Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean (19 page)

‘I thought they were already here,’ Laura said, but her words bounced off Janet Rain like rubber bullets off a steel tank.

They passed through a door and Laura bit back a gasp. They were on a narrow walkway. On either side of them a row of giant tanks, each as big as an Olympic swimming pool, held dozens of sharks of different species. A Great White poked its head out of the water and sniffed the air.

‘Watch your step,’ warned Large. ‘You might fall in and then it would be dinner time.’ He made a ghastly crunching sound and licked his lips.

Janet Rain giggled. ‘You are a tease, Mr Pike.’

She turned to Laura and Tariq. ‘All those summer movies about tourists being gobbled by Great Whites with jaws as big as caves are fabulous publicity for the Straight A’s business. Guess how many people are killed by sharks each year? Around four. You have more chance of being struck dead by a falling coconut. Sharks don’t like eating humans. However, humans love eating sharks. Nearly a hundred million are killed every year, mainly for shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy. Some are sold as “rock salmon” in British fish and chip shops. ’Course, the sharks we have here are mainly rare species like spiny dogfish and oceanic whitetip, and therefore much more valuable.’

She paused. ‘Naturally, these large fish are demonstration models only. Customers view them, place their orders and then our boats go out to hunt them. We believe we have the most sophisticated fish tracking sonar in the world. If you know what to look for, sea creatures are basically swimming money. Take those dolphins over there. People will pay anything to swim with dolphins. We capture them, train them and pack them off to theme parks.’

A blue pool with a variety of toys beside it held two listless dolphins. A trainer was trying to interest them in a bucket of dead fish.

‘Damian, make them do a trick,’ yelled Janet.

The trainer straightened. Laura recognised him immediately as the tall pirate from the ship, the one who had tried to coax her into the laundry hamper. He was no longer wearing his pirate regalia, but his sneer was unmistakable. He blew a whistle and one of the dolphins obediently turned a triple somersault. A strong stench of chlorine rose from the pool.

Laura fought back tears. ‘You’re inhuman,’ she screamed at Janet. ‘You and everyone else in the Straight A gang. You’re barbarians.’

Tariq put his arm around her, causing Little to give him a shove. ‘Don’t let them get to you. We’ll get out of here and we’ll get justice.’

‘You will get justice,’ said Janet Rain, overhearing him. ‘Indeed you will. That’s why we’ve brought you all the way to the Caribbean. We’ve brought you here to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget, Laura Marlin. We’ve brought you here to watch Calvin Redfern die.’

‘WHAT I DON’T
understand is why this sudden obsession with fish,’ Rita Gannet said as Jimmy returned to the short video on octopi and their young for the third time. ‘You’ve never shown the slightest interest in any sea creature in your life. Now they’re so important to you that we’ve had to leave our fabulous Antiguan resort, a place with every conceivable form of entertainment, to come to Montserrat. If it were the volcano you wanted to see, that would be one thing. But no, you had to come to this fish research place. What is it called again?’

‘Marine Concern. Mum, look at how incredible she is. I thought octopi were like blobs of jelly, but this octopus mum is the most loving mother in the sea.’

‘When do we see the man-eating sharks, that’s what I want to know,’ Bob roared. ‘What time’s this tour thing? Ten a.m.?’

The visitors’ museum attendant, a pale woman with glasses and hair tightly bound in a bun, regarded him with thinly veiled dislike. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, sir, but I’m afraid all aquarium tours have been cancelled for the day.’

Bob advanced on her. ‘You cannot be serious. Have you any idea how much it has cost us to fly to Montserrat? A king’s ransom, that’s how much. The flight was so bumpy I almost lost my breakfast, and let’s not get started on the taxi from the airport. Fleeced we were, absolutely fleeced. I’m surprised he didn’t ask for my watch. And after all that you want to break the heart of my boy, Jimmy.’

The attendant was impassive. ‘I apologise for the inconvenience, sir, but it’s out of my hands.’

‘This is an outrage,’ Bob said. ‘Why weren’t we told? I want my money back. Rita, are you hearing this?’

‘What, dear?’ Rita mumbled from the depths of a sensory experience booth. She had pressed the button marked Hunting Turtle. ‘Ooooh weeeh, Bob, you need to feel this to believe it.’

Jimmy held tightly to the badge in his pocket. His mind was racing. It had taken considerable effort to convince his parents to leave their magnificent resort and take a day trip to Montserrat, all so he could visit a sea life research facility, something that at first they’d refused point blank to consider.

He’d spent an equal number of hours scheming how to free Laura and Tariq if they had, as he suspected, been kidnapped. The aquarium tour had been key to that. And all the time, he was haunted by the thought that they might have spun him a pack of tall tales. That Laura’s detective uncle might be a complete fiction and that the badge might mean nothing at all. It might have been Laura’s feeble way of saying sorry for letting him down.

But the thing he returned to time and time again was how they’d saved his life – or at the very least saved him a trip to the hospital, at the adventure centre. They’d also kept their word about keeping him company on the ship, and had gone out of their way to include him, even when he sensed they’d rather have been alone. That’s why he’d been so determined to be the detective he’d boasted he could become and do his best to help them. He’d spent ages on the internet at the resort figuring out where Marine Concern were located and how on earth to persuade his parents to take him there.

And after all that, here was this museum attendant, a woman with a face like a prison guard, telling them the aquarium tour was cancelled. She didn’t look in the least bit sorry. He had the feeling that she enjoyed ruining their day.

It wasn’t hard to make himself cry. All he had to do was imagine what would become of Laura and Tariq if he couldn’t help them.

‘I want to see the sharks,’ he sobbed. ‘Miss, I want to see the sharks. Please, miss, let me see the sharks.’

‘Sorry, kid, the sharks are out of bounds today,’ said the attendant, trying unsuccessfully to hide a scowl. She didn’t like children at the best of times and this boy with the wild hair and T-shirt so vividly stained it was practically an artwork was no exception. ‘Try the volcano. It’s much more exciting.’

Jimmy stopped blubbing. He sniffed and said: ‘Either you let me do the aquarium tour or I’ll tell people that Marine Concern is a front for some shady operation and that you kidnap small children.’

Her face went the colour of marble and her mouth dropped open. ‘I don’t know what you … Who’s been saying …? What are you talking about? That’s rubbish. Do you hear me? It’s garbage.’

‘Keep your wig on,’ said Jimmy. ‘I was only joking.’

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Bob, marching up. ‘Have you made my boy cry? Jimmy, son, did this nasty person make you cry?’

With immense effort, the attendant summoned a smile. ‘I was just explaining to your son that the aquarium tour is cancelled indefinitely for health and safety reasons. I appreciate that he is bitterly disappointed, so I’d like to make it up to him by giving him a gift.’

She took a cellophane wrapped package from a drawer and made a great fuss of presenting it to him. ‘On behalf of Marine Concern, I’d like to apologise for inconveniencing you and present you with this as a token of our goodwill. Hopefully we’ll be able to host you on an aquarium tour on another occasion.’ Under her breath she said: ‘Here, have a clean T-shirt, kid. You look as if you need one.’

Jimmy grinned. ‘Cool, thanks. You’re a nice lady. Well, maybe not nice exactly but … smart. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything about Marine Concern being a shady operation and …’

The attendant hissed like a snake. ‘Shhh.’

Rita came rushing over, face aglow with the turtle experience. ‘That was awesome. You should try it, Bob.’

‘Not on your life. Come on, doll, let’s get out of here. Jimmy, where are you going to now?’

‘To the bathroom. I want to try on my new T-shirt.’

‘Quick as you can. We’re leaving shortly.’

Jimmy did indeed go to the bathroom, a door at the end of a long corridor marked by a shark wearing a tuxedo. But on his return he paused at an unmarked door. It was locked. Jimmy took out his mum’s supermarket points card, which he’d taken the liberty of removing from her bag earlier, and inserted it into the space between the lock and the door. He’d studied the exact method on the Internet at the resort. Unfortunately, it didn’t work quite as it had in the demonstration, or as it so easily worked in the movies. In actuality it didn’t work at all.

Down the passage, his mum and dad were arguing with the attendant over the cancelled tour. Jimmy felt a failure as a detective. He’d been so sure that the card would work and he’d be able to burst in and heroically save his friends if, of course, they were there. But once again he was just bumbling, scruffy, hopeless Jimmy Gannet. That’s how the kids thought of him at school. Oh, sure he was good at maths, science and pretty much every other subject. But in the playground and on the sports field, his classmates avoided him as if he was toxic waste. Unless they were bullying him.

In his head he was a lion, but in his heart he was … well, a mouse.

His heart pounded. What would Laura do?

Into his head came the advice she’d given him, about how Matt Walker said that a common weakness of criminals was being too clever for their own good. They were so obsessed with detail that they overlooked the ordinary things.

There was a squeak of wheels and a man came round the corner with a trolley heaped with towels and uniforms. Jimmy squatted down and pretended he was trying to get a stone out of his shoe.

The man nodded at him. ‘’Scuse us, ’scuse us.’ Seizing a handle set into the wall, he dumped the laundry down a chute. The trolley squeaked away.

‘Jimmy, what’s taking you so long?’ called his father.

Jimmy looked at the chute. He hadn’t a clue where it ended, but he was hopeful that the laundry would provide a soft landing.

‘JIMMY!’

Jimmy glanced quickly over both shoulders and opened the chute. It was difficult to clamber into and painful, since it had a sharp metal edge. While he was struggling to find something to hold onto, he lost his balance and fell headfirst. He had to grit his teeth to stop himself screaming all the way down.

MR PIKE GAVE
Laura a shove that almost sent her flying. Tariq steadied her and gave the big bodyguard a warning glare.

‘Ooh, I’m scared,’ teased Large. ‘I’m quaking in my boots.’

They were in a large white room at the halfway point of the aquarium, one whole side of which was a full-length window showing a cinematic stretch of grey-green sea. Storm clouds hung low over the churning waves. Pelicans dive-bombed leaping fish. Laura envied them their freedom.

‘They’ve no idea we’re prisoners,’ she thought. ‘No idea that the humans in this place are plotting to destroy the sea creatures they live on. And us.’

Janet flicked a switch and the storm-darkened room was illuminated. There were two swimming pools in it, a large one which, judging by the coloured balls and hoops, had been used as a dolphin training or display area. The other pool was close to the window. It was the size of a large Jacuzzi, but it wasn’t bubbling. Instead, a red chair was suspended above it. Tied to the chair and looking very much paler and thinner than when they last saw him was Calvin Redfern.