Lauren Child - Catch Your Death

The mini locator was a gadget dressed up as a kid’s word puzzle with little sliding letter tiles that, once arranged correctly, spelled HELP. Once formed, this word HELPwould set off a flashing light on the ‘buddy’ locator, which in this case was Hitch’s watch. Then he would know not only that Ruby was in trouble, but also where she was. It had limited range, but when it worked it worked very effectively. It looked simple, and in a way was simple, but no one, not even the evil genius known to Spectrum as the Count, had spotted it.

‘So you think LB has forgiven me for losing the great Bradley Baker’s mini locator?’ said Ruby, her tone sarcastic.

‘She’ll forgive you when you prove yourself to be half as good an agent as he was,’ said Hitch. He seemed to enjoy winding her up on this subject. Bradley Baker was a Spectrum legend and although he had died in an accident many years ago his reputation for brilliance and bravery dogged Ruby every day of her Spectrum life.

‘So why are you here?’ she asked.

‘To take you in to HQ,’ he replied.

Ruby knew she was going to have to face the music sooner or later, but she had hoped for later. Not today , she thought. But all she said was, ‘So where is it this time? The way in, I mean?’

This could seem like a strange question given that Ruby Redfort had been into Spectrum headquarters on many occasions and had spent hours and hours there working on cracking complex codes, but the unusual thing about Spectrum was that it never stayed in one place for long, or at least the way in never stayed anywhere for long. The first time Ruby had entered was via a manhole; last time it had been through a door in the boiler room of the municipal swimming pool.

Hitch pulled up in one of the bays by the iron railings that surrounded Twinford’s Central City Park. He switched off the engine and opened the car door. ‘Here,’ he said.

Ruby slowly got out. ‘Where is here?’

Hitch pointed to the path. ‘You see where it bends and disappears?’

Ruby nodded.

‘To the right of it, over by that huge tree, can you see those boulders?’

Ruby nodded again. There were some large rocks which had been used to landscape the park, to make it look more natural, sort of New York Central Park style.

‘Behind them you’ll find the toddler playground,’ said Hitch. ‘You’ll work it out from there.’

Ruby looked at him, her mouth open.

‘Man! You are surely kidding?’

Hitch shook his head.

‘I’m thirteen – that playground is for babies; how’s it gonna look if I start swinging around on the jungle gym?’

‘That might look unusual for a kid of your age. But I’m not sure what that would have to do with finding the door into Spectrum.’

‘So where is it by the way, the door?’

‘You’ll work it out kid, that’s what we pay you for.’

‘I’ll bet it’s inside the caterpillar pipes, isn’t it? You guys really get your kicks making me do these dorkish things, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think you should take it personally kid. Just think of it as another test – how well can you act?’

‘Swell,’ said Ruby. ‘And I guess you’ll be taking a different route? No monkey bars for you.’

‘See you on the other side kid,’ said Hitch. He winked at her and walked across the road.

RUBY SHRUGGED AND WALKED ON DOWN THE PATH for all the world looking like a kid exploring Twinford Central City Park on a bright summer day.

She opened the gate to the toddler and children’s playground and pretended she was looking for an imaginary little sister. There were plenty of mothers and nannies all occupied with babies, wiping faces and pushing little kids on swings. No one was there to relax exactly; no one was reading a novel or simply hanging out in the sun, so the only way to blend in was to look like you might be minding a young child.

Ruby was right: the one place where it was possible for a concealed door to be hidden was, just as she had thought, inside the caterpillar pipes. She thanked the stars that there was no Wendy house – that would have been a humiliation too far.

Ruby fed herself into the wide metal tube like it was the most normal thing in the world. It was about twelve feet long and had other pipes wiggling off in different directions. It wasn’t at all dark because there were human-sized holes in the top of the tubes so the children could stick their heads out and call to mommy.

Right in the middle of the pipe’s curved wall was a little sticker of a fly. A small child was gently picking at it, trying to peel it off and no doubt eat it. (Little kids were always eating things that didn’t need to be eaten – survival camp would be a breeze to them .) Ruby surmised that access to Spectrum must be directly below the fly sticker and therefore directly beneath the sticker-eating kid.

The kid didn’t look like it was going anywhere; it seemed perfectly content sitting on its behind, mumbling away to itself.

It had been a long time since Ruby was a toddler, but one thing she still remembered was that little kids are easily bribed.

She took the packet of Hubble-Yum bubblegum out of her pocket and carefully placed a square of it in the kid’s view. The kid immediately began edging towards it, eyeing the gum greedily. It took a minute or so, but soon enough Ruby and the kid had switched places. Ruby felt around until she found the hidden latch; this she turned until a hole opened up big enough for her to fit through. She cautiously eased herself into it, half in half out, like a person getting into a cold pool, when suddenly she slipped, let go and fell down a long dark tube, the door clanking shut over her.

She felt like Alice in Wonderland must have felt as she tumbled and slid and finally fell out of the tunnel, landing in a pitch-black nowhere.

‘Oh brother,’ she whined.

‘You made it,’ said a voice through the dark.

Ruby shrieked.

‘I didn’t know you were afraid of the dark kid?’

‘You shouldn’t creep up on people like that man.’

Ruby was lucky that she couldn’t see him smile; that would have put her nose out of joint worse than it was already. Hitch took her arm and led her along while she fumbled for her torch – she needn’t have bothered. The corridor went from dark to light, from stone grey to vivid green in about five paces, and at the end was a door painted the exact same shade. Hitch punched in a code and the door swung gently open.

They stepped into the large Spectrum atrium with its spiralling black and white floor and its huge domed ceiling; on the far side was Buzz the telephone operator sitting within her circular desk, surrounded by a flock of coloured telephones.

‘Hey Buzz!’ shouted Ruby.

Buzz peered at her over her unfashionable spectacles, spectacles that had not become unfashionable, but just never had been and never would be. Buzz responded with a feeble raise of her hand.

‘Friendly as ever,’ remarked Ruby.

‘Ah, she’s not really a kid-person,’ said Hitch.

‘Is she even a person-person?’ said Ruby.

‘No, I wouldn’t call Buzz a put people at their ease type; that’s kind of the point of her really,’ said Hitch. ‘LB doesn’t want someone chatty; she wants someone efficient.’

They walked over to the desk and waited for Buzz to finish her conversation, if you could call it a conversation – it seemed to merely be a whole lot of yeses, noes and the occasional instruction.

Buzz replaced the receiver and looked up at Hitch. She almost seemed to smile, but it could have been an involuntary mouth twitch caused by the throat lozenge she was sucking.