wanted to know was just how deep this went, how many other agents had been warned off talking to her? She thought for a moment and decided that the best place to start might be the coding office and, more specifically, Froghorn’s desk. Froghorn’s office door would be locked, his files would be password protected, but neither of these two issues were exactly problems.
Getting into the room was a cinch, the number he had chosen for his door code, I mean please … who picked the Catalan numbers series and actually expected to get away with it? She keyed in 12514.
Once she was in she began by looking in his desk, and when this search threw up nothing useful she set to work figuring out his file safe code. Again, a no-brainer. The lazy caterer’s sequence? Jeepers. This was sophomore stuff. She turned the dial on the safe: 1 click left, 2 right, 4 left, 7 right, 11 left.
With a clunk, it opened.
Rummaging through someone else’s desk at Spectrum was, of course, strictly a no-no, and sneaking information out of the file room no doubt a firing offence, but as she would have told anyone had she been caught: if it was such a big deal then the keeper of those files should have thought up a better password for his file drawer. Or as her T-shirt so aptly put it: you snooze, you loose, sucker.
Ruby let her fingers walk across the files until they reached R, Rabin, Railey, Reads, Redfort.
Slowly she pulled her file from its slot and laid it on the table. She didn’t have to do much looking, she opened the cover and her blood froze.
Chapter 45.
Going it alone
AS SHE STEPPED OUT OF THE SUBWAY, UTTER DARKNESS SEEMED TO ENVELOP HER. There were no streetlights, no store lights and no house lights to guide her way home. The pitch black was all there was, no buildings, no trees, no road ahead. It would be easy to lose oneself in this nothing land. Someone was trying to destroy her – was it Blacker alone who wanted her gone?
In her pocket was a photo, taken with a polaroid camera she’d found on Froghorn’s desk.
But what should she do with it? Who could she show?
Her problem now was if she couldn’t trust Blacker, then how could she rely on anyone who did? How could she trust anyone who trusted him?
Blacker was a likeable guy, always steady, always even, never rattled, at least not by people – soda, yes; jelly donuts, always; but when it came to people he was steady as they came.
She thought about this as she let herself in and made her way upstairs to her room. Could it be that his whole clumsiness thing was an act, a cover, was it just a way of distracting people? The smiling likeable fool, like that TV cop, the one in the raincoat with the uncombed hair … The guy looked a mess, like he had just rolled out of bed or spent the night sleeping in his tin can of a car, but this was a ruse to throw folk off the scent. His brain was razor sharp and when criminals let down their guard, he took them apart. Was that what Blacker was?
Had he been put there to observe her, lull her into a false sense of security so he could assess her strengths, her weaknesses, and report back? Did he think she was incompetent? Or was it worse than that – she felt a stab of panic – was she the suspect? Did Blacker actually think it could be her – Spectrum’s mole, the double agent? She was beginning to feel like she had been dropped into some seventy-five-cent thriller, where the tables had turned and suddenly the good guys were all pointing their fingers at her; the bad guys too.
There was a knock at the window and Ruby nearly jumped out of her sneakers.
‘Let me in would you,’ came a muffled voice.
Ruby peered into the dark. ‘Clancy, what are you doing out there?’
‘Checking up on you bozo, now let me in, it’s creepy out here, all the power lines are down.’
She unlatched the window and he climbed through.
‘So what happened?’ asked Clancy. ‘One minute you were there, the next you were nowhere.’
‘I’ve had a lot on my mind.’
‘School, home or Spectrum?’ asked Clancy.
‘All three, as it happens, but right now my biggest headache is Blacker.’
‘You’re being paranoid Rube.’
‘Am I? So why would he get Buzz to tell me he was out of HQ when I happen to know he was there?’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I saw him with my own two eyes. Not only that but he was busy on the phone warning someone not to talk to me, does that sound like a guy who’s on the same side?’
‘OK,’ said Clancy, ‘but maybe he had his reasons.’
‘I’d like to hear them,’ said Ruby.
‘It’s just I’m not sure Rube, I mean you were wrong about the rain.’
‘I might have been wrong about the rain, but how do I even know?’
‘Because of what happened to Elliot?’ suggested Clancy.
‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ she said. ‘You can argue all you like Clancy, but I got 100% proof.’
‘OK, so show me the evidence,’ said Clancy.
Ruby took out the polaroids and laid them on the table so the message could be read.
‘What is this?’ asked Clancy.
‘I broke into the file room and this is what I found,’ said Ruby.
FOR THE ATTENTION OF ALL AGENTS:
CLASSIFIED, DO NOT SPEAK TO REDFORT,
DO NOT CONVEY LATEST INFORMATION, DENY ALL.
SIGNED: BLACKER.
‘He might come over as Mr Apple-pie-down-the-tie, Clancy, but he sure as darn it speaks with a forked tongue.’
Clancy was all out of arguments. He just looked at her, looked right into her eyes and said, ‘I didn’t see this coming, and I’m usually good with my hunches.’
>
‘Well, he’s not a secret agent for nothing,’ said Ruby. ‘He’s got one heck of a poker face. The whole time we’ve been working together he’s been keeping his beady eyes on me and it turns out he doesn’t trust me one iota.’
‘So what are you gonna do?’ said Clancy.
‘I’m going to have to go it alone,’ said Ruby, ‘nothing else for it.’
‘That sounds like a truly bad idea,’ said Clancy.
‘Well, it seems I don’t have a whole lotta choice, Clance.’
‘What do you mean? You have a whole team of agents down there, under the supermarket – talk to one of them.’
‘You don’t get it Clancy. I mean, if Blacker doesn’t trust me, then who does? Not Froghorn, that’s for darned sure. Agent Gill thinks I’m a hot head, Dr Selgood thinks I have a God complex, so I can’t see him exactly backing me up.’
‘And Hitch?’ said Clancy.
‘It doesn’t matter what Hitch says. Once Blacker makes his case, I’ll be canned.’
‘But what evidence does he have? I mean, there isn’t any,’ said Clancy.
‘LB’s been trying to find any reason she can to fire me. She never wanted me in Spectrum in the first place.’
‘She hired you, didn’t she?’
‘Only because there was no one else.’
‘You’re saying you don’t trust anyone to back you?’ said Clancy.
Ruby looked down at her arm, the words written by Del in that most permanent of permanent markers were still there and she sort of half smiled, half sighed. ‘I guess I need to wake up and smell the banana milk. I’m all alone in this and no one’s gonna get me out of it but me.’
She stared into the darkness, there was nothing to see, no moon, no streetlights … It was hard to believe a city existed beyond her room.
What Ruby hadn’t told anyone, not even Clancy, was that she was going to the Twinford Mirror building that night, following the location and date on the last bottle.
RULE 11: BE PREPARED, she told herself.
Ruby hoped it would be an in and out sort of job, but she couldn’t count on it. She thought she knew where the bottle would be and there shouldn’t be too much trouble getting into the Twinford Mirror building since newspapers worked through the night. Being spotted was going to be the problem.
She got changed into the jumpsuit Hitch had given her, the one that was not only super warm, should one decide to scale a two-hundred-foot wall, but also had glider wings concealed inside the back zip. It was thanks to these glider wings that she hadn’t gone splat when Lorelei von Leyden dropped her off the hotel roof.
She glanced in the mirror and saw she looked not unlike some kind of schoolgirl superhero. The jumpsuit was cooler than the usual stretchy stuff they made superheroes wear – one thing you could say for Spectrum: they knew style.
She pulled her coat on over the jumpsuit and grabbed her backpack, opened the window and slipped out into the night.
She ran most of the way through the city, her parkour skills coming in handy for propelling her over walls and onto roofs, leaping alleyways and stairways, taking shortcuts, her feet barely touching the ground.
She arrived at Gödel Avenue, snuck down a side alley and slipped into the Twinford Mirror building through a restroom window, her small frame easily wriggling through the tiny opening. She hadn’t gone more then a few yards down the corridor when she saw it.
The bottle stood on top of a vending machine just to the left of the doors that led to the canteen. She reached up, checked the lid was on securely and popped the Taste Twister in her backpack. Nothing to it. No grizzling baby, no giveaway tell-tale beepers or squeakers or bouncing pacifiers – piece of cake.
She went straight home and once inside the door, climbed the stairs to her room.
She twisted the lid off the bottle and sniffed the liquid: acidic.
She tasted it: and spat it out immediately.
Geez. Cabbagey. It reminded her of something, a drink she had smelled before. She could almost hear Consuela’s voice urging her to drink it. This was the unmistakeable bitter flavour of kale. Mixed with … something salty? And maple syrup?
So: kale, salt and maple syrup.
In other words:
Bitter, salt, sweet.
In digits:
(1,0,1,1)
She ran back down to the guest bathroom, stepped up on the toilet and searched the map on the wall. She traced her fingers along the grid until she identified the location.
It was the city’s movie museum on Fibonacci Street. Twinfordites often referred to it affectionately as The Bodice Ripper Museum on account of the Twinford motion picture industry, which was famed for making a huge number of romantic costume dramas back in the day. The museum had a lot of monster costumes as well, zombies, vampires, mummies and the like – the thriller genre had been big business too.
She checked the date on the bottle top. The date was three days away.
The time for collection: 1am.
She just needed to hold her nerve.
Chapter 46.
How to suck eggs
THE NEXT MORNING RUBY LEFT FOR SCHOOL JUST LIKE ALWAYS, but when she made it to the bus stop she just kept on walking. There was a payphone next to the subway steps, she pushed in her quarter and dialled the school secretary.
‘Oh Hello, is that Mrs Bexenheath? It’s Sabina Redfort here, proud mother of Ruby … I wonder if you could advise, I do so value your experience with all things disease … I may be wrong, but Ruby is exhibiting all the signs of possible pink eye and I don’t wish to teach you how to suck eggs since I am sure, given your daily interaction with children, you could write a book on conjunctivitis, but I believe pink eye is highly contagious … I want to keep her home today and see what transpires, but you know Ruby, she’s all about the learning and is just insisting on making her classes today despite the doctor warning me that she might be a walking bacteria bomb, so I guess what I am asking is, should she come to school and perhaps start an epidemic or should I keep her at home? … I quite agree … thank you, Mrs Bexenheath, I will … and if we’re wrong you will see her tomorrow, bright-eyed and bushy tailed … thank you! You have put my mind at ease … what would we parents do without your knowledge on these gruesome matters!’
Then she skipped down the subway steps and rode the train to Chinatown and the Yellow Wind-Dragon dojo.
She practised until 2pm.
At 2.30pm she arrived at the Twinford council offices, changed into some orange overalls (much too large) and was issued with a roll of plastic sacks, a pair of thick gloves and a trash grabber.
‘OK Redfort,’ said the guy doling out the community service tasks, ‘you got your first three hours today, you got your instructions, you know what do.’
She headed off to Oakwood and the place where the whole sorry event had taken place.
She had been working for about two hours, sweeping up trash and shovelling it into sacks, and had just begun her next task, which was to plant a sapling – a replacement for the one that had been damaged in the fight – when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Rube, is that you?’
Ruby looked up to see Elliot. ‘Does it look like me?’ she asked.
‘Kind of,’ said Elliot. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ said Ruby.
Elliot shrugged. ‘Shovelling dirt around a tree?’
‘Or as we gardeners like to call it, planting stuff,’ said Ruby.
‘Looks like hard work,’ said Elliot.
‘Beats picking up garbage,’ said Ruby.
‘So what do you have to do once you’ve planted the tree?’ asked Elliot.
‘Pick up more garbage,’ said Ruby.
Elliot made a face. ‘Can I help?’
Ruby smiled up at him. ‘That’s really nice of you Elliot, but unless you happen to be assigned one of these orange jumpsuits then I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’
Elliot pe
ered into the huge bag of trash. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’ he asked.
‘A lot of lone sneakers,’ said Ruby. ‘Who are these people who go about losing single shoes?’
‘Beats me,’ said Elliot, ‘but let me know if you find anything interesting, OK?’
‘I’ll keep it for you,’ said Ruby.
It was when she was nearing the end of her final half hour on trash collection that she did find something interesting. Not that it would be possible to hand it to Elliot; it wasn’t something you could take home. It was lying under a pile of junk in the small paved seating area to the side of Sunny’s Diner. As she was levering up an old car tyre, she discovered a brass plaque set into the paving. On it were the words:
SITE OF THE FIRST
TWINFORD LAW COURTS.
Amazing what you discover when you pick through the garbage, she thought.
When she got home, she showered and had another go at trying to scrub away the permanent, permanent marker pen words, but the scrubbing made her arm sore. It would go eventually, she thought. By the time I’m sixteen it will probably be almost invisible.
The phone was ringing when she stepped out of the bathroom.
‘Twinford garbage control, you drop it, we pick it up.’
‘Hey Ruby, it’s Del. How about I buy you table time at Back-Spin, throw in a milkshake?’
‘Why would you wanna do that?’ asked Ruby.
‘Just to, you know, show my appreciation. I bumped into Elliot; he said you were picking up trash on account of the whole community service thing.’
‘It was easy,’ said Ruby.
‘Still,’ said Del, ‘tomorrow after school?’
‘You got yourself a deal.’
Chapter 47.
The locked locker
THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL BEGAN IN THE USUAL WAY FOR EVERYONE BUT RUBY. She had decided to devote another day to Yellow Wind-Dragon kung fu.
While Ruby was perfecting her movements, Del Lasco was sitting in the hot seat again. In fact, she had been in Principal Levine’s office for almost an hour and, although Del Lasco often found her way into the principal’s office and so this alone wasn’t unusual, what was strange was that she had no idea what had brought her here.