Pick Your Poison. Lauren Child

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ