Copyright

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015

First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

For Ruby Redfort games, puzzles, videos and more, visit:

www.rubyredfort.com

Visit Lauren Child at www.milkmonitor.com

Text copyright © Lauren Child 2015

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016, Cover photography © Sandro Sodano

Based on an original series design by David Mackintosh

Inside illustrations by David Mackintosh

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007334278

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008139650

Version: 2016-04-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A perfect storm

An ordinary kid

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

The debriefing

Halloween with a twist

From the Twinford Mirror

Shopping cart

The apple

How to see in four dimensions

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Praise

About the Publisher

WAY OUT TO THE NORTHEAST OF THE CITY WERE THE FLATLANDS, acre upon acre of prairie grass that waved in the warm winds blowing in from the ocean.

The girl was taking the long road to her grandmother’s ranch house. She imagined it would take her no more than an hour, so she would still be in good time; she had promised to be there by noon. The weather station had warned of an electrical storm and dark clouds were already forming in the great skies above her.

The girl had tried to coax her dog, a young husky pup, to travel with her in her bicycle basket, but the dog had looked up at the sky and howled when she tried to carry him from the house, his fur standing right on end.

It was as if he knew what was coming. There had been talk of a tornado looking to bear down and she had a mind to see it begin to pick up before it whirled in. Timing, she knew, was everything when it came to tornadoes. They could whip up quick and vanish in minutes, the average for these parts being around twenty. You had to be careful – you mistime it and you might be snatched up inside that wind funnel, for you could not outrun a tornado, only sidestep it; this her nine-year-old self knew for a certainty.

She hadn’t travelled more than halfway there when she realised she had left it too late. Turn back, keep going, it didn’t matter – she was never going to make it to the ranch before the storm struck. A lone tree grew out from the only raised piece of land in more than a hundred miles, a tree bent sideways by the relentless west wind and the only landmark on the whole horizon other than the marching telegraph poles.

But it was a good landmark. She remembered how the tree grew out of rock, not a cave exactly but a pile of stones so heavy that they looked like they hadn’t moved in more than ten thousand years. The girl saw at once that if she could make it to those rocks and climb between them then she would escape the tornado’s hold.

She let go of her bike and abandoned it right there, where it fell, on the tarmac road. She began to run across the open grassland, feeling the whipping wind as she fled. She ran, ran like the devil himself were chasing her, ran like all hell was biting at her ankles. The coarse grass was slurring her movement, wrapping about her legs, but she wouldn’t let it pull her down. There were the rocks and the half cave. She threw herself in just as the whirling funnel picked up over her head, and through the crack in the stone she saw her little green bicycle hooked up by the finger of wind and pulled high into its centre.

She didn’t notice the hissing thing: the wind drowned out its sound. Nor did she notice it raise its head and open its jaws wide, exposing those perfectly sharp prongs of teeth. She felt it though: a sharp pain followed by a sickening ache. A strange sensation.

She turned to look it in the eyes. Black eyes set in an arrow-shaped head, dark diamonds running down its brown back. She looked at it, unblinking, as it slowly wound itself back into the shadows.

Suddenly everything became hyper real, the strange crag of the rocks, one jutting stone looking almost like a dog’s head – she thought of her husky and wished he was at her side. She tried to steady her breathing and reached for the notebook and pencil she had tucked inside her pocket. She drew the head shape and the markings, making a note of the colours, and once she was sure she had all the information, she removed the sneaker from her left foot followed by her striped sock, cutting away the toe part with her penknife. Then she pushed her arm into the tube of knitted cotton and slipped it over the wound, not too tight but enough to support her deadening limb.

Slowly she began to move herself towards the road, keeping her arm down so that the bite wound was below her heart.

Looking behind her she saw the tree was gone, carried away by the tornado.

The farmer who drove by in his truck an hour later was surprised to see this young girl stumbling down the road on her own.

The doctor on duty in the local hospital was astonished when upon arrival she produced a notebook containing a perfect drawing of a Western Rattlesnake.

‘That’s … what … bit me,’ she said, her arm badly swollen by now and her voice losing its strength.

‘Smart of you, noting everything down like that,’ he said as he injected the antivenom. ‘Rattler venom can kill in two hours. If we’d wasted any time trying to identify the species, well …’

Which was why from that day on Ruby Redfort resolved to know every snake by the pattern of its skin – such knowledge might just save your life.

WHEN RUBY WAS TEN her father was due to take part in a tasting for the Olivarian Society, so called because in order to become a member of this esteemed club one had to blind taste twelve different types of olive, identifying the variety and the region in which they grew.

For reasons to do with bad weather in Boston, Sabina Redfort had failed to make her Twinford flight and was stranded at the east coast airport. Mrs Digby the housekeeper was on annual leave, Brant Redfort refused to leave his daughter home alone and his daughter refused to have a sitter. Therefore it was decided that Ruby would have to accompany her father to the club on Fuldecker Avenue, a grand old-fashioned building with plenty of carved wood and marble. It being highly irregular to bring a child to the club, Ruby was taken to the small club office, where she might read and wait out the two hours until her father was ready to go home.

Brant Redfort was blindfolded and led to a table on which twelve olive dishes were then placed. There were three olives that Brant Redfort found very difficult to place, but he filled in what he could and, once finished, his completed papers along with the olives were returned to the club office.

Ruby, who was fond of olives, had been his home-study partner and now had a very keen palette and a wide appreciation of olives from all regions. She decided therefore to take the test herself and, finding her father’s answers to be good but not great (considering the time he had given to this pursuit he should really have excelled), she amended his test sheet accordingly.

She detected every herb and every spice, and almost every variety of olive: young, old, barrelled in oak, pickled in sea brine, from the western slopes of Mount Etna and from the northern coast of Corfu.

Brant Redfort was declared a worthy Olivarian and was sworn into the club with a hearty cheer, and Ruby was able to get back to her book.

Some several years later …

WHEN RUBY REDFORT AROSE THAT MORNING, she could not have foreseen what kind of day it was going to turn out to be.

She certainly hadn’t meant to find herself running for all she was worth down the Amster back alleys, nor had she pictured how grateful she would be to see that dumpster in front of the Five Aces Poker Bar. It just happened that way. Sometimes things unfold in a way you could never predict.

RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.

Actually, at the moment when she left the house, Ruby was expecting her Saturday to be entirely peaceful. Expecting and hoping. She hadn’t been sleeping well recently, and she wasn’t exactly feeling sharp. She was planning to nod hello to Ray Penny as she entered his secondhand bookshop; if the mood grabbed her she might even ask after his dog, Jake, who was recovering at the vets having poisoned himself by eating an entire bar of chocolate. Then she would browse the shelves for a good thriller and sit down to read. She didn’t feel like too much human interaction today.

True to the weather report, the wind was really beginning to take a hold, and as she headed down Cedarwood Drive her usually tidy dark hair was yanked free from its barrette and was now wildly wrapping across her face and over her glasses, making it very hard to see.

The ‘gusters’, as Twinford folk referred to them, had been blowing for the past fortnight, ever since the night of the Scarlet Pagoda Film Festival, an evening Ruby would never forget, for although it was not the first time she had fallen from a tall building, it was the first time she had been pushed from the top of one.

The building in question had been the Hotel Circus Grande and the pusher had been thief and psychopath Lorelei von Leyden. Ruby had not been the target, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and, now Lorelei was incarcerated in a maximum security jail awaiting trial, Ruby could sleep more easily. Ruby felt Lorelei was one of those people who just might bear a grudge.

As she turned the corner into Main, Ruby spotted Del Lasco striding out of the recently opened Slush Store, her left hand gripping a blue ice drink, her right hand, newly sprained, in a sling and her face wearing a sour expression. Ordinarily Ruby would have been pretty pleased to see Del but on this particular afternoon she sensed something was brewing. Eleven seconds later and this feeling of foreboding was confirmed as Del and Ruby’s Junior High nemesis, Vapona Begwell, marched out of the store followed by several of her cronies. It was obvious to even the casual observer that Vapona wasn’t about to ask Del the time of day.

‘You wanna say that again, Lasco?’ Vapona shouted. ‘I didn’t quite catch it.’

‘You heard me, Bugwart,’ said Del.

‘So say it to my face, if you dare.’

‘If you’d point me in the direction of your face, I’d be glad to,’ replied Del.

Vapona didn’t wait for another insult, nor did she try and extract an apology, she just clenched her fist and aimed to sock Del right slam in the mouth, only Del, who was used to kids taking a swing at her, ducked and Vapona found her fist making contact with friend and sidekick Gemma Melamare, and it was Gemma’s dainty little snub nose that took the hit.

The sound that came out of Melamare’s mouth made everyone freeze in their tracks; everyone but Ruby. She took the opportunity to yank Del by the hood of her sweatshirt and propel her right across the road towards the back alleys off Amster. Vapona’s gang, spellbound by what had just happened, took a minute to realise Del Lasco had left the scene.

‘Hey! Come back here Lasco, you chicken liver.’

‘Run!’ shouted Ruby.

Del let go of the blue slushy and she ran. They both did.

They fled down the back of the minimart and along the alley that joined Maize, over the street (car brakes screeching and horns honking) and on through the next two alleyways, across Maple, across Larch, across Fortune, and beyond, heading east to the busy road that was Crocker with all its countless seedy bars and secondhand shops filled with nothing you would ever want to buy.

They could hear Bugwart and her pals not so far behind, their voices yelling out across the fenced passageways. They kept running; only trouble was, there was nowhere to hide, no more back alleys on Crocker, just a long wide strip of flat road and bars, pawnbrokers and gambling outlets, nowhere for a kid to blend. When they reached the Five Aces Poker Bar, Ruby realised they were in trouble. Bugwart wasn’t giving up and though Ruby, using the parkour skills that Hitch had taught her, could now easily climb a low-rise and sprint across the roofs, Del with her sprained hand and lack of parkour skills could not.

Which was how come they ended up scrambling into the Five Aces dumpster and pulling down the lid.

Undignified for sure, but as the old saying went, beggars really can’t be so choosy and (if you wanted another one) any port in a storm.

Or, as Ruby’s RULE 73 had it: SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a nice place to hang out, and Ruby was at that moment regretting her decision to leave the tranquility of her bedroom and venture out into the big bad world.

They could hear Vapona talking to her gang.

‘Where did they go?’

‘Beats me.’

‘They just disappeared!’

Thump.

Vapona slammed her fist on the dumpster.

‘We lost em.’ She sounded pretty angry about it. ‘When I find Lasco, I’m gonna pulp her!’ To illustrate this intention, Vapona thumped the dumpster again, this time so hard that Ruby felt the thud vibrate through her.

The two of them listened to Vapona’s gang’s footsteps as they receded back towards Amster, their dread threats becoming less and less audible until only the thrum of passing cars could be heard.

Twenty minutes later – Ruby wasn’t taking any chances – they struggled out like earwigs emerging from debris.

They brushed themselves down, Del picking a fish head out from Ruby’s hooded top, Ruby peeling chewing gum from Del’s jeans, then they shook hands.

‘Congratulations Lasco, you’re alive,’ said Ruby.

‘But I smell like I died,’ said Del, sniffing the air. She looked at Ruby. ‘Your glasses look wonky.’

‘That’s the least of my problems,’ said Ruby. ‘Listen, nice bumping into you and all but I think I gotta take a shower,’ she called as she strode off towards home. The garbage smell was making her nauseous and she needed to clean up before the stench knocked her out.

‘Thanks for your assistance anyway,’ called Del.

‘No problem,’ shouted Ruby, breaking into a run. She felt this day could surely only get better, that was until the wind blew her hair over her eyes and – vision impaired – she collided with a parking meter.

Winded, she sat down for a moment on the sidewalk.

A banana skin fell from her sleeve.

It had to be said, this was not the kind of day she’d expected.

AS RUBY STUMBLED IN THROUGH THE KITCHEN DOOR, Greg Whitney’s voice jingled out of the radio:

‘SO THOSE WINDS LOOK LIKE THEY REALLY MIGHT HIT HARD.’

‘YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,’ replied Shelly the weather girl. ‘THEY ARE REALLY BEGINNING TO WHIP UP AND IT WON’T BE LONG BEFORE TWINFORD CITY EXPERIENCES SOME VIOLENT STORMS.’

‘RAIN TOO, SHELLY?’

‘YOU CAN COUNT ON IT, GREG!’

Mrs Digby put down her apple peeler and planted her hands on her hips. The dishevelled state of Ruby was one thing; the smell of her a whole lot worse.

‘Child, have you been crouching in a garbage can by any chance?’

Ruby opened her mouth to explain but the housekeeper put up her hands.

‘Before you make up a whole bundle of untruths, I might as well tell you that Mr Chester saw you climbing out of a dumpster and he didn’t wait more than a minute before dialling up my number and spreading the good news.’

Ruby rolled her eyes.

‘The man is a virtual loudhailer of other people’s business,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘if you can call crouching in a garbage can “business”.’ She tutted. ‘Not that it would have escaped my keen eye that you look like something the cat dragged in but, that said, whatever you have been up to, and for whatever reason you thought it necessary, one thing’s not up for discussion: you need to take a bath.’

Ruby sniffed the air. ‘Yeah, it was sorta rancid in there.’

‘I thought you were lying low today?’ said the housekeeper.

‘I was trying to, and then I bumped into Del Lasco.’

‘Say no more,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘That child will have you banged up in the Big House before you can say, “call my lawyer”.’

Ruby went upstairs to her room, set the shower running and scrubbed the dumpster dirt out of her pores. She sprayed herself with a large waft of Wild Rose scent and put on some clean clothes – a pair of jeans, striped socks and a T-shirt. Like most of her T-shirts, it said something, this one bearing the words: I’ve heard it all before. She put on her glasses and could immediately see that there was a problem. The fall into the dumpster had bent them out of shape and the left arm no longer made contact with her left ear, so the glasses now sat at a strange angle. Since right at that moment she had no idea where she had put her spares, she would have to resort to her contact lenses: without either option, life was a total blur.

Once that was taken care of, she took a book from the bookcase and sat down to read.

Ruby owned a lot of books, ranging across all subjects. She read for every reason: inspiration, information and escape. If she valued any of her books above the others, perhaps the ones she would single out would be her code books. After all, it was her interest in codes that had landed her a job at Spectrum, an organisation so secret it was hard to know who actually controlled it, and who it was actually working for. All Ruby really understood was that the agency was on the side of good, a fact she had taken at face value when LB, her boss and head of Spectrum 8, had told her so.

Along with the job came her own personal minder and protector, a field agent who went by the name of Hitch and who disguised his true purpose by acting as the Redfort family household manager (or butler, as Ruby’s mother preferred it). He could have fooled anyone, and did fool everyone. To the outside world Hitch was one of those enviable assets – a manager who ensured one’s domestic life was pressed and ironed, and anything you forgot he was sure to remember.

Yet he also possessed skills most domestic managers lacked. These included scaling buildings, leaping from rooftops and the odd karate chop when required. He wasn’t bad in a crisis either: should you need to board a plane when it was already taxiing down the runway, Hitch was your man. To Ruby’s mom he was the best darned butler this side of the hemisphere; to Ruby he was a mentor, bodyguard, loyal ally and at times royal pain in the derrière.

The volume Ruby was engrossed in today, however, was neither codebook, textbook, nor true-life story. Today she was reading to relax her brain, a totally necessary pursuit if one wanted to find the answer to something one just couldn’t grasp.

RULE 6: SOMETIMES NOT THINKING ABOUT A PROBLEM IS THE BEST WAY TO FIND THE SOLUTION.

And there was a pretty big question that needed answering: what in tarnation was going on in Twinford? Ruby had worked four cases now for Spectrum, and all of them had been resolved, more or less.

But there was something still nagging at her. A sense that those cases were connected somehow, in some way she couldn’t grasp.

She hadn’t got a long way through Kung Fu Martians when one of her many phones began to ring. She had a good collection of telephones by now, having become interested in them when she was just five years old: every shape, every design, from a bar of soap to a squirrel in a tuxedo.

She reached for the donut and flipped it open.

‘Twinford Garbage Disposal, we depend on your trash.’

‘Ruby?’

‘Oh, hey Del.’

‘Look, thanks a load Rube, I owe you one, man.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, who hasn’t jumped into a dumpster to prevent a friend being socked in the kisser?’

‘Most people,’ said Del. ‘Anyway, the thing is, all I’m saying is I appreciate it.’

‘Any time,’ said Ruby. ‘Don’t think me rude, but I oughta get back to reading my comic book; I’m trying to figure something out here.’

‘Go figure,’ said Del.

Del hung up and Ruby went back to her reading until the next interruption, which came from the ACA Insurance Company.

‘Hello ma’am, how are you today, my name’s Doris, I’m calling from the ACA Insurance Company and I would like to invite you to take out an ACA life insurance policy with ACA Life Insurance at half the cost of our usual policy and if you join us today right now over the phone I can throw in an alarm clock radio and a free watch, worth a grand total of fifteen dollars and ninety-nine cents.’

‘Well, thank you for the offer Doris,’ said Ruby, ‘and as good as that sounds, I regret to say I am only thirteen years old and have no dependents depending on my income and no income to speak of, a perfectly good alarm clock radio and a better than ordinary wristwatch, besides which I do not plan to die just yet.’

‘Oh, sorry dear, might I speak to your mother?’

‘She too has a wristwatch and no plans to die.’

‘None of us plan to die, dear.’

‘Believe me, my mom’s not dying, she looks half her age and eats muesli for breakfast – thank you for your call.’

Ruby replaced the phone and resumed her reading, but three minutes later she was interrupted again. This time by Mrs Lemon.

‘Oh Ruby, I’m so glad I caught you, I was just wondering, I mean hoping to goodness, that you might be able to watch baby Archie tomorrow?’

This was not a call Ruby wanted to take, and just how Elaine Lemon had got hold of her private number was a mystery and something she would be taking up with her mother when she came back from wherever she was.

‘Well, jeez Elaine, it’s good of you to think of me but I am up to my eyeballs right now.’

‘Up to your eyeballs in what?’ asked Elaine.

‘This and that,’ said Ruby. ‘I got the girl scouts and band practice and cheerleading, not to mention the Christmas pageant.’

‘Really? Aren’t you a little old for Christmas pageants?’

‘Never too old to join in, Elaine, and I’m a joiner.’

‘It would seem so. My, they do begin these Christmas rehearsals early these days, it’s not even October,’ said Mrs Lemon. ‘Well, Ruby, if you are too busy then I won’t press you and I must applaud your get-involved spirit.’

‘I appreciate that Elaine, I really do,’ said Ruby. Then she hung up and once again went back to her comic. By the time the fourth phone call came in Ruby was a little strung out.

‘What!’ she yelled into the receiver.

‘You OK Ruby? You sound a little tense.’

‘Oh, it’s you Clance, sorry about that,’ said Ruby, relieved to hear the voice of her closest friend and most loyal ally, Clancy Crew, coming back down the line.

‘Yeah, well I’ve had a kinda tense few hours,’ she explained, ‘not what I had planned.’

‘Yeah, I ran into Del, she told me what happened. She was concerned that you might be mad at her,’ said Clancy.

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Ruby.

‘I told her you wouldn’t be,’ said Clancy.

No one knew Ruby like Clancy did, not even Mrs Digby, and she knew Ruby back to front and inside out.

‘So are you worried that Mrs Digby will tell your mom and dad?’

‘What makes you think Mrs Digby knows?’

‘You think she doesn’t?’

‘She knows,’ sighed Ruby. ‘She always knows. Mr Chester rang her, but she has no interest in getting my folks involved. You can imagine how they would react, right?’

Clancy sucked air through his teeth; he knew all right.

‘So what have you been doing?’ asked Ruby.

He let out a weary sigh. ‘I’ve been trying to make this petition to oppose Mrs Bexenheath’s suggestion that the school lockers be moved from the main corridor to somewhere totally inconvenient.’

‘Yeah, well that’s Mrs Bexenheath all over. Just so long as things are nice and tidy for her then she’s not interested in whether it works for any of us,’ said Ruby.

‘She doesn’t get it. The lockers are more than a place to keep your tennis shoes,’ said Clancy, ‘they are integral to social interaction.’

‘You’re preaching to the choir Clance, it’s Principal Levine you gotta persuade.’

‘I know,’ said Clancy, ‘but I have no idea how.’

‘You’ll think of something,’ said Ruby. ‘I have total faith.’

Pause.

‘So you watching The Ex Detective?’ asked Clancy.

‘I totally forgot it was on this afternoon. What’s the deal?’ asked Ruby.

‘Larry’s got his mom in town, but she’s just been kidnapped.’

‘I didn’t know that Larry had a mom.’

‘No one did,’ said Clancy, ‘but now she’s been kidnapped Larry realises how much he’s been missing her and wishes he hadn’t let the grass grow under their relationship.’

‘It’s always the way,’ sighed Ruby.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Clancy, ‘you just don’t know what you got until it’s gone.’

‘Talking of gone, when exactly are you flying to Washington?’ asked Ruby.

‘In about three weeks,’ said Clancy. ‘My dad’s planning on bringing along the whole pack of us.’

‘So what’s the point of this trip – pleasure or pain?’

Clancy sighed. ‘He won’t tell us, but he said this time we’ll enjoy it. Unlikely, I think. I’ll bet he just wants us to be there looking like a super-happy family. It’s good for politics.’ Clancy’s father was Ambassador Crew and he liked his family to fall in behind him in a nice straight line and generally make him look good. The Crew children struggled with this, partly because they weren’t suited to a life of smiling and waving but mainly because Ambassador Crew was much more focused on himself than he was on them.

‘Jeepers Clance, just how much smiling time has he got you down for?’

‘Forty-eight hours at least,’ said Clancy. ‘I don’t think my jaw will stand it.’

‘You’re pretty resilient, Clance,’ she yawned, ‘you’ll think of something to smile about.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Clancy. ‘Anyway, have you spoken to Hitch since the whole, you know, thing?’ he asked.

Ruby glanced around her as if somewhere in this Twinford teenager’s bedroom something lurked and listened. She was right to be concerned – it wasn’t prudent to talk on an unsecured line. She had learned this the hard way a few months back. Spectrum was not some sort of employment agency, it was a spy agency, and as anyone knew, spy agencies should not be blabbed about. In fact, blab and you could pack up your spy kit and head on home. It was Spectrum RULE 1: KEEP IT ZIPPED. Talking to your best pal Clancy Crew about Spectrum would also bring about a termination of your contract, but then Spectrum weren’t going to know about that since when it came to secrets, Clancy Crew was a vault and though Hitch knew that Clancy knew, he was also a vault.

So you could be pretty certain this secret was well and truly secret.

‘No,’ said Ruby, ‘Hitch hasn’t been around here. He told my folks he’s in the Bahamas with his mother.’

‘I didn’t know he had a mother.’

‘I’m not sure he does.’

‘You think he just made her up?’

‘When it comes to Hitch, I think it’s hard to know what’s true. You think you know him but, look at it this way, what do I really have as hard evidence? Do I know anything?’

‘You know he likes coffee,’ suggested Clancy.

‘What I know Clance,’ corrected Ruby, ‘is that Hitch drinks coffee and a lot of it, but does he drink it because he likes the taste of it or because he needs to keep from falling asleep? Well, it’s anybody’s guess.’

‘So you wanna meet?’ asked Clancy.

Ruby paused, for a moment torn between the pleasure of chatting to her friend and the pleasure that was reading Kung Fu Martians. She sighed. ‘Sure, why not, my day is ruined anyway.’

‘Oh, thanks a bunch, buster.’

‘I didn’t mean it like it sounded,’ said Ruby. ‘Just meant I was planning on a little downtime, but I guess your company might restore my mood.’

‘I’m beginning to think yours might have the entirely opposite effect,’ said Clancy.

‘See you in ten,’ said Ruby.

THEY MET WHERE THEY USUALLY MET when they didn’t want to bump into anyone else – the old oak tree on Amster Green. It was a good spot for hiding coded notes when there were secrets to be passed, and it was also a pretty perfect spot to sit and observe the comings and goings on Amster. The leafy branches provided good cover from passers-by, even this late in the year. October was almost here and most of the leaves still clung to the branches, the colours vivid and varied. It was an exceptional fall due to the late summer and sudden cold snap, the old oak’s leaves turning a whole host of colours.

‘Ideal for leaf peepers,’ said Ruby.

‘What?’ said Clancy.

‘Leaf peepers,’ repeated Ruby, ‘folks who like to spend their free time looking at leaves turning.’

‘There’s a name for people who do that?’ said Clancy. ‘Looking at leaves changing colour has an actual name?’

‘Everything has a name,’ said Ruby. ‘And this is an especially good fall for leaf peeping. It’s due to that Indian summer we had; I mean, until a few weeks ago the days were pretty sunny, unusually so. We’ve also had some cool evenings and no rain to speak of – as I said, ideal conditions for leaf peepers. It all has to do with sunlight, sugar and sap.’

‘What?’ said Clancy.

‘The green in a leaf is chlorophyll, right? Well, chlorophyll disappears more quickly when the sunlight is bright and the evenings are cool. And dry weather makes more sugar in the cell sap, which accelerates production of red compounds. So: bright days, cool nights and no rain means the green goes fast and lots of red is made to replace it. A leaf peeper’s idea of heaven.’

‘Jeepers, you really retain all this stuff in your actual brain?’

‘You never know when it might come in handy,’ said Ruby.

‘Apart from a biology test, I don’t see this info coming in super handy,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s not knowledge you need to have at your fingertips.’

‘How do you know?’ said Ruby. ‘You never know when a piece of information might prove vital for your future survival.’

‘I think you can be fairly sure this leaf thing isn’t going to help you in a life-or-death situation.’

Ruby knew a lot of facts like this – she spent an awful lot of time looking them up in books. She sometimes even attended lectures on subjects which interested her, slipping in unseen to the Twinford University seminars. The more you know, the more you know was a motto of Ruby’s, and she knew a lot.

Clancy and Ruby were sitting high in the oak’s branches and looking up at the sky and the dark clouds that were beginning to gather. Was the wind picking up or was there rain coming in?

‘You reckon you could outrun a tornado?’ mused Clancy.

‘No,’ said Ruby.

‘You say that, but I mean could you? I mean, has anyone tried?’

‘I’m sure plenty have tried, but unless they can run at two hundred miles an hour then no, they haven’t succeeded.’

‘Even on a bike?’ asked Clancy.

‘Who can ride a bike at two hundred miles an hour? Who does anything at two hundred miles an hour?’ said Ruby.

Clancy changed the subject. ‘So how are you going to explain climbing into a garbage can?’ he asked.

‘To whom?’

‘Your folks?’

‘How are they gonna find out? Mrs Digby’s sure as darn it not gonna tell ’em.’

‘Yeah, but Mr Chester might.’

‘Oh, so he’s been broadcasting in your neighbourhood as well?’

‘Well, my sister Lulu knew about it. She overheard Mr Chester telling Mr Nori when she walked past the bus stop.’

‘Why doesn’t Mr Chester just get himself a radio station? It would give him wider coverage.’

‘I’m not sure it would,’ said Clancy.

As parents went, Sabina and Brant Redfort were two very easy-going people, but bad manners and lack of social graces turned them very uptight indeed – especially if these failings were their daughter’s. And getting spotted by the town busybody as you climbed out of a dumpster in front of a poker bar was not socially graceful.

‘Let Mr Chester gossip all he likes,’ said Ruby. She wasn’t concerned; she would figure out exactly what to say. ‘So what was the exciting thing you wanted to tell me?’

‘What do you mean, what exciting thing?’ said Clancy.

‘Come on Clance, it is written all over your face, practically oozing out of the corners of your mouth. I can tell you’ve been dying to tell me something since you got here.’

‘No fooling you, huh?’ said Clancy.

‘I can read you like a book, baby.’

Clancy frowned. ‘Let’s hope a more interesting book than the one about how leaves turn red.’

‘So what’s the news?’

‘I’m going to the Environmental Explorer Awards,’ said Clancy, smiling the smile that he would be wearing on the night.

‘You’re going to that?’ Ruby felt like she might fall off her branch.

Clancy nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Since when?’ said Ruby.

‘Since my dad had this extra invitation.’

‘How did he manage that?’ asked Ruby.

‘My mom’s not keen on some of the live exhibits.’

‘I guess you got lucky,’ said Ruby.

‘I know,’ said Clancy, ‘it’s this year’s big money-can’t-buy ticket. It must be one of the few perks of being the Ambassador’s favourite son.’ (Clancy was also the ambassador’s only son.)

‘What about your sisters? They not wanna go?’ asked Ruby.

‘Minny’s banned due to some misdemeanour or other, Lulu’s not into that kinda thing, and since I’m the third oldest the others don’t actually get a look in.’

‘I must say, for once I envy you my ambassadorial pal,’ said Ruby.

‘Are your mom and dad going?’ said Clancy.

‘Need you ask?’ said Ruby. The Twinford Environmental Explorer Awards was a three-yearly event held in the Twinford Geographical Institute, a grand modernist building near the Twinford City Museum. A large cheque was presented by a local dignitary to the environmentalist deemed to have made the biggest impact on some area of world ecology. It was a big deal event. Of course the Redforts were going. Ruby’s parents were Twinford’s premiere socialites, attending on average two major functions per week along with a sprinkling of private parties, launches and fundraisers.

‘You couldn’t, like, wrestle a ticket?’ asked Clancy.

‘It’s a sell out,’ said Ruby, ‘everyone wants to be there. I guess I will be left watching it on TV.’

‘It’s because of the exhibits,’ said Clancy, ‘that’s what makes it so popular. They said there’s going to be moon rock there and probably one or two astronauts floating around.’

‘If you get to speak to one of them you gotta ask, which is the more comfortable space suit: the G4C, or the A7L?’ Ruby thought for a moment and then added, ‘Also, does the moon really smell like wet gunpowder?’

Clancy said, ‘I’m going to ask them how they can sit in a rotating spacecraft without getting dizzy? I mean my sister Nancy would puke all the way to the moon.’

‘Which isn’t saying a lot since your sister Nancy looks like she’s about to puke every time she climbs aboard the school bus. No, the real question to ask is – “Aren’t you concerned about all that space junk you’re littering the galaxy with? Sooner or later someone’s going to bump into a lump of it …” – that’s what I wanna know,’ said Ruby. ‘That and what Virgil Hipkip does in his spare time.’

‘Can you even imagine?’ mused Clancy. ‘I mean how does a guy like that relax?’

‘Ah, he probably knits,’ said Ruby.

Virgil Hipkip was a survivalist and explorer of hostile terrain, and known for many hair-raising feats, but the most notorious was when he swam beneath the Arctic ice with a polar bear.

‘He’s the reason my mom doesn’t want to go,’ said Clancy. ‘She thinks he may have insisted that jungle grubs be served as canapés.’

‘A not entirely unreasonable worry,’ said Ruby.

‘I’m hoping to meet him,’ said Clancy. ‘As they say, he hangs out with the rare and dangerous, or is it the dangerously rare?’

‘Well, talking of dangerously rare, if you get a chance, ask him if he’s run into the Blue Alaskan wolf recently – I’ll betcha he hasn’t.’

‘Yep, we must be the only two kids alive today who have seen that old wolf,’ said Clancy. They were talking about a creature thought to be extinct until August that year. Ruby and Clancy had cut it loose. Had they left it caged up there on Wolf Paw Mountain where Lorelei von Leyden and the mysterious Australian woman she was working for had trapped it, then its fate might very well have been the same as that of the dodo.

‘So who do you figure is going to get the big cheque?’ asked Ruby.

‘My money’s on the woman who discovered that new snake species.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t know, just a hunch,’ said Clancy. ‘I just got a good feeling about her. It’s the sort of discovery that takes a hold on people’s imaginations.’

‘That’s because people are scared of snakes,’ said Ruby. ‘People like to be thrilled.’

‘True, but more than that, this snake has an amazing yellow skin, I mean, fluorescent yellow,’ said Clancy. ‘On top of that, it has a really weird venom, interesting weird.’

‘What does it do?’ said Ruby.

‘Well, it doesn’t kill you,’ said Clancy. ‘At least, not immediately. First of all you sweat, like a lot. I mean you basically sweat to death unless you drink about a gallon of water; if you don’t, you end up like a raisin. The worst of it is, you find you can’t close your eyes – they are sort of pinned open, which is very unattractive and unrelaxing.’

‘You think you would be able to relax with symptoms like those?’ asked Ruby.

‘It also gives you really bad breath,’ added Clancy.

‘Gross. How come you know all these reptile facts?’ asked Ruby.

‘My dad was given the literature on account of him being on the awards committee. I read up on it. It’s top secret though; I shouldn’t even be telling you,’ said Clancy. ‘I hope you’re not going to blab.’

Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘Give me a break.’ Hearing about the snake made her wish more than ever that she could make it to the Explorer Awards; snakes were of particular interest to her.

She had spent an awful lot of her time watching the nature channel and had seen more than a few programmes about deadly snakes and their habitats. It was a subject that fascinated both her and Clancy, and one that they had often argued about.

They were always trying to figure out which was the most deadly snake of all. Clancy would usually argue: ‘It has to be the hook-nosed sea krait because it requires the least venom to kill.’

‘Come on, it has got to be the Russell’s viper,’ Ruby would answer. ‘I mean, it has to be considered the more dangerous on account of it being a more aggressive reptile and it packs more venom. You also have to consider that you are much more likely to cross paths with a Russell’s viper than our hook-nosed friend.’

Clancy refused to accept this argument and merely countered that this was not the point – if one happened to meet the Enhydrina schistosa then the chances of making it back to the beach to enjoy a little more sunbathing activity were pretty much non-existent. This argument had been going on for the past five and a quarter years and a compromise had yet to be found. What they both did agree on was: ‘Whichever one you meet, just be sure you don’t upset it.’

‘This snake lady,’ said Ruby, ‘what’s her name?’

Amarjargel Oidov? Or as they say in Outer Mongolia, Oidov Amarjargel.’

‘That’s where the snake’s from? Outer Mongolia?’

‘No, that’s where she’s from. I don’t know where the snake’s from,’ said Clancy. ‘It sounds cool, doesn’t it?’

‘What, the snake?’

‘Outer Mongolia. I mean, how many countries are called ‘outer’ whatever?’

‘You mean like outer space?’

‘Yeah sorta, just makes it sound exciting, kinda wild,’ said Clancy.

‘Speaking of outer space, my money’s on the Mars exploration,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, what could be more exciting than the big question … is anyone out there?’

‘… And will they infiltrate human society?’

‘Well, if they are and they do then please let them be on the side of wholesome good-citizen-like behaviour because we already have more than enough bad guys mooching around, most of them in Twinford, as far as I can tell.’

The face of the Count loomed up in her mind’s eye – she could see him laughing, his dark eyes unfathomable. He’d been involved in more than one of the cases Ruby had worked on. Did he have further plans to bring his deadly ambitions to town? She had a bad feeling that all of the cases she’d solved so far were only building up to something bigger. Something infinitely deeper and darker than her worst nightmares could conjure.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge the image, and said, ‘Boy, if I could just get my hands on one of those Explorer tickets.’

‘You’d be lucky,’ said Clancy. ‘My dad said people are ready to commit murder for them.’

And Ruby could almost hear the Count laugh.

WHEN RUBY OPENED THE FRONT DOOR she could hear her mother’s voice. Sabina Redfort was on the phone and speaking in a vaguely hushed tone. Ruby paused on the stairs, trying to figure out who her mother was talking to. She sounded serious, very serious.

‘You know, I’m just at a loss, what am I going to do? It will be a total disaster if I don’t find them … I can’t tell him …’ Silence. ‘Oh my gosh, are you sure? … You really mean it? I mean, I can see the sense, they are practically identical … I don’t know how I can ever thank you!’ She sounded beyond grateful. ‘That would just about save my life … What’s that? No, I hadn’t heard … Today you say?’

Ruby froze, waiting for the next words. Was someone about to tell her mother about the dumpster incident?

‘Sure thing, yes, I’m dying to go to the Melrose Dorff sale but it will have to be tomorrow, I have a party tonight … Meet you at the perfume counter, sounds perfect, tomorrow it is. I’ll see you in town, bye, bye, bye.’

Marjorie Humbert! thought Ruby. Has to be. She recognised the sign off: ‘bye, bye, bye’ was what her mother and Marjorie always ended their conversations with.

She exhaled; she was getting paranoid, seeing trouble where there was none. Nothing serious had happened. Her mom no doubt was worrying about her outfit for the Explorer Awards and Marjorie was lending her a pair of shoes or earrings, something her mother had mislaid.

As it happened, Ruby was on the money.

‘Hey Mom, how’s it going?’ she said as she walked into the living room.

‘A whole lot better since two minutes ago. Marjorie has saved my life!’

‘Literally?’ asked Ruby.

‘Sort of literally but not exactly,’ said Sabina.

‘How did she manage that over the phone?’

‘By lending me her ruby-eyed snake earrings. Don’t tell your father,’ said her mother, adopting a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He’ll never spot the difference, even though Marjorie’s are cobras and mine are sea serpents, but he’d be so mad if he knew I’d lost them. You see, I clean forgot to put them on the insurance.’

‘When did you last have them?’ asked Ruby.

‘During my stay in New York City.’

‘So they could be at Grandma’s place?’

‘She’s looked and looked but they haven’t shown up,’ sighed Sabina, ‘not on the night stand, not in the bathroom or anywhere obvious.’

‘So I take it Dad’s not home?’ said Ruby.

‘Not yet honey. He was called in for an emergency meeting about the Explorer Awards. The caterers stepped out at the last minute – the chef apparently has a considerable fear of snakes. Brant offered to find a replacement … He is late though,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘I hope everything’s OK. I have a bad feeling about this whole function.’

It was most unlike Sabina to have a bad feeling about anything – losing her jewellery had clearly rattled her.

Ruby sank down on the sofa opposite her mother.

‘You’re sitting on the menu,’ said Sabina.

‘What?’

‘The menu,’ said Sabina. ‘You happen to be sitting on it.’

‘Oh.’ Ruby pulled the card from under her. ‘So is this what they’re serving on the night?’

‘It was going to be,’ said Sabina, ‘but who knows now, it might just be crackers.’

Ruby began reading from the card. ‘Looks fancy. Caviar, oysters …’

SABINA: ‘I do love oysters, but I feel very uncomfortable eating them now it turns out they have a brain.’

RUBY: ‘I think you are getting mixed up here. They don’t have brains, they are brain food, i.e. meant to be food for the brain.’

SABINA: ‘Whose brain?’

RUBY: ‘Your brain – anyone’s brain.’

SABINA: ‘You sure?’

RUBY: ‘Yes. By the way, you eat plenty of other things with brains.’

SABINA: ‘I know, but I’ve been eating oysters all this time and thinking they don’t have brains.’

RUBY: ‘Well, you can relax ’cause they don’t.’

SABINA: ‘You’re sure about this?’

RUBY: ‘Where do you think they would keep them?’

SABINA: ‘In their shells, of course.’

RUBY: ‘Where in the “body”? I mean, you’ve shucked enough oysters to know.’

Her mother mulled this for half a minute.

SABINA: ‘Now I come to think of it, no, I have never noticed an oyster with even a face.’

RUBY: ‘There you go.’

SABINA: ‘What gets me is how do they think?’

RUBY: ‘They don’t need to think. They’re bivalves, they are pretty much gills and a mouth. They catch plankton in their mucus and—’

SABINA: ‘OK, mucus does it – that’s it for me and oysters.’

Ruby was saved from any more oyster talk by the sound of a key in the front door.

‘That’ll be your father, don’t blab about the earrings,’ hissed her mother.

‘When do I ever blab?’ said Ruby.

‘Brant?’ called Sabina.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he called back.

‘We’ll be late to the Feldmans’ party,’ said Sabina.

‘Sorry honey, I got held up, but guess who I have in tow?’

‘Hola, Mrs Redfort.’

‘Consuela?’ cried Sabina. ‘Is it really you?’ And in walked Consuela Cruz, large as life and in six-inch scarlet heels.

‘Meet my new caterer,’ announced Brant. ‘She has agreed to save the day.’

‘Bravo!’ cried Sabina.

For a very short time Consuela Cruz, a dietician and talented chef from Seville, had been in the Redforts’ employ, hired by Mrs Redfort to bring health and wellbeing to the family, though what had actually happened was the cause of a certain amount of indigestion.

Mrs Digby and Consuela Cruz had not hit it off and had disagreed about most things. Plates had been thrown and tomato juice flung. Mrs Digby had felt very much discarded, her cooking somehow relegated to second best – all in all it had been a less than satisfactory arrangement. It was a mercy Mrs Digby had already departed the house for poker night.

‘Great seeing you again,’ said Ruby.

Consuela gave her a hard stare. ‘Have you been eating your kale, Ruby Redfort?’

‘Course I have, never miss it,’ lied Ruby.

‘Don’t try and pull wool over me, chica. I can see just by looking into your eyes, no kale has passed your lips.’

‘Oh, honey,’ fretted Sabina, ‘is this true?’

‘I’ll go fix her a kale juice once we have debated the menu,’ said Consuela.

Jeepers, thought Ruby, one minute in the door and she’s ruining my life. ‘Really nice to see you again Consuela,’ she said, ‘but if you would excuse me I just need to go and tidy my sock drawer.’

Ruby grabbed some banana milk from the refrigerator while her parents and Consuela Cruz talked oysters. Consuela wanted to serve them on seaweed.

‘I’m not sure we should serve oysters on anything,’ said Brant, ‘because of the green pearl discovery. The marine explorer – what’s his name? – might be offended.’

‘More likely to be offended that you can’t remember what he’s called,’ said Ruby.

‘He wouldn’t have discovered a green pearl if someone had not been trying to eat it,’ said Consuela.

The logic of this statement didn’t register with Brant Redfort.

‘We can’t eat anything endangered,’ he insisted.

‘Oysters aren’t in danger,’ said Consuela. ‘No way José.’

‘Were you aware they don’t have brains?’ said Sabina. ‘Not even faces.’

Ruby decided it might be time to retire to her room.

RUBY PULLED THE BLOCK OF WOOD FROM THE DOORJAMB and took notebook 625 from its hiding place. The previous six hundred and twenty four, all varying shades of the same colour, were hidden under the floorboards. She had been writing things down in yellow notebooks since she was no more than four years old, when it had struck her that the smallest detail was what made up the whole big picture. RULE 16: EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY. No one knew about the yellow notebooks, not even Ruby’s closest friend, Clancy. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told him; she just hadn’t.

She flipped back to see what she had written over the last few weeks. There was a lot there, most of it still fresh in her mind, but she was hoping that there might be some detail that once re-read might mean more than perhaps it had when first jotted down. Some detail that made everything fit together, that revealed the pattern she couldn’t see. She sank back into her outsized beanbag and began to read.

Her life as a Spectrum code breaker had begun in March, getting on for seven months ago now, and it had been no easy ride.

Ruby, who was an ambitious kid, was determined to do more than crack codes: her lifelong dream was to be a field agent. That dream – and her life – had been almost snuffed out by various murdering thieves and kidnappers, but that only served to make her more determined. She had made it this far, she wasn’t dead, why give up now?

It was the Cyan Wolf case that had led her to the blue-eyed Australian, and it was the conversation with her on Wolf Paw Mountain that kept circling her mind. She turned back several pages and read her notes on the case. It was up there on the mountain where things had taken an almost fatal turn, though in recent months things had had a habit of taking near fatal turns.

Sometimes she thought she could still smell the fire that had burned around her, the forest catching light as she had dared the woman to explain her dark motives.

‘All this so you can make some money out of some stupid fragrance.’

How the woman had laughed at that.

‘Is that what you think this is about? No sweetie, this is not about some high-end perfume counter cluttered up with rich folk wanting to waste their money. This is about something important, more important than you could ever imagine.’

The woman had been talking about the Cyan scent, the scent of the Blue Alaskan wolf. A scent so rare that just a few drops were worth unimaginable riches, a scent with an irresistible pull – breathe it in and you fell under its spell. But the Australian had made it clear that she was not interested in it for its value as a perfume – she had far bigger ambitions.

Ruby was chewing on a pencil and looking down at a blank page.

She had been recruited by Spectrum in March to crack a code, just one. Her first (and supposedly last) assignment was to figure out what code-breaker, Lopez, had discovered before she mysteriously died. It turned out to be a plot to steal the priceless Buddha of Khotan. Thanks to Ruby’s work, the Buddha had been saved and the criminals identified. One incarcerated – Baby Face Marshall; one dead – Valerie Capaldi, aka Nine Lives; and one at large – Count von Viscount.

It had all seemed to tie up quite neatly, everyone at Spectrum was satisfied, but Ruby was no longer feeling so complacent. Though the Buddha was now safely back in Yoktan (formerly the ancient city of Khotan), might it be that something had after all been stolen?

Ruby wrote:

Was something stolen from the Jade Buddha itself?

She leafed back to the note she had made about the case when it had all been deemed over, done and dusted, put to bed.

WHAT I DON’T KNOW:

What was the Count looking at?

She had seen him take out a small torch-like device and shine it into the eyes of the Buddha. What had he seen there? What secret might be held in the eyes of the Jade Buddha of Khotan?

The case of the Jade Buddha was supposed to be her one and only code-breaking exercise, but Spectrum had kept her on, despite her age and despite LB’s reluctance to take on a mouthy school kid (the Spectrum 8 boss had been clear about that). Perhaps she hadn’t had much choice – even she could see that, had Ruby not been there, things would have ended very differently.

Ruby turned to a fresh page and wrote:

LOOSE END ONE: the jade.

The second case had been a confusing one. The death of a Spectrum diver had turned out to be accidental, and some worrying pirate activity that had seen Ruby’s own parents taken hostage was in fact a cover to allow Count von Viscount to recover the lost treasure of the Sibling Isles. But on reflection this too turned out to be a bluff, a distraction – something much more sinister was going on. Clancy had told her just how pale the Count had turned when he discovered the vials of indigo he was carrying were smashed and his relief when he had found one, just one glass vessel, still intact. The indigo was the ink obtained from the cephalopod – a giant octopus sea creature – the stuff of legend and a legend no one (until then) had believed in. This indigo ink worked exactly like a truth serum – once ingested, you couldn’t help but tell the truth. Ruby had first-hand experience of its powers and could see just why any master criminal would want to have it sitting in his or her cupboard of villainy, but Ruby had a strange feeling that the Count had some bigger purpose for it.

The pirates and their leader had been captured and marched to jail. The Count’s henchman, Mr Darling, had died in the strangulating grip of the octopus. But the Count himself, as always, had sailed away into the sunset, or in this instance into the dawn.

LOOSE END TWO: the indigo. Was it acquired for some specific purpose?

The third case was the Blue Alaskan wolf: rescued, but not before some of its valuable cyan scent had been extracted and stolen.

This time it was the mysterious Australian who had been running the show, and no one had seen her since she made Ruby take a long walk off a cliff edge. Her co-conspirators had been less lucky: Eduardo had wound up dead, his own boss had seen to that, the bulk of the gang had fled the scene only to be captured by Spectrum agents, and as for Lorelei von Leyden, new villain on the block, well she, like smoke, had disappeared into the atmosphere before the mountain was engulfed in flames.

There had been no sign of the Count in the cyan case, but had he been lurking behind the scenes? Had he been the one pulling the strings?

LOOSE END THREE: the Cyan.

Which just left Ruby’s most recent case – the one that had begun with a pair of missing canary-yellow shoes. It was the shoes that had led them to uncover the whole plot, and eventually locate the invisibility skin, stolen to order by a cat burglar named Claude Fontaine, hired by their old friend Lorelei von Leyden. Ruby had recovered the skin and returned it to the Department of Defence, but she had known as she crouched on the rooftop that night that the invisibility skin was not the whole story. With hindsight, it was clear that the skin had been stolen in order to perpetrate another crime.

The real trophy had been the 8 key. A coder key belonging to Spectrum boss LB, which became useless to anyone as soon as it was known to be missing, since all it took was the press of a button to deactivate its functions. The only part of it that seemed to be in any way interesting was the Lucite tag attached to it, and this was only of interest to LB since it had once belonged to Bradley Baker, legendary Spectrum agent and LB’s long-dead sweetheart.

So why had the Count strived so hard to obtain it? Why risk incarceration for a key that would be deactivated as soon as it was discovered missing? A key therefore that would never unlock one single Spectrum door, not one file, not one secret?

And the bigger question: since the key had been locked away inside a DOD safe room, protected by LB’s own code, how had Claude got to it? Had someone from the DOD or even Spectrum given him inside information? Investigations were of course being conducted – Ruby didn’t have to be told this to know it was so. She thought that was probably why no new code-breaking cases had been landing on her desk; activity had been suspended pending security clearance. So was Hitch likely to be ‘on vacation’ with his ‘mother’ at this time of high alert? Answer: not a chance.

LOOSE END FOUR: the key. What’s the link?

She paused before writing,

Beats me.

She didn’t know what else to write, except for the one thing she didn’t want to write: has a bad apple found its way into Spectrum, or is someone in Spectrum rotten to the core? Someone I know? Someone I trust?

She sat back and exhaled a weary breath. ‘Where the Sam Hill are you Hitch, and why can I never find you when I need you?’ The question, muttered aloud, roused her trusty husky dog and he ambled over and licked her hand, a display of loyal affection Ruby was grateful for.

‘Come on Bug, let’s you and me go get a snack, how about that, huh?’

The dog began to wag his tail. Ruby wriggled out of the beanbag and the two of them exited the room and went quietly on downstairs.

When she arrived down in the kitchen she fetched a dog treat from the pantry and fed it to Bug. Then she opened the refrigerator to see a large glass of green with a note pinned to it written in Spanish:

It was undoubtedly from Consuela.

If I wanted to wind up with dog breath – no offence Bug – then I would. She wasted no time in pouring it down the sink, trying not to breathe in the kale smell.

Mrs Digby had made her a small fish pie. Ordinarily Ruby would have been pleased (Mrs Digby made a good fish pie), but due to her earlier encounter with fish heads she decided she might give it a miss. Instead she sliced some bread, dropped it in the toaster and waited in silence for it to toast. She thought about Hitch again and where he might be – was he part of some investigation into the 8 key or had he been kept out of it too? How did people so good at keeping secrets investigate other people who were equally good at keeping secrets?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the pop of the toaster and just like that one of her questions was answered.

THE MESSAGE WAS GRILLED INTO THE TOAST, the words clear but edible, an advantage to any hungry spy looking to cover her tracks. The fax toaster was Spectrum issue and, while useful, some might feel it had its downsides – not everyone wanted to be contacted about work assignments at 8pm when they had just popped into the kitchen for a snack. But then Ruby Redfort wasn’t everyone.

She spread the toast with mayonnaise (the Redforts were out of butter), stuck it between her teeth and pulled on her waterproof coat. Rain was due anytime soon – that’s what they kept saying, though it was the wind that had the city in its grip.

Then she headed out into the dark to Greenstreet subway station. The train journey wasn’t a long one, but even so Ruby was frustrated with herself for forgetting to bring her book. So instead of reading she stared at her reflection in the dark window. Someone had stuck a sticker to the glass. It was of a boss-eyed cartoon kid licking its chops – on the tongue were the words: It’s On the Tip of Your Tongue.

There was also part of a newspaper discarded on the ledge behind the seat, its headline mirrored in the glass:

She picked it up and continued to read:

THIS YEAR’S HALLOWEEN PARADE BIGGER THAN EVER!

Mayor Abrahams, keen to make himself popular before the mayoral elections, had decided that there should be a special televised Twinford Halloween parade in Harker Square. The meteorological service thought this unwise due to the recent violent gales and predicted torrential rain, but Mayor Abrahams was not to be deterred:

“No little rain shower is going to dampen Twinford’s spirits!”

Ruby’s friends, Red in particular, were keen to make a big impression, costume-wise. There had been a lot of talk but so far no decision on what ghoulish theme they would all be adopting.

She resurfaced at Crossways, the subway stop just northeast of the Village and not so far from the Twinford River. On Broker Avenue traffic was heavy no matter what time of day or night, and to traverse meant dodging cars. The Dime a Dozen 24-hour supermarket was her destination: brightly lit with fluorescent tubes, the aisles signed with giant cardboard numbers suspended from the ceiling.

Aisle 17 held canned vegetables and jarred baby food on one side, chilled goods in tall refrigerators on the other. She didn’t immediately spot Hitch. He was browsing chickpeas: a tall, good-looking man, wearing an elegant raincoat over a dark suit.

In his hand – only slightly marring the look – was a Dime a Dozen paper bag.

‘Been doing some shopping?’ she said.

‘You’re only three minutes and forty seconds late, good going kid,’ he said.

‘Isn’t this a bit inconvenient?’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, having to walk through a store every time you want to reach Spectrum?’

‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘It’s a convenience store.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘For those in the know, there are always other ways in, I just thought this one would appeal to your sense of mystery,’ said Hitch. ‘Besides, we were out of butter.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby, ‘but how do you know?’

‘Lucky guess,’ said Hitch.

Boy, thought Ruby, that’s some butler.

‘So I’ve managed to restock the dairy goodness and get to work on time,’ said Hitch, shaking the bag.

‘Where’s the door then?’ she asked.

‘Right here,’ said Hitch, pointing to a section of shelving bearing all kinds of fly sprays, fly papers and fly swatters. He reached behind a can of Fly-Be-Gone and the shelf swung open and they walked through into a very white, very cold space. Nothing was in it at all but for a tiny image of a white fly on the white wall in front of them, almost invisible but not quite. Hitch pressed his thumbprint onto it and the wall slid back and stairs were revealed.

At the bottom of the staircase – an industrial refrigerator door; on the other side – Spectrum. A hive of spies all secretly going about their business.

Hitch went over to check in with Buzz. She looked the same as always, bland and beige and looking sort of like a mushroom sitting there in the middle of her round desk surrounded by telephones. Ruby watched her as she phoned through to LB’s office.

‘Agent Hitch and Agent Redfort,’ she said.

This time there was no waiting and Ruby and Hitch were told to just go right on in to the boss’s office.

If LB had been looking tired and twitchy last month, then she seemed doubly so today. And if the dark circles around her eyes were anything to go by, perhaps her head had not been hitting the pillow as often as it should. Next to her was a man Ruby recognised as Agent Trent-Kobie, head of Spectrum 5, aka Sea Division. He was someone LB had a lot of time for and clearly trusted.

Everyone shook hands.

Ruby noticed LB’s face slightly brighten when she saw Hitch. ‘Sorry to bring you back from your vacation, Hitch, I appreciate your returning at short notice.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Hitch. ‘To be honest I’m not a big fan of sand in my shoes.’ Ruby couldn’t swear to it, but she thought she saw a flicker of a wink as Hitch spoke – no doubt because he and LB knew the vacation was bogus.

LB turned to Ruby, no smile. ‘Sit down, Redfort.’

Ruby sat.

LB dropped an aspirin in a glass of water before saying, ‘Oh, and Redfort, please don’t irritate me today; I’m a little out of sorts and you may find me less than my usual affable self.’

‘I’ll keep it, you know …’ Ruby mimed turning a key in a lock.

‘Would you?’ said LB. ‘I have a lot on my mind and a rather bad headache to contend with, so please try not to act your age, Redfort … just pretend you’re someone more reasonable.’

Ruby resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘So you have something for me?’

LB shook her head. ‘As you are probably aware, we are not assigning cases to field agents in training at this time,’ she said.

There was a knock at the door and Blacker entered with a Styrofoam cup and a brown paper bag.

LB looked only a touch alarmed. ‘Lose the baked goods would you Blacker.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Blacker, exiting the room and returning without the bag.

‘Actually, would you mind relinquishing the coffee too? You know how it is with white carpets … every little mark.’

‘No problem,’ said Blacker, popping out once again and returning empty handed. He winked at Ruby and sat down.

‘I requested that Agent Blacker join us since this is as much about coding as it is security,’ said LB. Blacker was a more senior code expert and had collaborated with Ruby on most of her cases.

There was a buzz from LB’s intercom. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Agent Delaware has arrived,’ said Buzz.

‘Send him in,’ said LB.

The door opened and in walked a very short man with not too much hair. His blue-black suit was perfectly pressed, he held a shiny briefcase under his arm, had neat glasses on his nose and looked like he got things done.

‘This is Agent Delaware from Spectrum 1,’ said LB. She nodded at him. ‘Good to see you, Stanley.’

Agent Delaware shook everyone by the hand, opened his briefcase, took out a leather-bound notebook and an expensive-looking fountain pen, closed the briefcase, placed it next to his chair, opened the notebook, unscrewed the lid of the fountain pen and held it poised above the blank page.

‘Agent Delaware will be spending some time with us here in Spectrum 8,’ said LB. And that was clearly as far as she was going to go with her explanation as to what this man was doing sitting there with his smart little notebook.

LB looked at Ruby. ‘Redfort, it would be helpful if you could walk us through the events that took place on the night of the 15th of September.’

‘You want me to say it all over again?’ Ruby asked, looking from one agent to another.

‘I am aware that you have been through the debriefing process already, Redfort, but for the sake of our visiting agents, Agent Trent-Kobie and Agent Delaware, could you tell us exactly what occurred up there on the roof of the Circus Grande Hotel and the events leading up to it?’

Ruby took a deep breath and said, ‘OK, this is how it breaks down.’ She tore a piece of paper from the notepad on the desk.

‘You might want to use the board, Redfort,’ said LB.

‘What board?’ said Ruby looking around the room.

LB pointed to the huge expanse of glossy white wall on the right-hand side, which Ruby realised as she looked at it was more than just a wall. It doubled as a very sophisticated blackboard: instead of chalk there was an electronic pen device. Ruby picked it up, unsure what to do next.

‘Just write,’ said Hitch. ‘It will translate your handwriting into typeface.’

‘Oh, cool,’ said Ruby. She picked up the pen and began writing out what she knew. ‘Can I draw with this thing too?’

‘If you really feel the need,’ said LB.

‘OK, so this is Claude Fontaine, our acrobatic cat burglar. He steals the invisibility skin from the Department of Defence and uses it to break in unseen to the DOD safe room and steal the 8 key, your key.’ She looked at LB. ‘What we are in the dark about is how Claude knew it would be there, and how he knew the code to your safe locker. But what we can be sure of is he had some help, probably from the woman who had hired him to do the job, Lorelei von Leyden. How she came by this information we really don’t know.’ Ruby paused briefly before adding, ‘I should mention that Lorelei was disguised as Nine Lives Capaldi and that threw me for a while, after all Nine Lives was confirmed dead back in April, which of course she was …’

Ruby caught the look on LB’s face which suggested she might want to stop rambling.

‘I say this only because Lorelei, it seems, is a master of disguise, which makes her pretty tricky to trace. Fortunately she is now incarcerated in a maximum security government facility, pending her trial – a long way from here, at least I think.’

‘Could you move it along Redfort?’ growled her boss. ‘Where this woman is living out her days is not pertinent to this discussion.’

‘This is a discussion?’ said Ruby. Boy you could have fooled me, she thought, but didn’t say. ‘Getting back to the question of who might have accessed the safe code …’

She drew three military stars.

‘Maybe someone in the DOD leaked it.’

She drew a fly to symbolise Spectrum.

‘Or it could have been someone here in Spectrum.’

She drew a figure to represent Lorelei von Leyden.

‘Maybe Lorelei hacked into our security system, or the DOD’s security system.’

‘Claude was meant to pass both the skin and the 8 key onto Lorelei von Leyden in return for a sizeable chunk of cash. Lorelei in turn was to pass the key and, maybe I’m guessing, the skin also onto the Count, but she was planning to double-cross him.’

‘You’re sure about that?’ asked Blacker.

‘I’m sure she was meant to deliver them to someone because I overheard her saying so and I’m sure it had to be him because the Count was waiting for her.’

‘Why would he wait for her on the roof? If he’d employed von Leyden then why not wait for the items to be delivered?’ asked Agent Trent-Kobie.

‘Because,’ said Ruby, ‘I’m also kinda sure he was expecting Lorelei to betray him; either he knows her pretty well or he’s not much of a truster. What Lorelei was not expecting was for him to second-guess her actions.’

‘So coming back to Claude, what did he say before he disappeared?’ asked Agent Delaware.

Ruby remembered this very well. ‘He said, “Let the girl go Capaldi, or your treasures will be lost forever.” Then he held up the key in one hand, and the invisibility skin – which of course I couldn’t see – in the other, and then he said, “You want this? And this?” and then he threw them both into the air. And then he just vanished.’

‘So you have no idea where he might have gone?’ asked Agent Delaware.

‘Why would I?’ asked Ruby. ‘We never exchanged addresses.’

‘Would you regard him as a risk to Spectrum?’ asked the agent, his voice so steady that it unnerved her.

‘I don’t see why he would be,’ said Ruby. ‘His criminal motivation was highly personal – he was stealing items to avenge his wronged mother and the chances are we will never hear from him again.’

‘You are very quick to dismiss him as a threat,’ said Agent Delaware, without a hint of accusation.

‘You asked me if I felt he was a risk and I said no,’ said Ruby.

‘Why no?’ asked Agent Delaware. He had stopped writing, his eyes trained on her every blink, her every twitch.

Ruby tried to keep her voice even and not betray her irritation. ‘He used the skin to steal a pair of yellow tap shoes, a paperweight, a tie-clip and a poetry book, all things once belonging to his mother, and all stolen for sentimental reasons that had nothing to do with the core plan, which was to steal the 8 key, and everything to do with a personal vendetta against Margo Bardem.’

‘You sound like you have a degree of sympathy for him, Agent Redfort.’ An observation or an accusation? It was hard to tell.

‘He seemed like a pretty broken man. I felt sorry for him, if that’s what you mean.’

Agent Delaware’s eyes were firmly fixed on hers, not a blink, not a twitch. ‘Didn’t he save your life?’

‘Yes,’ replied Ruby.

‘Twice?’ said Delaware.

Ruby nodded. ‘I guess.’

‘Why would he do that?’ asked the agent.

‘How should I know?’ said Ruby. ‘Perhaps he hates to see kids go splat.’

‘As far as he was concerned you were the enemy,’ said Delaware, ‘wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m not sure he saw it that way,’ said Ruby.

Agent Delaware cocked his head very slightly to one side.

‘Look, I was just someone who might get between him and his goal. I think he wanted to keep me at bay until he had done what he needed to do. He wasn’t what I would term a “danger to society”.’

‘This man somehow obtains a highly classified code and breaks into a top security safe room, and you don’t think he is a danger to society?’ said Delaware.

‘I was talking about his personal motivation,’ said Ruby. ‘In my opinion, he is not one bit interested in bringing about world destruction. What should concern us though is the man who is.’

‘And who is this man?’ asked Delaware.

‘The Count,’ said Ruby, looking around the room. ‘He took the key, and given that it was deactivated even before he took possession of it, what I’m struggling to understand is – why? Why would he want it?’

‘Wasn’t it you who let him take it?’ said Agent Delaware.

‘You think I had a choice?’ said Ruby, aware that there was an edge to her voice. Keep cool Redfort.

‘But you did see him take it?’ said Delaware.

There were a whole bunch of sarcastic replies coming to mind, but in the end Ruby opted for silence. Sometimes silence was the only option, or as Ruby’s RULE 4 had it: IF IN DOUBT, SAY NOTHING.

Agent Delaware gently tapped his pen on the page of his notebook and asked, ‘So what do you think is going on here?’

‘I think we have to assume that there is something much bigger at stake,’ said Ruby, ‘that this – everything I mean: the cyan scent, the truth serum, the Jade Buddha, the 8 key – is not the end of it. But I have no idea where it’s leading us.’

Agent Delaware gave her that same look, like he was trying to fathom her mind.

‘Do you have a question for me?’ he asked.

She did actually, what she really wanted to ask was, ‘Why do I feel like I am under suspicion?’ but instead she said, ‘Agent Delaware, do you think the threat is coming from within or without?’

‘That is the million dollar question, Agent Redfort,’ he replied.

‘And if you decide it’s from within, do you think you’ll find the mole?’ she asked.

‘The difficulty with moles, or double agents as I prefer to call them, is that they are always very smart. I could be staring into the eyes of a traitor right this very moment and not know it,’ said Delaware, not shifting his eyes from Ruby’s.

‘Do you ever consider that when you look in the bathroom mirror?’ asked Ruby.

He smiled very slightly. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not me, if that’s what you’re getting at, but to take your question less literally, seeking the truth can lead you to some uncomfortable places and searching for answers often sends you down blind alleys.’ He closed his notebook and replaced the lid on his fountain pen.

The interview-stroke-grilling at an end, Ruby stood, shook hands with all present, and with much relief left the room. She took some bubblegum from her pocket and popped it in her mouth. The taste of strawberry reminded her reassuringly of less complicated days. She was looking forward to getting back home – it had been a long Saturday and she was tired.

She blew a bubblegum bubble as she walked to the exit, but leaving wasn’t going to be so easy.

‘Agent Redfort.’ The voice of the administrator came across the Spectrum intercom system. ‘Agent Redfort, please report to Dr Selgood.’

Pop went the gum.

‘You have to be kidding,’ muttered Ruby.

Ruby walked over to Buzz’s desk. ‘How about we do this some other time?’ she suggested.

‘The psychiatrist will see you now,’ said Buzz.

RUBY HAD ALREADY HAD THE DUBIOUS PLEASURE OF MEETING THE SPECTRUM PSYCHIATRIST NOT SO LONG AGO, when she had been suffering from a bad case of fearlessness.

What Ruby thought of as ‘doing what it takes’ Selgood had called ‘the miracle complex’ – a syndrome that prevented fear from kicking in since the sufferer could or would not accept that death was even a possibility. The result was that those afflicted put themselves in unnecessary danger. Ruby had seen risk and danger as all part of the job.

Interestingly, she had changed her tune since her little encounter with LvL. It still didn’t mean she was thrilled to be here.

DR SELGOOD: ‘Good to see you in one piece.’

RUBY: ‘How many pieces were you expecting me to be in?’

DR SELGOOD: ‘It says in this report that you fell from a hotel rooftop.’

RUBY: ‘Can I just say that was not down to me.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘You were pushed?’

RUBY: ‘I was dropped, but technically it amounts to the same thing.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘But you climbed up to the top of that building yourself?’

RUBY: ‘It wasn’t so hard, I took the stairs most of the way.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘And found yourself on a rooftop with a dangerous and unstable felon.’

RUBY: ‘I wasn’t exactly planning on her being up there.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘So what was the plan?’

RUBY: ‘To stop an actress being dropped from a great height.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘You knew this was going to happen?’

RUBY: ‘I was fairly convinced.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘And there was no one else who could have prevented this?’

RUBY: ‘No.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘And did you succeed?’

RUBY: ‘Yes.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘You prevented the actress from being dropped and killed?’

RUBY: ‘No, but yes.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘Meaning?’

RUBY: ‘No, she wasn’t killed, but yes, she fell anyway.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘But she didn’t die?’

RUBY: ‘No.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘And why was that?’

RUBY: ‘Hitch caught her.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘So did you in fact need to be up there on that roof to prevent her from dying?’

RUBY: ‘Look Doc, I am hearing you, and I do get where we are going with this, but I had to get up there because I had figured out the tightrope walker’s intention and there wasn’t a whole lotta time to persuade him otherwise.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘So you alone knew what was going to happen to the actress?’

RUBY: ‘No, I managed to contact Hitch and he contacted those other Spectrum guardians of the galaxy, but time was tight.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘So you went ahead alone?’

RUBY: ‘What would you have done, let her go splat because no one else arrived on time?’

DR SELGOOD: ‘Maybe I would; most people don’t have your unwavering courage.’

RUBY: ‘Try living with the memory of knowing you might have been able to save someone if only you had possessed the nerve to run up a flight of stairs, climb out of a window and stand on a roof shouting.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘So you are saying that you felt your very presence on that rooftop might save the actress’s life?’

RUBY: ‘Now you’re making me sound like I have a god complex.’

DR SELGOOD: ‘Do you?’

RUBY: ‘I reckon that’s your job to figure. I have far more important things to think about.’

Dr Selgood nearly smiled at that one. ‘I’m going to suggest you take on some psychological training. Meanwhile you might want to read this.’ He handed her a book entitled Six Seconds Could Save Your Life.

‘Sure, thanks Doc. I could use a light read; I left my book at home.’

Hitch, it seemed, could not be contacted, and so Ruby had to return to Cedarwood Drive alone. During the short subway ride, she opened Dr Selgood’s book and began reading. Actually it wasn’t as irritating as she had imagined and there seemed to be some evidence that this simple technique might actually work.

Basically, the idea was this: if you found yourself in a stressful, frightening or emotionally unsettling situation, you should take six seconds to quietly reflect before making any decisions. It was a simple concept, but there was some science behind it too: as Ruby flicked through the pages she saw that there had been some research showing that this moment of reflection helped the prefrontal cortex to modulate signals from the amygdala – which was where anger, fear and aggression were registered.

She thought she might try and give this technique a go; it was worth a shot.

Not wanting to alert anyone to her late arrival home, Ruby went in the back way through the yard and climbed the tree to her window. She went into the bathroom, took out her lenses, looked in the mirror, debated whether she should have a shower and rejected the idea before falling fully clothed onto her bed.

Meanwhile …

… the prison officer handed prisoner 2185 his package.

It had already been opened and checked by the prison security team.

‘It’s your lucky day, a surprise gift – home cooked too! Someone on the outside likes you.’

Prisoner 2185 carried the gift over to the table and took it out of its wrapping. Inside was a tin and a note was taped to the back:

Thought these might take you out of yourself. We’ll all be waiting for you when you get out.

P.S. Remember there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.

Your Uncle Ed

The handwriting looked like it might belong to a gorilla.

The man prised open the lid and looked inside: the tin contained muffins. He picked one up. Heavy, he thought.

He slowly bit into it and felt his teeth knock on something hard.

He tried another, the same thing.

He smiled.

He would eat these later, much later when everyone had gone to bed. He had a feeling this batch of baked goods might just be his ticket to freedom.

RUBY WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF A CHICKEN CLUCKING INSIDE HER HEAD. Actually it wasn’t inside her head, it was sort of underneath her pillow, and it wasn’t an actual chicken, it was a novelty telephone shaped like an egg. Now the cheerful cluck of the Chicken Licken ringtone roused her from a series of forgettable dreams.

‘Ruby?’

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s Mouse.’

‘Oh, hey Mouse, did I oversleep or something?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry … where am I meant to be?’

‘The Donut.’

‘Now?’

‘A half hour ago.’

‘Sorry.’

Silence.

‘Do I need to be there?’

‘Kinda.’

Ruby was trying to think.

‘Halloween costumes!’ She finally got it.

‘Yeah and I wish you would hurry up, the conversation has been wearing thin. Clancy has this new pen. He says it’s a space pen, you know, writes upside down, zero gravity …’

‘I know,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s meant to be like the most permanent permanent marker there is. Apparently you can write on a space shuttle and it won’t come off.’

‘Well, it’s causing permanent boredom, the kinda boredom that makes you wish you were in space.’

‘I’ll be there, Mouse, just give me ten minutes.’ Then she glanced at herself in the mirror: brother! Something weird had happened to her hair. ‘OK, better make that fifteen.’

She walked to the bathroom, stepped into the shower, squirted shampoo on her head, rubbed it in, cleaned her teeth, rinsed her hair, combed it through, dried off, pulled on the clothes that happened to be lying on the floor, looked for her lenses, couldn’t find them so instead reached for her battered glasses, stepped into her Yellow Stripe sneakers and laced them up. Then she climbed out of the window and down the tree – she didn’t need to run into her parents; that would certainly slow things up.

She walked the familiar route to the Donut Diner, feeling almost like a zombie. Man, she needed a waffle to perk her up.

A guy in a baseball cap handed her a flyer as she approached the coffee shop. She barely noticed she had it until it was torn out of her grip by a gust of wind. She watched it whirl away across the street, the image of a kid biting into an apple landing on the windshield of a parked car.

Finally she made it to the Diner, fourteen minutes and eleven seconds after Mouse’s call.

‘What happened to you?’ called Elliot. ‘Ever thought of getting a watch?’

‘Sorry, man,’ said Ruby, ‘I had a rough night, must have slept right through the alarm.’

‘Yeah, you look … not yourself,’ said Red. ‘What happened to your glasses? Did you sleep in them or something?’

‘Give her a break,’ said Del, patting Ruby on the back. ‘It doesn’t matter Rube, at least you’re here now. Have a waffle.’ Del passed her a plate and began sliding food onto it.

Ruby looked around. ‘Where’s Clancy?’

‘In the restroom,’ said Elliot.

‘So you wanna hear the plan?’ said Mouse.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Clancy?’ said Ruby.

‘He heard it already,’ said Mouse, ‘we’ve been here nearly an hour. So you wanna know?’ She was clearly going to pop if she didn’t say it.

‘Sure,’ said Ruby, ‘tell me the plan.’

‘OK,’ said Mouse, ‘the idea is that we go as the Rigors of Mortis Square.’ Everyone waited for Ruby’s reaction.

The Rigors of Mortis Square had first appeared in a comic strip and then as books and finally as a TV show. It was a situation comedy about a bunch of people, or rather dead people: ghosts who lived in a strange apartment block named Mortis Square, situated in New York City. The Rigor family were the main focus of the show, but there were other characters too: Liv Inded for instance, who was always to be found rummaging in the trash, looking for bones, her cat constantly chided for running off with one of her fingers or occasionally hands. It was a very popular show and Ruby for one loved it.

‘But that would require pretty elaborate costumes,’ said Ruby. ‘Where we gonna rustle those up at this late hour?’

They looked at her like she’d dropped a marble or two.

‘My mom promised to get us all costumes from the film studio,’ said Red. Nothing was registering on Ruby’s face so Red continued, ‘It’s kind of a birthday present to me, don’t you remember Ruby, the other night when you guys were all over at my place?’

Ruby was kind of vague on this point; she really didn’t remember. Sure, she remembered dinner at Red’s place and she remembered Red’s mom being there, she even remembered catching the bus home, but beyond that, no. The problem was she just hadn’t been getting enough sleep and, as her mother was always telling her, teenagers need their sleep.

‘My mom said we could choose any six costumes on the lot – it’s a big deal because there’s gonna be a film crew there filming … you gotta remember that?’ said Red. ‘It was in the paper, the mayor putting on this big Halloween do?’

No, still nothing was coming back to her, but the way Red was looking at her made her feel uncomfortable. So she said, ‘Yeah, sure I do.’

‘What have I missed?’ asked Clancy, sliding back into the Diner seat.

‘Red was just telling me about the Halloween costumes.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘I would say sounds genius to me.’ And it did; she really meant it. ‘So who am I going as?’

‘We, that’s you and me,’ said Del, ‘will be going as Hedda Gabble.’ Hedda Gabble was the Rigors’ nanny.

Ruby looked at her with unease.

Del continued, ‘I will be wearing a floor-length fur-trimmed velvet coat which covers me from head to toe – literally speaking.’

‘So what will I be wearing exactly?’ asked Ruby.

‘You, my friend, will be going as my severed head.’

‘Will it hurt?’ said Ruby.

‘Funny,’ said Del. ‘You will be under the coat with your head sticking out at the side, sorta tucked under my arm.’

‘Sounds very uncomfortable,’ said Ruby.

‘It’s not so bad,’ said Del. ‘Erica Grey did it for years.’

‘So why don’t you be the severed head and I’ll tuck you under my arm?’ suggested Ruby.

‘I’d be delighted but you’re way too short to carry off the coat part of the costume. I’d have to practically bend double to tuck my head under your puny little arm.’

Del took a photograph out of her backpack – it was a TV still that showed the actress Erica Grey, her head tucked under the arm of who knew who. Her pretty face was made up to look very pale indeed, huge dark circles around vacant eyes, lips blood red and black hair piled elaborately in some kind of historical do.

‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ said Del. ‘It’s you that gets the glory, I just get to stand about under a coat all night.’

‘So choose a different costume, why don’t you?’ suggested Ruby, biting into the waffles. ‘Boy, these are good.’

‘That would spoil the whole deal,’ said Red. ‘We are meant to be going as the Rigors and there are five principle characters.’

She waited for Ruby to click.

‘You and Del will be one person, so that works out well with the six of us,’ said Red, slowly.

‘What about the baby?’ asked Ruby.

‘We don’t have a baby, obviously,’ said Mouse.

‘But the baby is a big part of the comedy,’ argued Ruby.

‘Well, it’s too bad because we don’t have one,’ said Red. ‘But we can get a headless dog ’cause that can be Bug.’

‘Pardon?’ said Ruby.

‘No, not really,’ said Red. ‘What’s with you? There isn’t a headless dog in the show.’ That was true; the dog in the show was called Toadstool and he floated. That wasn’t going to be easy to pull off either.

‘Bug will be on skates,’ said Del.

‘Skates?’ said Mouse.

‘Maybe a skateboard,’ said Del.

‘But toadstool is a pug,’ said Ruby. ‘Bug is a husky.’

‘We have to make compromises,’ said Red.

‘Yeah, ’cause where are we gonna get our hands on a pug?’ asked Del.

‘I’ve always wanted a pug,’ said Elliot.

‘How does that help?’ asked Mouse.

There then ensued a long discussion about who might have a pug they could borrow and this led to another discussion about the pros and cons of owning a pug. The overall conclusion was having a pug would be a good thing, the main reason: because it would be very useful if one wanted to dress one’s pug up as Toadstool Rigor.

When the noise level had died down, they tuned into another sound: it was coming from Ruby Redfort who had her head on the table, one arm stretched out towards her milkshake. The straw had never made it to her mouth.

‘She’s sleeping like the dead,’ said Mouse.

‘Boy, should she get to bed earlier,’ said Del. She looked at Ruby, sleeping so soundly and then she picked up Clancy’s special permanent space pen and wrote on her arm:

‘Del, you do realise that’s a permanent marker,’ said Red.

‘Not just permanent but super permanent,’ said Clancy. ‘They use these pens in outer space.’

‘If you repeat that one more time I’m going to end up outta my mind,’ said Mouse.

Del rolled Ruby’s sleeve down. ‘Maybe she won’t notice.’

‘What’s going on?’ said Ruby, scratching her arm. ‘I fall asleep or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Elliot, ‘do you snore when you’re awake?’

‘Huh?’ said Ruby.

‘What’s with you today?’ said Mouse. ‘It’s like the lights are on but no one’s home.’

‘She’s preparing for the part,’ said Elliot, beginning to snicker. ‘Her head is somewhere else.’

MRS DIGBY WAS IN THE KITCHEN trying to manoeuvre a large pumpkin into the pantry when Ruby walked in.

‘Child, you shouldn’t be out in this weather without a hat, you’ll catch your death. I swear this wind will blow your mind away and your good health with it.’

‘You’re sounding very Halloweeny, Mrs Digby.’

‘I just tell it like it is,’ said the old lady. ‘Your lips are blue and your nose is running and it is a most unattractive combination.’

‘Well, thanks for your honesty, it really is refreshing.’

‘You won’t thank me when you’re dead.’

‘But I might come back to haunt you,’ said Ruby.

‘Of that I’m certain,’ said the housekeeper. ‘You haunt my every waking hour, why give up the habit when you’re dead?’

Ruby opened the refrigerator, took out a carton and poured herself a glass of banana milk, then headed up to her room.

Inspired by the breakfast conversation about The Rigors of Mortis Square, Ruby flicked on the TV, tuned to channel 17 and waited for the next episode to begin. They were rerunning the entire series to coincide with Halloween fever.

The Rigor family was having trouble with the plumbing and Cordelia Rigor, who had died in a drowning incident, was wading through the kitchen wearing water wings. Toadstool was hovering in swimming goggles and barking a lot.

The telephone rang and Ruby reached out for the receiver.

‘You rang?’ she said.

‘Look Rube, can I come over? My sister Olive is driving me crazy.’

‘What’s she doing?’ asked Ruby.

‘The usual,’ said Clancy. ‘She’s eaten all my Spy Scoundrel figurines.’

‘Actually eaten them?’ said Ruby.

‘Chewed their heads off,’ said Clancy.

It was when Ruby heard things like this that she was relieved that she didn’t have a little sister or in fact siblings of any age.

‘Sure Clance, come on over, but you better make it quick, the weather guy just said the rain’s coming in.’

‘I’ll bring my galoshes,’ said Clancy.

An hour later, Ruby and Clancy were sitting on her rooftop looking at the sky. They were both wearing their parkas, hoods pulled up over woollen hats to protect them from the wind.

‘Boy, this is about as stormy as I can remember,’ said Clancy. ‘When do you suppose the rain’s gonna hit?’

They could see the lightning way off over the ocean, but it was moving their way.

‘Maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen,’ said Ruby.

It was like watching a badly dubbed movie, the sound was so far behind the action that it didn’t seem to relate to what was going on.

‘So what new case have Spectrum given you?’ asked Clancy.

‘That’s the thing,’ said Ruby. ‘They aren’t handing out cases to junior agents right now, at least that’s what they’re saying, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just me.’

‘That doesn’t sound very likely,’ said Clancy, ‘not after everything you’ve been through – on Spectrum’s behalf, I mean.’

‘Well, I had a meeting yesterday and I got a strange feeling like they sort of didn’t quite trust that I was telling the truth. If you’d been there, you’d know what I was talking about.’

‘So what exactly happened?’ said Clancy.

‘I was interrogated is what happened. They wanted to know all about Lorelei von Leyden and what occurred on top of that roof,’ said Ruby. ‘They brought this agent in from Spectrum 1 and he was all busy with his little notebook writing everything down and looking at me with his squirrelly eyes.’

‘Don’t you think this is actually what spies like to call a debriefing? I mean, it’s their way of getting to the bottom of things, right?’

‘I told them what happened several times in triplicate. I was the one who got the darned invisibility skin back to the Department of Defence, so why am I under suspicion?’

‘Maybe you’re not, or maybe everyone is. You gotta see that something is going on here, right? That someone in Spectrum is involved in something they shouldn’t be. So they have to clear everyone before they can see what might be the cause of the leak.’

‘It might not be someone on the inside,’ argued Ruby. ‘It could just as easily be a security breakdown caused by a faulty computer program.’

‘Exactly my point,’ said Clancy, ‘but until they know for sure then they can’t discount the idea that it’s one of you guys.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ruby. ‘If they don’t trust me then how can I trust them?’ She stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked out at the approaching storm. Neither of them spoke for a while, until Ruby finally looked at Clancy.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You’re taking this too personally,’ he said.

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘A professional agent wouldn’t,’ said Clancy. ‘This is just business to them. Spectrum are there to protect justice and prevent evil doing.’

‘This isn’t a Spy Scoundrel comic,’ said Ruby.

‘Exactly,’ said Clancy, ‘which is why they have to conduct an investigation rather than lasso villains and zap people with laser guns – you should see that what the guy from Spectrum 1 is doing is simply his job.’

Ruby sighed. ‘I know you’re right, OK, I guess it just freaked me out because now Spectrum doesn’t feel like the safe place it was. It could be anyone and it might be no one. I look around HQ and think to myself, if there is a double agent in the building then I am 100% sure it isn’t me, which means it has to be one of these other people, all of whom I trust, even Froghorn I guess, and it gives me the shivers.’

Just then a fork of lightning split the sky above them, thunder cracked a split second later and the rain began to pour.

‘Time to go,’ shouted Ruby.

Clancy fumbled with the hatch.

‘Jeepers Clancy, would you open it already.’

‘It won’t budge,’ shouted Clancy, ‘it’s completely jammed.’

‘Let me have a try,’ said Ruby, and she began sliding the catch back and forth in an effort to get it free of whatever had caught it.

‘It’s no use, it’s totally stuck.’

‘I told you,’ said Clancy. ‘So what are we gonna do now?’

Ruby peered over the top of the roof and into the tree’s branches – it looked perilous, but possible. ‘We could climb down,’ she suggested.

A fork of lightning lit the sky just overhead. She remembered her Dr Selgood conversation and suddenly that didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

‘How about we shout?’ said Clancy.

‘Good idea,’ said Ruby, and they began to yell at the tops of their voices, which made no impact whatsoever.

Five minutes later, they heard a scratching sound on the underside of the hatch door and a faint yelping.

Ten minutes later, Mrs Digby stuck her head through the hatch.

‘What are you, a couple of fools? Get yourselves down here and inside before I lock this hatch closed once and for good.’

Ruby and Clancy bundled down as fast as they could but still a fair amount of rainwater came with them.

‘Thanks Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, whose teeth were chattering so much she could barely be understood.

‘Don’t thank me, thank that hound of yours,’ said the housekeeper. ‘If that dog hadn’t been howling himself hoarse, you might have been up there all night.’

Mrs Digby sent Clancy to the guest bathroom to dry off while Ruby struggled to peel off her drenched clothing.

When she saw the handwriting on her arm she exclaimed: ‘Del Lasco, I am going to strangle you!’

‘RUBY!’ Her mother’s voice came through the house intercom, small, tinny, yet authoritative.

Ruby groped for her glasses and pushed them onto her nose; they sat there unhappily, bent out of shape. She peered at the alarm clock.

‘6.32,’ she muttered, ‘not even breakfast time.’ It was unlike her mother to shout through the intercom unless there was a matter of some urgency.

‘Is the house sinking, on fire, falling down?’ Ruby grumbled. Ruby fell from her bed, stumbled to her feet, staggered to the intercom and spoke into it. ‘Hello caller, please divulge the nature of your query?’

‘Have you forgotten about the mathlympics meet?’ said her mother.

Yes, she had actually.

‘Oh geez!’ she moaned. Why did her mom enter her for these lame loser geek-central dork fests? What was the point of it all? Did she want to waste a precious day of her life sitting in a school gym or on a theatre stage with a whole bunch of other kids who were good at math?

No, she did not.

She knew exactly how good at math she was and she didn’t need to stand on a box, finger on the buzzer, answering quiz questions to prove it. But this time there didn’t seem to be any way out. She was going and that was that. Her mother could be a very determined woman.

While she was brushing her teeth, she peered out of the window. Mrs Beesman was out in what looked to be a dressing gown and pushing her shopping cart down Cedarwood. There was one sneaker sitting in the middle of the road, possibly a man’s tennis shoe. She made a note of this in her yellow notebook and wondered how all these stray sneakers came to end up in the middle of roads; it was not by any means an unusual sight.

When she climbed into the car – her mother had already been sitting waiting for her for ‘fifteen minutes, for goodness sake’ – Sabina Redfort turned to her and said, ‘Really? You had to wear that T-shirt?’

Ruby’s T-shirt choice was one bearing the words: dorks beware.

‘And your glasses …?’ said Sabina. ‘What in the world of Twinford has happened to your glasses?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘OK, let’s get this over with.’

It was a long and testing day, not because the competition was especially tough, nor because the test questions were especially tricky, but because one of the candidates, one Dakota Lyme, was a royal pain in the butt.

Dakota Lyme was a girl Ruby had met twice before on the mathlympics field. Once when Ruby was four and once when she was eight. Dakota was one year and nine months older than Ruby and behaved like a child of that exact age.

She was a sore loser and, what was worse, she was an even sorer winner. On both previous occasions she had narrowly beaten Ruby in the final round and spent a lot of time afterwards crowing about it. Though what Dakota’s parents had not pointed out to their little prodigy was that Dakota had been coached in the advanced math that was at the competition’s heart and Ruby had just that day happened upon it.

This time things went a little differently.

They were equally matched right up until the final question, and the tension emanating from the parents could almost be touched.

‘OK, you two,’ said the compere, ‘draw the shape represented by this formula.’ Letters and numbers appeared on the screen:

Ruby frowned for a moment, then smiled. She glanced over at Dakota, who was looking panicked; it was obvious that nothing was coming to mind.

Ruby drew quickly. She had worked out in seconds that the formula represented a tesseract, or a 4-dimensional cube – a shape with 24 edges that was to the cube what the cube was to the square. She chose to render it as a kind of fake 3D image that she knew was called a Schlegel diagram:

Then Ruby hit her buzzer.

‘Redfort, you have the diagram?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Bring it to the podium for checking, please.’

She took her piece of paper over to the desk where the math checkers sat. They in turn checked it over and handed it on to the compere.

‘Correct!’ declared the compere. ‘We have our winner.’

Dakota Lyme glared at Ruby, one eye covered by her long dark hair. Her mouth was pinched like she had just eaten something sour, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

The photographer stepped up to take some pictures and Dakota and Ruby were asked to stand uncomfortably close.

‘If I could ask you to hold up your trophy Ruby, and Dakota, your runner-up prize.’

Ruby tried to force a smile, but it was hard because she hated this kind of dorky contest and even more than that she hated the dorky victory photographs. Dakota couldn’t force a smile because she was too sore about her defeat. So they stood there looking in some ways remarkably similar. They were the same height, same build, had the same long dark hair, they even sort of dressed alike, though Dakota’s T-shirt was pink and said Party Girl, and her sneakers had glitter detail and her jeans had a heart patch on the pocket. But their expressions weren’t so very different – even if Ruby managed to look coolly aloof and Dakota unattractively bitter.

It was in the parking lot that Dakota became even less attractive. Ruby and Sabina were just driving slowly towards the exit when Dakota Lyme shouted, ‘You’re a phoney, Redfort. You cheat, I know you cheat, and your clothes are ugly, you dress like a boy.’ Dakota stamped her foot.

Sabina Redfort reversed the car, wound down the window and said, ‘And you, pipsqueak, are a very unpleasant little madam who will never be attractive no matter what you wear!’ Then she put her foot down on the pedal and took off at more speed than was wise.

Ruby winked at her mother and said, ‘Nice going, Mom.’

And her mother said, ‘I simply can’t abide a sore loser.’

TUESDAY MORNING CAME AND RUBY STUMBLED OUT OF BED. She looked out of the window and there was Mrs Gruber walking her Siamese cat. Mrs Gruber always walked her cat on a Tuesday; it was something you could count on.

Ruby got ready for school and went down to the kitchen. No one was there. She was about to grab a bagel and walk out of the back door when she caught sight of an envelope lying on the table. On the front, written in her dad’s neat hand, the words:

For Ruby, congrats on the big math win, love Pop

And on the back:

P.S. I had to go through hell and high water to get this

She slit it open and pulled out a leaf-shaped piece of green card that said:

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLORER AWARDS.

She smiled. Nice going, Dad. There was a further note under the envelope, this one from her mother:

I’ve ordered you new glasses, the pair you liked, as opposed to the ones I liked. Love Mom. P.S. Am I a nice mom or what?

Ruby smiled. ‘Nice going, Mom.’

Ruby climbed aboard the school bus and made her way down to her usual seat and sank into it. Stuck to the window was that same sticker of the cross-eyed kid and someone had scribbled WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BANANA MILK underneath.

Del, thought Ruby, pushing back her sleeve to see the still very loud and clear message written on her arm. That’s not gonna disappear any time soon. Someone else had put a line through Del’s words and written, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.

Who drinks coffee on a school bus?

She caught sight of Bailey Roach sitting across the aisle – probably him, she thought. For just a second they locked eyes, but neither of them said a word. To the casual observer, this was no different from two strangers glancing at each other in the street, but to a person with good observational skills, the boy’s awkward running of hands through hair and biting of lower lip told a story.

They were not friends, Ruby Redfort and Bailey Roach: he had blown his chances of friendship when he had picked on Clancy Crew. It wasn’t just that Clancy was Ruby’s closest friend; it was also a lot to do with the fact that Ruby couldn’t stand watching someone get picked on, period. Roach might be a bully, and his previous actions could certainly be deemed cowardly, but he was not a fool. He had figured out that to cross Ruby Redfort was to take on one determined enemy and, to be frank, Bailey Roach always went for the easy target.

That was why Bailey Roach had avoided coming face to face with Clancy ever since the Marty’s minimart incident. No one in Bailey Roach’s gang, least of all Bailey, had understood how a wimpy-looking boy like Clancy had beaten him in a fight. Word had gone round school that Clancy Crew was not someone to be messed with, that he had some special moves, probably taught to him by some kung fu master. Whatever the reason, Roach certainly didn’t want to repeat the experience.

Ruby made it into school in good time. This would give Mrs Drisco no opportunity to comment on Ruby’s lack of regard for the school clock (something her form teacher did most days) but she would have ample opportunity to comment on the T-shirt Ruby was wearing, which read: Have you had a frontal lobotomy or have I?

The first person she ran into was Del, who said, ‘So I saw a picture of you in the paper standing with your little identical twin friend.’

‘What?’ said Ruby. ‘What are you talking about?’

Just then Mouse came running down the corridor. ‘Hey, Ruby,’ she called, ‘who’s that kid in the Twinford Mirror, you related or something?’

‘She looks nothing like me,’ protested Ruby.

Five minutes later Elliot arrived, waving the newspaper excitedly. ‘You have a doppelganger!’

The photograph was black and white and did not show the vivid pink T-shirt or the glittery sneakers, the heart patch on the jeans, or indeed much of Dakota Lyme’s mean, pinched face.

Red walked over, and peered at the picture. ‘Hey Ruby, congratulations. I didn’t know you had won the mathlympics prize!’

‘Don’t you think that girl looks like Ruby?’ said Del.

‘Not even slightly,’ said Red. ‘Dakota Lyme is a total vacuum.’

Ruby thanked Red for her support and went off to find Clancy, who was sitting on a bench reading his Garbage Girl comic.

‘You’re early?’ said Clancy.

‘Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf,’ said Ruby.

‘I give you one day, possibly two.’

‘For what?’

‘For your leaf to turn back over.’

‘I’m inspired by your confidence.’

‘I just know you – likelihood is you are going to revert to your old ways.’

‘Well, that’s kinda depressing.’

‘Talking of depressing, look who it is,’ said Clancy.

Vapona Begwell walked by with her little gang. Gemma Melamare’s nose was encased in a triangle of splint and wadding. Ruby almost felt sorry for her; Gemma was very proud of her nose. It was certainly the cutest thing about her.

When they passed, Vapona gave Ruby the evil eye and hissed, ‘Tell Lasco she’s a yellow-belly.’

‘Jeepers Vapona, tell her yourself,’ said Ruby. ‘I haven’t got time to run little messages between you guys.’

‘You’re in my sights, Redfort!’

‘I’m flattered,’ said Ruby as she walked into her form room.

‘So what’s the real reason for your punctuality?’ asked Clancy.

‘I got something to tell you,’ said Ruby.

‘Please don’t make me guess,’ said Clancy.

‘My dad gave me this.’ Ruby took out the invitation.

‘You must be in his good books,’ said Clancy. ‘My dad said you either got to know the right people or part with a whole lot of cash.’

The first class of the morning was behavioural science and Mr Cornsworth was excited to announce a project which he hoped all the students would take part in.

‘I would like you to explore the idea of social interaction and think about the way human beings form groups and clubs and the various ways they communicate. Perhaps you could explore and investigate the importance and significance of these rituals.’

There was a lot of exaggerated yawning from Vapona Begwell and Gemma Melamare. Bailey Roach, who was sitting at the back of the class, was throwing balled-up pieces of paper across the room. Mr Cornsworth was not a confident teacher and had little clue when it came to controlling a class of thirteen and fourteen-year-olds, but when he went on to mention there would be ‘extra credit’ suddenly there was a lot of interest.

Vapona, Gemma and Bailey Roach really needed to make up their grades. So did Clancy, as a matter of fact, but he was interested in the project for other reasons. Already he could see the outlines of a way of making a strong challenge to Mrs Bexenheath’s proposal that the school lockers be relocated. Not only might he change Principal Levine’s mind, but he could also gain a big tick on his grade sheet.

Clancy started planning immediately, chewing on his pen.

Ruby felt she had enough on her plate, psychologically speaking, without having to think about other people’s behavioural patterns – and besides, she didn’t need the extra credit. She might not be the most punctual, but she was a straight-A student.

The issue more immediately facing her was the psychological falling apart of her basketball teammates. She had been thinking about this for much of the morning, already dreading the moment when school would end and she and her team would have to make their way to the Basketball courts, where they would almost certainly lose.

Mouse was sat on the bench just down from the lower Amster stop when Ruby got there, waiting for the bus that would take them to the tournament. Opposite was a large brick wall and newly pasted there was an advertisement for something which showed the massive cartoon head of a kid, eyes crossed, and twisting from the mouth in huge curly letters the words:

Weird, thought Ruby. What’s that supposed to—

‘What do you think the likelihood is that we get totally slammed?’ said Mouse, interrupting her thoughts.

‘You know that’s not a great attitude, Mouse.’

‘I just hate losing, and with Del on the bench we probably will.’

‘I read in this tennis coaching magazine that you’re a whole lot more likely to win if you love winning.’

‘I do love winning, that’s what I said.’

‘No, you said you hate losing. You shouldn’t be focusing on the losing, just set your sights on winning.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right, but I don’t think we’re gonna.’

Ruby sighed, knowing this was probably true: most of her teammates did not have the killer instinct.

‘What do you reckon Taste Twisters are?’ said Ruby, staring at the image of the boss-eyed cartoon kid.

Mouse studied the picture.

She shrugged. ‘Some kind of candy – aimed at kids.’

Ruby continued to stare. ‘It’s odd that they don’t tell you what it is, don’t you think? I mean, ordinarily they would want you to know.’

‘What are you guys looking at?’ called Elliot. He was walking towards them along the sidewalk, his gym bag over his shoulder. Del and Red were lagging a little behind.

‘We are trying to figure out what a Taste Twister is,’ called Mouse.

Elliot joined them on the bench and he too turned his gaze on the poster.

After a couple of minutes he said, ‘A drink – it’s a drink of some kind, most probably a kids’ drink.’

‘Why a drink?’ said Mouse.

‘Because of the straw,’ said Elliot.

‘Where’s the straw?’ asked Mouse. ‘I can’t see any straw.’

‘The twisting words, they represent a straw.’

‘I don’t see it myself,’ said Mouse. ‘But if it were a drink then what flavour would it be?’

‘Milk,’ said Elliot. ‘Milk. Has to be.’

‘Why?’ said Mouse.

‘Look at the kid’s teeth. If it was for soda or something then they wouldn’t emphasise how white the kid’s teeth were. They’re saying drink milk and have strong white teeth.’

‘When do they ever advertise a drink and show the kid with rotten teeth?’ said Ruby. ‘Doesn’t matter if the drink is choc full of sugar and treacle, they would still show the kid smiling a pretty smile. White teeth proves nothing.’

‘Who cares what it is,’ said Del. ‘I’d as soon drink a blue slushy, they’re super good.’

‘Think like that, my friend, and you’ll never taste anything better,’ said Red.

‘What’s better than a slushy?’ said Del.

‘You’ll never know,’ said Red.

‘I like slushies,’ said Del.

‘You should broaden your horizons,’ said Ruby.

They sat looking for a little longer until Elliot shook his head and said, ‘I gotta make tracks.’

The bus came into view and Mouse picked up her bag and waited for it to pull into the stop.

Ruby sat a little longer. Cross-eyes, she thought. If it’s a drink then it’s a sharp-flavoured drink. It has bite.

The game itself might only have been forty-eight minutes plus stoppage time, but it was a long and uncomfortable forty-eight minutes plus stoppage time. Vapona Begwell and her team (the Vaporizers) took every opportunity to step on Ruby’s toes, elbow her in the ribs and knock her over.

The Deliverers (Ruby’s team) did not make it through to round two, and so as far as Ruby was concerned, there didn’t seem like a whole lot of point sticking around until the end of the tournament. She certainly wasn’t going to sit there and watch the Vaporizers grab victory.

Vapona’s parting words were, ‘I’m gonna pulp you Redfort.’

‘Yeah, change the record would you, you said that at least forty times.’

Del Lasco didn’t have to suffer the insults and general barging because her wrist was still strapped and she was sitting comfortably on the sidelines.

‘She’s only looking to pulp you because she can’t pulp me,’ said Del.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better,’ said Ruby, ‘knowing that just being your friend causes me pain?’

MOUSE AND RED HAD STUCK AROUND TO WATCH THE REST OF THE GAMES, but Ruby and Del didn’t have the heart. They now had time on their hands.

‘You wanna go down to Back-Spin and play table tennis?’ asked Del.

‘Oh, interesting, you can hold a ping-pong bat but you can’t dribble a basketball?’

‘Table tennis isn’t a contact sport,’ countered Del, ‘basketball can be.’

‘You don’t need to explain that to me,’ said Ruby. ‘You wanna see the bruises Bugwart laid on me?’

‘I can’t wait for my sprain to heal – I’ll be only too glad to have her try and land a punch.’

‘I’d be happy to point her in your direction,’ said Ruby.

‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll get her soon enough.’

‘You should give up on the fighting, it doesn’t achieve a thing. You think if you punch her she’s not gonna punch you back?’

‘It’s an honour thing,’ argued Del. ‘If I let her knock me down and I don’t retaliate, what will people think?’

‘That you’re not as dumb as you look.’

In the end they decided to give the table tennis café a miss and instead hang out at Ruby’s house. Ruby was keen for Del to keep a low profile and, in any case, Mrs Digby had mentioned that she might be baking. Mrs Digby’s baking was right up there with sliced bread – her cookies were in a league of their own.

When Del and Ruby made it home to Green-Wood house, they found Mrs Digby peering at a large piece of black and white paper rolled out on the kitchen table. She had a comedy-sized magnifying glass in her hand and was moving it across the paper, back and forth.

There was no sign of any cookies.

‘What are you looking at Mrs Digby?’

‘A map of old Twinford,’ she said without looking up. ‘Your father got it for me.’

‘Why dya wanna look at an old map?’ asked Del.

‘I like to see how things once were in this town,’ said the housekeeper.

‘And how were they Mrs Digby?’ said Ruby, her head in the pantry.

‘Better,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Seems every day now they go knocking an old building down or running a road through it. I barely recognise my own neighbourhood, find I get lost in my own city. If it weren’t for the place names, you wouldn’t have a blind clue what used to be there.’

‘So Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, ‘we were sort of wondering if there might be any, you know, cookies?’

The housekeeper put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Upstairs in your room, and don’t ever go about saying I’m not a slave to your every need.’

It was while they were sitting on the roof eating Mrs Digby’s cookies that misfortune struck.

Ruby had just popped down to the kitchen to fetch some banana milk and returned to find Del peering over the top into the next-door yard.

‘What are you looking at?’ asked Ruby.

‘Your comic – I just put it down for a second while I put on my sweater …’ said Del.

Ruby looked over the roof edge: there was the comic sitting on Mr Parker’s lawn.

‘It was an accident,’ said Del. ‘The wind sorta took it.’

‘You know, Kung Fu Martians is rare – that’s a collector’s edition, plus I haven’t finished reading it.’

‘I’m sorry OK,’ said Del, getting to her feet. ‘Look, I’ll go knock on his door and ask for it back.’

‘You’re kidding. You think you can just go over to Mr Parker’s and ask for your comic back? You must be crazy.’

‘Sure I do – what’s the worst he can do?’

‘One – feed it to his dog; two – feed you to his dog.’

‘You’re being a little dramatic, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ said Ruby, ‘actually, NO. Remember Red’s hat?’ Del made a face, she remembered all right. ‘Oh, and don’t forget Clancy’s sweater, Clancy’s left sneaker, Clancy’s trumpet, my mom’s scarf – he apologised for that one, he even returned it, though the whole middle section was missing.’

‘OK,’ sighed Del, ‘I get your point, I’ll have to climb over the fence.’

‘With your wrist strapped? I don’t think so.’ Ruby stood up. ‘It’s me that’s gonna have to get it.’ Without another word, she stepped off the rooftop and onto the eucalyptus branch that extended towards the house. Darn it Del, she thought.

Ruby walked the branch like a tightrope walker might, arms outstretched and feet stepping one in front of the other, until she reached the end. From there she looked out across the yard and the alley that ran between the backs of the houses. She was looking to see where Mr Parker was and, perhaps more crucially, Mr Parker’s dog, Bubbles. Mr Parker was a man who rarely had a good word to say about anyone or anything. He just didn’t like people and as Mrs Digby so wisely said, ‘Steer clear of folks who don’t like folks.’ Bubbles, meanwhile, was a dog who didn’t like people, but did enjoy biting them. For these two reasons Ruby rarely trespassed on Mr Parker’s land, not if she could possibly help it.

She stood there perfectly still, listening for activity that might warn of her neighbour’s presence, but she could only hear the wind and feel its keenness to snatch her from her perch. She took a deep breath and leapt.

She landed on the branch of the tree next door and she didn’t stop, running now, climbing as high as the tree would take her. She moved so quickly that the weaker branches had no time to snap, her weight gone before the branch realised it could not hold her.

As Ruby swayed from limb to limb, reaching out to grab another, stepping lightly from one to the next, she felt almost like she were defying gravity, treading the space between things. Having left the safety of her own yard, she wanted nothing more than to retrieve the comic and get out of there. She couldn’t see Bubbles. She waited, she scanned the yard, looking all around, but there was no sign of the Doberman, which meant Mr Parker was out. Below her, a large cat watched, tail twitching, ready to pounce should the strange bird fall.

If Bubbles was here, she reasoned, then this cat would be running for its life.

She dropped to the ground, ran to the middle of the lawn and snatched up the comic, then stuffed it down her sweatshirt and began to climb back up the tree.

‘What exactly are you doing?’

The voice came from far below.

It wasn’t one Ruby recognised and in her confusion she nearly toppled from the branch.

‘Relax!’ came a different voice. ‘It’s just me!’

‘Jeepers Clance! Is that supposed to be funny? You nearly half scared the wits out of me.’

‘Sorry Rube.’ He was staring up from the alley at the back of the houses, his eyes hidden behind a pair of flower-shaped dark glasses. ‘But actually what are you doing?’

‘Dicing with death.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Clancy. ‘You do know that if Mr Parker catches you you’ll be skinned alive?’

‘That’s the kind of thing Mrs Digby would say.’

‘Yes, and she happens to be right.’

‘And I happen to know he’s gotta be out – there’s no sign of Bubbles.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

‘You scared, Crew?’

‘Sure I’m scared – and not of the dog. Mr Parker is one mean old man.’

‘You don’t wanna be scared of Mr Parker,’ said Ruby, preparing to jump back towards home. ‘Mr Parker is a pussycat.’ She leapt.

At that exact moment a voice bellowed and Ruby, losing concentration, failed to catch the branch her outstretched arm was reaching for and tumbled through the leaves, grabbing at any flimsy twigs that might prevent her fall.

‘Boy!’ the new voice boomed. ‘What are you doing peering over my yard fence?’

Clancy twisted around to see the angry beet-coloured face of Mr Parker.

‘Oh, me,’ stammered Clancy, ‘me?’

‘Yes, you, idiot. Is there another skinny, good-for-nothing chump looking into my yard?’

‘I wouldn’t think so Mr Parker, I’ll bet I’m the only one.’

‘So answer me quick – what’s got you so interested in my property?’

‘I saw a raccoon,’ said Clancy, ‘more than one, several, in fact lots of them. I was going to inform you because I thought you would want to, you know, call raccoon control?’

‘I don’t need raccoon control,’ he spat. ‘I’ll simply set my dog on them just as soon as I find her – she’s gone AWOL.’ He whistled a command as if to illustrate the point. ‘Disappeared into thin air,’ said Mr Parker. ‘I don’t suppose you know something about that, do you?’ He trained his beady eyes on Clancy and Clancy stepped back a pace.

‘Why would I, Mr Parker? But I’m happy to help you look.’

Unfortunately, Ruby’s cluster of twigs parted company with the tree at that moment and she was again tumbling through the branches and this time to the ground.

‘Ouch.’

Mr Parker’s ears pricked up. ‘Was that an ouch?’ he said, fumbling for his gate key.

‘I doubt it,’ said Clancy. ‘I’ve never heard a raccoon say ouch.’

‘Don’t get smart with me boy. It’s that Redfort girl, isn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t think so sir.’

But Mr Parker wasn’t listening. ‘Girl!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re in trouble so deep you’ll need that hound of yours to dig you out.’

‘Hey, let me help you with that key,’ said Clancy, knocking the key out of the old man’s hand. It fell between the bars of a drain cover, clattered into the darkness and that was that for Mr Parker’s gate key.

This delaying tactic gave Ruby just enough time to stumble to her feet, then half-run half-limp across the Parker lawn.

Mr Parker whistled again to his dog and this time Ruby thought she did hear something: not a bark, not a yap, but perhaps a whimper. It was the noise an injured dog might make. It was coming from the space underneath the house.

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