The Ruby Redfort Collection: 4-6: Feed the Fear; Pick Your Poison; Blink and You Die. Lauren Child
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was standing in the Spectrum lab looking at the evidence: a small card in a little plastic zip-lock bag.
‘This is it?’
‘Uh huh,’ said SJ. ‘We are just conducting one more test before it’s all yours.’
‘What are you testing for?’ asked Ruby.
‘Toxic substances,’ said SJ.
‘What? You think it’s poisoned or something?’ said Ruby.
‘I doubt it but you never know.’
‘I guess you don’t,’ said Ruby. ‘Mind if I take a look at the card before you run your tests?’
‘Sure,’ said SJ.
Ruby took the card out of the zip-lock bag. One side was entirely blank. On the other side was some kind of touch code made up of dots, some were punched into the card, and some were punched out.
‘Any thoughts?’ said SJ when Ruby handed the card back.
‘Not yet,’ said Ruby. The dots meant something, but without more code and ideally something to give context, there was no way to crack them.
‘OK,’ said SJ. She put the card back in the bag. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’
‘I might go grab a drink while you do your thing,’ said Ruby. ‘I could use something sugary.’
‘You know, some people consider sugar to be a toxin?’ said the young technician.
‘Yeah, my mom for one,’ said Ruby, ‘but it sure does taste sorta good.’
Ruby was a little weary and was thinking a pep-up soda might be just what she needed. Unfortunately, however, she ran straight into Froghorn by the drinks machine and got into a little altercation with him.
‘This machine doesn’t dispense bottled milk,’ he said.
‘Strange,’ said Ruby, ‘because it seems to attract babies.’
‘You are so childish,’ said Froghorn.
‘You started it,’ said Ruby.
‘I started it? Me? You lowered the maturity level the second you stepped into Spectrum back in March.’
‘Wow, I managed to get it below your level, who knew that was possible.’
‘Don’t you miss the other crèche kids?’ asked Froghorn.
The sound of fingernails tapping on metal caused Ruby and Froghorn to stop their bickering and turn around. What they saw was LB standing right behind them, her fingers drumming on the side of the fridge. They hadn’t heard her arrive due to her bare feet and almost silent footsteps.
‘I seem to have stepped into some dreadful version of kindergarten,’ she said, her nose wrinkled. ‘I found preschool unbearable the first time around, do not make me suffer it again.’ This was both a demand and a warning.
Froghorn’s cheeks coloured pink; he did not like getting caught out, especially not by LB, the very person he so hoped to impress. Without another word the Spectrum 8 boss turned and continued her silent way along the corridor.
By the time Ruby made it back to the lab she was feeling flustered. She had wasted a whole twenty minutes on nothing at all and now she was about to examine a piece of evidence that also offered little in the way of help.
The lab technician had gone, but the little white card had been placed on the counter top underneath a bright Anglepoise lamp. A powerful magnifier was sitting next to it so she could examine the card more closely, but as it turned out she didn’t need to. It was perfectly plain to see that the card was no longer blank. What had been a small area of plain white was now dissected by thin black lines forming a sort of grid.
Ruby picked up the phone and dialled.
‘Blacker,’ came the voice down the line.
‘It’s me, get yourself down to the lab, something just came to light.’
TWO MINUTES LATER, BLACKER WAS STANDING NEXT TO HER – he looked more dishevelled than usual, perhaps due to the sprint from the upper floor.
He looked over Ruby’s shoulder. ‘Well I’ll be. . .’
‘It must have been the heat,’ said Ruby. ‘It was left under this lamp and I think that’s what did it. Boy I could kiss Froghorn.’
‘You OK Ruby?’ Blacker was looking concerned. ‘You sound like you might need to lie down.’
‘It’s a figure of speech, not actually, nah, you know what I’m saying, it’s just if I hadn’t gotten into this fight with him then I wouldn’t have left the card under the lamp so long and then it might not have reacted with the heat. . .’ She was staring intently at the card. ‘So what does it look like to you?’
Blacker didn’t say anything for a few minutes and then broke the silence by saying, ‘Well, on the one hand it looks like how one might draw a window, you know, the rectangle shape with one line down the middle and three cutting across it like glazing bars making six panes of glass.’
‘And?’ said Ruby.
‘On the other hand it looks a lot like a loyalty card.’
‘Exactly what I thought,’ said Ruby. ‘So what if it’s both? The window image is telling us it’s the calling card of the thief who comes in through the window, and the grid markings are also telling us how many things he’s going to take.’
‘So why are the boxes all empty?’
‘You got me,’ sighed Ruby.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Blacker, he walked to the intercom and paged the lab technician.
Two minutes later, SJ was back.
‘Something happened?’ said SJ.
Blacker pointed at the card.
SJ peered at it first with her eyes and then through the magnifier.
‘Very interesting,’ she said. ‘It reacted to heat, so you are wondering what else it might react to?’
‘Yup,’ confirmed Blacker.
SJ wasted no time and began setting up various tests using a number of liquids – mild acids, alkalis, various other substances. Drop by drop they fell onto the card, but revealed nothing.
Black light revealed more nothing.
X-rays revealed nothing too.
Same when they took the card to a dark room and dunked it in a developing bath, as if it was photographic paper.
Finally SJ took off her goggles, peeled off her gloves and sat down. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ she said with resignation. ‘Not sure what else I can throw at it.’
‘Looks like that’s all folks,’ said Blacker. ‘Rube, go on home and put your head on a pillow, we can look at this again in the morning.’
It was disappointing to make one breakthrough with the grid lines, only to get no further, but since they had hit a dead end, they decided they all might as well head on home.
Once back at Cedarwood Drive, Ruby watched some TV but she couldn’t concentrate. Her book wasn’t holding her attention either.
Finally she gave up