Sleuth on Skates (7 page)

The unpleasant hammering noise started again, and the fluttering squad flooded in. In a few seconds, they unclipped their wings and flung them to the floor, ruffling a pile of brochures. One of them took off like a dove and landed next to me.

“What's that?” I said.

“Just the program,” replied Jeremy Hopkins. “They have to reprint them all, because Jen's not Odette any more.”

It was a slick-looking thing, with a big green
and white C in a circle to symbolize Cambridge, I guessed, and the words
Swan Lake
, in elaborate spirally writing.

I shuffled through it. Half a page was devoted to telling the reader everything about Jenna Jenkins's life so far. Nothing I didn't know before. Next was a pompous picture of the producer from a professional photo shoot, and in enormous letters:

Edwin Franklin, Third-Year
Student in Classics,
Trinity College.

The blurb babbled on about his achievements. I skimmed through the rest. Gemma's name was mentioned among a hundred others in the orchestra.

“Anyway,” said Jeremy, “I came here to listen to what people were saying in the wings, but I only overheard people congratulating each other. I don't think Jenna's disappearance is linked to the ballet. I think it's more sinister than that.”

Onstage, the music died out.

“Let's get out of here before the tutu battalion comes back,” said Jeremy.

We jumped to our feet and left the wings, blinking in the neon light of the entrance hall. When my eyes finally managed to focus, they focused on a stunned-looking vicar.

“Oh no,” I sighed.

“Sophie! What on Earth were you doing in there?”

“Just having a look around, Daddy. I've concluded that ballets are more interesting backstage.”

“Who is this young man?” said Dad in a voice that meant, “Who is this scoundrel?”

“That's Jeremy Hopkins,” I said obligingly.

“And what is Jeremy Hopkins doing here with you?”

My words were so good that Jeremy Hopkins nicked them: “Just having a look around. I've concluded that ballets are more interesting backstage.”

Dad shot him a hundred terrifying glares. “Why are you hanging out with my daughter?”

“I didn't know she was your daughter,” replied Jeremy.

The answer didn't seem to satisfy the holy man, whose nostrils frilled up in the manner of the huffy buffalo. “Right,” he said. “We're going home.”

“Daddy Daddy Daddy, I have an urgent question.”

“What is it?”

“Is the pregnant duck still in the garden? I'm worried, you see, because if Peter Mortimer sees her it's going to be World War III.”

Jeremy Hopkins chuckled, Dad obliterated him with another discharge of angry glares, then he ruffled my hair and said, ‘Yes, love, it's still there, but I thought of you and looked up a few things on the Internet about ducks.
Apparently, it's trying to find a place to settle down and lay eggs. Tomorrow I'll move it to Emmanuel College. They have a pond there, and no cats.”

“Oh, Daddy! I'm so proud of you! I'm sure God is really proud of you too. I bet he didn't know you had potential as a bird-relocalizer. Maybe that's your new calling!”

“Yes, well. Let's go.”

“Bye, Jeremy!”

“Bye, Sesame!”

And we walked home in the purple night.

Tuesday morning introduced itself rudely by shooting a painful ray of sun right into my opening eye. The garden was drowned in sunlight, the towers and gargoyles shone white. Peter Mortimer, flattened out in the manner of a bearskin, was on the terrace outside my window, purring like a diesel engine.

“Today, I'll find Jenna Jenkins,” I promised the world.

But before that I had to get dressed for school, and as I was putting on one sock, Peter Mortimer leapt on the other one and kidnapped it just like that.

“Peter Mortimer! Give that back, you vicious velociraptor!”

But the sock-hijacker dived out of the room and tumbled awkwardly down the stairs. A second later, he'd slipped into Mum's study to hide the indispensible piece of clothing under her desk.

“You are such an obnoxious example of felineness! I will have you hanged high and short!”

Knowing himself to be under the protection of God and the East Anglian Cat Lovers' Society, Peter Mortimer didn't budge, and I had to crawl under the furniture to dislodge the hissing monster
from his lair. When I finally managed to push him out of the study, I was bleeding from all sides like a hot-water bottle in a hedgehog's bed.

And then, since I was in Mum's study, which doesn't happen that often, I thought I might as well have a little look around.

“Best Mummy in the world, queen of all mummies, endlessly beautiful model of mummyhood?”

“What have you done again?”

“Well, you see, admirable Maman, it all happened very accidentally. A treacherously slippery floor sent me flying into your study, and then my tie tied itself around the handle of the middle drawer of your desk, and it slid open, and suddenly a massive gust of wind hooked out a single piece of paper . . .”

“For goodness' sake, Sophie! You've been looking through my desk?”

“I can't have done, Mother, it's made of solid wood.”

“You know what they say about curiosity.”

“Yes, that's why I made sure Peter Mortimer was out of the room. Anyway,” I stated before she could retort, “this single small rectangular piece of paper somehow landed in my hand, and try as I may, I couldn't help but notice . . .“

“Cut it, Sophie. You found the cheque. What of it?”

“Six hundred thousand pounds, Mum! Six hundred thousand pounds! How many bags of sea-salted caramel fudge is that? I can't even represent it in my head! If I close my eyes and scrunch up my face like this—see how scrunched up it gets—like this—even if I do that, I can't imagine it in my brain . . .”

“Good, because it's not the kind of money I
want my eleven-year-old to be able to imagine. Why do you only have one sock?”

“Who in the universe could possibly have given you all that money?”

Mum rolled her eyes and dropped a few extra sugar lumps in her tea. “It's not mine, you featherbrain. It's for Christ's. For the College. To buy new books for the library and help a few students pay for their university fees. It's a donation from Cooperture.”

“A donation? Why?”

“I'll have you know, my dear, that it is extremely frequent for colleges to receive donations from sponsors. When you barged into Auntie's Tea Shop yesterday, you interrupted a very important meeting I was having with the President and the Vice-President of Cooperture, and with Professor Philips who put us all in touch. Luckily, they mustn't have been too appalled by your shockingly disgusting socks, because they made very generous donations to ten different colleges, including Christ's. There might be more in the future. It is a very large
sum of money, but there's no reason to be so shocked.”

“But why give all this money away? Do they have too much?”

Mum rearranged her eyebrows in a way that made it clear she was explaining difficult things to a small child, took my hand, and said slowly, “No, darling. It's in return for exposure. That's what companies do. Cooperture gave us all that money in exchange for the installation of a piece of software on the college's Internet system. Now every time students open the Internet in college, they see the word ‘Cooperture' written at the top of the page. And that is all.”

“So they might buy things from them?”

“No, Cooperture is a marketing agency, they don't make things. They just work for companies that do. They tell these companies how to get people to buy more of their products, and they help them sell them by making adverts. Anyway, it's too complicated for you to understand.”

“What's the point of advertising themselves then?”

“The point is . . . Well, the point is that students might then want to apply for a job at Cooperture.”

“But then they'll have to pay them again for the salaries!”

“Yes, but over several years the students might make them money.”

I shook my head. “I don't understand. It doesn't make sense! Giving all that money just because in ten years' time a student from Christ's might earn it back for them?”

Mum let go of my hand and laughed, looking at the ceiling. “Oh, Sophie! Why do you even care? Don't worry about Cooperture, they have enough calculators and people who know how to use them to make absolutely sure that their investment will be worth it.”

“But Mum, don't you find it weird . . .”

“Why do you only have one sock? We're leaving in five minutes!”

“No news from the police about Jenna Jenkins?”

“No! Will you ever start minding your own business? Get ready, or else!”

So I got ready, because else isn't pleasant when Mum's involved.