Gangster’s Shoulder.’
‘So I was right,’ marvelled Clancy. ‘He was in a shoot out.’ His face lit up. ‘You know he’s probably on the run, hiding out at your house, stealing your stuff and selling it.’
‘Clance, that brain of yours never ceases to amaze.’
But she couldn’t help thinking he might not be so far from the truth.
Ruby pretty much sleep-walked through her morning classes, so distracted was she by the puzzle she needed to solve. And then at 2.30 during her history lesson she suddenly saw what it was she couldn’t see before.
Mrs Schneiderman was giving a very tedious lecture about the ancient Greeks, and those students who weren’t staring out of the window were busy painting their fingernails with Wite-Out and generally working hard to keep from falling asleep. It wasn’t that anyone didn’t want to be interested, it was just that Mrs Schneiderman was one of those people who managed to make even the most interesting things sound very dull indeed. It was something to do with her delivery – she tended to ramble. Ruby was brought out of her thoughts and back into the classroom by the sound of one hundred thumbtacks falling to the floor. Ruby looked across the room and saw the ever accident prone Red Monroe frantically trying to scoop them back into their container.
‘Sorry, Mrs Schneiderman,’ she said. ‘They just sorta fell off my desk.’
The tacks had rolled right across the room and a few had ended up under Clancy’s chair – as he stood up to help, a couple of them lodged themselves in the sole of his left sneaker. Mrs Schneiderman was trying to regain the attention of her students and rapped her ruler on the wall. Ruby looked up and saw, projected on the screen, a slide showing a simple repeat pattern, the famous Greek key pattern used on pottery, mosaics and, it seemed, almost everything ancient Greek.
‘This is a decorative border called “meander”, first used in the Greek Geometric period,’ said Mrs Schneiderman loudly. ‘The name “meander” conjures up the twisting and turning of the Mæander River. “Greek key” is a modern term used to describe the pattern. It is always useful to remember that, in history, decoration is very rarely purely decorative, it is usually there to symbolise something or convey a message.’
Ruby was suddenly very alert. She reached behind her and felt for the jacket hanging on the back of her chair. Locating the left pocket she pulled out her notebook containing the little white card – the one from Organic Universe. On it were the six words, DON’T CALL US WE’LL CALL YOU, but it wasn’t the words that Ruby was interested in. The thing that got her attention today was the pattern decorating the edge of the card. She had previously overlooked this, considering it to be simply decorative – thus forgetting one of her own rules, RULE 13 in fact, THERE IS MORE TO MOST THINGS THAN MEETS THE EYE.
Now she studied the decorative border carefully – it was made up of interlocking figure eights which repeated all the way around the edge of the card.
‘… tomorrow night at eight for eight…’
Ruby knew the time was set for eight but what if the destination was also eight? ‘Be lucky,’ the voice had said – why? Why did she need to be lucky?
After school, Clancy and Ruby picked up Bug, and cycled out to the ocean. Ruby found watching the husky racing in and out of the waves helped her mind relax but still she had no answer. It wasn’t until they started off for home that something clicked. Ruby was cycling very slowly along the sidewalk – Clancy was on foot; his bike chain had broken and he was telling her about how this oil sheik had been on the way to meet with Clancy’s dad when he ran out of gas.
‘Imagine the scene – he is an actual oil baron and he runs out of gas!’
‘That’s pretty funny,’ said Ruby.
‘But that’s not all, his chauffeur flags down this old truck and who does it belong to?’ Clancy didn’t wait for her to guess. ‘Only old Mr Berris who owns the local gas station, that one that’s closing down due to lack of business. Old Mr Berris has a spare can, fills up the sheik’s car and the sheik makes it to dinner on time!’
‘That’s really something,’ smiled Ruby.
Clancy couldn’t get over the irony of the situation. ‘Here is a guy with all the fuel he could ever want but he has to borrow a can from some little old guy who is about to close down due to no one buying his gas!’
‘He certainly got lucky,’ said Ruby, and then she stopped – she had stumbled on the final piece.
‘What’s up? What did I say?’ asked a bewildered Clancy.
‘Sorry Clance, gotta split – I promise I’ll tell you tomorrow!’ she said, steering herself off the kerb and back on to the street. ‘Drop Bug off would ya,’ Ruby called as she turned in the direction of Mountain Road and pedalled like crazy up the hill.
‘What?’ shouted Clance. ‘What just happened?’
‘I think I just got lucky!’ she shouted back.
A small dark space
RUBY PULLED UP AT EXACTLY THE SPOT she was sure she was meant to be. It was just out of town on Mountain Road, at a place where the road bent round to the left. It was the site of the old gas station. The only thing remaining of it was the faded sign which still pronounced, ‘Be Lucky, Treat Your Automobile to Some Lucky Eight Gas.’
It had been an unusually sunny afternoon and the road still felt warm under her feet. She took a look around.
Am I meant to be meeting someone?
There was nothing in any direction, nothing at all. Ruby was about to admit to herself that she had made a mistake when she noticed a manhole cover. She walked slowly over to it and brushed the dust from the cover with her hand. The manhole cover had a company logo on it – a picture of a fly with the words Bluebottle and Larva underneath it. Around the edge was the same repeating pattern as on the card, and there was a number in the middle: 848.
Eight for eight.
She waited, only taking her eyes off the manhole to check her watch. At precisely eight o’clock she began working on how to open the cover.
There was a trick to it, and after only a few minutes she had worked it out: eight turns clockwise, four anticlockwise and another eight clockwise – bingo. With some effort she lifted the lid and peered down into utter blackness.
Ruby Redfort’s one real fear was the small confined space. Not cupboards or tiny rooms, or tunnels she knew her way out of – no, it was the small dark space she had never before encountered… the small dark space with no way out… with no oxygen… that’s what she was scared of.
She stared into the void for five minutes, thirty-two seconds before she got a grip on herself.
Was she really going to come this far and no further? Her instinct told her it would be OK, her body wasn’t so sure. Very slowly she eased herself down into the drain and jerkily pulled the manhole cover over her head. She merged with the dark; no more hands, no more feet – it was as if
