The Fangs of the Dragon (13 page)

1.  Napoleon LOST the Battle of Waterloo.
(For more info, see my previous case file.)

2. That translation I gave him was total gibberish.
Even I speak more French than him, and all I can manage is to order a baguette!

3. The Brazilian rainforest is in South America.
In, like, you know, er,
Brazil
! It’s nowhere near Africa.

I tapped at Monsieur Jacques’s sleeve. ‘Could I ask if you —?’

He was clearly getting ever so slightly fed up with my questions now. ‘I don’t appear to ’ave your name on my list, young man. ’Ave you paid for ze session?’

‘Er, no, I’m just tagging along,’ I said.

‘Well, tag along to ze kitchen and make ze tea,’ said Monsieur Jacques. He gave me a smarmy smile.

And in that instant, I knew why his face had looked familiar. Remember what I said about family resemblances? Monsieur Jacques’s smarmy smile was identical to the smarmy smile of a certain
low-down rat from school . . .

My heart suddenly started to race. So as not to give anything away to ‘Monsieur Jacques’, I quickly retreated to the kitchen. While the kettle boiled, I phoned Izzy.

‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘I’ll get a picture of him and send it to you straight away.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ she said.

I hurried back into the living room, holding the phone to my ear as if Izzy was still on the line. I planned to stand as close to our phoney French friend as I could, pretend to be deep in
conversation, and click the photo button when he wasn’t looking.

The living room was empty.

For a second or two I panicked, thinking that the class was suddenly over and that everyone had gone home. But as the steady throb of the music continued, I could hear people moving about all
over the house.

One or two members of the class reappeared, and kick-stepped their way across the room. I spotted a couple more of them twirling and stretching in the hallway. From somewhere upstairs came a
familiar, treacle-thick accent: ‘Looovely, Mrs Ferguson, hold your leg in zat position and spin! Yeeees, that is perfecto; you three there, please to be going downstairs to join ze group in
ze dining room. Loooovely!’

I found Izzy’s mum doing funny-looking arm movements on the stairs.

‘Does every class include this different-rooms routine?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Izzy’s mum, continuing to wave her arms about like a slow-motion windmill, ‘we always split up, spread out and move about. Monsieur Jacques says it’s
to give us a free-flowing feeling of personal space. He says it allows him to assess us individually.’

A crime-related thought popped into my mind. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I bet that’s not all it allows him to do.’

Monsieur Jacques appeared at the top of the stairs and started skipping lightly down towards us. ‘Mrs Ferguson,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘ze spinning, she is enough
now, you will get dizzy again.’

As he drew level with Izzy’s mum and me, he smiled at one of us and sneered at the other. I’ll leave you to guess which of us got the sneer.

‘You ’ave made ze tea?’ he said.

‘
Oui,
’ I replied. ‘Ze kettle, she is boiled.’

For the briefest of split seconds, the look on his face said, ‘I don’t like you, sunshine!’ But then he switched his attention to Izzy’s mum, grinning soppily at her. He
dug into his pocket and produced a gold badge like the one he was wearing, with a dragon logo printed on it.

‘Mrs Moustique!’ he declared. ‘You ’ave made such terrific effort this evening. You are quite a new member to our group, but already I award you my Star Pupil
badge!’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ said Izzy’s mum, as he pinned it to her tracksuit. There was a ripple of applause from upstairs.

I took the opportunity, while Monsieur Jacques’s attention was diverted, to flip open my phone. I got an excellent shot of his face while he was busy asking Izzy’s mum for her
monthly subscription fee.

Later, after I’d sent the picture to Izzy and was back home, I waited nervously for confirmation of the evening’s findings. I didn’t have to wait very long. Izzy called me back
within the hour.

‘You were right to suggest I look back through crime reports on the news sites,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take me long to find this Monsieur Jacques. The pictures I’ve
got of him are ten years old, but it’s definitely the same guy.’

‘Ten years old?’ I said. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Because until the middle of last year, he was in prison,’ said Izzy. ‘He organised a gang that conned half a million quid out of a group of Third World aid charities. What a
scumbag!’

‘And his real name?’

‘Oh yeh, that’s the best bit,’ said Izzy. ‘You were quite right. He certainly isn’t French. He’s Harry’s uncle. His name is Jack Lovecraft.’

That piece of information was the last piece in the puzzle. I now knew exactly what had been going on. I knew what those non-break-ins were all about, and I knew what Harry had been up to.

But catching the intruder would still be difficult.

T
HURSDAY
10.55
A.M.

‘Can’t we park outside the house?’ asked Miss Bennett.

‘No!’ I cried. ‘We mustn’t be seen, we can’t let the intruder suspect anything.’

Miss Bennett stopped the school minibus and we all got out: Miss Bennett, me, the six pupils in Miss Bennett’s class who’d already been visited by the intruder and a seventh pupil, a
scruffy boy called Oliver.

‘I live at the other end of this street,’ said Oliver, as Miss Bennett locked up the minibus.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re here. OK, everyone, most of these houses have hedges around their front gardens. Keep down, below the hedges, out of
sight.’

Everyone crouched down and shuffled along the street towards Oliver’s house. An old lady walking a tiny dog passed us on the other side of the road. Both of them gave us a funny look.

‘Honestly, Saxby,’ said Miss Bennett crossly, ‘is this really necessary?’

‘It’s vital,’ I whispered.

‘Why couldn’t you have talked to us at school?’ said Miss Bennett.

‘Because until we’ve caught the intruder red-handed, news mustn’t get out at school that the mystery’s been solved. One sneaky phone call from Harry Lovecraft, and the
intruder will fold up the whole scheme and make a run for it. I’ve got Muddy covering for me back in class. As far as Harry’s concerned, I’m at the optician’s getting my
glasses adjusted.’

‘You’re making some pretty serious allegations about that boy,’ said Miss Bennett quietly. ‘You’d better have your facts straight.’

By now, we’d reached Oliver’s house. Luckily, the hedge round his garden was particularly tall and thick. We all scrunched down, at a point where we couldn’t be seen from the
front door or any of the windows.

I checked my watch. 11 a.m. precisely.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Now, we all know that, right at this moment, there’s a weekly de-stress session going on, which the mums of all seven of you are attending. This week,
it’s over at Liz Wyndham’s house.’

‘Right,’ said Liz Wyndham.

‘The homes of six members of that class have already been visited by a mysterious intruder,’ I said. ‘Oliver here is the only person we know of whose mum is at that class, but
whose home has
not
yet been visited by a mysterious intruder.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Surely, there are more than seven people at this weekly session? How can we know which house is next on the intruder’s
list?’

‘Weeeeeell,’ I said, ‘strictly speaking, we can’t . . .’

‘So, we could all be crouching here, behind a hedge, like a bunch of idiots, using up lesson time, for nothing?’ said Miss Bennett.

‘Strictly speaking . . . yes,’ I admitted. ‘But I have every reason to believe I’m right, and that the intruder is, right now, as we speak, in Oliver’s
house.’

‘Well, let’s get in there and grab them, then!’ cried Oliver.

‘Shhh!’ I hissed. ‘No good. If we barge in there, the intruder could simply dump the evidence we need and run out of the back door. We have to wait. We have to catch
them.’

‘But what’s this evidence you mention?’ said Miss Bennett. ‘And how
do
you know this is the right house?’

‘Look at what we know so far,’ I said. ‘In every case, the intruder has struck at a house they
know
will be empty. Think about it from the intruder’s point of
view. Mum X attends a gym class. So
she’s
out of the house, but half a dozen
more
people might still be at home! An intruder will want to minimise the risk of finding the place
still occupied.
That
is the link between all seven of you here. All seven of you can confirm to a third party that, on a Thursday morning, when Mum’s at her gym class, there’s
nobody else at home.’

‘A third party?’ said Oliver.

‘You mean . . . Harry Lovecraft?’ said Miss Bennett.

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘He’s been unusually friendly of late. He’s been chatting away to people left, right and centre. And the interest he takes in all his new friends
covers up the fact that he’s fishing for information. About your mums and dads, about what goes on at home . . .’

‘That sneaky, miserable, underhand . . .’ muttered Liz Wyndham.

‘So,’ said Miss Bennett, ‘cross-referencing the addresses of the people who attend the gym class, with the information gathered by Harry, means that the intruder can know which
houses would make the best targets.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Of course, the intruder only
needs
to have an address, and can use various tricks to find out if there’s someone else at home, but the
information provided by Harry would be a perfect shortcut to targeting houses left unattended.’

‘But we’re still no nearer knowing
how
or
why
these incidents are happening,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘The intruder can’t be the man running the classes.
He’s running the classes.’

‘How is Monsieur Jacques involved?’ said Liz Wyndham. ‘My mum thinks the world of him.’

‘I’m afraid Monsieur Jacques is really Monsieur Harry Lovecraft’s uncle, a man with a criminal record as long as an anteater’s tongue. He got out of prison last year, set
up Dragonfang Gym and is using it as a front for his latest con trick.’

‘You mean he’s holding all these classes as a kind of distraction, so that the intruder can get to work?’ said Miss Bennett.

‘Oh, he’s doing a lot more than that,’ I said. ‘Remember how there’s never any sign of an actual break-in? That’s because the intruder is using a key. You
see, because Monsieur Jacques holds his classes in people’s homes, he’s got every opportunity to snoop. He sends people off around the house, doing their exercises, and all he needs is
a few seconds to locate the owner’s keyring, and take an impression of their keys with a bar of soap or a block of modelling clay.’

‘But if he’s going to all that trouble,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Why is so little being taken?’

‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘A great deal is being taken. Look at the sort of things that were disturbed in each case. Computers, household papers, even waste paper bins. The
intruder is stealing words and numbers.’

‘Words and numbers?’ said Oliver.

‘Bank account numbers, computer passwords, login details, financial records. Personal information of all kinds. Identity theft.’

‘But none of the parents have had their bank accounts emptied, or anything like that,’ said Miss Bennett. ‘Surely he’s not simply storing up all that
information?’

‘Yes, that’s precisely what he’s doing,’ I said. ‘He’s already told everyone he’s closing Dragonfang Gym down and moving abroad. Not to Africa, as he
claims, I’m sure. But somewhere. And when he’s safely on the other side of the world, he can use all that information to whatever criminal ends he likes. It’s all done by
computer. He could be on Mars and still launch raids on one bank account after another.’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Bennett, ‘if he’s abroad, it’ll be that much harder to trace him, and that much harder for the law to catch up with him.’

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘He’s been running loads of different classes, so by now he’s probably got passwords and account numbers for dozens of people, possibly
hundreds.’

‘If that’s true,’ said Liz Wyndham, ‘why haven’t more people in more gym classes noticed that these intrusions are happening?’

‘Why would they? You lot only noticed by accident. If the intruder is careful enough, most of this scheme’s victims won’t even realise the intruder’s visited
them.’

‘Why steal the money?’ said Liz Wyndham. ‘Isn’t that inviting suspicion?’

‘A little bonus for Harry?’ I said. ‘For services rendered? If Harry wasn’t so flash with his cash, I might not have noticed that! In most cases, for most classes,
Monsieur Jacques will have had to spend time cosying up to his customers to find out the sort of household details that the intruder would benefit from. But once he realised that several members of
this one particular Thursday morning de-stress class were mums at St Egbert’s, he spotted an opportunity. He had a nephew he could use as an inside man!’

‘So
who
is in my house, then?’ wailed Oliver. ‘Who
is
this intruder?’

I was about to answer him when two things happened. First, the front door of Oliver’s house swung open. Second, I felt a distinct and sudden itching in my nose. I glanced at the hedge: it
was one of those flowering types. I’d been crouching down with my head in an air current loaded with pollen.

‘Ohhh, briddiant!’ I sighed.

But I had no time to feel sorry for myself. The door of Oliver’s house was standing ajar. So far, no movement came from inside.

Nobody dared breathe. We all stared through the tiny gaps in the hedge, between the leaves, watching the front door.

11.04 a.m.

Suddenly, moving swiftly, a figure emerged. A woman. She was wearing a long red coat and chunky boots, and a cascade of blond hair fell around her shoulders. She was facing into the house, away
from us, as if checking that she’d not forgotten anything. The upper part of her was deep in the slab of shadow thrown by the flat porch that jutted out above the door.