Читать книгу The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection: Look into My Eyes; Take Your Last Breath; Catch Your Death; Feel the Fear; Pick Your Poison; Blink and You Die - Lauren Child - Страница 106

THE DINNER CONVERSATION WAS OF COURSE LIMITED to the subject of pirates, rescue and lost treasure.

‘What gets me is why the coastguard didn’t pick up my mayday call,’ said Sabina.

‘Yes, that is a mystery,’ agreed Brant.

‘And Bernie sent message after message when our engine went kaput, but no one responded,’ said Eadie.

‘It was pure chance that we got rescued – the guy in the chopper just happened to be flying by,’ said Bernie.

‘Shame, it was a lovely spot,’ said Brant. ‘We were really having a high old time, weren’t we darling?’

‘Oh yeah,’ replied Sabina. ‘A swell time.’

While her parents and the Runklehorns laughed, Ruby was beginning to put things together in her head. She was sure that the pirates had to be responsible for the lost mayday calls: it made sense; this way they could rob and hijack vessels without being disturbed. But how were they doing it? From her mother’s description they didn’t sound like the most sophisticated villains at sea and surely, if they were going to all the trouble of blocking mayday calls, they must have a bigger target in mind than cruise boats and cash.

Like Blacker said, it wasn’t like many pleasure boats sailed in those waters.

‘Sabina was so heroic.’ Brant gripped her hand and smiled. ‘You should have seen her out there, quite an inspiration.’

Her mother’s family had always had confidence, but what they were famous for was their guts, the kind of courage that inspired awe – after all, there were legends about it. No one could be sure that these weren’t just tales told by drunken sailors, but Ruby chose to sort of believe them; they sounded just far-fetched enough to be true. And it wasn’t impossible that her mother had a pirate relative, though when she looked across at Eliza’s great-great-great-granddaughter, sitting there in her cerise Marco Perella evening dress, it did seem unlikely. Sabina Redfort might not have inherited her great-great-grandmother Martha’s brains, but she had certainly inherited her courage. Sabina Redfort was no wuss, no siree.

Later, when dinner was over and Ruby’s parents were sitting chatting with the Runklehorns, she went upstairs to her room and pulled out the list and the spider-map. It seemed likely that the dead couple, the couple who turned out not to be Ruby’s parents, were also the victims of the pirates, judging by the state of their yacht, the Swift, which had been ransacked. They too had been thrown to the waves, but they were not such able swimmers and with no ambassadorial luggage to cling to, drowning was their fate.

Ruby added their names under the heading, pirate attacks.

The facts on the piece of paper were growing and things were beginning to add up. Though she still wasn’t sure to what.

The drowned agent diver

Confused shipping

Unusual marine activity

Sea sounds

Missed maydays

The stranger

Pirate attacks

Ruby fell asleep without difficulty and slept soundly until an hour before dawn when her dream took a puzzling turn.

She found herself in her music class. Clancy was tapping out a message with a drumstick. Ruby was frustrated: she knew Morse code well, but she couldn’t decipher this, it just made no sense. What are you trying to tell me Clance? He was just looking at her like she was super dumb and continued to tap. Was it nonsense or was she not as smart as she thought?

She woke up, but the dream continued… or at least the tapping did. It was coming from the bathroom. Ruby fumbled for her glasses, got up and switched on the light. It was the cold tap, not quite turned off, and a steady drip was drumming onto a plastic cup that was sitting upside down in the sink. Ruby switched on the radio, which was still tuned to Chime Melody, and a reassuring old tune wafted out of the set, the kind of golden oldie that Mrs Digby adored.

As Ruby listened, she began to think about the recent interruptions, the strange unmusic-like music playing on the radio, music more suited to the classical radio channel Cerebral Sounds. The kind of music that had no business being played on Chime. Suddenly Ruby froze and she felt those tiny hairs on the back of her neck prick up. She could see it now, this thing that had sounded like a jumble of notes, a mess of sounds; she had heard it with her own ears, but failed to understand.

She ran to the wall of books that covered one side of her room and pulled at the quarterly code magazines that dated back several years. She remembered reading an article about something, something that might help her chase down the thought she couldn’t catch. She spread them out across the floor until she caught sight of the one she wanted. In this old edition was an article on musicians who had encrypted music and so passed secrets across the airwaves without anyone ever suspecting that these tunes were not just tunes. One of the most famous was a composer called Arvo Pärt, but there were many others: the highly successful composer and double agent Sarå H Stein, and Roberto Bowerbeck and Tristan Delaware to name a handful. At the back of the magazine was a 7-inch plastic record: low quality but it should still play.

Ruby put the record on the turntable and the needle automatically lowered itself onto the disc. The piece was by I Zac-Gardner: Preamble in Three Equally Divided Halves.

It sounded very much like the kind of thing Chime had been playing – music without melody.

Ruby pulled on her sweatshirt and ran down the stairs right to the bottom of the house. She moved lightly and almost soundlessly and only Bug heard a footstep.

She tapped lightly on Hitch’s door – she could hear him put something down on the table, a cup or a glass.

‘Ruby?’ he said quietly. ‘That you?’

She opened the door; he was still dressed from the night before, or maybe he was freshly dressed for the coming day. He looked only mildly surprised to see her.

‘Hey kid,’ he said. ‘What got you up before dawn?’

Ruby sat down in one of the two easy chairs that furnished the compact yet stylish apartment.

‘I figured something out,’ she said. ‘At least I think I figured something out, I just got to prove it is all.’

‘I’m all ears kid.’ He sat down in the opposite chair.

‘This Chime Melody thing I’ve been working on for Froghorn – I suddenly get it. It’s not interference, it’s not someone disrupting the airwaves – it’s more than that.’

‘More how?’ asked Hitch.

‘Well, old Froghorn dumped me with the job of studying each tape, each piece of music, trying to listen for a voice masked by the music, but that’s not what’s going on here.’

‘It isn’t?’ said Hitch.

‘No,’ said Ruby. ‘The music isn’t covering up the communication, the music IS the communication. It’s a code.’

‘You know this?’ said Hitch.

Ruby shook her head.

‘But you’re pretty sure?’

‘Eighty per cent. I figure each note is a letter. Could be more complicated though. You know, like when a note lasts for two beats, you skip a letter, or it changes into a number, or something.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hitch. ‘But if you say so, I believe you.’

‘So I gotta listen to the tapes so I can figure out how it works.’

‘That all? You can go in and listen to them any day you like.’

‘I mean I want to bring them home; it would give me more time.’

He paused, considering the request; it wasn’t strictly protocol, but it was practical. He took a deep breath. ‘I can get them.’

‘What about Froghorn? Is he gonna make trouble?’

‘No, leave Froghorn to me. I can handle anything he cares to throw.’

‘And maybe…’ said Ruby, ‘don’t let’s say anything until I’ve got proof. I’d hate to give him the pleasure of knowing I’d got it wrong.’

‘I’ll keep it zipped kid. You can count on it.’

They went up to the kitchen and sat there for a while drinking tea and talking things over until they were interrupted.

‘Well, knock me down with a feather!’ Mrs Digby said. ‘This child is up before the sun – I must be dreaming.’