Squishy Taylor and the Mess-Makers (5 page)

‘Dinner!’ Dad calls.

Alice is doing an evening lecture, so it’s just us and Dad and Baby. I sit near Baby and spoon rice onto the table in front of him.
He’s so funny
. He eats some, smears some on the table, and throws the rest on the floor. We’re all laughing at him, and he’s laughing and slapping the table with his palms, when the door buzzes.

We look at each other. The door only buzzes when friends are coming – and usually we already know they’re on their way.

Dad pushes back his chair and goes to the door speaker. ‘Hello? Oh, hello, yes, yes, certainly. No, that’s fine, we’re sitting down to dinner, but if they signalled you? Yes, come on up. Eleventh floor.’

OK, that was fast.

Dad looks a bit
amused
and a bit worried. ‘You kids signalled the Chief of Special Secret Undercover Operations?’ he asks.

We nod.

‘Whatever for?’

‘Umm,’ I say. For some reason it feels a bit embarrassing now and I don’t want to meet anybody’s eyes.

Boring Lady is at the door before we can explain anything. She’s wearing a grey suit with a blue scarf tied neatly at her throat. Dad offers her Alice’s chair, but she shakes her head. She stands at the top of the table, looking quickly into each of our faces.

‘I don’t have much time. What do you need?’

So the story of Carmeline Clancy tumbles out: how she’s being framed, maybe by the Nanny, or the Fancy Men. (‘
Fancy Men?
’ Dad asks.) We explain how Vee and I loved Carmeline Clancy first, how we’re worried and we want to prove she’s innocent.

Boring Lady listens, but starts shaking her head long before we’re finished. We trail off.

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a lot of other pressing things to do, and this is just not my area.’

‘But what about Carmeline Clancy and her movie?’ Vee asks.

‘I’m sure the noise will die down in the next few days,’ says Boring Lady. ‘She’s got a qualified nanny. She’ll be fine.’

Like
that
scary lady is going to fix anything.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to keep going.’ Boring Lady really does look sorry.

Dad walks her to the lift, leaving us alone at the table.

‘That’s it,’ says Jessie. ‘It’s just us. We’re going to have to
prove
this on our own.’

‘We need more information,’ Jessie says, rolling over in the bunk beneath me after lights out. Dad is being super-strict about our online time, so we can’t google anything. It makes Jessie
twitchy
.

‘We need to know who is around,’ Jessie says. ‘And how they feel about her.’

‘The criminal could be anyone,’ Vee says from the top bunk. She sounds kind of excited. ‘Could be a rival rock-climber. Or a rival filmmaker.
Anyone
.’

‘You know what we need to do?’ I say, sitting up, because this is going to be fun. ‘We need to get close to her, so we can figure out what’s going on.’

‘Like a stake-out,’ Vee says.

I can feel Jessie shaking her head. ‘A stake-out is for a place,’ she says. Jessie cares about how you use words. ‘We need to shadow her.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘
Mission: shadow
.’

‘Starting tomorrow?’ asks Vee.

‘Straight after school,’ says Jessie. ‘We’ll go down to where they’re filming.’

Vee is so excited after school that she’s basically jumping out the tram windows.

When we get home, Alice grabs us muesli bars. She tells us to go straight to the park and not cross any roads.
We nod
. We’re not going to the park, but a nod isn’t a promise.

They’re filming at one end of the street behind our building. There are rows of orange witches hats, bright lights on tall metal stands, silvery umbrellas and at least five enormous video cameras. Three white trucks are parked at the other end. People with clipboards and lanyards are running around like they have to
save the world
. Others are standing with takeaway coffee cups, just talking.

There’s a brand-new fence blocking the way, and a small group of people are gathered along it, watching. You can tell straight away that they’re nothing to do with the film. They just want to watch. A little bit like us, except that we’re on a
mission
.

We stand with them, our chests up to the fence, eating our muesli bars and watching, but it’s pretty boring. We’re miles from Carmeline. We can hardly even see her, let alone hear what people say. There’s no way we can find out who’s framing her from here.

‘We have to get closer,’ says Jessie.

I just love Jessie.
She’s so responsible, but once she wants to know something, nothing gets in her way.

I can’t see how we’ll get any closer, though. It’s like a desert of concrete between here and the filming. If we started to run across, everyone would see.

Vee is on
tiptoe
, squinting.

I try to tell her it’s hopeless. ‘You’re not gonna see anything from here.’

‘I know, I know,’ she says. ‘But isn’t that Not-John’s grate?’

I stare down the side of the building. Of course it is.

One time, we met a runaway boy who said his name was John but it wasn’t. He lived in our basement and crawled in and out through a grate onto the footpath. His grate is right there – in the middle of all the action.

‘Vee,’ Jessie says. ‘
You are a genius.
’

Vee grins.

We all turn and bolt, leaving the other watchers to the boringness. I smile. We’re gonna be
so
much closer than they are.

The stairs down to the basement car park are quicker than waiting for the lift. We barrel down them. Lots of the parking spaces are empty – I guess because people like Alice are still at work.

Not-John’s grate is above car park 503. He used to climb the bonnet of the car there, like a step to get in and out. Right now there is no car. The grate is higher than our heads, but I can see feet going backwards and forwards up there.

There.
Those are Carmeline’s, I can tell by the
kid-sized feet
and the bright leggings. And those black trousers and serious boots next to her belong to the scary Nanny.

There’s a pipe running along the wall at about knee height. I step onto it and grab for the grate. Then I
heave
up so my tummy is on the sill and my face is pushed against the bars. The old green public toilet across the footpath is partly blocking my view.

Someone calls, ‘Take seven!’ and the feet around me start walking away. They head across the road to where the filming is.

‘What’s happening?’ Vee asks, trying to jump up beside me. There’s not enough room for both of us.

‘Hang on,’ I say.

I give the grate a little shove. It pops out of place, leaving a
Squishy Taylor-sized hole
to squeeze through.

I’m crouched behind the back of a movie truck, watching Vee struggle out from the grate-hole. It’s pretty hard to get up, and it’s a tight squeeze to
shimmy
through.

There. She’s out. She turns around to peer back into the car park.

I see Jessie’s face pop up, then disappear, as though she slipped off the pipe. This is going to be pretty hard for Jessie. She doesn’t really climb anything, ever.

Then Jessie’s hand reaches up and Vee grabs it and tries to haul her out.

Jessie says, ‘Ow! Ow, stop.’ Her hand rips away from Vee’s.

I glance around. We’re partly hidden by the toilet building and the movie truck, and luckily no-one is watching us right now. I creep back to see if I can help. Jessie is down there in the dark, rubbing her hand, which looks sore.

‘I don’t think I can do it. You go without me,’ she says. ‘Just make sure you take note of all
suspicious activity
.’

I glance behind me. Carmeline Clancy is partway up the building. There’s a camera sliding up a long pole, following her as she goes. I desperately want to watch. I think about being noble and trying to get Jessie out. But the filming is too fun.

‘OK,’ I say, and leave her in the dark basement. I
creep
along the side of the truck, getting closer and closer to the filming. Vee is right behind me. We
crouch
in the shadow of the truck and watch.