THE RUBY REDFORT COLLECTION: 1-3: Look into My Eyes; Take Your Last Breath; Catch Your Death. Lauren Child

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      When they arrived, Buzz informed them that LB was giving a briefing to some of the Spectrum staff.

      ‘She’s in the cinema room – looking at key suspects for the City Bank robbery.’

      Hitch led the way down a black and white tunnel until they reached the circular doorway of the screening room.

      ‘You better wait here kid, this is highly confidential – I’ll call you in when we’re done.’ Hitch entered and the door locked shut behind him.

      Ruby stood around gently kicking at the wall until she heard footsteps running down the passageway. Agent Blacker appeared, out of breath and even more crumpled than usual.

      ‘You meant to be at this thing too?’ he wheezed.

      ‘Yeah,’ replied Ruby. ‘I forgot the password – talk about dumb!’

      ‘No worries,’ said Blacker, ‘we can probably slip in unnoticed if we sit in the back – I know all this stuff anyway so I’m not missing anything.’

      He tapped in the password and they crept in silently; a projector was whirring and grainy pictures were being thrown up on to the screen, twenty or so people sitting listening as LB talked. Ruby caught sight of the back of Hitch’s head, and sank as low as she could into her seat; Agent Blacker made himself comfortable, propping his feet up in front of him. Projected large was the image of a big, thuggish looking man in a raincoat.

      ‘I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night,’ whispered Ruby.

      ‘I wouldn’t want to meet him on any night,’ replied Agent Blacker.

      The next picture came up: a strangely comical face – ugly, sinister even but definitely comical.

      There was a wave of muffled laughter from the Spectrum audience.

      ‘I see you have taken an instant liking to our dear friend Hog-Trotter,’ said LB. ‘Not as funny as he looks I’m afraid.’

      ‘Is he as stupid as he looks?’ said a young man in the front row.

      ‘Oh, never underestimate this portrait of crime – where HogTrotter is concerned it’s always wise to bear in mind the cliché “never judge a villain by his face” – however ugly that face may be. He is strangely good at second-guessing people and quite the intellectual. I wouldn’t rule him out.’

      LB clicked the button again.

      ‘Wow, he doesn’t look like the criminal kind,’ whispered Ruby, peering at the green–eyed, sweet-looking man who filled the screen.

      ‘Ah yes, Baby Face Marshall – now he always surprises everybody,’ replied Blacker.

      ‘He’s dangerous?’ said Ruby doubtfully.

      ‘Quite the cold-blooded killer,’ hissed Blacker. ‘You see Baby Face, don’t bother calling for Mommy – run!’

      Ruby gulped. She was used to the baddies she saw on TV. There the murderers always seemed to have a hump, or hooked hand, or half a dozen gold teeth, something to give them away, but this guy looked like he might run the local pet store. The projector clicked on and up came the face of a woman.

      ‘Valerie Capaldi, also known as Nine Lives,’ said LB.

      ‘Wow, she’s pretty,’ said the same mouthy young man.

      ‘Not as pretty now,’ replied LB. ‘A couple of years back she got into a nasty tangle escaping one of our agents – I would imagine she has a fairly ugly scar across her left eye. Be kind of hard to miss – they call her Nine Lives because she has cheated death as many times as any cat.’

      The woman on the screen didn’t look the type, Ruby thought – in fact she looked like someone her parents might know.

      ‘She’s a decadent sort and pretty stylish,’ continued LB, ‘though I would be surprised if she were involved in a gold heist – jewels and precious stones are more her style. She was trained by this gentleman.’ Click. ‘Fenton Oswald – he loves planning a good robbery, enjoys the challenge but he is strictly speaking more of a jewel thief – spends most of his time in Europe.’

      He looked an ordinary sort of man – the picture showed him exiting a jewellers in Berlin. He was wearing tinted glasses, a tweed suit and carried a rolled umbrella.

      Then came a very different sort of face, the kind of face you might expect to appear in an old movie, very melodramatic looking with slicked grey hair and pointed sideburns. The nose was long and elegant which gave the face a dignified look, but the chiselled cheekbones were those of a gothic villain. 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.

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