2.
HANGING THERE BY HER FINGERTIPS, Ruby looked down at the map of streets. She could see the city’s famous old movie theatre, the Scarlet Pagoda; the Japanese garden in front of it, the lampposts decked in bunting and lights to celebrate this year’s Twinford Film Festival: A Date with Thrills.
The festival was to be a celebration of romantic thriller movies of the kind that she and Mrs Digby loved, and the situation Ruby currently found herself in was no doubt one seen in many of these pictures.
Only for Ruby this was no stunt, there was no safety net, and she needed to get a grip before someone raised the alarm. She heaved herself into the window-cleaning cradle and found the controls that would carry her back to her original window. She knew which one it was because it had an empty milk glass sitting in front of it.
She was just clambering out of the cradle when she heard a voice.
‘Hey kid, would you come in from there?’
Ruby looked up to see a tall, well-groomed man in a well-cut suit standing in the room. He appeared moderately anxious.
‘Am I making you nervous?’ asked Ruby.
‘The only person making me nervous is the meter maid on 3rd Avenue where I’m double-parked.’
‘Geez Hitch, why don’t you just find a parking spot like a normal person?’
‘You think it’s easy parking in this city?’ Hitch replied.
Ruby sighed, swivelled herself round and dropped back in through the window. She landed on the long elegant coffee table, the main feature of the sleek reception room. Pens went skidding across its surface and a bowl of marbles upturned, contents spinning in all directions and disappearing under furniture.
Hitch rolled his eyes. ‘Good going kid.’
‘OK, OK,’ said Ruby gathering up the pens and plonking them back in their pen pot. ‘Don’t have a total baby about it, man.’
HITCH: ‘It’s not me who’s going to have the “baby”. Mr Barnaby H. Cleethorps is a very particular man.’
RUBY: ‘What’s he gonna do, dangle me out of the window by my toes?’
HITCH : ‘Probably.’
RUBY: ‘Boy this guy must really like his pens tidy!’
HITCH: ‘You better believe it Redfort.’
RUBY: ‘So what are you doing here? You back from summer vacation?’
HITCH: ‘Something like that.’
RUBY: ‘Where have you been anyway?’
HITCH: ‘It’s classified.’
RUBY: ‘Your vacations are classified?’
HITCH: ‘I wasn’t on vacation.’
RUBY: ‘But you just said you were.’
HITCH: ‘No I didn’t, you did.’
RUBY: ‘Boy, have I missed small-talking to you. So where are we going?’
HITCH: ‘Elevator.’
RUBY: ‘You know I can’t leave, my dad won’t let me out of his sight.’
HITCH: ‘I’ve cleared it, your father has entrusted me with your safety.’
RUBY: ‘He clearly doesn’t know your safety record – so what are we doing?’
HITCH: ‘I’m going to have a cup of coffee and you are going to be grilled.’
‘Huh?’
HITCH: ‘Our boss, she wants to talk to you.’
To the outside world, Hitch was the Redforts’ household manager, but to the few in the know he was actually a highly trained Spectrum agent, living undercover at the Redfort home, stationed there to mentor and protect Ruby Redfort, Spectrum’s youngest recruit. Their boss was LB, head of Spectrum 8.
They took the elevator down to street level. It wasn’t the quickest ride since the building was an old one and the elevator cars were far from state of the art.
‘I thought I was on sick leave,’ said Ruby.
‘Not any more,’ said Hitch.
‘Anything going down at Spectrum?’ asked Ruby. ‘A new case?’ Ruby had been a Spectrum agent and expert code breaker since April, and in that time she had worked on three cases. All three had nearly got her killed. But then evading death sort of went with the territory.
‘Don’t ask me, I’m just the bozo driving the car,’ replied Hitch.
Ruby gave him a look, aware that if anyone was going to know anything then it was Hitch. But that said, there was no point trying to get him to talk; if he didn’t want to then he never would. That was the thing about Hitch: he kept his mouth shut.
SPECTRUM RULE 1: KEEP IT ZIPPED. He had to: as one of the highest-ranking agents at Spectrum 8, he was trusted with heavily classified information. He didn’t squeal for anything or anybody.
So how had a top-notch spy wound up working undercover as bodyguard to a thirteen-year-old kid? Hitch, for one, asked himself this question practically every day.
They strode out of the Sandwich Building to see a meter maid busy studying Hitch’s car.
Where to start? He was parked in a tow-zone, facing in the wrong direction, one of the wheels up on the sidewalk, the vehicle abandoned for twenty-one minutes. This was going to be one long ticket.
Hitch just raised an eyebrow. ‘Wait here kid.’
The meter maid had her hands on her hips, like she meant business. She looked ready for a fight, like she was thinking, Here he comes, another bozo who doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own dumb actions.
Hitch strolled over and the meter maid crossed her arms – a defensive move.
Hitch leaned against his car and began talking – well not so much talking as chatting. The meter maid shifted her weight and relaxed her arms so she now stood with one hand on her hip – was she actually smiling?
Man, you’re good, thought Ruby. Hitch could talk his way out of a maze.
The conversation,
