Scam on the Cam Read online

  Except we couldn’t run, because we couldn’t touch the ground.

  Because we were hovering in midair.

  Caught by the very sturdy, very hairy and very angry arms of someone whose deep and thunderous voice in our ears said, with a strong accent:

  “Eh bien! Finally I’ve found you, you damned zieves!”

  Painfully, I managed to turn my head around to look at our captor.

  And I must confess I trembled a little.

  Because he had a gold earring, and a beard, and long hair, and a red bandana. I’ve been in tricky situations before, as you may or may not remember.

  But never before had I been kidnapped by an authentic pirate.

  IV

  Legs still dangling in the air, we were taken by the pirate to his ship. But rather than a fearsome caravel, it was a barge on the side of the river.

  And rather than a skull and crossbones, it was flying a French flag and a Union Jack.

  And rather than being called Slaughterer of the Seven Seas, it was called La Sardine Souriante, which, vague memories of French lessons with Mademoiselle Corentin told me, meant The Smiling Sardine.

  There wasn’t a shadow of a sardine anywhere on the barge, however. But there was a rotund pirate woman fixing something on the roof, and a small pirate child who was playing with a chocolate-brown Labrador on the plank.

  “I’ve found the zieves!” declared the pirate to his wife.

  “What do you mean?” she laughed, looking at us. “Marcel, those are children!”

  “I caught zem hand in ze bag!”

  “Not true,” I said, “you caught us as we were making our way down from the balcony.”

  “It’s a French expression,” the pirate lady explained. “He means red-handed. Marcel, seriously, what’s that about? Put them down.”

  “Zey’d broken into ze university boathouse,” he said, and he put us down on the ground.

  “But look,” said his wife, “they can’t be the thieves. They’re way too young. And the one we spotted last time was definitely a boy.”

  “Zey could have accomplices,” said Marcel.

  “We’re completely not thieves,” I said. “See, we don’t even have a bag or anything with us.”

  “Empty your pockets!” said the pirate.

  Gemma and I grimaced. In my pocket was the key. What if he guessed I’d stolen the key? What if it was the key to his pirate chest? What if Gwendoline had stolen the key from him to start with? I had to think even faster than Peter Pan.

  “Tell me—did the thief look like that?” I asked, randomly pointing into the distance.

  Everyone turned around to look, and I flung the key into the Cam. It disappeared with a little plop.

  “Not at all,” said the pirate, “zat would be completely absurd.”

  And indeed it would, as the passerby I’d accidentally designated was an old lady in an electric wheelchair with a tartan blanket on her lap.

  “Ah well,” I said, “I was just trying to help. But no, look, I’ve got nothing in my pockets.”

  Gemma turned hers inside out too, and the pirate lady said to her husband, “You see, darling, it can’t be them.”

  “What’s that about, anyway?” I asked. “Have there been thefts around the area recently?”

  “Oh yes,” said the pirate lady. “Lots of burglaries in the barges. Some of my old jewelry was stolen, and Marcel’s watch, and even some electronic equipment. And it’s happened to many other people in barges along this corner of the river.”

  “Have you told the police?” said Gemma.

  “Of course,” smiled the woman. “But they’re not too concerned with what happens to people like us, it seems.”

  “Do you know anything about pirate chests?” I asked.

  “Pirate chests?” repeated Marcel, and he burst out laughing. “We might look like pirates, but we’re not, ma petite fille.”

  That was extremely disappointing, but also meant we weren’t in immediate danger of being made to walk the plank.

  “Okay,” I said, “it was really nice to meet you. Thanks for everything. I hope you catch your zieves. And now we need to run, or else our teacher will skin us alive with a nail file.”

  “Wow,” said Gemma as we walked back to our rowboat. “That was close. Where did you put the key?”

  “I had to throw it into the river.”

  “What? Are you mad?”

  “Well, what else was I supposed to do with it? Swallow it? I wouldn’t have looked forward to getting it back at the other end.”

  “But now we don’t have it anymore!”

  “Well observed. But it can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

  Glumly, Gemma started fiddling with her ears, which is what she does when she’s being all pensive and intellectual. Suddenly, in the manner of an opera diva, she screamed, “Heavens! My earrings!”

  “What about them?”

  “My pearl earrings!”

  “Yes, I know what they’re made of. Everyone in the world knows.”

  “They’re gone!”

  I looked at her ears, and indeed there were no pearls bulging from them to indicate that she was a respectable young girl.

  “Are you sure you were wearing them today?” I asked. “Thinking about it, I don’t remember seeing them this morning.”

  “I always wear them,” she said. “I never take them off.”

  “Seriously, Gemz, this morning I thought, There’s something different about Gemma Sarland today. She’s the same, and yet different. She’s herself, and yet strangely Other. It was the earrings, I’m sure. You must have left them at home.”

  She shook her head but looked unsure.

  “I’ll check tonight,” she said, “but I doubt it. I think I lost them at the boathouse.”

  “Maybe they fell off when the pirate captured us.”

  “He wasn’t a pirate, he was a French barge owner. He’s a person just like us, and his life choice is just as good as all other life choices. You’ve got to stop calling him a pirate; it’s highly insulting.”

  Having thus proven that losing her pearl earrings hadn’t deprived her of random bouts of weirdness, she got back into the boat and we haphazardly rowed back to the Laurels’ boathouse.

  Toby was standing outside pretending to look innocent, which we immediately guessed meant he had hidden a frog inside his hoodie pocket.

  “Have you hidden a frog inside your hoodie pocket, Toby?” I asked as we brushed past him carrying the boat on our shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said. “So, how did your mission go? I kept Halitosis very busy, just like you asked. I almost capsized us three times, and one of those on purpose. Lily was furious. As for Halitosis, he’s currently trying to calm himself down.”

  He pointed at Halitosis, who was lying under a nearby tree and breathing into a paper bag. We all spared a minute to pray that the paper from the bag wouldn’t ever end up recycled into any kind of food wrapping.

  “The mission went quite badly,” I said. “We stole the key, but got kidnapped by a pirate who was a French barge owner and called us zieves, so we had to throw the key into the Cam, and as a result we couldn’t open the chest that didn’t belong to the pirate anyway, since he wasn’t one.”

  “Tough luck,” said Toby sympathetically.

  “And I lost my earrings,” said Gemma.

  “Oh yes,” said Toby, “I was going to ask you where they were when you arrived this morning, and then I forgot.”

  ‘This morning?” repeated Gemma. “I didn’t have them on when I got to school?”

  “I told you!” I told her. “You’ll find them at home tonight, and since absence makes the heart grow fonder you’ll love them even more than before. And who knows, they might have made lots of tiny baby pearls when you weren’t watching.”

  But Gemma wasn’t listening: she was looking into the distance with an expression of such pain that I suspected for a minute the imminent arrival of the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse
. But when I turned around I realized it was much less exciting than that; it was, in fact, the pangs of despised love. For yonder near the stream were Julius Hawthorne and Lily Murray (Toby’s unfortunate rowing partner and owner of an impressive marmalade mesh of red hair) who were laughing and cooing together, gazing at each other from the corner of their long-lashed eyes in the manner of two badly drawn Disney princesses.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Gemma. “She can’t even play Dvořák on the cello.” I left her to her lovelorn state, because I was quite keen to have a look at Toby’s frog. It was a lovely shade of green, like my mum’s face when she gets the bill for something I’ve broken, and had two perfectly humid eyes, just like Mum again when she’s signing the check to pay the bill.

  “It’s super fast, you know,” said Toby, petting its sleek back. “I’m sure it’s faster than any frog I’ve ever seen.”

  “I didn’t know you were in the habit of speed-checking amphibians,” I said. “Where did you catch it?”

  “Oh, next to the university boathouse, when we finally passed by it earlier. You must have been inside then.”

  While we were playing with the frog, Mr. Halitosis awoke from his paper bag–induced calm, got to his feet and threatened to slice us into slim strips of meat for a giant stir-fry if we weren’t ready to go back to Goodall in two seconds. Not being one for soy sauce, I rushed into the Laurels’ boathouse to get my clothes and bag.

  As I checked my phone, coming out into the sunshine, I saw that I had a lovely little text waiting from me from Susie, all warm and exciting like a mini-blueberry muffin: Fourth & fifth rowers of the university team taken ill and in hospital. How’s the investigation going? Jeremy x

  Running back to Toby and Gemma, I found the latter sidekick in a state of dangerous hyperventilation, repeating, “He came to talk to me! He came to talk to me!”

  “Who did?” I asked.

  “Julius!”

  “Caesar?”

  “No, Hawthorne!”

  “Ah,” I said. “Maybe he guessed you could play Dvořák in the end.”

  “He told me he’d only come here to talk to me! He knew that we were training, and he wanted to talk to me! He came here to talk to me!”

  “To say what?” asked Toby.

  “Just that,” said Gemma.

  “He came here just to tell you that he’d come here just to talk to you?”

  “Yes!” she marveled. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “The boy is profoundly deranged, as I always suspected,” I said. “But that’s okay, since he seems to have found an equally insane kindred spirit.”

  “And then,” reminisced Gemma, “I asked him if he could give me his phone number, and he did!”

  Toby and I tried to be as discreet as possible while we coughed and retched and went, “Urgh! argh! disgusting! yuck!,” but I think Gemma still heard us.

  In short, that day was a huge failure.

  “In short, today is a huge failure,” I informed Peter Mortimer in the living room. “We lost a key that wasn’t ours, didn’t learn anything new about the virus, some more rowers fell ill and Gemma’s lost all her brainpower due to l’amour.”

  Peter Mortimer seemed quite sympathetic: he tried to pat my shoulder, but forgot to retract his claws. When I’d finished blotting the blood with the ivory tablecloth, Dad and Mum walked into the living room carrying plates and cutlery for my dinner (and theirs).

  “I’m completely and utterly fed up with Sophie,” said Mum. “I just wish our paths would never cross again. I certainly don’t want to help her anymore; I’ve given her all the time and effort I can.”

  “You’re absolutely right, my dear,” said Dad. “She’s tried your patience enough. It’s not your responsibility. Just tell her to go away.”

  I thought that was a bit cheeky of them. “It is your responsibility!” I claimed. “At least until I’m eighteen. We still have to endure one another for another six and a half years, I’m afraid. And I won’t go away—at least not until I’ve had my dinner, and only if Peter Mortimer can come with me.”

  “We’re not talking about you, Sophie,” sighed Mum. “We’re talking about another Sophie.”

  “Oh, I see. I did think it was a bit silly of you to go trumpeting it around the house that you were going to get rid of me. If I conspired with my husband to abandon my daughter, I’d talk about it very quietly and probably in a secret code of my invention.”

  “The problem with Sophie is that she’s a paranoid little Mithridates,” sighed Dad.

  “Which Sophie are we talking about now?” I inquired.

  “You,” said Dad.

  “Calling me Sesame would make it immediately clearer. What’s the deal with the other Sophie?”

  They sat down in silence and started to eat their chicory and walnut salad like they do when they don’t want to reply to my questions. So I resorted to singing my question to the tune of “Jingle Bells,” which ended up sounding like this:

  What’s the deal, what’s the deal,

  with the other Soph?

  What’s the deal, oh what’s the deal,

  with the o-o-other Soph?

  OH! What’s the deal, what’s the deal,

  with the other Soph?

  What’s the deal, oh what’s the deal,

  with the O-O-Other Soph?

  This was a good day, as I only had to sing it four and a half times, increasing the volume every time, until Mum gave in.

  “Hush! You’re giving everyone a migraine! The deal, as you distastefully put it, is something absolutely uninteresting to you. Sophie Quentin is a doctor at Addenbrookes Hospital. She wants me to look at a certain virus that is affecting some people. They don’t know what it is and want my pharmacological expertise. But I don’t have the time to look at it closely. Satisfied?”

  “Who’s ill?” I asked.

  They didn’t reply, so I started to sing again—“Who is ill, who is ill”—but immediately Mum said, “I’m not allowed to tell you; it’s a secret. Eat your chicory.”

  “I hate chicory. Anyway, it’s okay, maman adorée, I know it’s the rowers. It’s not norovirus then?” I asked.

  Mum’s eyes widened so much I worried her eyelids might swallow up her glasses. “I don’t know how you know that,” she said, “but no, it’s not norovirus. Finish your chicory.”

  “I hate chicory.”

  “Finish it.”

  “If I finish my chicory, can I ask what you think it is?”

  She nodded, so I wolfed down the rest of the chicory in five seconds. (I actually adore chicory with an ardent passion; I just pretend I don’t so I can have a conveniently pleasant way of pressuring parents. It is a strategy I warmly recommend.)

  “That was revolting,” I said. “Never give me chicory again. So, what do you think it is?”

  “I think,” said Mum pensively, “that it’s a man-made virus. And I don’t think it’s in the river. I think . . . I think someone is poisoning those poor rowers. Yes, poisoning them.”

  V

  “I don’t know,” said Gemma, “how it’s possible that I’m both immensely happy and completely unhappy.”

  “It happens to me when I eat After Eights,” said Toby, “because I’m like, Wow! Chocolate! and then Yuck! Mint! and it’s really confusing.”

  “Right. That’s not quite what I’m talking about,” said Gemma. “I’m devastated, because I can’t find my earrings. They weren’t anywhere at home yesterday, I looked everywhere. I must have lost them sometime the day before yesterday. They must have fallen off. Maybe here, at school.”

  “Maybe they’ve fallen inside your ears!” suggested Toby. “They might be trapped in all the earwax that we saw you had.”

  “Earwax!” exclaimed Gemma. “Toby, do you still have those pictures from the other day?’

  “Sure,” he said, “I downloaded them all onto my phone.”

  He got his phone out and swished through a hundred pictures of his frog tha
t he’d taken the evening before, until he got to the shots from the university boathouse. “Here’s the earwax one,” he said.

  “Unmistakably earringed,” I said. “You must have lost them sometime after then.” Toby slid his finger on the screen. In the next picture—Gemma talking to Will—she was still wearing them. The next few pictures were a bit of staircase, Rob’s foot, and Gwen’s office. And then Gemma again, talking to me. He zoomed in.

  “No earrings!” he said. “You lost them on the staircase.”

  “It must have been when I was looking up at Rob,” she murmured. “Okay, well, at least I know where they are. I’ll go this evening after school and try to see if I can find them. Want to come along?”

  Toby nodded, but I replied sadly, “Unfortunately, my parents are forcing me to come along with them to some extravaganza at St. Catharine’s College. They don’t want to leave me home alone as they don’t trust me to keep it an animal-free zone. Let me know how it goes, though!”

  “St. Catharine’s!” exclaimed Gemma. “That reminds me why I’m unbelievably happy. I saw Julius this morning! We met up on the way to school.”

  We let her stare into the sky for a few minutes, until the bell rang and we had to walk upstairs to our classroom.

  “What’s the link between Julius and St. Catharine’s, anyway?” I asked, shaking her out of her reverie.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “He told me that Gwendoline is a student at St. Catharine’s, so he goes there to visit her all the time. Oh, and Rob Dawes is also a student there. Do you know, apparently everyone hates Rob Dawes. And Julius doesn’t trust him either. The other day, Julius saw Rob mixing weird stuff into the rowers’ food when he thought no one was looking. Being in the reserve crew, it would make sense for Rob to poison people to get into the first crew, so Julius thinks Rob is poisoning the rowers. Anyway, that’s the link.”

  “Wait—WHAT?” I shouted, and then realized everyone else had gone silent, waiting for Mr. Halitosis to start telling us about the Tudors.