Scam on the Cam (13 page)

And then I had a bit of a headache, and for the second time in less than a week, everything went
                                                                                             

“How dare he hit a skull that contains a brain that has as many connections in it as there are stars in the universe?”

This question remained unanswered, for I happened to be talking to a bunch of bags and luggage, which I could barely see anyway, as me and my dumb leathery companions were locked inside the trunk of a van.

I don't know if you've ever been locked inside the trunk of a van, but it's quite hustly and bustly in there. Not exactly the kind of place you'd elect for a cup of tea, unless you wanted it to go everywhere but your mouth. And it's pretty cold, too. And it's pretty dark. And it's ferociously noisy.

And I'd been unconscious for long enough that I couldn't fall asleep again even if I tried. Technically, it's true that I was in a sleeping bag, but the bag was zipped up and I was inside all tied up with rope, with just my eyes peering at the top, so the situation wasn't particularly doze-inducing.

“Ouch!” I ouched as the van braked and a bag flew at me and fell on top of my head.

This time, it felt like the van had stopped for good, as the engine died down. I wasn't sure how long I'd been unconscious, but I guessed we must have just arrived in London, where the crew was to stay in a hotel for the night. I heard the doors slamming, and Gwendoline's curt voice, muffled by the noise of the dying engine, saying, “You get the bags out of the van, Wally.”

“Okey doke, Gwen!” said Will's cheerful voice.

He opened the boot, and light flowed in.

“I'm awake!” I said.

“Shut up or you won't be awake for long,” he replied.

“I didn't have very good dreams,” I said. “There was this lingering ache next to my ear, I wonder why.”

“I said shut up.”

“What are you going to do with me? Please don't kill me. My grandparents would be sad, I'm their only granddaughter.”

“I. Said. Shut. Up.”

He got all the bags out and hauled some on his shoulders.

“It's not very comfortable in here,” I said. “On a scale of ‘bed of nails' to ‘mattress of pure cotton wool,' it's much closer to the former.”

“Poor darling,” he groaned.

“I'm hungry, too. I haven't found the minibar.”

He rolled his eyes, and closed the trunk again.

It's funny how reassuring a bunch of bags and suitcases can be.

You only realize it once you're all alone without any bags and suitcases around.

It's funny how reassuring the noise of the
engine and the hustle and bustle of being driven around can be.

You only realize it once you're in a dark, quiet, motionless nothingness of a place.

“Don't panic, Sesame Seade,” I commanded. “Don't think about panicking. Think about how to get out of the locked trunk of a van when you're tied up in a sleeping bag in a manner very much resembling that of a sausage roll.”

I began to crawl along like a worm, and then decided to upgrade to caterpillar, getting my legs close to my head and then far again. The trunk was big. I caterpillared my way through one side of it. Nothing there. Then the other, near the door, where I met some sort of cuddly toy that had been abandoned there. Then the next side, and finally the last . . .

And that's when I bumped into something hard, which fell to the side with a metallic CLUNK, filling the place with an atrocious smell.

“Oh mirth and eternal joy,” I sighed. “It's like being trapped in a locked room with Halitosis. What is this repulsive stuff?”

This repulsive stuff was now slowly imbibing the side of the sleeping bag, and filtering through it all the way to my skin.

“Cripes on a pair of purple roller skates,” I cursed. “Engine oil! Who keeps engine oil inside one's trunk? Well, everyone, I guess, but still. I don't need any ointment, thank you very much, despite my sausage-roll state.”

And now I was disgustingly oily.

“Well, at least,” I noted with some satisfaction, “the oil has loosened the rope inside a little bit. It's definitely more comfortable this way. Maybe I'll even be able to sleep . . . Wait a minute. It's LOOSENING the ROPE!”

So I began to pull. And push. And tweak. And turn. And squiggle and wiggle and wriggle. And in the manner of the caterpillar slowly sliding out of its cocoon to emerge as a beautiful butterfly, I freed one hand, then the other hand, unzipped the zipper and was OUT!

(Except, of course, that butterflies don't have hands and cocoons don't have zippers; just pointing this out in case I get accused of
spreading falsities.)

“And now, my faithful mobile phone, you're going to call Mum and Dad,” I said.

I extracted the faithful mobile phone from my pocket and clicked “Call Mum.”

“Unfortunately,” said a voice at the other end of the line, “it looks like you haven't got enough credit to make this call. Why not top up by calling . . .”

“Bother and double bother and triple bother with bother cream on top,” I pestered. “All Gemma's fault for babbling on about Toby's mosaic on the phone to me the other time. Well, I can still call the police, since emergency numbers don't cost anything.”

So I dialed 911, and a voice on the other end of the line said, “Hello there. It looks like you're calling us from a Phone4Kids phone. Are you a child? Are you sure you really want to call the emergency services? It's a very serious offense to call them if you're not really in a situation of emergency, you know. Have you told an adult that you're making this call? If not, you really should try and find an adult who can make it instead of you. If you really want to proceed to the emergency services, key 1.”

“Yes, yes, I do, you useless, terrible, atrocious, not-in-the-least-useful phone,” I grumbled.

And I tried to press 1. Except my hands were covered in oil, so the phone joyfully leapt out of my fist in the manner of an Olympic diver, and crashed onto the floor of the trunk, exploding
into a great number of pieces, most of which drowned in the oil.

“I cannot believe this!” I shouted. “The only time I want you alive and well, you go and die on me! You morbidly catastrophic piece of technology! You epicly abominable machine sent to destroy the Earth! I hate you and I hate the day my parents first laid eyes on you!”

My imprecations didn't seem to motivate the dead device to be alive again. I sat down, still as greasy as a French fry, and sulked. How dare Will do that to me? He who was so nice, so sweet. Will-Wally, always smiling, always positive, always—

“Wally,” I said to the dark trunk. “Wally. Why does that ring a bell?”

May I?
interrupted my well-connected neurons in the form of a polite brain butler.
I should like to suggest that you were vaguely reminded of the
Where's Wally?
books the last time you saw that red-and-white woolly hat
.

“Yes, that's it,” I said. “It did look like Wally's hat in the books. I was going to say it, but Toby
interrupted me. What about it?”

Could it be because Will looks like Wally that he owns a red-and-white hat, perhaps as a joke from his fellow team members? Just a thought, of course
, added my brain butler hastily.

“What do you mean?” I asked it. “What's Will got to do with that? It's Gwen and Julius's stolen jewelry in that hat.”

Well, Madam
, whispered the amiable neuronal butler,
perhaps I wouldn't be so hasty. It struck me that the pirate described the zief, in fact, not as blond like Julius, but as brown-haired, like Toby. And like
 . . .

“. . . like WILL!” I shouted. “Will, who's short, small and brown-haired! Will, who was the only one on the staircase with us when Gemma's earrings got stolen! Will, the jewelry thief? But why?”

I seem to recall that you said once that those burglaries might have been performed in order to pay for the poison, but I may be too ambitious in my hypothesis
.

“The poison,” I murmured. “Will would be
the
poisoner
, too? But how?”

My brain butler coughed a little bit, and said,
I shall leave you to mull over it. As for myself, I think I have a frog in my throat
.

Frog.

FROG.

Will studies frogs.

Will studies how frogs' skins produce poison, which in turn can intoxicate humans by touching their skins.

Will, who could, with a little bit of money, buy more of the frogs, recently . . .

. . . and gather enough of the poison to distill it, and put into something small and easy to carry, such as . . .

“
A tube of antibacterial gel!
” I shouted. “That's it! All the while we were thinking about food, all the while—but the poison was in the gel that Will was giving people to disinfect their hands! He gave it to Gemma, Toby and me as he was driving us home—he must have felt threatened by our findings—and I bet he did the same to Jeremy and
Marcel as he drove them to the police station! Of course, things could have become a bit problematic for him if the police had seen the jewelry and traced it back to him . . .”

But why?
Why
would he want the Cambridge team to be poisoned like that, when he was clearly so keen to win the race that he'd locked me inside the trunk of a van so that it wouldn't get canceled?

Just as I was pondering upon this incomprehensible act of evil, crunchy noises outside the van indicated that two people were approaching.

“I can't find it anywhere,” said Gwendoline, “so it must have fallen off my bag and be somewhere in the boot.”

“Are you sure you brought it?” asked Julius.

“Of course,” she scoffed. “It's the team's mascot! Our little Cambridge teddy bear. I wouldn't have left it in Cambridge for the world.”