Catch Your Death

  ‘I didn’t know where she was,’ replied Hitch. ‘She moves around a lot. I catch up with her when I catch up with her.’

  ‘I thought you were a secret agent,’ said Ruby, ‘good at tracking people down.’

  ‘I’m pretty good at it when I want to be, but Connie, she’s better. If she doesn’t want to be found, she’s not going to be found.’

  ‘She sure can see a lot from a long way away,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hitch, ‘she sees pretty well for someone who’s blind.’

  Ruby looked at him hard. ‘Connie Slowfoot is blind?’

  ‘Blind as a bat in daylight,’ said Hitch.

  Chapter 47.

  CLANCY WAS IN A GOOD MOOD: things were working out. Maybe that Windrush 2000 wasn’t such a distant dream; maybe it would arrive on his very doorstep. Lyla was going to help him out with that expensive French perfume so who knew what was just around the corner?

  As it turned out, it was his father who was just around the corner and he did not look like he was about to give Clancy an expensive bicycle.

  Ambassador Crew was unhappy about a lot of things, a whole list in fact – starting with:

  Clancy’s lack of punctuality resulting in detention.

  Clancy having to retake his French test.

  Learning of Clancy skipping school while retaking his French test.

  Sitting on the roof when he had expressly been told not to.

  And telling Olive that she was talking horse manure.

  None of these things was he pleased about.

  ‘But you don’t even know what my test mark is yet,’ argued Clancy. ‘I might have actually finally passed. I could have done well even. I don’t think it’s fair to include this along with all that other stuff.’

  But his father wasn’t swayed by this argument.

  ‘Why should I possibly think you could have passed, and why would I imagine that you could possibly have done “well”? You have never done well before; you have never put in the hard work to make it possible to do “well”,’ said his father. ‘You are grounded until further notice and when I say grounded I mean no meeting Miss Redfort, no communicating with Miss Redfort and no socialising of any kind. You do not set foot off these grounds, do you hear me?’

  It was impossible not to at that volume, thought Clancy. Anyone passing the ambassadorial home would have heard.

  ‘What about school tomorrow?’ asked Clancy. ‘It’s the last day.’

  Ambassador Crew had Forgotten about that. ‘Obviously, I expect you to go to school,’ said his father.

  ‘So I can set foot off these grounds?’ said Clancy.

  ‘Well, clearly, yes, since you have one more day of school.’ His father finally turned to leave. ‘By the way, I have booked you on the Wichitino Camp in the hope it might drum into you some discipline. You won’t thank me now, but in years to come I think you will be glad you learned a thing or two about hard work and team spirit, two qualities you are evidently lacking.’

  It was bad enough to be grounded during the first week of the school break, but to be ordered to go on camp with the Wichitinos was an insult too far. Plus, how was he going to make it to the department store to pick up the 1770 for his mom? Clancy was going to have to do something so the first action he took was to call Ruby – another punishable offence, but at this stage what did he have to lose?

  Ruby wasn’t there so he left a message: ‘Great, now my dad’s enrolled me in dork camp and once he gets my test scores no doubt he’ll leave me there.’

  And then he hung up, no goodbye. Ruby Redfort was just like everyone else, only out for herself, and now she had got him in a whole heap of trouble, did she even care? He doubted it. Clancy headed off to school with appropriate dread – what were the odds that he had passed his French test? Zero? Less than zero? Was it possible to have odds that were less than zero? If it was, then he was bound to have them: it was just his dumb luck.

  When Ruby returned home from the mountain and played her messages, she called Clancy right back, but unfortunately he was not picking up.

  “Hey, this is Clance, leave a message if it’s interesting. I’ll call you back.”

  She used the number pad to leave a Morse code message:

  Which would have made utter sense to Clancy if only he had had the capability to listen to it – for what Ruby didn’t know was that Clancy’s answerphone had just two minutes later been confiscated and was now sitting in his father’s office.

  Chapter 48.

  AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT – or was it hard work? (he didn’t think so) – Clancy Crew did pass his French. In fact, he returned home that afternoon, letter in hand, to find that he had passed well, better than he could have ever expected to, not absurdly well but believably well.

  How had that happened? He didn’t think he was anywhere near to getting a B–, especially since he hadn’t even finished the test, especially since he hadn’t even been able to remember the French word for elephant, lion, acrobat or trapeze.

  Anyway, he had done it – it didn’t matter how, he was home free.

  Perhaps this would have a good impact on his dad’s mood.

  He left the letter on the hall table so his dad would see it as soon as he got up. This was the beginning of something good. Maybe things were finally looking up for old Clancy Crew.

  Ruby had stopped in at the City Library to do some research on this Mr Wolf guy Connie had mentioned, but found not one single volume or pamphlet that so much as mentioned him.

  Mr Latham had looked through the index cards, but there was no record of anyone taking out even one of the twenty-three books there should have been on the subject.

  ‘What a mystery,’ was all he could say. There were no books on the Cyan wolf either and so Ruby left the library empty-handed and none the wiser.

  When Ruby got home that evening, Hitch was sitting in the back garden sipping a drink at the wooden table.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ruby, ‘you been somewhere?’ She was looking at the overnight bag on the ground next to him. Still attached was the flight label; it was marked Paris.

  ‘Personal business,’ Hitch said. He pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down kid.’

  Ruby sat, saying nothing; he obviously had something on his mind and from his expression she guessed it was important. He swirled the ice cubes in his drink, his elbow resting on the table, his chin resting on his hand. He looked like a man all out of ideas. After a short pause, he spoke.

  ‘I’m going to level with you here kid: LB doesn’t think you can cut it.’

  ‘That what your meeting was about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That maybe this isn’t the right thing for you. Perhaps in ten years’ time – maybe – but the thing you have to consider is, well, perhaps you were born to be a code breaker pure and simple.’

  ‘She said she would give me a second chance,’ said Ruby.

  ‘LB’s not sure that she made the right decision,’ said Hitch.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She doesn’t think you’ve got what it takes to be a field agent.’

  Ruby didn’t shift her gaze or flinch or blink; instead she looked him in the eye and said, ‘And what does it take?’

  ‘Determination.’

  ‘Determination I got,’ said Ruby.

  ‘You got to be tough kid, tougher than you can imagine.’

  ‘Did I blub when my foot got all torn up? Did I lie down and die when the Count tried to bury me alive in sand? Did I stop work on this whole mission when my brain was like jello’ cause of contracting the flu?’

  ‘No kid, you didn’t,’ agreed Hitch.

  ‘So that proves I’ve got inner resources. Isn’t that one of the important qualities an agent has to have?’

  Hitch nodded. ‘But LB’s point is, why did you allow these things to happen? You should never have been captured in the first place – you were careless. You shouldn’t have come down with the flu o
ut in the field, that happened because you didn’t pay attention. You lacked judgement. She doesn’t know about your foot and she’s not going to know, but I can’t see her spilling any tears in your direction even if she did.’

  ‘I’m not asking for sympathy, I’m asking for a second chance.’

  ‘But maybe it’s important for you to consider where your talents lie. Maybe you are more suited to four walls and a desk; maybe you need these constraints to work in so your mind can break out; maybe fieldwork causes you to lose focus.’

  ‘You’re the one who believed in me; you’re the one who was sure I could cut it and I can prove you right. Let me go this one time, let me retake the survival test and then decide.’ She looked at him, her eyes unblinking. No emotion, no little kid whining, just a clear-cut deal.

  Finally, he nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll stick to what was agreed. I’ll back you, but this is on my head: you get into trouble it’s down to me, so you make contact as soon as anything goes wrong. I mean anything.’

  Ruby said nothing.

  ‘That has to be the deal kid: you want to be a field agent you have to accept the ground rules; it’s too dangerous to have an agent out there who isn’t making the grade. You put everyone’s life at risk that way.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll square it with Spectrum and LB, but you need to be ready, could be tonight tomorrow or next week, you won’t know, but you gotta be there; you’re not there, that’s a fail.’

  ‘I’ll be ready,’ she said.

  ‘No going AWOL.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Don’t let me down kid.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Oh, and I’ll need the rescue watch – no gadgets on survival training and that includes everything. I don’t want you blowing it by trying to sneak it.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘You think I’d do that?’ said Ruby, doing her best to look offended while she handed him the rescue watch.

  ‘Lose the halo kid, it doesn’t suit you.’

  There was a beep on his watch. He glanced at it and frowned.

  Then he dialled in.

  He didn’t speak, just listened.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Ruby once he had signed out of the call.

  Hitch sighed. ‘A body, it was found in the canal. Suspicious circumstances.’

  ‘So what does it have to do with Spectrum?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but Blacker seems to think there might be a link.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Some guy in expensive deck shoes. From the injuries looks like he might have fallen from a great height, injured himself badly and tried to drag himself to get help – his nice clothes were kinda torn up from the effort. No one knows how he ended up in the canal; he didn’t drown, he was dead long before he hit the water.’

  Lorelei sat quite still;

  she was thinking

  A plump velvet rose petal fell from the flower arrangement and landed like a drop of blood on the white marble of the floor.

  She knew what she was going to have to do. One just couldn’t have loose ends.

  Chapter 49.

  WHEN CLANCY LOOKED OUT OF HIS BEDROOM WINDOW THE NEXT MORNING, he almost fainted because there standing just near the driveway was the Windrush 2000, brand-new and perfect in every way. His dad must have finally seen the light. This was something. This was his dad saying sorry, telling him he was right all along. This was the moment he had been waiting for all these years. He was right and his dad was finally telling him so.

  He forgot about his bad feeling, and about wanting to leave Twinford, and instead he ran down the hall stairs two at a time. He ran out of the house and punched in the numbers to the electric gate and he hopped from one foot to the other as it very slowly juddered open. He slid through it and out onto the sidewalk.

  But before he could make it to the bike, before he was in touching distance a terrible thing happened. A girl in a blue sweatshirt, jeans and flip-flops ran over to the bike, unlocked it, climbed on and cycled off up Ambassador Row.

  Clancy had a hard time believing what had just happened. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it? That girl had just stolen his bike! He looked around – had anyone even seen? What would his dad say? And then the truth dawned on him: nothing, his dad would say nothing because the girl had not stolen the bike; the girl had a key to a bicycle lock, a lock which belonged to the bike, her bike. He was suddenly weak, like he had been punched hard in the gut. There was no bike; the Windrush belonged to that girl in the flip-flops. Clancy turned back towards the house. ‘Who wears flip-flops riding a Windrush 2000?’ he muttered. ‘She doesn’t deserve that bike.’

  Just to add insult to the whole bitter disappointment of the day, when Clancy stepped back inside the house, he saw a note from his father; it was written on one of his ambassadorial note cards and a metallic blue ballpoint pen lay on top of it.

  Clancy,

  In recognition of your struggle to finally complete basic French.

  Best regards,

  your father

  PS Enjoy.

  Clancy looked around; he couldn’t see anything to enjoy. Maybe his father was going to present him with it later. He wondered what it could be. He picked up the pen; there was gold writing etched down one side. It said: Try and you wont fail.

  There was something miserable about these words, as if to say, if only you would actually put in some effort, you might actually succeed. Also it was clearly untrue: plenty of people tried and failed and so trying was no insurance. Plus, it was disappointing to have a missing apostrophe when the pen guaranteed a perfect outcome.

  All in all, it was shoddy.

  Then, just to make matters worse, it dawned on him: this was the thing to be enjoyed; a cheap ballpoint pen was his gift.

  ‘Oh brother,’ he sighed. ‘This even beats the alarm clock.’

  Ruby was sitting up the tree in Amster Green, wondering where in tarnation was Clancy Crew. There was no message hidden in the branches and no missed call on her answer machine. She wanted to talk to him – she needed to talk to him, darn it. She was potentially facing one of the biggest disappointments of her life, the biggest failure, and he wasn’t there.

  She scribbled the coded words fhrvos shf auspbrs bfhs down on a piece of origami paper and folded it carefully.

  The paper now resembled a rat. If she had had the time, she would have gone over there then and there if only to tell him what a lousy friend he was being, but she had bigger things on her mind, a whole lot bigger than Clancy Crew.

  Chapter 50.

  CLANCY WENT TO SPEAK TO HIS SISTER MINNY. Minny, after all, was the one who never did anything she didn’t want to do and, despite being caught numerous times, never seemed to buckle. If she had no good advice for Clancy, then at least she would be a sympathetic ear.

  Clancy sat in Minny’s room, giving her the low-down on everything that had happened and how their father had reacted to it. Minny sat on the edge of the window sill, arms folded; her mouth was set in a firm pinch like she was really considering all Clancy’s options. Finally, she spoke.

  ‘It would serve him right if you just ran away.’

  Clancy didn’t like the sound of that; it was the kind of thing people said they were going to do before they thought about exactly what they were running away to.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Lulu. ‘I mean what are you gonna do out there?’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Clancy.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Minny. ‘It’ll teach Dad a lesson; he grounds people way too much.’

  ‘You’re the only one who gets grounded,’ said Lulu.

  ‘Clancy’s grounded,’ Minny argued back.

  ‘Yeah, now he is, but that’s once and only because Olive ratted on him.’

  ‘Did not,’ said Olive from behind the door.

  ‘Yeah you did,’ said Clancy, ‘and, by the way, this is a priv
ate conversation.’

  ‘Well, I still think you should run away, just for a few days,’ said Minny.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Clancy, turning to Lulu.

  ‘Go on the dumb camp, save yourself the trouble.’ Lulu found trouble boring; it interfered with her social life and brought more trouble.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ said Clancy. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in the Wichitino uniform.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that if you hadn’t trashed your bike then none of this woulda happened.’ Lulu tended to see things for what they were.

  ‘I didn’t trash my bike, Minny did.’ He was flapping his arms.

  ‘Yeah and you covered for her which means you took the blame which means you have to suffer the consequences.’ There was no arguing with Lulu’s logic. ‘You have a choice here: rat her out. . .’

  ‘Hey!’ said Minny.

  ‘In which case you’ll still be in trouble for lying,’ continued Lulu.

  ‘You will,’ agreed Minny.

  ‘Or,’ said Lulu, ‘run away, who knows where for who knows how long, and, when they send a search-and-rescue team for you, expect to be grounded for the rest of your life. My advice, go on the dorky camp.’

  ‘Oh brother!’ groaned Clancy.

  ‘Like I told you,’ said Minny, ‘you gotta get out a here. I mean all you need to do is pack up a rucksack; you can take a tent and some food and stuff. You won’t even need to go far, just to Boulder Valley.’

  The idea was now growing on Clancy; he knew Boulder Valley really well, Ruby and he often hung out there, and he wasn’t scared or anything. He knew where the underground creek was so he would have a good supply of fresh water and he could light a campfire, no problem.

  ‘I’m telling,’ said Olive from behind the door.

  ‘If you do,’ warned Minny, ‘it’s goodbye teddy.’

  ‘I won’t tell,’ said Olive. Olive always took Minny’s threats seriously because Minny usually meant what she said, at least when it came to things like this.