theory.’
The commander wrung an imaginary neck. ‘Foaly! Why am I not surprised?’
Artemis smirked from his seat in the passenger area.
‘Now, you two, we need to work together as a team.’
‘So tell me about Foaly’s theory, Captain,’ ordered Root, belting himself into the co-pilot’s seat.
Holly activated a static wash on the shuttle’s external cameras. Positive and negative charges dislodged the sheets of dust from the lenses.
‘Foaly thought Mulch’s death a bit suspicious, given that he was the best tunnel fairy in the business.’
‘So why didn’t he come to me?’
‘It was just a hunch. With respect, you know what you’re like with hunches, Commander.’
Root nodded grudgingly. It was true, he didn’t have time for hunches. It was hard evidence, or get out of my office until you’ve got some.
‘The centaur did a bit of investigating in his own time. The first thing he realized was that the gold recovered was a bit light. I negotiated for the return of half the ransom and, by Foaly’s reckoning, the cart was about two dozen bars short.’
The commander lit one of his trademark fungus cigars. He had to admit it sounded promising: gold missing, Mulch Diggums within a hundred miles.
Two and two make four.
‘As you know, it’s standard procedure to spray any LEP property with solinium-based tracker, including the ransom gold. So, Foaly runs a scan for solinium, and he picks up hot spots all over Los Angeles. Particularly at the
Crowley Hotel in Beverly Hills. When he hacks into the building computer, he finds the penthouse resident is listed as one Lance Digger.’
Root’s pointy ears quivered. ‘Digger?’
‘Exactly,’ said Holly, nodding. ‘A bit more than coincidence. Foaly came to me at that point, and I advised him to get some satellite photos before taking the file to you. Except. .’
‘Except Mister Digger is proving very elusive. Am I right?’
‘Dead on.’
Root’s colouring went from rose to tomato. ‘Mulch, that rascal. How did he do it?’
Holly shrugged. ‘We’re guessing he transferred his iris-cam to some local wildlife, maybe a rabbit.Then collapsed the tunnel.’
‘So the life signs we were reading belonged to some rabbit.’
‘Exactly. In theory.’
‘I’ll kill him,’ exclaimed Root, pounding the control panel. ‘Can’t this bucket go any faster?’
Mulch scaled the building without much difficulty. There were external closed-circuit cameras, but the helmet’s ion filter showed exactly where these cameras were pointed. It was a simple matter to crawl along the blind spots.
Within an hour, the dwarf was suckered outside Maggie V’s apartment on the tenth floor. The windows were triple glazed with a bulletproof coating.
Movie stars. Paranoid, every one of them.
Naturally, there was an alarm point sitting on top of the pane and a motion sensor crouching on a wall like a frozen cricket. Only to be expected.
Mulch melted a hole in the glass with a bottle of dwarf rock polish, used to clean up diamonds in the mines. Humans actually cut diamonds to shine them. Imagine. Half the stone down the drain.
Next, the Grouch used the helmet’s ion filter to sweep the room for the motion sensor’s range. The red ion- stream revealed that the sensor was focused on the floor. No matter. Mulch intended going along the wall.
Pores still crying out for water, the dwarf crept along the partition, making maximum use of a stainless-steel shelving system that almost completely surrounded the main sitting room.
The next step was to find the actual Oscar. It could be hidden anywhere, including under Maggie V’s pillow, but this room was as good a place to start as any. You never knew, he might get lucky.
Mulch activated the helmet’s X-ray filter, scanning the walls for a safe.
Nothing. He tried the floor; humans were getting smarter these days. There, under a fake zebra rug, a metal cuboid. Easy.
The Grouch approached the motion sensor from above, very gently twisting the neck until the gadget was surveying the ceiling. The floor was now safe.
Mulch dropped to the rug, testing the surface with his tactile toes. No pressure pads sewn into the rug’s lining. He rolled back the fake skin, revealing a hatch in the wooden floor. The joins were barely visible to the naked eye. But Mulch was an expert and his eyes weren’t naked, they were aided by LEP zoom lenses.
He wormed a nail into the crack, flipping the hatch. The safe itself was a bit of a disappointment. Not even lead-lined; he could see right into the mechanism with the X-ray filter. A simple combination lock. Only three digits.
Mulch turned the filter off. What was the point in breaking a see-through lock? Instead he put his ear to the door, jiggling the dial. In fifteen seconds the door was open at his feet.
The Oscar’s gold plating winked at him. Mulch made a big mistake at that moment. He relaxed. In the Grouch’s mind he was already back in his own apartment, swigging from a two-litre bottle of ice-cold water. And relaxed thieves are destined for prison.
Mulch neglected to check the statuette for traps, plucking it straight from the safe. If he had checked he would have realized that there was a wire attached magnetically to the base. When the Oscar was moved, a circuit was broken allowing all hell to break loose.
Holly set the auto-pilot to hover at three thousand metres below the surface. She slapped herself on the chest, releasing the harness, and joined the others in the rear of the shuttle.
‘Two problems. Firstly, if we go any lower, we’ll be picked up on the scanners, presuming they’re still operating.’
‘Why am I not looking forward to number two?’ asked Butler.
‘Secondly, this part of the chute was retired when we pulled out of the
Arctic.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means the supply tunnels were collapsed. We have no way into the chute system without supply tunnels.’
‘No problem,’ declared Root. ‘We blast the wall.’
Holly sighed. ‘With what, Commander? This is a diplomatic craft. We don’t have any cannons.’
Butler plucked two concussor eggs from a pouch on his Moonbelt. ‘Will these do? Foaly thought they might come in handy.’
Artemis groaned. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the manservant was enjoying this.
‘Uh oh,’ breathed Mulch.
In a matter of moments, things had gone from rosy to extremely dangerous. Once the security circuit was broken, a side door slid open admitting two very large German shepherds. The ultimate watchdogs. They were followed by their handler, a huge man covered in protective clothing. It looked as though he were dressed in doormats. Obviously the dogs were unstable.
‘Nice doggies,’ said Mulch, slowly unbuttoning his bum-flap.
Holly nudged the flight controls, inching the shuttle closer to the chute wall.
