The Promised One (12 page)

‘Well …’ began Sam. He wondered whether to mention the pigs in an attempt to win over Chopper’s sympathy, but immediately decided against it.

‘I’m sorry for being so dense,’ Chopper interrupted in a pseudo-apologetic tone. ‘I had this silly idea that she was going to be tortured for information and that six grown men would just, conceivably, be able to subdue her. Silly old over-optimistic Chopper not to know she was going to tear my camp to pieces.’ His voice reverted to a vicious snarl. ‘Listen, you bunch of big girls’ blouses, I don’t give a stuff about your stupid bloody animals, but I
do
care about the drug consignment that’s due in January. The Bionic Girl can’t have got far. Get after the little bitch in the other boat.’

‘Actually, we can’t. You see, she seems to have smashed up the spare boat and …’ He held the phone away from his ear as Chopper went completely berserk at the other end.

‘Then make a raft and get after her,’ he shouted. He was purple in the face and so much saliva was spraying from his mouth that, as the phone receiver became progressively waterlogged, he was practically incomprehensible. ‘She can’t possibly have started the outboard motor so she
must
have gone downstream; follow her and shoot her to pieces.
But –’ he paused and his voice turned heavy with sarcasm. ‘Don’t tell me – you can’t, because Xena the Warrior Schoolgirl stole all your guns while you were asleep.’

There was a breathless moment of silence while Sam nervously rubbed his nose; it had a small lump of pig dung on it, which he smeared across his face and into one eye which started watering.

He cleared his throat apprehensively.

‘It’s funny you should say that, Chopper, because …’

The line went dead as Chopper crushed the phone in his hand and threw it across the garden. Chopper lashed out savagely with his foot at the nearest garden gnome who was engaged in mugging a smaller gnome for a tiny golden mobile phone. These particular gnomes, being nearest to the terrace, had been repeatedly knocked over and the gardener, fed up with restoring them to an upright position, had cemented them permanently in place on a little concrete platform. He was rather proud of the result and was looking forward to telling Chopper but, unfortunately, hadn’t yet had the opportunity to do so.

The villa windows were all open in the morning sunshine and the sudden crack as Chopper’s big toe snapped could be
heard all over the house. His howls of pain and fury could be heard all over the neighbourhood. For some time Chopper remained alone; nobody in the household wanted to be the first to approach him, but eventually his secretary ventured out. He was sitting on the ground clutching his foot, his hand bleeding from where a sharp fragment of plastic from the phone was embedded in his palm. He was leaning for support against the wooden pole of a bird table which was in the process of being felled by another gnome with a miniature golden chain-saw.

‘Get a bloody doctor,’ he hissed through foam-filled lips, ‘and get the bloody plane ready. As usual, I’m going to have to sort this out myself.’ He paused and looked at his rapidly swelling foot; he was going to need help on his journey to the camp. He turned back to his secretary.

‘Oh, and find that little new bloke I took on yesterday – Bert Shrunkshorts, or whatever. Tell him to get his bag packed: he’s coming with me.’

His secretary helped him limp back into the house and then picked up the phone. As she dialled she looked out of the window at the haze of pollution hanging over the city. ‘At least you’ll get some fresh air at the camp,’ she murmured comfortingly to her boss.

J
oanna Bonaventure was ironing. She was frantic with worry about Lucy and she always ironed when she was worried. She said it gave her something to do but didn’t require any concentration. The police searches and enquiries had so far all proved fruitless and they were now in the process of arranging a reconstruction of Lucy’s last movements using a child actress in order to try to jog the memories of any possible additional witnesses to her abduction. Joanna’s parents, who were staying with her, were out shopping and Sarah had gone to stay with her aunt and uncle and her cousins, Ben, Henry and Christopher. Ben was the same age as Sarah and they were very good friends.

Joanna always ironed in front of the window so she could see the garden, and her attention now focused on Tibbles who was just reappearing through her favourite gap in the fence at the end of the garden. Until a few minutes ago she had been quietly snoozing on her mat when she had suddenly woken and pricked up her ears. She had got to her feet, intensely alert, with her head cocked slightly to one side. Then she had scrambled through her cat-flap and
hurried down the garden and through the fence as fast as she could waddle.

As she returned Joanna could see that she had something in her mouth. The cat-flap rattled and Tibbles disappeared upstairs. Intrigued, Joanna put down the iron and followed the cat into Lucy’s bedroom to see her jump on to the bed, something that she knew she was forbidden to do, and put something on Lucy’s pillow.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Tibbles?’ exclaimed Joanna, picking up the little parcel. ‘Putting rubbish on Lucy’s pillow indeed!’ She threw the little screwed-up bit of paper into the wastepaper basket and swept Tibbles off the bed on to the floor. Tibbles, usually shamefaced if caught on the bed, immediately went to the basket, knocked it over and started pawing frantically at its contents to retrieve the parcel. Clare, intrigued by the activity and noise, came in from her own bedroom where she had been studying. She was amused at Tibbles’s antics.

‘She just ran down the garden to get something,’ said Joanna in bewilderment, ‘and now she’s trying to put it on Lucy’s pillow.’

Clare suddenly stopped laughing and her eyes widened in anticipation. She knew that if Lucy was alive and well she would somehow use her special powers to get in touch with the family, but hadn’t been able to think of how she would do it. Now she thought she knew.

‘Stop, Mum!’ she said, as Joanna started to pick Tibbles up and take her downstairs. ‘Quick, let me see what she brought in.’ She crouched by the contents of the basket strewn over the floor and, taking Tibbles from her mother, put her down in front of the mess.

‘Good girl, Tibbles. What is it you brought?’ Tibbles immediately picked up the little parcel and, jumping up on to the bed, put it once more on Lucy’s pillow. Clare snatched it up, looked at it and ran to the bathroom to get some nail scissors from her make-up bag.

‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ said Joanna. ‘Have you and this cat gone completely mad, or is it me?’

‘Wait two ticks, Mum, and I think all will be clear,’ said Clare, as with fingers trembling from excitement she snipped the tightly bound thread and opened the sweet wrapper it had surrounded. Inside was Lucy’s note, which Clare opened and flattened on the dressing table top.

‘I thought so,’ she said triumphantly, her voice breaking with relief. ‘It’s from Lucy. She must be OK.’

They read the note together and Joanna was the first to speak, through tears of relief.

‘Hang on a minute – ETC is the company Daddy works for. What on earth are they doing kidnapping Lucy? And
what’s this bit?’ She pointed to the note and read out: ‘Clare knows all.’

‘Lucy wasn’t sure if I would have told you about her secret yet,’ Clare explained, ‘and she’s just giving me permission to do so.’

‘We must tell the police about this note,’ said her mother. ‘They’ve got a massive hunt going on and this will tell them that Lucy’s in Brazil. They need to get the police over there on to ETC as soon as possible.’ Clare agreed that the police had to know, and her mother rang the special number that the investigation team had given her.

While they waited for the police to arrive Clare re-read the note.

‘What’s this about keeping an eye on Tibbles?’ she said. ‘It must be important or she wouldn’t have wasted words on it in such a tiny note.’ Her mother thought for a moment. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, as she looked again at the note, ‘that she feels she may not always be able to send us a note, but may be able somehow to let us know something through Tibbles.’

‘Of course. That’s it! Good thinking, Mum! We’ll watch Tibbles like hawks from now on.’

Within half an hour the door bell rang and Joanna Bonaventure opened the door. On the doorstep stood a policeman. His car was parked outside the gate. One of the back wheels was on the kerb and just behind it an old man was cursing and struggling to remount his electric wheelchair.

‘Mrs Bonaventure?’ said her visitor, showing her his ID
card. ‘I’m Detective Constable Noholmes.’ As he leant forward to take his card back Joanna was impressed to see what she took to be a small gold medal just above his tunic pocket but it proved, on closer inspection, to be a blob of breakfast marmalade.

‘I hear you have a note from your missing daughter – may I see it?’ He took the note and read it slowly, his brow furrowed. His finger moved slowly but steadily along each line, his lips soundlessly forming the words as he read. When he had finished he read the note once more.

‘Who’s this Tibbles you’ve got to watch?’ he asked guardedly.

‘That’s the cat,’ said Clare. ‘Lucy’s very fond of her and is reminding us to look after her.’ The constable seemed satisfied by this explanation.

‘And what’s this stuff about “Clare knows Al”? Who’s Clare and what’s she going to say to Al?’

‘I’m Clare,’ said Clare. ‘Lucy’s sister, and it doesn’t say “Al” it says “all”: “Clare knows all.” It means that I will explain things.’

The constable looked suspicious.

‘What will you explain?’ he asked. Clare thought quickly. She couldn’t say anything about the animals. She glanced at the note again and then had a brainwave. The constable was holding it up as he looked at it, and on the back she could see the little scribble where Lucy had checked her pencil was working. She took the note and turned it over so the constable could see.

‘You see this symbol?’ She pointed to the scribble and
her voice dropped to a confidential whisper. ‘That’s a secret sign we’ve used since we were little. Only the two of us know about it. It proves the note comes from her. That’s what only I could explain.’

The constable was impressed.

‘Very good planning,’ he said. ‘It would make our job a lot easier if more people arranged secret symbols in case they got kidnapped.’

Then he snatched the note away from her.

‘You mustn’t touch this – it may have fingerprints on it. We’ll send it to the lab’. Clare thought that they would be better looking for paw prints but said nothing.

‘But we’ve already touched it,’ said Joanna. ‘That’s how we read it.’

‘Well, you’d better not touch it again,’ said the constable, trying to look important. He folded the note, rubbing the crease firmly between his thumb and forefinger and then slipped it into his tunic pocket, neatly scraping off the blob
of marmalade as he did so.

‘Where’s the envelope?’ he asked.

‘There wasn’t an envelope – it just came like that,’ said Joanna. She wondered whether to say it was just something the cat brought in but decided against it. ‘I expect you’ll be getting in touch with the police in Brazil through Interpol,’ she continued.

‘That almost certainly won’t be necessary,’ replied the constable. ‘In fact I’m prepared to stake my professional reputation on the fact that Lucy has never left the country. This note was delivered by hand, and as you seem certain that it was written by your daughter, she must be being kept in hiding near by. I expect we’ll get a ransom note in the next few days. She was forced to write that stuff about Brazil to put us off the scent. It’s an open-and-shut case.’

Clare thought that the only things that had opened and shut in the case were the various beaks and jaws that had carried the note across land, air and sea but she said nothing. She knew now that Lucy would be safe and that was all that mattered. She had seen with her own eyes the immense power that her sister could wield through her control of the animal kingdom, and her quick brain was already imagining the many ways in which Lucy could use those powers to outwit her captors. In her heart she knew that all she needed to do now was to reassure her mother and await further news.

Soon the constable left. On the way out he took a photograph of the letterbox on the front door and said he would send forensics round to dust it for prints.

‘The villains will have touched this flap as they posted the note,’ he explained, opening the flap as he spoke and running his hand along the edge.

At the local police headquarters Chief Inspector Lestrade sat at his desk. His office was on the ground floor with a large window overlooking the staff car park so he could see at what time his staff came and went. His vantage point was particularly useful today as he was able now and then to glance lovingly at his new car – picked up from the showroom that very morning. Noholmes stood on the other side of the desk with the window behind him. The chief studied once again the crumpled, marmalade-stained note in front of him before picking it up with a pair of tweezers and carefully sliding it into a plastic bag. Heaven only knew what Noholmes had been doing to it; it looked as if it had been dragged through a tropical jungle and halfway round the world.

He went over once again in his mind the garbled story he had heard from Noholmes. The fellow had only been working under him for a fortnight and already Lestrade was wondering how on earth the man had managed to get into the force. It was a windy day and the window in front of which Noholmes was standing rattled as a particularly violent gust swept through the police compound. Glancing up from across his desk the Inspector suddenly pointed, apparently at the constable’s shoulder. Noholmes looked at his shoulder. There on his epaulette was his constable’s insignia. Suddenly he understood. He was about to be promoted. Admittedly the case wasn’t quite
wrapped up – the kid still had to be found – but he remembered that the chief had a reputation for recognizing early talent and rewarding it. He looked back to the chief, a knowing smile playing round his lips. Nothing was being said in the open at this stage; the finger said it all, he understood the code.

The chief jabbed his finger more urgently.

‘Outside, you fool!’

Noholmes turned and looked through the window. His car, in which, in his excitement, he had forgotten to set the handbrake, was starting to move. The gust of wind seemed to have set his car in motion, and it was now moving slowly down the inclined yard towards the chief inspector’s new car some twenty yards away.

Noholmes rushed out of the office. The inspector picked up the phone and pressed a button.

‘Yes, sir?’ a voice answered immediately.

‘Ah, Inspector Fetterson, Lestrade here. There are several matters that require urgent attention. Can you see to them immediately, please?’ The chief’s tone of voice was not one that invited any reply.

‘First of all, you may know of Noholmes – he’s on a detective training attachment from Uniformed Branch – part of the new joined-up policing plan.’

‘Ye-es’, replied the voice cautiously.

‘Well, I think he’s got as much as he can out of us. I want him to start in your section on the first of next month.’ Through the window came the sound of crumpling metal and breaking glass.

‘Make that first thing tomorrow morning. We don’t want to hold a good chap back and I think he’s ready to move on. The other matters relate to the case of the missing schoolgirl. First, I want you to intensify searches in the local neighbourhood. She is almost certainly alive and a prisoner. Next, have you put in place the protection for the family I asked for?’

‘Yes. Nothing larger than a fox has been near the place in the last forty-eight hours. The fox seemed to be after their cat – in broad daylight too, cheeky beggar! Was there anything else, sir?’

The chief sighed. There was something funny about this case and it wasn’t just Noholmes. The story didn’t yet add up and he could leave no stone unturned in the search for Lucy.

‘Yes. Put me through to Interpol.’