Eye Spy Page 5

  I explained what had happened, and we agreed that we’d give her a few days to think about the reward and then, if she hadn’t got in touch, we’d talk to her again.

  It was almost four o’clock and the shops were starting to pull their shutters down and lock up. It was time we headed home. As we walked through the big glass doors of the mall into the market square and headed towards the Promenade, Donna said, “D’you really think they’re a dog-napping gang?”

  “I dunno, but we might as well follow them up since we haven’t got any other leads.” As I mulled over everything we’d done in the last two days, I couldn’t help thinking gloomily to myself that we were no further forward than we had been the day before. We’d have to try and do better tomorrow.

  Chapter Nine: EAVESDROPPING

  I hate Mondays. Let’s face it, nobody’s keen to get back to school after the weekend, but at Lea Green Monday mornings are even more deadly because that’s when Mr Bull holds his Year 8 assemblies.

  That Monday there was more than the usual amount of chattering and giggling because there was a rumour going round that someone had seen Mr Owen and Miss Lovelace kissing on the top deck of a bus.

  “That’s disgusting!” Donna whispered. “They’re both so old!”

  I never got a chance to reply, because at that moment Mr Bull appeared at the front of the hall and roared “Silence!” in his usual friendly manner. The front rows were the first to shut up; they were right under his nose. The rest of us took a bit longer. Finally, everybody was quiet. Bull clasped his hands behind his back and stared round the room, trying to catch someone whispering, or sneezing, or coughing, or even farting. It was a little game he played with us at assembly. If he could begin the morning by bawling out some unlucky kid, it would put him in a good mood for the rest of the day. It’s not enough for the Pitbull that he’s the Head and everyone has to jump at his command; he has to ram it home to us every single day. Talk about power-crazy – he could give Adolf Hitler a run for his money.

  Nobody was playing ball today, so after throwing us all a filthy look for not allowing him his morning fun, Bull started out on the usual round of news, threats, and bits of useless information. Just as I was about to switch off and start thinking about something more interesting, I caught the words ‘parents’ evening’ and ‘Tuesday’. I groaned inwardly. We’d have to keep Nan away from Bull or he’d have another go at all three of us about the poker game.

  Bull was coming to the end of his speech at last. “… and finally, the Managing Director of Holtech Systems will be addressing Year 8 in the Hall on Wednesday afternoon as part of our career opportunities initiative…” Holtech was the biggest employer in the area. I wasn’t interested in working on an assembly line when I left school, so the whole thing would probably be another boring waste of time.

  At last the assembly came to an end and we began to file out of the hall. Our first period on Monday was Modern Languages. I went off to my French lesson, while Donna and Emerald, who were doing Spanish, disappeared in the opposite direction.

  As I passed the open doorway of a Year 11 classroom, I did a double-take. Two girls were standing by the window, chatting. Even without the red lipstick and with her long hair tied back, there was no mistaking Atlanta. The other girl was her gum-chewing friend. I couldn’t help it; I was so surprised I stopped in my tracks. A boy standing near the door saw me staring and called out, “Hey, Atlanta, your fan club’s arrived!” The friend sniggered and waved at me. “Hi, Shorty!”

  I could feel my cheeks turn red as I dashed off down the corridor. Their laughter echoed after me.

  Our second lesson was English with Mr Cohen. I like Mr Cohen. He’s not sarcastic like Mr Owen, or twittery like Miss Lovelace, or scary like the Pitbull. English is my best subject, and I usually look forward to it, but today my mind was on other things. Mr Cohen was already in the room when we arrived, so I didn’t get a chance to speak to Donna, who sat down with Emerald at the next table. I waited until Mr Cohen was writing on the board, then I wrote ‘BIKER GIRL IS IN YEAR 11’ on the back of one of our Eye Spy business cards and passed it to Donna. Unluckily for me, Mr Cohen chose that very moment to turn round, and swooped on the note just as Donna was holding out her hand for it. I waited, praying he wouldn’t read it out to the class, but instead, after reading both sides of the card, he just raised his eyebrows at me.

  “You really ought to be able to spell ‘discreet’ by now, Alex.” He thrust the note into his pocket and turned back to the board. I sighed with relief and forced myself to concentrate on the lesson.

  In between English and Maths, I grabbed the chance to tell Donna about Atlanta.

  “What d’you think we ought to do now?” I asked. “Is it worth following her after school and seeing where she goes? She might lead us to Kiki.”

  “We can try, I suppose. And in the meantime we’ll keep an eye out for her at break and lunch. If she’s part of a gang, she might boast about them to her friends.”

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best we could come up with. In the end, it was a waste of time, because we couldn’t find her anywhere either at morning break or in the canteen at lunchtime. At two o’clock we admitted defeat and headed off to the Art room for our next lesson.

  I dragged my feet. I’m rubbish at art, and I wasn’t looking forward to an hour and a half listening to Miss Lovelace explain viewpoint and perspective. By the time I reached the patch of muddy grass that separated the main building from the Art block, the Science block and the canteen, Donna was way ahead with a group of other girls.

  Years ago, some history teacher with a sense of humour christened that patch of grass ‘the Somme’. Mr Bull likes to call it ‘the quadrangle’, as if Lea Green was some posh private school and not a rundown comprehensive. If anyone’s going to try and rough you up in school, that’s where they’ll do it, because there are hardly any windows overlooking it, so the chances are that nobody will see. Even if you’re lucky and don’t get hurt, you end up covered in mud, so you get in trouble with both your parents and the teachers.

  I lingered by the door to the Somme, pretending to look for something in my schoolbag and putting off the moment when I’d have to join the Art class. Then I heard the sound of a window opening, and became aware of voices coming from somewhere above my head. Although I could hear their conversation, they couldn’t see me, because I was standing in a deep recess in the wall.

  “Thank goodness! Fresh air at last! Do you think they’ll ever get the heating to run at the right temperature? It’s like the Amazon rainforest in here.”

  The voice belonged to Miss Wren, our IT teacher. I liked her because she made her lessons fun and she didn’t bawl at us the way a lot of the other teachers did.

  “When you’ve worked at Lea Green as long as I have, you’ll get used to it.” That was Mr Cohen speaking.

  Miss Wren laughed. “How do you stand it here, Frank? The whole place is falling to pieces, and Bull is a monster…”

  “It’s the people that make the place, Lucy, and some of the kids here really know how to use their initiative. Look at this: I took it off Alex Macintyre earlier.” I groaned. Now Mr Cohen and Miss Wren would make fun of us.

  “A private detective agency?” Miss Wren said. “You’re right. That shows true entrepreneurial spirit!”

  “With a mother like that, it’s probably in the genes.”

  I nipped out of the recess and peered upwards, but the sound of their voices was already fading as they moved away from the window.

  My head buzzed with questions. What was ‘entrepreneurial spirit’? Was it a compliment or a criticism? What had Miss Wren meant about ‘a mother like that’? And what was it that was in our genes? None of it made any sense, but I was already late, so I couldn’t think about it now. Shouldering my bag, I hurried off towards the art block.

  In the Art room, Miss Lovelace was trying vainly to get the class to settle down. There was a lot of whispering and sniggeri
ng going on. Her ‘romance’ with Mr Owen was still a hot topic, but she seemed genuinely puzzled about why people were making fun of her. I guessed that, as usual, the rumours had been untrue.

  Finally we got started. The theme this week was ‘faces’, and she told us each to pair off and try and draw a likeness of our partner’s face.

  I sat down next to Ryan Mitchell. Ryan’s the only person in our class who’s worse at Art than I am. Miss Lovelace always shakes her head and sighs when she sees our efforts. All the other teachers love Ryan, though, because he always knows the answers to their questions. He’s like a walking encyclopedia: full of all sorts of unlikely information.

  After a while, Miss Lovelace wandered over to the corner where Ryan and I were trying to make ourselves as unobtrusive as possible. She sighed when she saw my sketch. “Oh dear. Not one of your better efforts, is it, Alex? Perhaps you should try a collage next time. You might find that easier than a pencil sketch.” She wandered off again, and when she was out of earshot I whispered to Ryan, “D’you know what ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ means?”

  He thought for a minute, then shook his head. “Sorry. Why d’you want to know?”

  “It’s not important.” I wasn’t going to explain what I’d overheard to Ryan; this was strictly family business. I began to mull over the comments Mr Bull and Mr Cohen had made about our mother, and the few facts about her that we’d been able to scrounge from Nan. As I struggled to make my portrait look more like Ryan and less like one of the seven dwarves, I tried to think where I could get hold of more information.

  The main problem was that we didn’t have any other family members to ask. Nan had fallen out with her family in Glasgow when she married Granddad; that was why they’d moved south and settled in Holcombe Bay. Granddad was an orphan, so he didn’t have any relatives either, and Dad was their only child. Granddad died when we were five, so that just left Nan, Dad, Donna and me. That’s one of the reasons Donna and I are so close. With no brothers, sisters or cousins, we only have each other.

  By the time the end of school bell went, I was no nearer to working out how I could find out more about our mother. I decided to put the problem aside while we concentrated on finding the missing dog.

  We’d agreed earlier that our best bet would be to try and follow Atlanta home, in case Kiki was with her. Luckily, there’s only one way out of Lea Green: through the huge pair of wrought iron gates opening onto the road. We decided to hover near the gates and wait for Atlanta to show up. Twenty minutes later, as the stream of kids going home turned into a trickle, she still hadn’t appeared. “Perhaps she got a detention,” Donna suggested with a giggle. “She looks the rebellious type.”

  And then there she was, striding towards us, looking at her watch as if she was afraid of being late. She’d untied her hair, replaced her blazer with the leather jacket, removed her tie, and tucked her trousers into knee-high leather boots. She was wearing make-up too: lots of black eyeliner, and her trademark bright red lipstick that made her face look even paler. She was running a huge risk. Bull would have had a fit if he’d caught her looking like that on the school premises.

  Just as she reached the gates, with perfect timing, a motorbike screeched to a halt a few yards away, and a voice I recognised called out, “Come on, girl. You’re late.”

  “So are you!” she replied. She walked straight past us without giving us a second glance. Then, as she jumped on the back of the bike, she turned round and winked at me. As they roared off down the street, Donna dissolved into giggles.

  “Shut your mouth, Alex. You look like a goldfish.”

  I pursed my lips. “So much for following her! Why didn’t it occur to me she might get a lift home?”

  Yet again, our suspect had eluded us. It was getting to be a habit, and I was fed up. “Let’s call it a day and go home,” I said.

  That night, we’d just sat down at the supper table, and Nan was ladling out portions of food when Dad came in looking positively chirpy. This was so unusual that Nan stopped what she was doing and looked hard at him.

  “Have you won the lottery and forgotten to tell us?” she asked.

  Ignoring Nan, Dad hung his coat up on the peg, looked at the food on the plate, and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Mmm… Lancashire hotpot. My favourite.”

  He sat down at the table and started to eat. “Er… Dad?” I began, but he pretended not to hear and continued to wolf down his meal. Donna and I exchanged glances with each other. After a few moments her curiosity got the better of her and she said, “Come on, Dad, tell us what’s up.”

  Dad ignored her and went on eating. Finally, when his plate was clean, he let out a satisfied sigh.

  “Aahh… Only your grandmother knows how to satisfy the inner man.” Then, as we all stared at him expectantly, he smiled broadly and said, “I guess you all deserve to hear the good news. The Ministry is interested in my ideas. They’re sending a man down here on Wednesday so I can put Hamish through his paces.”

  We all cheered. Nan went and hugged Dad. “Well done, son,” she said. “I knew you’d succeed eventually.”

  Dad shook his head ruefully. “It’s not in the bag yet, you know. These are early days. There’s still plenty that could go wrong.” But you could see he was cautiously optimistic; he’d never before got this far with any of his inventions.

  That night, after Nan and Dad had had a celebratory drink, we all sat down and played Monopoly for the rest of the evening. A couple of hours later, halfway through a complicated manoeuvre in which he was trying to acquire Park Lane off Donna, Dad’s lack of sleep finally caught up with him. His eyelids started to droop and he said, “Goodnight, all. Going to sleep now.” Then he lay back in his chair and went out like a light.

  Nan covered him with an old rug, and we all tiptoed out of the room, leaving him to his well-earned rest.

  As we went upstairs, I grumbled, “That’s typical of Dad. The only occasion in months he’s had the time to play a game with us and he falls asleep. I was winning, too.”

  Donna giggled. “I bet he’s dreaming of thousands of little Hamishes rolling off the production line.”

  It was difficult to believe that Dad’s dream might soon become reality if he could just impress the man from the Ministry. I crossed my fingers and prayed that the meeting would go well.

  Chapter Ten: ROMEO AND JULIET

  I wanted to go into town after school on Tuesday to see if there was any sign of Sergei, but Nan insisted we come straight home and have an early supper before the parents’ evening. It seemed wiser not to risk annoying Nan again, in case she took away another month’s pocket money, so we did as we were told.

  That evening, Dad was extra fidgety. He’d sit down in an armchair and then, almost instantly, get up again and start prowling around like a caged animal. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. I wondered if he was anxious about what the man from the Ministry would think of Hamish. I didn’t think he had anything to worry about. Hamish wasn’t just cute, he was clever too, but I could understand why he was nervous. I would have been too, if I was him.

  At supper, he ate his meal absent-mindedly and didn’t join in the conversation. When we’d all finished eating, Nan said, “Right, you two, coats on. We need to get moving.”

  Dad looked up. “Where are you going?”

  “Parents’ evening. If you’re at a loose end whilst we’re out, Ian, you can do the washing up for me. I want to put my feet up when I get back.”

  Dad jumped up. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll go to the parents’ evening and do the washing up. How’s that?”

  We all stared at him in amazement. Dad never did parents’ evenings, which was just as well, considering what might happen if he had a confrontation with the Pitbull.

  I once heard somebody say that an eccentric is a person who doesn’t care what anybody else thinks of them. That’s Dad, all right. Because he’s not worried what anyone thinks about his appearance or behavio
ur, you never know in advance what he’s going to do or say if he’s provoked. That was why keeping him away from Mr Bull was crucial.

  Nan gave Dad a hug. “Thanks, Ian. I really appreciate that.” She disappeared into the sitting room and we heard her switch on the television.

  Dad rubbed his hands together. “Come on, then. You heard the lady. Let’s go.” He grabbed his jacket off its peg, wound a very long red scarf round his neck, and hustled us out of the front door before we had time to object. He started walking briskly in the direction of Lea Green while we trailed behind, trying not to think of all the things that could go wrong when we got there.

  “This is going to be so embarrassing!” Donna hissed in my ear. “If he does anything awful, we’ll never live it down.”

  “It could be worse. D’you remember that time he went into town wearing tartan trousers, flip-flops, and a baseball cap saying ‘Kiss me quick’?”

  She shuddered. “Wasn’t that awful? But seriously, how are we going to keep him away from the Pitbull?”

  “Dunno. We’ll have to play it by ear. Maybe he won’t even be there.” I didn’t really believe that. Mr Bull loves to show off to the parents. They see a cuddly Father Christmas lookalike with a white beard and red cheeks, which is just what he wants them to see. They never realise it’s all an act.

  We were still lagging behind Dad as we passed through the school gates and joined the stream of other families heading for the parents’ evening, but once we were inside the building he stopped and waited for us to catch him up.

  “Right then, who have we got to see?” I ran through the list, ending up with Miss Lovelace, the Art teacher. “But she’s not important,” I added, remembering the unconvincing portrait of Ryan I’d drawn the day before.

  “Speak for yourself!” said Donna, glaring at me. “You may be hopeless at art, but she’s very pleased with my work!”

  Dad smiled, as if he was looking forward to a real treat. “After you,” he said, gesturing to us to lead the way.