The Case of the Vanished Sea Dragon (11 page)

When the car arrived at Sidney Clavel Estate Holly understood why Archie thought she was posh. With flaky paint and crumbling brickwork, the grey blocks of flats were in a similar state of neglect to Gristle Street. Almost every square inch was covered in graffiti. Not the colourful kind in big bubble writing but scrawled swear words, spray-painted tags, insults and threats. The walkways outside the flats were littered with old rusty bikes and rubbish. On the grassy communal area a gang of lads threw stones at a three-legged dog.

‘Home sweet home,' said Archie as the car pulled in.

Weaver dived out and opened the door.

The gang of lads noticed the car and lost interest in the dog.

Holly thought Archie looked nervous, but he smiled and said, ‘See you tomorrow, then?'

‘Holly won't be seeing anyone,' replied her dad. ‘She's grounded.'

‘Grounded?' she exclaimed. ‘How long for?'

‘For the rest of the summer.'

‘Oi, nice car,' shouted one of the boys on the grass. ‘Can I have a drive?'

Archie stepped out.

‘Hey, that's little smelly-grove,' he yelled.

The others joined in.

‘Yeah, I see your old man's nicked a new car?'

‘Nah, his dad's still behind bars, eh, smell-growth?'

‘I'll see you later, then,' said Archie, suddenly dashing across the lawn towards the block of flats on the far side.

The gang of boys took chase. Archie was quick and he beat them to the building, through the outer door and to the central staircase that led up to the flats. The gang followed him up the stairs, closing in.

Weaver slammed the car door and jumped into the
driver's seat. As they drove away, Holly twisted round to look out of the back window. Archie ran along the top walkway to a green door. She could feel his panic as he pounded on the door until it opened. He dived inside and the door shut, leaving the gang of boys outside. She didn't like to think what would have happened if they had caught him. Archie's heart must have been beating fast, but watching the scene from the car, with the gentle classical music playing, Holly felt distanced, like she was watching it on TV.

‘Sit down properly,' snapped her dad irritably.

Holly did as she was told and neither of them spoke for the rest of the journey.

Outside her house, Weaver opened the door and Holly climbed out. Her dad led her back to the house. She glanced round to see Weaver disappear into the car and drive away.

‘Go to your room,' said her dad.

Holly walked up the stairs miserably, her dad behind her. This wasn't the first time he had been upset with her. Every time she had been suspended or expelled from school, he had been upset with her. But this felt worse. This time she had embarrassed him at work. She opened her bedroom door and went in.

‘There'll be no television, no computer and no
leaving the house. You'll stay in your room and think about what you've done. You're out of control,' said her dad, unplugging her computer and wheeling it out. He stopped in the doorway. ‘You know, it's not just me. You've let your mother down too,' he said.

‘That woman's not my mother!' exclaimed Holly.

Her dad looked at her sadly and said, ‘I wasn't talking about Bridget. Your mother would never have approved of this kind of behaviour.'

He closed the door behind him.

Holly sat down on her bed and stared at the door. Tears built up in her eyes. She tried to hold them back but she couldn't help herself. She wasn't crying because her dad had shouted or because she was grounded or because she had lost Mrs Klingerflim's book. She cried because it was the first time her dad had spoken to her about Mum since the funeral.

Willow climbed out from under the bed and jumped into Holly's lap, letting out soft comforting miaows.

On a list of all the places in the world a Mountain Dragon is safe, a densely populated capital human city in the south-east of Britain wouldn't rate highly, and yet
safe
was exactly how Dirk always felt in London. It was his home, his patch. These rooftops were his playground.

‘I still do not understand why we are coming back to this noisy humano nest?' said Alba.

‘You don't need to understand,' said Dirk, landing on an old-fashioned red-brick library at a busy crossroads. ‘You need to keep quiet and stay close.'

He stood on his hind legs and worked out the best route. The lights changed and he leapt across the road,
stopping on the roof of some flats above a row of shops. He looked back at Alba. She stared nervously down at a mother and two children coming out of the library, all clutching books to their chests.

‘Come on,' mouthed Dirk.

Alba closed her eyes and made the jump, flying over the road, landing with a loud THUD on the roof.

‘Frank, did you hear that? It sounded like something just landed on the roof,' shouted a woman's voice.

‘It's probably those blasted squirrels,' another responded. ‘I'll get the broom.'

Dirk grabbed Alba by the scruff of her neck, pressing his nose against hers.

‘Will you be careful,' he whispered angrily. ‘Keep your eyes open at all times. Use your wings to land gently. The roofs are your friends. Use them for cover. Now, come on.'

Dirk ran along the rooftops. He knew that Alba and London didn't mix well but he had no way of shaking her off and he needed to look at that book. He had no idea how, but the late Ivor Klingerflim had collected a lot of information and he hoped there was something in
Dragonlore
that would help him find a Sky Dragon and solve this case.

Dirk paused on a rooftop by a grassy roundabout near a row of shops. He looked down at the shoppers in the high street. Humans' love of shopping had always fascinated him. As far as Dirk could see shopping was a kind of hobby, and yet, looking down at the people trudging from store to store, they didn't appear to be enjoying themselves much. Big droplets of rain began to fall and the already disgruntled shoppers groaned and put up umbrellas.

The rain gave Dirk and Alba enough cover to move more quickly across the city. It wasn't long before they were soaring through Dirk's open office window.

Inside, Dirk pushed the window shut and picked up the remote control, out of habit pointing it at the TV, before remembering that Alba had smashed it.

‘What does it do, this lights and noises box of yours?' asked Alba.

‘It
was
a television,' replied Dirk pointedly. ‘And before you broke it, it told me what was going on in the world,' he said, even though he spent much more time watching old detective films and reruns of cop shows than news programmes or serious documentaries.

Looking around the room he realised that Mrs Klingerflim had tidied up. There was no sign of the
book but on the desk was a note, written on the back of the one he had left her. It read:

Mr Dilly,
I'm out until later tonight. I have tidied
up. Don't worry about the rent. Oh, and I
have lent dear Ivor's book to Holly. What
a lovely girl. So polite.
Yours,
Mrs K

‘I've got to go out,' said Dirk, putting the note back on the desk.

‘I will be coming with you,' said Alba.

‘Not this time. The city isn't safe for you. You can't blend and you don't know these roofs like I do. You're a quick dragon and you're in good shape, but for me this is a full-time job.'

‘But I must stay with you at all times.'

‘Listen to me, Alba. We will find the Sky Dragon and we will find your sister, but I can't risk you out there again. Besides, I've got to go and visit a humano. You wouldn't like that, would you?'

‘Meet a humano? That would not be good.'

‘OK, so stay here,' he replied. ‘Keep the blinds down
and don't answer the door to anyone. If anyone knocks, I'm not in, you're not in, there's no one here, OK?'

‘OK, I understand,' said Alba. She picked up a tin of beans. ‘Can I eat some of your crunchy shelled food?'

‘Knock yourself out, but you might want to try using this?' Dirk threw something at Alba.

‘What is it?' asked Alba.

‘It's called a tin opener,' he replied, moving the blinds out of his way and leaping out.

Across the road from Holly lived a nosy old woman called Mrs Baxter who spent her days sitting by her window, behind her net curtains, watching every single event in Elliot Drive and noting them down in her diary. If Mr Perry at forty-seven got an extra pint of milk delivered, or if Mrs Standen at forty-one had a longer than usual conversation with the postman, it went down in Mrs Baxter's diary.

She had noted that Holly Bigsby at forty-three hadn't left the house at all since she and her father had been spotted stepping out of a very expensive-looking silver car on Saturday. A blond-haired boy about her age had visited every day but had been sent away.

However, like all suburban gossips, Mrs Baxter
assumed that the most interesting events involved humans and therefore occurred at street level. Had she looked up at the roof, she would have seen a dragon squeeze through Holly's window. Instead, she was busy jotting down how Mr Mynard at number thirty-eight had left his car headlights on and would probably find in the morning that his battery had gone flat.

‘Where have you been?' asked Holly, throwing her arms around Dirk's soft green belly. ‘I kept trying to call.'

‘I've been out of town on a case. That's why I'm here.'

‘So you didn't come to see me,' said Holly, unable to hide her disappointment.

Dirk lifted her chin with his paw. ‘I'm sorry, kiddo, I've been wrapped up in this case,' he said.

‘What's it about?' she replied.

‘Well, the newspaper headline would be “Sky Dragon kidnaps Sea Dragon”,' said Dirk.

‘Cool,' said Holly. ‘What are Sky Dragons like?'

Dirk told Holly what little he knew about Sky Dragons and then said, ‘The problem is they've been living in the clouds for a long time. No one knows much about them. I was hoping I'd be able to find something that might help in Mrs K's book.'

Holly looked away. ‘Oh,' she said.

‘
Oh
doesn't sound good,' said Dirk, picking up Willow, who had been rubbing herself against his leg, and stroking the cat.

‘I haven't got it,' Holly admitted. ‘It was confiscated.'

‘Do you know where it is?'

‘Well … Yes.'

‘Fine. I'll swing by and grab it,' said Dirk.

‘It won't be that easy,' said Holly.

‘Come on.' Dirk spread his paws and grinned. ‘Remember who you're talking to here.'

‘It's been confiscated by the seventh richest man in the world, and is being kept in the upstairs office of a high-security animal experimentation lab,' said Holly.

Dirk laughed. He put Willow down. ‘So you've been busy, then?' he said.

Holly told Dirk everything that had happened over the last two days. She told him about Brant Buchanan, her dad accepting a job for Global Sands, and the conversation she had overheard about the AOG Project.

‘He must be after the QC3000,' said Dirk.

‘That's what I thought but why would a billionaire businessman want a weapon?'

‘I can think of lots of reasons,' he replied. ‘For a man
like that, business
is
war. So how did he end up with the book?'

‘I wanted to find out what they were up to, so I broke in, but I got caught.'

‘They didn't see you blending, did they?'

‘No, but I got taken upstairs and they took away the book as a punishment.'

‘You think he knows what the book is?' asked Dirk, nervous about a human with so much wealth and power possessing a book that told the truth about dragonkind.

‘I don't think so. He just thinks it's a stupid book for kids.'

‘Tell me about the security.'

Holly recounted everything Mr Buchanan had told her about the building and how she had got in with Archie's help.

Dirk thought for a moment. ‘We'll need a distraction,' he said.

‘Archie could help again,' suggested Holly.

‘No, the security guard might recognise him. Besides, I don't want any more humans knowing about me. We need someone he won't recognise, someone we can trust,' said Dirk, looking at her with a knowing wink.

‘I'll make the call,' replied Holly, understanding instantly what that wink meant. ‘What time?'

Dirk looked up at Holly's wall clock. He scratched his head uncertainly.

‘Here, try this,' said Holly, showing him her watch.

He read the time: 19:01.

‘Hey, digital,' said Dirk, smiling. ‘How far's the lab?'

‘It's about half an hour on the bus.'

‘Tell him we need the distraction at a quarter to eight.'

Holly nodded and stepped out to make a phone call. As he waited, Dirk checked out her room. He had never been in it before. Everything was brightly coloured and all very Holly. On her desk were bits of paper with pencil-drawn pictures. He picked one up and recognised it as himself. He pulled open a drawer and saw the Shade-Hugger claw that they had discovered on their last case together. Dirk had forgotten all about it. She must have held on to it. It was against Dragonlore to let a human have any evidence of dragon existence, but if anyone could be trusted with it, it was Holly.