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Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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WAY OUT TO THE NORTHEAST OF THE CITY WERE THE FLATLANDS, acre upon acre of prairie grass that waved in the warm winds blowing in from the ocean.
The girl was taking the long road to her grandmother’s ranch house. She imagined it would take her no more than an hour, so she would still be in good time; she had promised to be there by noon. The weather station had warned of an electrical storm and dark clouds were already forming in the great skies above her.
The girl had tried to coax her dog, a young husky pup, to travel with her in her bicycle basket, but the dog had looked up at the sky and howled when she tried to carry him from the house, his fur standing right on end.
It was as if he knew what was coming. There had been talk of a tornado looking to bear down and she had a mind to see it begin to pick up before it whirled in. Timing, she knew, was everything when it came to tornadoes. They could whip up quick and vanish in minutes, the average for these parts being around twenty. You had to be careful – you mistime it and you might be snatched up inside that wind funnel, for you could not outrun a tornado, only sidestep it; this her nine-year-old self knew for a certainty.
She hadn’t travelled more than halfway there when she realised she had left it too late. Turn back, keep going, it didn’t matter – she was never going to make it to the ranch before the storm struck. A lone tree grew out from the only raised piece of land in more than a hundred miles, a tree bent sideways by the relentless west wind and the only landmark on the whole horizon other than the marching telegraph poles.
But it was a good landmark. She remembered how the tree grew out of rock, not a cave exactly but a pile of stones so heavy that they looked like they hadn’t moved in more than ten thousand years. The girl saw at once that if she could make it to those rocks and climb between them then she would escape the tornado’s hold.
She let go of her bike and abandoned it right there, where it fell, on the tarmac road. She began to run across the open grassland, feeling the whipping wind as she fled. She ran, ran like the devil himself were chasing her, ran like all hell was biting at her ankles. The coarse grass was slurring her movement, wrapping about her legs, but she wouldn’t let it pull her down. There were the rocks and the half cave. She threw herself in just as the whirling funnel picked up over her head, and through the crack in the stone she saw her little green bicycle hooked up by the finger of wind and pulled high into its centre.
She didn’t notice the hissing thing: the wind drowned out its sound. Nor did she notice it raise its head and open its jaws wide, exposing those perfectly sharp prongs of teeth. She felt it though: a sharp pain followed by a sickening ache. A strange sensation.
She turned to look it in the eyes. Black eyes set in an arrow-shaped head, dark diamonds running down its brown back. She looked at it, unblinking, as it slowly wound itself back into the shadows.
Suddenly everything became hyper real, the strange crag of the rocks, one jutting stone looking almost like a dog’s head – she thought of her husky and wished he was at her side. She tried to steady her breathing and reached for the notebook and pencil she had tucked inside her pocket. She drew the head shape and the markings, making a note of the colours, and once she was sure she had all the information, she removed the sneaker from her left foot followed by her striped sock, cutting away the toe part with her penknife. Then she pushed her arm into the tube of knitted cotton and slipped it over the wound, not too tight but enough to support her deadening limb.
Slowly she began to move herself towards the road, keeping her arm down so that the bite wound was below her heart.
Looking behind her she saw the tree was gone, carried away by the tornado.
The farmer who drove by in his truck an hour later was surprised to see this young girl stumbling down the road on her own.
The doctor on duty in the local hospital was astonished when upon arrival she produced a notebook containing a perfect drawing of a Western Rattlesnake.
‘That’s … what … bit me,’ she said, her arm badly swollen by now and her voice losing its strength.
‘Smart of you, noting everything down like that,’ he said as he injected the antivenom. ‘Rattler venom can kill in two hours. If we’d wasted any time trying to identify the species, well …’
Which was why from that day on Ruby Redfort resolved to know every snake by the pattern of its skin – such knowledge might just save your life.
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WHEN RUBY WAS TEN her father was due to take part in a tasting for the Olivarian Society, so called because in order to become a member of this esteemed club one had to blind taste twelve different types of olive, identifying the variety and the region in which they grew.
For reasons to do with bad weather in Boston, Sabina Redfort had failed to make her Twinford flight and was stranded at the east coast airport. Mrs Digby the housekeeper was on annual leave, Brant Redfort refused to leave his daughter home alone and his daughter refused to have a sitter. Therefore it was decided that Ruby would have to accompany her father to the club on Fuldecker Avenue, a grand old-fashioned building with plenty of carved wood and marble. It being highly irregular to bring a child to the club, Ruby was taken to the small club office, where she might read and wait out the two hours until her father was ready to go home.
Brant Redfort was blindfolded and led to a table on which twelve olive dishes were then placed. There were three olives that Brant Redfort found very difficult to place, but he filled in what he could and, once finished, his completed papers along with the olives were returned to the club office.
Ruby, who was fond of olives, had been his home-study partner and now had a very keen palette and a wide appreciation of olives from all regions. She decided therefore to take the test herself and, finding her father’s answers to be good but not great (considering the time he had given to this pursuit he should really have excelled), she amended his test sheet accordingly.
She detected every herb and every spice, and almost every variety of olive: young, old, barrelled in oak, pickled in sea brine, from the western slopes of Mount Etna and from the northern coast of Corfu.
Brant Redfort was declared a worthy Olivarian and was sworn into the club with a hearty cheer, and Ruby was able to get back to her book.
Some several years later …
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WHEN RUBY REDFORT AROSE THAT MORNING, she could not have foreseen what kind of day it was going to turn out to be.
She certainly hadn’t meant to find herself running for all she was worth down the Amster back alleys, nor had she pictured how grateful she would be to see that dumpster in front of the Five Aces Poker Bar. It just happened that way. Sometimes things unfold in a way you could never predict.
RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT.
Actually, at the moment when she left the house, Ruby was expecting her Saturday to be entirely peaceful. Expecting and hoping. She hadn’t been sleeping well recently, and she wasn’t exactly feeling sharp. She was planning to nod hello to Ray Penny as she entered his secondhand bookshop; if the mood grabbed her she might even ask after his dog, Jake, who was recovering at the vets having poisoned himself by eating an entire bar of chocolate. Then she would browse the shelves for a good thriller and sit down to read. She didn’t feel like too much human interaction today.
True to the weather report, the wind was really beginning to take a hold, and as she headed down Cedarwood Drive her usually tidy dark hair was yanked free from its barrette and was now wildly wrapping across her face and over her glasses, making it very hard to see.
The ‘gusters’, as Twinford folk referred to them, had been blowing for the past fortnight, ever since the night of the Scarlet Pagoda Film Festival, an evening Ruby would never forget, for although it was not the first time she had fallen from a tall building, it was the first time she had been pushed from the top of one.
The building in question had been the Hotel Circus Grande and the pusher had been thief and psychopath Lorelei von Leyden. Ruby had not been the target, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and, now Lorelei was incarcerated in a maximum security jail awaiting trial, Ruby could sleep more easily. Ruby felt Lorelei was one of those people who just might bear a grudge.
As she turned the corner into Main, Ruby spotted Del Lasco striding out of the recently opened Slush Store, her left hand gripping a blue ice drink, her right hand, newly sprained, in a sling and her face wearing a sour expression. Ordinarily Ruby would have been pretty pleased to see Del but on this particular afternoon she sensed something was brewing. Eleven seconds later and this feeling of foreboding was confirmed as Del and Ruby’s Junior High nemesis, Vapona Begwell, marched out of the store followed by several of her cronies. It was obvious to even the casual observer that Vapona wasn’t about to ask Del the time of day.
‘You wanna say that again, Lasco?’ Vapona shouted. ‘I didn’t quite catch it.’
‘You heard me, Bugwart,’ said Del.
‘So say it to my face, if you dare.’
‘If you’d point me in the direction of your face, I’d be glad to,’ replied Del.
Vapona didn’t wait for another insult, nor did she try and extract an apology, she just clenched her fist and aimed to sock Del right slam in the mouth, only Del, who was used to kids taking a swing at her, ducked and Vapona found her fist making contact with friend and sidekick Gemma Melamare, and it was Gemma’s dainty little snub nose that took the hit.
The sound that came out of Melamare’s mouth made everyone freeze in their tracks; everyone but Ruby. She took the opportunity to yank Del by the hood of her sweatshirt and propel her right across the road towards the back alleys off Amster. Vapona’s gang, spellbound by what had just happened, took a minute to realise Del Lasco had left the scene.
‘Hey! Come back here Lasco, you chicken liver.’
‘Run!’ shouted Ruby.
Del let go of the blue slushy and she ran. They both did.
They fled down the back of the minimart and along the alley that joined Maize, over the street (car brakes screeching and horns honking) and on through the next two alleyways, across Maple, across Larch, across Fortune, and beyond, heading east to the busy road that was Crocker with all its countless seedy bars and secondhand shops filled with nothing you would ever want to buy.
They could hear Bugwart and her pals not so far behind, their voices yelling out across the fenced passageways. They kept running; only trouble was, there was nowhere to hide, no more back alleys on Crocker, just a long wide strip of flat road and bars, pawnbrokers and gambling outlets, nowhere for a kid to blend. When they reached the Five Aces Poker Bar, Ruby realised they were in trouble. Bugwart wasn’t giving up and though Ruby, using the parkour skills that Hitch had taught her, could now easily climb a low-rise and sprint across the roofs, Del with her sprained hand and lack of parkour skills could not.
Which was how come they ended up scrambling into the Five Aces dumpster and pulling down the lid.
Undignified for sure, but as the old saying went, beggars really can’t be so choosy and (if you wanted another one) any port in a storm.
Or, as Ruby’s RULE 73 had it: SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a nice place to hang out, and Ruby was at that moment regretting her decision to leave the tranquility of her bedroom and venture out into the big bad world.
They could hear Vapona talking to her gang.
‘Where did they go?’
‘Beats me.’
‘They just disappeared!’
Thump.
Vapona slammed her fist on the dumpster.
‘We lost em.’ She sounded pretty angry about it. ‘When I find Lasco, I’m gonna pulp her!’ To illustrate this intention, Vapona thumped the dumpster again, this time so hard that Ruby felt the thud vibrate through her.
The two of them listened to Vapona’s gang’s footsteps as they receded back towards Amster, their dread threats becoming less and less audible until only the thrum of passing cars could be heard.
Twenty minutes later – Ruby wasn’t taking any chances – they struggled out like earwigs emerging from debris.
They brushed themselves down, Del picking a fish head out from Ruby’s hooded top, Ruby peeling chewing gum from Del’s jeans, then they shook hands.
‘Congratulations Lasco, you’re alive,’ said Ruby.
‘But I smell like I died,’ said Del, sniffing the air. She looked at Ruby. ‘Your glasses look wonky.’
‘That’s the least of my problems,’ said Ruby. ‘Listen, nice bumping into you and all but I think I gotta take a shower,’ she called as she strode off towards home. The garbage smell was making her nauseous and she needed to clean up before the stench knocked her out.
‘Thanks for your assistance anyway,’ called Del.
‘No problem,’ shouted Ruby, breaking into a run. She felt this day could surely only get better, that was until the wind blew her hair over her eyes and – vision impaired – she collided with a parking meter.
Winded, she sat down for a moment on the sidewalk.
A banana skin fell from her sleeve.
It had to be said, this was not the kind of day she’d expected.
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AS RUBY STUMBLED IN THROUGH THE KITCHEN DOOR, Greg Whitney’s voice jingled out of the radio:
‘SO THOSE WINDS LOOK LIKE THEY REALLY MIGHT HIT HARD.’
‘YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,’ replied Shelly the weather girl. ‘THEY ARE REALLY BEGINNING TO WHIP UP AND IT WON’T BE LONG BEFORE TWINFORD CITY EXPERIENCES SOME VIOLENT STORMS.’
‘RAIN TOO, SHELLY?’
‘YOU CAN COUNT ON IT, GREG!’
Mrs Digby put down her apple peeler and planted her hands on her hips. The dishevelled state of Ruby was one thing; the smell of her a whole lot worse.
‘Child, have you been crouching in a garbage can by any chance?’
Ruby opened her mouth to explain but the housekeeper put up her hands.
‘Before you make up a whole bundle of untruths, I might as well tell you that Mr Chester saw you climbing out of a dumpster and he didn’t wait more than a minute before dialling up my number and spreading the good news.’
Ruby rolled her eyes.
‘The man is a virtual loudhailer of other people’s business,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘if you can call crouching in a garbage can “business”.’ She tutted. ‘Not that it would have escaped my keen eye that you look like something the cat dragged in but, that said, whatever you have been up to, and for whatever reason you thought it necessary, one thing’s not up for discussion: you need to take a bath.’
Ruby sniffed the air. ‘Yeah, it was sorta rancid in there.’
‘I thought you were lying low today?’ said the housekeeper.
‘I was trying to, and then I bumped into Del Lasco.’
‘Say no more,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘That child will have you banged up in the Big House before you can say, “call my lawyer”.’
Ruby went upstairs to her room, set the shower running and scrubbed the dumpster dirt out of her pores. She sprayed herself with a large waft of Wild Rose scent and put on some clean clothes – a pair of jeans, striped socks and a T-shirt. Like most of her T-shirts, it said something, this one bearing the words: I’ve heard it all before. She put on her glasses and could immediately see that there was a problem. The fall into the dumpster had bent them out of shape and the left arm no longer made contact with her left ear, so the glasses now sat at a strange angle. Since right at that moment she had no idea where she had put her spares, she would have to resort to her contact lenses: without either option, life was a total blur.
Once that was taken care of, she took a book from the bookcase and sat down to read.
Ruby owned a lot of books, ranging across all subjects. She read for every reason: inspiration, information and escape. If she valued any of her books above the others, perhaps the ones she would single out would be her code books. After all, it was her interest in codes that had landed her a job at Spectrum, an organisation so secret it was hard to know who actually controlled it, and who it was actually working for. All Ruby really understood was that the agency was on the side of good, a fact she had taken at face value when LB, her boss and head of Spectrum 8, had told her so.
Along with the job came her own personal minder and protector, a field agent who went by the name of Hitch and who disguised his true purpose by acting as the Redfort family household manager (or butler, as Ruby’s mother preferred it). He could have fooled anyone, and did fool everyone. To the outside world Hitch was one of those enviable assets – a manager who ensured one’s domestic life was pressed and ironed, and anything you forgot he was sure to remember.
Yet he also possessed skills most domestic managers lacked. These included scaling buildings, leaping from rooftops and the odd karate chop when required. He wasn’t bad in a crisis either: should you need to board a plane when it was already taxiing down the runway, Hitch was your man. To Ruby’s mom he was the best darned butler this side of the hemisphere; to Ruby he was a mentor, bodyguard, loyal ally and at times royal pain in the derrière.
The volume Ruby was engrossed in today, however, was neither codebook, textbook, nor true-life story. Today she was reading to relax her brain, a totally necessary pursuit if one wanted to find the answer to something one just couldn’t grasp.
RULE 6: SOMETIMES NOT THINKING ABOUT A PROBLEM IS THE BEST WAY TO FIND THE SOLUTION.
And there was a pretty big question that needed answering: what in tarnation was going on in Twinford? Ruby had worked four cases now for Spectrum, and all of them had been resolved, more or less.
But there was something still nagging at her. A sense that those cases were connected somehow, in some way she couldn’t grasp.
She hadn’t got a long way through Kung Fu Martians when one of her many phones began to ring. She had a good collection of telephones by now, having become interested in them when she was just five years old: every shape, every design, from a bar of soap to a squirrel in a tuxedo.
She reached for the donut and flipped it open.
‘Twinford Garbage Disposal, we depend on your trash.’
‘Ruby?’
