The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

His clothes were different too, long black coat and pointed black shoes, polished to a high shine. The slide was aged and the picture black and white. LB clicked past him without explanation.

      ‘Who was that guy?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘Oh him?’ said Blacker. ‘That was the Count.’

      ‘The Count of what?’

      ‘The Count von Viscount. If you think he looks like something from some old B-movie then that’s because he is.’

      ‘He used to be an actor?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘Not an actor but a director – there’s a theory that he turned to crime when all his movies were trashed by the critics. Some say he was a little ahead of his time – the movie-going world wasn’t ready for him back then. Still isn’t – too dark, too strange, too dangerous. Unfortunately, he became a much more successful criminal than he ever was a film maker – only one of our agents ever met him and lived to tell the tale.’

      ‘Who was that?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘Oh, no one’ said Agent Blacker, quickly. ‘No one you would know’

      Bradley Baker? wondered Ruby

      ‘It’s been a long time since we heard from the Count,’ said Blacker.

      ‘But he’s a contender?’ asked Ruby

      ‘Oh, he’s been off our radar so long we are wondering if he isn’t pushing up daisies – that, or he retired.’

      ‘How would you know if you had heard from him?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘You can recognise a Count von Viscount crime because it is always bizarrely melodramatic. You can be sure if someone is dangling you over a bubbling volcano rather than just dropping you into it then it is almost bound to be the Count.’

      ‘That’s a comfort,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him myself but they say he was always very charming – right up until the moment he decided your time was up.’

      Ruby shivered.

      Suddenly the lights came on – the briefing was over. Ruby managed to slip out, hidden amongst the crowd; in the corridor she adopted the pose of someone who was fed up of waiting.

      A short while later Hitch stuck his head out of the door. ‘You’re up, kid.’

      When Ruby walked in, LB didn’t waste time with hellos.

      ‘So Redfort, anything to report?’

      Ruby tried to look confident, even if she didn’t sound confident. Here goes everything. She cleared her throat. ‘Um, not quite but almost.’

      ‘What does that mean?’ said LB.

      ‘I think I have almost figured something out but I kinda need, well, I sort of wondered if I could, you know…’

      ‘Spit it out Redfort.’

      ‘Take a look at Lopez’s stuff.’ The words sort of hung stupidly in the air; LB didn’t say anything but Ruby could gauge what she was thinking by the scowl on her face.

      ‘What “stuff”?’

      ‘The stuff she had with her when she died in that avalanche.’

      ‘And why would you need to look through Lopez’s backpack? What does it have to do with anything?’

      ‘I just thought maybe she could have had the missing code with her,’ said Ruby.

      LB looked at her as if she hadn’t heard quite right.

      ‘Lopez was a professional, do you even know what that means? She wouldn’t dream of removing classified evidence from Spectrum and take it with her on vacation – up a mountain!’

      It did sound kind of preposterous when put like that but Ruby persevered. ‘But the thing is, I’ve been thinking, what if everything isn’t quite as it seems? What if Lopez found something, but she didn’t tell anyone that she had found that something, but instead decided to check it out herself?’

      ‘You’re talking crazy kid – why would she not tell anyone?’

      ‘Because she was bored?’ suggested Ruby

      ‘Because she was bored?’ LB clearly couldn’t believe her ears. ‘This isn’t an installment of Nancy Drew, this is the real world and in the real world Spectrum code breakers don’t just run around playing hero because they get bored.’

      ‘But you see I think that’s what coulda happened and I think she found something and someone saw her find that something – someone who didn’t want her to find it – so they bumped her off.’

      ‘Redfort! She died in an avalanche – let’s not let our imagination run away with us. It was an accident! Lopez was a desk agent not some action hero.’

      ‘But you see,’ said Ruby, ‘the code isn’t anywhere in the files so Lopez must have had it with her.’

      ‘What you mean is that because you can’t find it, then it can’t be there.’

      ‘No, I know it isn’t there because…’

      Ruby tailed off, she could hardly tell LB how she knew it wasn’t there. Instead she simply had to stand there looking like some dumb kid until LB, exasperated, waved for her to go. When Ruby got to the door LB said, ‘by the way, you’re out of here – you failed and that’s all there is to it.’

       Chapter 26.

      The little brown box

      BEING DROPPED BY SPECTRUM was humiliating but Ruby wasn’t taking it lying down. If she could only get some proof – get her hands on that piece of paper.

      By the time Hitch dropped her back home it was already early evening. Her parents were out and she wasn’t in the mood to sit eating her supper alone so she headed off in the direction of the Double Donut. When she arrived she settled on one of the high stools at the counter and was about to order when a thought occurred to her. She slipped off the stool and went straight to the phone booth next to the restroom.

      ‘Hey Clance, meet me at the Double, as soon as.’

      ‘I’m not really hungry Rube,’ replied Clancy.

      ‘Good, ’cause I wasn’t planning on eating.’ She put the phone down.

      Fifteen minutes later a very out of breath Clancy stumbled through the door.

      ‘What took you?’ said Ruby.

      ‘Give me a break! I ran the whole way – so what am I doing here exactly?’

      ‘I’ll tell you in the cab,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Oh brother, not again!’

      Soon enough they were in a car heading east.

      ‘So,’ said Clancy, ‘what’s going on?’

      ‘So LB wouldn’t listen – I told her my hunch. I told her that Lopez was most probably bumped off by the Fool’s Gold Gang. It makes sense – she wasn’t trained as a spy and as a consequence she got spotted.’

      ‘Do you think the Fool’s Gold Gang know who she was working for?’

      ‘Nah, I figure they don’t – I think they think she’s just some nosey parker who happened to be looking in their direction and they don’t like people looking in their direction.’

      ‘They sure don’t,’ said Clancy with a shiver.

      ‘My guess is they tailed her to see what she was up to and when she landed up mountain climbing, they came to the conclusion that she was just some woman