The Great Escape (15 page)

‘Right. OK,’ said Jake.

Millie thought perhaps she
did
like him. There was something to be said for a person who simply agreed with you when you proposed a second rescue mission that would almost certainly
involve further criminal activity. Particularly if they had been injured in the first one.

‘Are you badly hurt?’ she asked, realising she should probably have mentioned this sooner. ‘What happened?’

Jake told Millie about his exploits the previous night, and Millie explained about the near misses with Arthur Shepard and the van coming to collect the cats.

‘Oh, that explains it,’ said Jake. ‘I took down the registration number of the van, in case they’d kidnapped you too. And I got the number of the car that left just after
it.’

‘That must be Arthur Shepard’s,’ said Millie. ‘It’s his lab.’

‘I wrote it down while I was lying in the ditch, waiting for my leg to stop twitching.’ Jake seemed quite proud of this. ‘So we should be able to find out where he
lives.’

‘How?’

‘The police and the driving licence place have reverse directories. You type in the car registration and it gives you the home address.’

‘How will we get into those?’

‘My brother can do it.’

‘Really?’

‘He’s a pretty good hacker. I mean, he tries not to draw attention to himself by doing MI5 or the Vatican or anything, but he’s pretty good.’

‘OK. Well, here’s another one for him.’ Millie gave Jake the number of the would-be intruder, and told him what had happened when she and Max had got home early this
morning.

‘Wow.’ Jake was impressed. ‘You two are pretty hardcore.’

‘Thanks,’ said Millie. ‘I would slightly prefer it if no one was trying to break into my house in the middle of the night, though. I mean, I could stop being hardcore quite
easily.’

‘Come round later,’ said Jake, ‘when my parents are at work, and we’ll see what we can find out. Maybe we can get enough to give to the police. Or the papers. Then
Shepard won’t have time to be sniffing around you and Max.’

This sounded like an excellent idea.

Jake gave her his address. ‘Come round at ten – Mum and Dad will be long gone by then.’

Millie agreed, hung up and told Max the plan. ‘I’ll leave a note here for Dad. She looked at the clock, considering. ‘He’s gone straight to work, I guess, from
what’s-her-face’s house.’

‘Is that her real name?’ asked Max innocently.

‘Yes. It’s on her birth certificate, next to a surprisingly late year,’ said Millie acidly. ‘Now, let’s have breakfast, and then I’ll fix that
puncture.’

As Millie reached up to ring Jake’s doorbell, the door swung softly open on its own.

‘Come in,’ muttered Jake, from behind the door.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Millie suspiciously.

‘Nothing, really.’ He reached behind her and pulled her bike inside, propping it up against the wall. ‘I just thought you might be being followed.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Max, his head popping out of her bag like a well-trained magician’s sidekick. ’I’ve been keeping my eyes open. We haven’t seen
that man, or his car. And I didn’t see the other man either.’

‘What other man?’ asked Jake. Max could be quite confusing, he thought.

‘The one I watched search Millie’s house the other day.’

Max jumped down onto the carpet. Millie looked at Jake properly for the first time, and saw that he was holding his left arm awkwardly. His long-sleeved T-shirt concealed a bandage.

‘I fell quite hard,’ Jake confessed, seeing concern in her face. ‘I’ve twisted my left knee, and I think I’ve sprained my elbow – it’s the size of a
melon,’ he added, sounding reasonably proud of this fruity achievement. And now Millie looked closely, his arm did seem to swell out in the middle.

‘Ouch,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he sounded rueful. ‘You should see my bike.’ He pointed out of the hall window and Millie saw a mangled bicycle leaning against the wall like a crippled crane
fly.

Max jumped up onto the sill and had a look for himself. ‘Oh dear.’

‘I know. I dunno what I’m going to tell my parents,’ he sighed. ‘The truth, I suppose.’

Millie looked extremely surprised.

‘Not all of it,’ he explained. ‘Just the bit where I fell off. Not the bit where I was following a guy in the dark without my lights on round the unlit roads outside of town,
after acting as a diversion for two burglars.’

‘I should leave all those parts out,’ agreed Max. ‘No point worrying them if you don’t have to.’

‘I hope I didn’t worry you two, either.’ Jake looked apologetic. ‘I tried to call you, but there was no signal for a while. And by time I had a signal . . .’ He
paused awkwardly. ‘By the time I had a signal again, my phone was in three separate pieces,’ he finished.

‘Can you fix it?’ asked Millie sympathetically. She would be lost without her phone. It had been on her top ten list of things not to forget before attempting the break-in, along
with maps, food, quiet shoes and Max.

‘Not a hope.’ Jake shrugged.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I forgot my puncture repair kit, so we had to walk home.’

‘She forgot tissues, too,’ said Max.

Jake shook his head sadly. ‘Dear dear,’ he said. ‘You forgot tissues. What a shambles. I dunno how you managed to break in anywhere with that kind of slacker attitude.’
He grinned at them both.

‘I have a question,’ said the cat. ‘Why did you try to follow Arthur Shepard at all and get into this mess’ – he nodded at Jake’s bike and his many injuries
– ‘if you can simply get his address from your, what is it, reverse directory?’ Millie had told Max all about this on their way over.

‘I didn’t know I could then,’ explained Jake. ‘That was another one of my brother’s bright ideas. He mentioned it this morning.’ He shrugged wearily and then
winced.

Millie was just about to ask about Jake’s elusive brother, when they were interrupted.

‘Are they here? Are they here?’ called a child’s voice from upstairs.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Millie.

‘This is Ben,’ said Jake, as a small boy appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Hello, Ben,’ said Millie.

‘Hi,’ Ben said shyly, looking down at the cat. ‘Is this Max?’

‘Hello,’ said Max.

‘He really talks!’ Ben was delighted, a huge grin splitting his face in half. ‘Come on up.’

‘Are you sure you should have told your little brother about us?’ Millie tried to sound less annoyed than she felt. The more people who knew about this, the more danger she and Max,
and maybe her dad or even Bill, might be in.

‘Er . . . he already knew,’ Jake mumbled.

‘How?’ she demanded.

‘Well, you know, from helping us yesterday.’

‘How did he . . .?’ Millie’s voice trailed off as Max’s jaw dropped.

‘
That’s
your brother? The computer hacker?’ She was horrified.

‘Yeah.’ Jake sounded embarrassed. ‘He’s a lot cleverer than people think. I mean, he’s way cleverer than me. He has an IQ of 168. He’s a genius,
really.’

‘Your baby brother did all that yesterday?’ asked Max, who looked as shocked as Millie felt, which was some consolation.

‘He’s not a baby. He’s nearly ten.’ Jake was getting defensive.

‘I’m glad you saved this information till now. To think you were so rude to Millie about being a “little kid”.’ Max glared at Jake.

‘Well, who knew she’d be exactly like him?’ Jake sounded genuinely affronted. ‘I spend half my time being told what to do by one child genius. I didn’t realise she
was another.’

Millie blushed.

‘Anyway, he got you in, didn’t he?’ asked Jake.

‘Yes, he did,’ Millie conceded.

Max shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he puzzled. ‘I spent years of my life thinking children were simply noisy and sticky. I get
kidnapped, I escape, and every child I meet is some kind of master crook. Millie is like an arch-villain, plotting away with her nerves of steel, you are able to elude large dogs and disappear at
will, and your brother apparently controls the electricity supply for this entire area.’ Jake shrugged modestly, and Millie blushed again. Max continued shaking his head. ‘I am either
the luckiest cat in England or this country is populated entirely by unusually gifted children with criminal tendencies. And yet, you all look so innocent . . .’

‘Come on,’ shouted Ben, poking his head over the banister above them. ‘Jake says we’ve got another cat to rescue. And then we’re going to nail the bad
guys.’

Millie raised her eyebrows briefly.

‘He likes those American police shows,’ said Jake.

Max and Millie nodded mutely.

If Millie’s room had seemed to Max to be a good place in which to plot an escape, Ben’s room could have belonged to an international criminal mastermind with an
unusual fondness for cartoons. Computers, scanners, printers and web-cams all gleamed on a huge desk, beneath a giant poster of several animated superheroes on the wall. The computer had already
been in action and printouts littered the table.

‘Here are the registered owners and addresses of all the vehicles you saw,’ said Ben, waving them at Millie.

Obviously Jake had also reported back. She scanned them quickly.

‘So, the van that came to pick up the cats belongs to a company in Lincolnshire.’

‘It’s a front. Another testing lab,’ said Ben.

‘How do you know?’ asked Max.

‘I ran the company name through a search to get the names of the directors. Then I searched for other companies in their names. That’s where I found this.’ Ben handed them
another bit of paper. It was a copy of the home page of an animal research centre.

‘That’s theirs, too.’ Millie nodded as she read.

‘So the orange cat—’

‘Ariston,’ supplied Max.

‘Ariston?’ asked Jake. ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘Apparently, it means “The Best”,’ scoffed Max. ‘We always said it should stand for “Best at Annoying Every Other Cat in the Room”.’

‘Well, it pains me to say it, but “Ariston”’ – Millie rolled her eyes – ‘was right. They were being shipped off to another lab. Lucky we went when we
did. And lucky you saw the van and got the registration. There’s no way Max and I could have seen it without getting caught.’

Jake smiled proudly.

‘And the guy who came to our house last night was . . .’ Millie leafed through the sheets Ben had given her.

‘. . . Ray,’ finished Jake.

‘He works for Arthur Shepard directly, not through Vakkson,’ offered Ben.

‘How do you know that?’ This was far more information than Millie had managed to unpick from the net.

‘He runs a security firm. Pretty scuzzy one, though.’ Ben handed her another sheet of paper. ‘It says they offer security for people and property. But Vakkson uses a different
company for their site security – this one.’

Ben brandished another sheet, and Millie recognised the colours of this home page – they were exactly the same as the uniform of the security man who sat at the front desk – maroon
and grey. She began to laugh.

‘You’re amazing,’ she said.

‘Well, Jake helps,’ he replied, trying and failing to look modest.

Jake nodded, and pulled a face.

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘I load the paper into the printer. And sometimes, I staple things together.’

‘So we know all about the van and the heavies. And that just leaves . . .’ Millie reached out and took the last sheet. ‘Arthur Shepard’s home address?’

‘No.’ Ben was irritated. ‘His car’s not listed to his home address. It’s listed to a business address, and that turned out to be a mailbox, not a real place at
all.’

Millie pressed her lips together in annoyance.

‘Sorry,’ said Ben.

‘Don’t be sorry.’ She felt guilty now. ‘It’s not your fault. We’ll just have to think of another way to find out where Shepard might be keeping Celeste. I
don’t think he’d have taken her to his house, anyway. He’s very secretive about his business dealings, isn’t he? I can’t see him taking Celeste home – his
neighbours might see her.’

Max looked worried.

‘We’ll think of something, mate,’ said Jake to the cat.

‘We will,’ promised Millie.

‘So, what next?’ Ben had obviously had more sleep than the other three put together and was bursting with energy.

‘I don’t know,’ said Millie. ‘I was hoping we’d be able to get proof of the cats being held in the lab when we raided Shepard’s office. But then he turned out
to be in the building, so we just made a run for it.’

‘You did the right thing,’ said Jake fervently, and rubbed his sore arm again.

‘Hmm. We still need to find an answer to the most basic question,’ said Ben.

‘Which is what?’ asked Max.

‘Which is, who wants talking cats?’

‘We’ve tried to figure this out before,’ explained Millie. ‘But we couldn’t find anything online and we couldn’t think of any reasons
ourselves.’

Ben looked pained – he hated failure. ’I’ve tried too,’ he admitted. ‘There’s nothing, is there?’

‘Not that I could find. But you’re better at this kind of thing. I mean, how did you do that stuff with the electricity last night?’

‘Oh, it was easy. Their electricity grid was hardly protected at all. And the different circuits weren’t even encrypted. They’d practically labelled them. If they’d put
the cameras and the doors on the same loop, that would have been tricky, but honestly, it was as if they
wanted
someone to break in. I turned the cameras back on after you’d left, by
the way. Just because it was funny.’

Millie grinned at him. She wondered how funny Arthur Shepard had found it.

‘But I can’t find anything that connects Vakkson to cat research at all. They usually deal with rodents.’

‘Mmm. That’s what
we
thought. But Max doesn’t reckon there were any other animals in the building.’

‘If there had been mice, I would have smelled them,’ he said patiently. ‘Mice, birds, little helpless voles – cats know.’

The others nodded.

‘So, if they aren’t doing any rodent research at Haverham,’ said Jake, ‘is it anything to do with Vakkson at all? Is the cat thing Arthur Shepard’s pet
project?’ Millie, Max and Ben all stared at him. ‘Sorry,’ said Jake. ‘That pun was unintentional.’