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‘OK, not just for not getting burnt alive, but how about all that other stuff you did?’
‘That’s what I’m paid for, that is my actual job,’ said Ruby. She paused. ‘Though, maybe not for much longer,’ she added.
‘What?’
‘Spectrum. They’ve taken me off field training indefinitely.’
‘Indefinitely?’ mouthed Clancy.
‘Well, unless I take this test and pass it – fail and I’m out, stuck at a desk for the rest of my career, like old Froghorn. It’s kind of a last-chance-saloon kind of deal.’
‘You’re not serious!’ said Clancy. He was flapping his arms now. ‘You cracked that whole wolf case! They should be giving you a medal, to show their appreciation, a job well done and all that, like in the army, not—’
‘Look Clance,’ Ruby interrupted, ‘for A: this ain’t the army, and for B: it wasn’t a job well done. I’m bummed about it too, but I think what you gotta understand is that it isn’t really a thanking-with-a-medal-type situation – I mean there’s no “thanking” in secret agenting. You do well, you get another assignment; you louse up, you get your marching orders – that’s about it. I pulled it outta the bag with the whole code-breaking-and-case-solving thing, but I loused up my survival training, nearly got myself killed, and worse – lost what was left of the Cyan perfume. It’s not medal-worthy stuff. So. . . I guess I’m lucky I’m even getting another chance.’
She didn’t feel lucky though. She felt royally hard done by. Clancy sucked hard on his drink. ‘What’s the test?’
‘No idea.’
‘But you’ll pass it, right?’
‘I sure hope so,’ said Ruby. She didn’t want to think about what she’d do if she got kicked out of the Spectrum Field Agent Training Programme. Sure, she got a big buzz out of code breaking, but she lived for the thrill of working as a bona fide all-action agent.
They climbed back down the tree. Ruby was quicker on the descent, though when she made the final jump from the low branch to the ground she stumbled and found she was unable to steady herself. She thumped down on the grass and landed awkwardly on her shoulder.
‘Rube, you sure you’re ready to go back to work?’ asked Clancy.
‘Sure I’m sure, never felt better, considering.’ She dusted herself down.
‘Well, that’s great Rube, but have you considered that this traumatic event may have had a traumatic impact on you? Subconscious and all – but there nonetheless?’
‘Have you been reading your Aunt Tatum’s psychology books again?’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Clancy, you’re over-thinking stuff. I am totally AOK, except for I have a very itchy and possibly hairy arm.’
‘I hate to be the one to notice, but your balance is a little off too, like you’re not so sure of yourself,’ remarked Clancy.
‘My balance is good, better than good – great. It’s just this plaster cast throwing me off.’
Clancy looked at her hard. ‘If you say so Rube, then I believe you.’
He didn’t believe her, not for a minute. Ruby knew that, but she didn’t want to discuss it further – talking about this kind of stuff was fine when it related to other people, in fact she found it fascinating. Talking about this stuff in relation to her was very tedious.
When she got back home she went straight up to her room and on up to the roof where she could sit in private and think her own thoughts undisturbed. What she was thinking about was the Spectrum test. What would it be? Survival? Agility? Strength?
And what would happen if she failed?
It was too awful to contemplate.
She stared up into the starlit sky and searched for meteors. It was the end of the season but she couldn’t help looking and Ruby’s patience knew few bounds. It was like a sort of meditation, looking up into the infinity above her, and it allowed her to think. She heard the soft padding feet of her dog.
‘Hey there boy,’ she scratched him behind the ears. ‘What’s next for old Ruby Redfort do you think?’ She looked at the husky like he might answer back.
Three cases and five months into her agent career and she already felt like she had always done the job – she certainly wasn’t ready to give it up.
She thought back to the past month’s events – the meeting with the Australian, her close encounter with the perfumer Lorelei. . . there was more to that whole conspiracy than she could fathom. Why had the Australian woman commissioned Lorelei to steal the Cyan scent? What was she planning to do with it? Where were they now? What did they really want and when would they resurface? Perhaps never, though this seemed unlikely – in every thriller she had ever read, the evil genius always came back for a curtain call.
Ruby found herself actually longing for this to be the case for these two, and she wished with a strange hope that it would be sooner rather than later. . . her curiosity made her want it so.
As Ruby gazed up at the dark sky, hand on Bug’s warm head, she heard distant sirens, lots of them, drifting through the night air from downtown Twinford. They sounded like a warning cry of things to come. And as Ruby listened, another alarm sounded in her mind, and she was suddenly almost able to hear LB’s voice, the words sharp and unequivocal – ‘Too much curiosity can be fatal.’
It was a warning Ruby had been given on many occasions and had always ignored. Would she heed it this time?
History suggested not.
High
above the
howling sirens. . .
. . .above the slow-turning red and white lights of emergency vehicles, a tiny figure walked across the barely illuminated sky. He trod the air between two colossal buildings, his feet feeling the invisible path, skywalking.
The sirens and lights were not for him. Further down the street, a building was burning.
Well, it was none of his concern.
When he had crossed the void he stepped lightly onto the rooftop and vanished as if he were a mere figment of the imagination.
Chapter 7.
RUBY REDFORT WOKE TO THE SOUND OF THE TELEPHONE. At least, she thought it was a telephone. She stumbled out of bed and staggered to her feet. But she couldn’t seem to locate the ringing. She had a lot of phones – a whole collection of them. One shaped like a shell, one a lobster, another a squirrel in a tux. There was also a donut, a hamburger, a few shaped like telephones, and a whole lot more.
As Ruby scanned the room, trying to work out where exactly the noise was coming from, it slowly dawned on her that the sound was no ringing phone and in fact was almost certainly emanating from her watch, which was tucked away in her desk drawer. The watch was no ordinary Timex, Ingersol or Swiss. This watch was custom made, multifunctional, radio equipped, and though often referred to as a Rescue Watch, its official title was the Spectrum Escape Watch. It had once belonged to Bradley Baker when he was a kid.
Now it belonged to Ruby.
Ruby picked it up and switched it to speak-mode.
‘So how’s the broken arm doing?’ came a perky voice.
‘You woke me to ask me that?’ said Ruby.
‘It’s ten am,’ said the voice.
‘I wasn’t aware,’ said Ruby.
‘Perhaps you should set your alarm.’
‘I don’t need to. I got people like you bothering me.’
‘So the arm, is it giving you any trouble?’
‘Yeah, it’s preventing me from sleeping.’
‘How’s that?’
‘People keep calling to ask how it is.’
‘Is that so,’ said the voice, ‘and how is it?’
‘Itchy,’ said Ruby.
‘That’s a good sign,’ said the voice, ‘means it’s healing.’
‘So people keep telling me. By the way, do you mind giving me some idea of who you are?’ Ruby asked.
‘Oh I’m sorry, did I neglect to say?’
‘Uh huh,’ yawned Ruby.
‘I’m Agent Gill. LB asked me to coordinate your field test. Just wanted to say hi.’
‘Hi back,’ said Ruby scratching her arm with the yellow pencil. She tottered into the bathroom and examined her face in the mirror. ‘So this is a survival test?’ she asked, fake-casually.
‘I can neither confirm nor deny,’ said Gill. ‘When’s the cast due off?’
‘Today,’ said Ruby.
‘That’s good because you’re going to need both arms for this; fitness is key.’
‘Isn’t it always?’ said Ruby.
‘That’s correct, so you might want to get back on your bicycle and put in some miles. Give yourself a bit of a workout.’
‘I would, only I don’t have a bike,’ said Ruby.
‘Sure you do, I’ve seen you riding around, yellow isn’t it?’
‘Green,’ said Ruby.
‘That’s the one,’ said Gill. ‘Yep, you got to get back on that green bike of yours.’
‘It’s blue,’ said Ruby.
‘You just said it was green.’
‘Not any more.’
‘How so?’ said Gill.
‘I sprayed it Windrush blue and gave it to my pal Clancy.’
‘That was nice of you,’ said Gill.
‘Yeah, maybe, but it leaves me walking I guess.’
Gill sighed down the end of the phone line. ‘That’s what you get for being nice.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Ruby.
‘My advice, take up jogging,’ said Gill.
‘You woke me to suggest I should take up jogging?’
‘No,’ said Gill, ‘I woke you to inform you that you’ll be contacted any day soon, maybe in the next few hours. You need to be on standby.’
‘You contacted me to tell me that you’ll be contacting me. . .?’
‘Correct, I’ll be contacting you,’ said Gill, and hung up.
Ruby’s watch vibrated – she looked at the words that appeared on the surface of the glass that covered the dial.
Be prepared!
‘I’ll count the hours,’ muttered Ruby. The truth was that despite her sarcastic tone she really was counting the hours. Life as it had been before Spectrum recruitment now seemed humdrum. Sure, she could happily live a week or two without the thrill of Spy agency work; her friends were amusing, her family likeable, there were books, there was music, museums, galleries, cinema, diners, rollerskates, the great outdoors, the great indoors, and then there was TV, and of course, ping-pong – all available to entertain, occupy and stretch her curious mind. But Ruby was no ordinary thirteen-year-old; her mind needed a lot of stretching and occupying.
As Ruby set about looking for things to wear she noticed a note, clearly pinned on her door by Mrs Digby. It said:
DON’T FORGET THE DO TONIGHT! 6.30 SHARP. MAKE SURE YOU’VE WASHED BEHIND YOUR EARS (WITH SOAP). PS YOUR MOTHER HAS BOUGHT YOU
A DRESS (YOU’RE NOT GONNA LIKE IT).
Ruby rolled her eyes and began the search for her Yellow Stripe sneakers and a fresh T-shirt. Her eyes settled on one – red with black text, the words pleading: please tell me I’m not awake.
Ruby had many T-shirts, all pretty similar in tone, all bearing slogans, statements or questions, some funny, some impolite, some funny and impolite. They caused her mother great consternation but Ruby wasn’t the sort of kid to let someone else’s opinion get in the way of her wardrobe, particularly not her mother’s.
‘You’ll appreciate me one day,’ Sabina would often say.
‘Mom, I appreciate you now,’ was always Ruby’s reply, ‘it’s just these outfits you keep buying me are causing me to appreciate you less than I would if you didn’t buy them.’
The intercom in Ruby’s room buzzed. ‘Yuh huh,’ said Ruby into the speaker.
‘This is your housekeeper, you know, the wretched old lady who attends to your every need?’
‘Hullo Mrs Digby, what can I do for you?’
‘Just reminding you about tonight,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Your mother and father want you hosed down, dressed, shoes shined, standing at the front door by six-thirty sharp.’
‘You already told me that in your note – anything else you wanna repeat?’
‘Yep, six-thirty sharp – be there or be in peril.’
Mrs Digby had been housekeeper to the Redforts for just about ever and she knew Ruby inside out and back to front. And one thing she was sure as eggs is eggs about was that Ruby Redfort would never be winning any punctuality award. She was a terrible time-keeper.
The buzzer buzzed again. ‘There’s a note from your father, stuck to the refrigerator.’
‘And?’ said Ruby.
‘And what?’ said Mrs Digby.
‘And what does it say?’
‘If you got your lazy self down here you could see for yourself.’
The housekeeper hung up and Ruby went downstairs to find something to eat.
The note was still fixed to the refrigerator. It read:
Dr Shepherd has found time for you in his schedule. Be at the St Angelina hospital at 1.15 pm. My chauffeur Bob will collect you from the house at 12.30 and return you home. Do not take the subway. And seriously, honey, don’t be late, the guy is doing me a big favour here. Love Pop.
Ruby looked at her watch; she had more than a couple of hours before she needed to be there. Time enough to check out the vintage store on Amster and find a dress she might want to wear to the evening’s event. Obviously she wasn’t going to wear the dress her mother had picked for her. But maybe if she wore a dress it would make Sabina happy.
She got lucky – the dress she particularly liked fitted perfectly, or at least would once she applied a little sticky tape to the hem. She also found a cool-looking old paperback thriller that she thought might be an OK read. Her dad would doubtless have booked his chauffeur to pick her up way early and she would rather read her book in the sun than in an air-conditioned waiting room. She would make a call.
As she was leaving she caught sight of the payphone in front of the store. She dialled her father’s number and was put through to his personal assistant.
‘Hi Dorothy, Sabina Redfort here. Look I’ve decided to drive Ruby to the hospital myself, you know how it is with kids, I just want to ensure she gets there on time and I know Bob’s a wonderful chauffeur and all but can he wrestle a teenager into a car on time? I doubt it. . .’ (Ruby laughed in exactly the way her mother would.) ‘Yes Dorothy, I hear you! So if you could cancel Bob, I would be very grateful, oh and don’t tell my husband he will think I’m being a worry worm. . . It’s wart? Really? Worry wart?’ (She laughed again.) ‘Bye, bye, bye.’
Ruby’s impersonation of her mother had got so good over the years that not even her mother could tell the difference.
Ruby sat down on the bench, leaned her back to the wall, and smiled to herself. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get to the hospital with no bike, but she’d solve that problem later. She opened the vintage-store book, No Time to Scream, leaned back against the wall and began to read.
Ruby quickly lost track of time; the book was a lot more engrossing than she had expected it to be. She had almost read the whole 275 pages while she sipped on her slushy when she sensed someone’s gaze and looked up. The kid from yesterday evening, the one standing outside the minimart with the styled-unstyled hair, was standing on top of the payphone, as if no one was going to mind, or perhaps he didn’t care either way.
Ruby thought about him on his skateboard, hitching a ride from that truck; she really should try that. He was one of those kids who knew he was good-looking – only today he looked awkward and was fiddling with his key-chain which he had looped to his pocket, a self-conscious tough-guy look which wasn’t really working for him. He seemed to be preparing to smile, to say something even.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hey back,’ replied Ruby. She had put down her slushy and was busy trying to find her hat; it was somewhere in her satchel. ‘By the way, I think that lady wants to make a call.’ She indicated the elderly woman who was clearly working up the courage to ask the boy to step off the payphone. He shrugged and jumped down.
‘So what’s your name?’ asked the boy.
‘I believe it’s traditional to introduce yourself first before asking a personal question like, what’s your name.’
‘What’s your name is a personal question?’ said the boy.
‘It is to me, unless of course you are a law enforcement officer, or person in a position of ultimate authority, and if you are I guess what’s your name would be a demand.’ She paused without looking up. ‘Are you in the whole law enforcement business?’
The boy sounded flustered when he replied, ‘Am I what?’
‘In law enforcement?’ said Ruby.
‘Uh, no,’ said the boy uncertainly.
‘Didn’t think so,’ said Ruby. She resumed her satchel rifling. ‘So what is it?’
‘What’s what?’ said the boy.
‘Your name buster.’
‘My name?’
‘What? You got amnesia? Or you in the police protection programme?’
The boy actually smiled at this, surprised, like he had never met a girl before who wasn’t falling over herself to get his attention.
‘My name. . .’ announced the boy. He was about to disclose this piece of information when Ruby caught sight of something alarming – it was the clock above the pharmacy door.
Darn! The hospital; her appointment. She was late.
‘Look, I’m sure you got a really nice name buster, and I’m sure it suits you and all but tell me next time because I gotta scoot.’ She had jammed on her hat, finally retrieved from her bag, and was already hailing a cab, opening the door and climbing into it.
The kid with the hair watched as the taxi joined the other cars, all waiting for the lights to change from red to green. Glancing down he saw Ruby’s book on the bench.
‘Hey, your book!’ he yelled. He began to run, zig-zagging through the moving traffic, but the lights had changed and the cab was picking up speed.
‘Keep it for me,’ she shouted back. ‘I want to know how it ends.’
Chapter 8.
THE RADIO WAS TUNED TO TTR, Twinford Talk Radio, and the local news debate was blaring out. First a story about the mayor’s statue, newly commissioned by the mayor himself – it had upset a lot of Twinfordites.
‘IT’S JUST SO UNSPEAKABLY UGLY,’ said Roxy from North Twinford.
‘I HAVE TO SAY, MY TODDLER CRIES EVERY TIME WE PASS BY,’ agreed Judy from Midtown Avenue. ‘I FEEL LIKE THROWING A BLANKET OVER IT, YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING?’
‘I sure as heck do, Judy,’ said the cab driver, ‘it’s just about the ugliest thing I ever laid eyes on.’ The driver looked at Ruby in the rearview mirror. ‘You a fan?’
‘I’m into horror if that’s what you’re asking,’ said Ruby. The sculptor who had attempted to capture the mayor in stone had clearly been going for some kind of modernist vibe, but the result was pure nightmare.
‘I hear you kid!’ said the cab driver, punching the horn. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Get outta my way lady!’
TTR had moved on to another story about the predicted storms, which despite regular weather updates had yet to ravage Twinford.
‘I MEAN THEY KEEP TELLING US THIS HURRICANE IS ON ITS WAY BUT THERE ISN’T ENOUGH WIND TO FLY A KITE, I PROMISE YOU, I’VE TRIED,’ said Steve from Ocean Bay Suburb.
The other big debate was about a presumed robbery that had taken place on the twenty-sixth floor of the Lakeridge Square apartments. Presumed, because nothing had actually been reported missing yet. ‘LAKERIDGE RESIDENTS TARGETED BY HIGHRISE THIEF,’ announced Ted, the show’s host.
‘I’ll bet it has something to do with that skywalker,’ said the cab driver.
‘What skywalker?’ said Ruby.
‘Some clown’s been spotted walking between those fancy apartments in the city downtown,’ said the cab driver. ‘Doesn’t worry me, I live on the ground floor of a lowrise out in East Twinford.’
‘What, you mean he’s been seen walking on roofs?’
‘No, walking on the air is what I heard,’ said the cab driver. ‘Just strolling between the buildings.’
‘Sounds unlikely,’ said Ruby.
‘SO HOW IS THIS GUY DOING IT, ALICE? HIGH WIRES OR SUPERPOWERS? AND WHAT DO YOU THINK THE TWINFORD POLICE SHOULD BE DOING ABOUT THIS GUY, IF ANYTHING?’
‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK?’ said Alice from East Twinford. ‘GOOD LUCK TO HIM! I WISH I HAD THE MONEY TO LIVE IN THE LAKERIDGE BUILDING. THESE RICH FOLK HAVE MORE MONEY THAN THEY CAN HANDLE. WHAT DO THEY CARE IF SOME THIEF BREAKS INTO THEIR APARTMENT AND STEALS ONE OF THEIR VALUABLES? THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE ALL THIS WEALTH, IT’S NOT RIGHT, IF I HAD MY WAY I WOULD—’
‘THANK YOU FOR THAT INTERESTING POINT OF VIEW, ALICE, I MIGHT JUST CUT YOU OFF THERE,’ said Ted.
It was an intriguing discussion and Ruby was disappointed when the radio show moved onto the less interesting subject of bathroom limescale. She tuned out and instead let her thoughts drift as she watched the city flick past the cab window. It was only when Ruby had travelled halfway to where she needed to be that she realised she wasn’t going to have enough money to pay for the entire cab journey. Heck, she didn’t have enough to pay the distance she had already travelled. She had spent her dollars on the dress and the book, and now she was short.
‘Look man, you’re gonna have to pull over, I’ll step out here,’ Ruby said to the driver. ‘I’m outta funds.’
The cab screeched to a halt.
‘Unless. . . I don’t suppose. . .’ Ruby ventured, handing him every nickel and dime, ‘you might wanna help out a kid with a busted arm?’
‘Scram,’ said the driver, pointing his thumb in the direction of the sidewalk.
‘Thanks for your kindness sir,’ called Ruby, as the cab driver pulled away. ‘I’ll remember you in my will!’
Ruby arrived at the hospital almost a half-hour late and was met by a sour-faced nurse. Her name tag read, “Nurse Driver”.
‘You’re late,’ she said.
‘Only twenty-seven minutes,’ said Ruby.
‘Late is late,’ said the nurse.
‘Too late?’ asked Ruby.
‘Dr Shepherd has gone,’ said Nurse Driver, hands on hips.
‘Really.’
‘Dr Shepherd is a busy man.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ruby, giving her the old Ruby Redfort sad eyes. ‘I had such trouble getting here, first of all I—’
Nurse Driver raised her hand to stop the tide of excuses. ‘If you promise not to say another word, I’ll see what I can do.’ She made a few calls and told Ruby to sit it out on the hard plastic chairs in the waiting area.
Ruby picked up a crumpled copy of the Twinford Mirror. On page two was a piece about the Lakeridge break-in. Mr Baradi was quite shaken up to find the front door to his twenty-sixth-floor apartment wide open when he arose at 6.20 am.
‘It was unlocked from the inside,’ he explained to the police from the 24th precinct. ‘I ask you,’ he continued, ‘how in the name of rigatoni did that happen?’ Nothing so far has been discovered missing, but the search continues.
Forty-five minutes later Nurse Driver ushered Ruby inside a small white box of a room and informed her that the doctor would see her presently. One hour twenty-seven minutes later the door still hadn’t opened. Ruby read all the notices and information pinned to the walls, first in English and then in Spanish and then in Braille. At last the door opened.
‘So, want to get that thing off?’ said the technician, pointing at her arm.
‘Umm, yeah, that would be nice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great, but I oughta be getting back to my parents or they might decide to rent out my room.’
The technician didn’t rise to Ruby’s sarcasm. ‘Is that a yes?’ she said.