Take Your Last Breath. Lauren Child

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      The question came from Agent Blacker, a dishevelled-looking man in a crumpled jacket – an agent Ruby had a lot of time for. They had worked together on the Jade Buddha case and he was not only a smart person, he was a nice guy. He had a laid-back manner, but was as sharp as a pin tack.

      ‘There is nothing to suggest that Trilby was the victim of foul play if that’s what you’re getting at,’ replied LB. ‘However, I am interested in his findings in the context of other unusual activity – some of you will have been party to the ongoing investigation into the missing or scrambled coastguard signals and reports of disruption with shipping vessels; cargo going awry, turning up in the wrong place.’

      She listed the coastguard reports – and the list was long. Trainers, coffee, corncobs, bananas, you name it, it seemed to have ended up in the wrong port.

      ‘Even a six-ton elephant on its way to Baltimore has gone astray,’ concluded LB.

      Ruby made a mental note to apologise to Del Lasco: give or take a few elephants, she had actually been telling the truth.

      LB wound up her talk and removed her glasses, hooking them onto her shirt. ‘To be honest with you,’ she said, ‘we really have no idea what might be going on. To date we are not investigating any criminal activity. All we know is that Agent Trilby was monitoring unusual events at sea and regrettably died. If it wasn’t for the coastguard reports, we would continue monitoring marine life and not look any further.’

      Blacker raised his hand again.

      ‘Yes?’ she said.

      ‘So you are looking to make a link?’ said Blacker.

      ‘Either that or to establish that there isn’t one – it could all be a coincidence,’ she replied.

      ‘But link or no link, you’ll be wanting me to plot through Trilby’s findings and see where they take us?’ said Blacker.

      ‘Correct. Meanwhile, I understand that Agent Kekoa from Sea Division will take over Trilby’s ocean research. She is intending to make sound recordings – this way we hope to learn just what is causing the marine disturbance. If the strange sealife occurrences are just a series of natural blips and shifts, then so much the better; the information will be passed onto those who deal with such things and we will concentrate on the shipping alone.’

      LB stepped to one side and Agent Kekoa walked to the front – Ruby’s dive instructor looked shorter out of the water and less assertive. You could tell she wasn’t particularly comfortable standing there talking. She clearly wasn’t really comfortable out of her wetsuit in fact – clothes made her look strangely out of her depth.

      ‘There have been reports of a sound, a whispering sound,’ said Kekoa. She clicked the clicker and up popped a slide showing a kid of about seventeen, his photo alongside a map of the Twinford coast, and an arrow pointing to the sea beyond Little Bay.

      ‘Tommy Elson was swimming out past Little Bay and reported a whispering sound coming from under the water.’

      Click: Slide of a young couple in beach gear – the map showed that they were in a sailboat far out at Rock Point.

      ‘Same story with Hallie Grier and Lyle Greene.’

      Click: One of those freckly kids with a couple of missing teeth. She was smiling and shielding her eyes from the sun.

      ‘Billie-May Vaughn was surfing with her dog and heard a noise which she described as someone calling, but calling in a whisper; she dove under the water but could see nothing to explain it. She claimed her dog reacted to the sound too.’

      There was some sniggering in the audience that could have come from Agent Froghorn, but Kekoa took no notice.

      ‘The girl alerted the lifeguard, who swam out but found nothing to substantiate what Billie-May had told him.’

      Kekoa clicked through some more pictures that showed various fresh-faced-looking people and the location references.

      ‘The sounds have generally been heard when people are swimming a mile or so from shore, or on boats further out to sea. One person, Danny Fink Junior, heard the sound when fishing on a rock which juts out into the ocean, almost an island, but that’s the only example of anyone hearing the sound on dry land.’

      ‘Have you heard it?’ asked one of the agents.

      ‘No,’ said Kekoa.

      ‘And how many years have you been diving in those waters?’ asked another.

      ‘Seven,’ said Kekoa. ‘But I’ve been in Hawaii the last couple of months.’

      ‘Yet you yourself have heard nothing?’ said the first agent. ‘Even since you got back?’

      ‘No,’ said Kekoa.

      A rippled whisper went through the audience.

      ‘So have you considered that these accounts could all be bogus? I mean some of the people who reported it are just little kids,’ continued the first agent.

      ‘Yes,’ said Kekoa. ‘But I consider it unwise to disregard them just because I, just because you, have no personal experience of them.’

      Ruby couldn’t agree more strongly with this statement. There were people who made wild claims about spotting aliens and spacecraft, and there were other people who claimed that this was nonsense and aliens and spacecraft didn’t exist, but either way what you had to accept was that these people had seen something. RULE 5: REMEMBER, THERE IS MORE TO LEARN THAN YOU CAN EVER KNOW.

      ‘In conclusion,’ said LB, stepping back in front of the screen so the smiling face of Danny Fink Junior was projected across her white suit, ‘I want this case wrapped up all neat and tidy AS…’ she rapped the perspex file with her fountain pen, ‘AP.’ She couldn’t have looked more serious.

      ‘One of our agents is dead. Spectrum need to know if it was foul play or just plain bad luck. The coastguard need to know if all this disruption to the cargo shipping is incompetence or something a lot more serious. The fishing industry need to know where all the fish have gone. I want to know if I have a team smart enough to give me some answers. I don’t get the right ones and I’m not happy; I’m not happy and some of you are going to have to take a walk.’

      ‘Yikes,’ whispered Ruby. ‘What’s LB like when she’s unhappy, I mean really unhappy?’

      ‘You don’t want to see it,’ said Hitch.

      Ruby was glad she had taken Hitch’s advice and zipped her jacket up. LB was in one very bad mood.

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