Scam on the Cam (3 page)

“Good afternoon, sir. I'm very sorry to importune you in the midst of what I'm sure must be an extremely busy time for you, but allow me to introduce myself: my name is Gemma Sarland, editor in chief of the school newspaper the
Goodall Days
, and these are my friends and colleagues Toby and Sesame; and we would be immensely grateful if you would let us interview you and have a look around the boathouse for a special feature in next month's issue.”

Toby whistled. I have to admit I was quite impressed. “Good job, Gemz! It's like you swallowed my mother for breakfast!”

“Should I flutter my eyelids a bit more?”

“No, your eyes are already barely more than a blur. But flash the pearl earrings. And don't forget to do that thing where you move your head and your hair stays exactly in place like you're a Lego figure.”

She frowned and crossed her arms, which proved that she wasn't a Lego figure.

“All right,” I said, “your turn, Toby. You'll be the cameraman.”

“Great! But I don't have a camera.”

“Not yet. But look what I borrowed from the real
Goodall Days
journalists.”

And I produced a huge camera with a telescopic zoom and as many buttons on it as there are warts on Mr. Halitosis's chin.

“Wow,” Gemma marveled. “Amanda let you borrow the school paper's camera? After the damage you did last time you borrowed their printer?”

“How was I supposed to know it wouldn't print on lasagna sheets? They're just as thin as paper. Anyway,
borrow
is a big word. Let's say I'll put it back in the cupboard before she
notices it's gone. Catch, Toby!”

“Hey, don't give it to me! You know how clumsy I am! What if I break it?”

“I'm at least ten times as clumsy as you, so your having it will make its life expectancy longer by at least a few minutes. Anyway, the gist of it is, you go in and pretend to take lots of pictures while Gemma prattles on about the interview. Right. Let's go, team!”

“Wait a minute,” said Gemma, pointing at me. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Has your brain suddenly been abducted by an ill-advised brain thief? I'm Sesame Seade, supersleuth on skates, Cambridge's first self-made superheroine! I'm almost internationally famous, feared by at least some criminals and a couple of my adventures have even been written down by an amicable pen-pusher for clever people to read. There are as many connections in my brain as—”

“Shut it, Sesame. I mean, which part are you playing in this story? While I'm being important and journalistic, and while Toby's merrily
snapping away, what will you be doing?”

“Oh,
that
. I thought you'd guessed. You know how adults, sadly, never trust me?”

“Yes,” chorused Toby and Gemma.

“Well, that's why I'll have to act extremely innocent. I'll keep looking at my shoes and shooting silly smiles at the walls. Just tell the rowers I'm the vaguely stupid kid in the class whom you've been told to take along and acknowledge in the article so she can feel special for one day in her life.”

“Why can't I do that?” moaned Toby. “I'm sure I'd be good at it.”

“No doubt. But don't worry, you'll be my inspiration. All right—let's get a move on!”

So we shot out of school on our faithful wheels: my purple roller skates lashed with orange flames, Gemma's tidy little scooter and Toby's red bike. The problem when we race through town like that is that we're a little bit faster than the speed of sound and it's happened a few times that we've run over various people,
some of them notorious criminals. Just like today, when there was a CLANG! and a BANG! and two OUCHES! and when the dust cloud finally settled, it revealed a very red Gemma and a very black-and-blue . . .

“Julius Hawthorne!” I exclaimed. “What are
you
doing here?”

“What do you mean?” he scoffed, dusting his embroidered school blazer. “This is my city too, you know. I was peacefully making my way home from the Laurels.”

Gemma beamed at him like he'd just said he was walking back from Hogwarts.

“I'm ever so sorry,” she said. “I hope you don't have too many bruises.”

“Bruises?” he replied. “Oh, you mean hematomas. Yes, a few, but I should be fine. We Laurel boys are made of ferromolybdenum.”

“Can you move out of the way of Gemma's wheels?” I asked. “We're trying to get somewhere to do something.”

“Oh yes? Riverward? What might it be?”

He scrunched up his eyes in a perfect imitation of Peter Mortimer having swallowed anti-worm medicine. “Perhaps training in secret, in hopes of one day beating us at rowing? Surely not?”

“Actually,” I said sourly, “not quite. We're going there to interview the Cambridge University rowing team for the school newspaper.”

“Are you now? Did you arrange that with Gwendoline, the coach?”

“Course. We're best mates. She and us are like that.”

And I showed my hand with four fingers all intertwined, which is quite difficult, if you want to take a moment to try it yourself.

“Funny,” snarled Julius. “She hasn't told me anything about you. Even though I see her every evening, since she's, you know, my
sister
.”

I have to admit I got a little bit warm around the ears, judging by my hair getting all lifted up by the steam in the manner of a hot air balloon. Before I could think of a good lie, Julius waved
and said, “Anyway, catch up later. Probably at the next race. I'm sorry I never see any of you for terribly long; it's all a bit of a blur. I do try to slow up my crew, but it's very unnatural for them to go so painfully sluggishly.”

And he was gone. I sped up to avoid having to listen to Gemma's reproaches about my ruining her chances of ever being recognized by Julius Hawthorne as anything other than a loser.

“Your parents ruined them first by putting you at Goodall,” replied Toby shrewdly.

We reached the big field at the north of the town and whooshed past a cluster of cows, spiraled around a few dogs tied to wheelchairs tied to people, sped up at the white-and-pink bridge beside which the weeping willow was still weeping and a few seconds later braked in front of the university boathouse. Just in time to avoid diving into the gray-green Cam River.

Next to us was a huge, shiny white rowboat, and on the bank were long black oars decorated with the light-blue stripes of
Cambridge. Examining the oars was a skinny, small, brown-haired student with glasses who looked nothing like a rower. He looked up when he heard us, and I switched to stupid mode (which is a very difficult mode for me to switch to).

“Can I help you?” he asked kindly. “Are you lost?”

Gemma's hand shot out toward his. “Good afternoon, sir. I'm very sorry to importune you . . .”

And we were in.

It turned out that the student's name was Will Sutcliffe, and that he was a student at Homerton College and the cox of the university rowing team. He was about as tall as me and barely heavier, and he had a smile as white as the boat and almost as big, which punctured his cheeks with two dimples.

“A school article on the university team! Sure, we'll find some time to answer your questions, of course,” he went on, taking us on a whistle-stop tour of the boathouse. “We've
just finished a short outing on the river; we were just practicing starts. We're going to have a debriefing session right now, with Gwen—the coach—she's probably going to come down in a minute . . .”

As he was opening and shutting doors and showing us around the smelly gym, the smelly changing rooms and the smelly offices, Gemma was busy taking notes and asking questions that Will didn't really need to fuel his endless chitchat. Toby, meanwhile, was taking so many pictures that I worried for a moment that the camera would melt. As for me, I was acting perfectly stupid, but my constellation of brain cells was taking in as much as possible.

And in particular the grotesque amount of bottles of antibacterial gel screwed to the walls, with handwritten inscriptions on Post-it Notes above them—'Keep Your Hands Clean! Bacteria Spread in Every Handshake!' and other such instructions that my parents would have been proud to give.

While Will was taking us up a smelly staircase, I nudged Gemma and pointed at one of them. She nodded.

“Will?” she asked innocently. “What's all that about? Have you all been getting a cold, or measles or the bubonic plague?”

“Oh no,” he said, suddenly somber. “There's been an outbreak of norovirus, or something of the sort. Three of our best rowers have come down with a terrible stomach illness and can't make the race. It's all a bit hush-hush, but it won't hurt if it ends up in your school newspaper—as long as you publish the article after the race.”

“What's norovirus?” asked Gemma.

“Some stomach bug, probably from the
river. But it's not the usual type, apparently. We're not sure. The guys who've caught it got extremely ill for about a week. When they're up and running again, it's too late, of course; they've lost too much weight and been out of practice for too long. They've had to give up, and we've pulled guys from the reserve crew. Pretty bad news for the team. Anyway, we're doing our best. They have to wash their hands all the time. Everyone's got their own personal tube of antibacterial gel!”

He got his out of his pocket and shook it under our noses.

“What's going on, Waldo? Who are those kids? Your schoolfriends?”

We'd reached the top of the staircase, but we still had to crane our necks to look at the boy who'd just spoken. And even looking up like that we couldn't quite make out the features of a face which was so high up in the distance that it was probably less oxygenated than the rest of us.

“Oh hi, Rob,” Will laughed. “You're funny—
no, they're just kids from a local school who want to run a story on the university team in their newspaper. I told them they could ask a few questions.”