The Lornea Island Detective Club Read online

  Tucker doesn't have a top on, I can see his tattoos and his muscles. He's sitting down at the breakfast table, frowning at something just below the screen. It takes me a while to figure out that he's frowning at the keyboard. He must be trying to type, only he has to look at the keys when he does so. This makes me a lot more confident that whatever type of criminal he is, it's not the computer expert type.

  I don't know what he's typing from looking at SpyCatch, but I've got that covered for later. Now I just keep watching, and for a long while he stares back at me through the screen. I can see his eyes moving left to right, so I guess he's reading something. I can see his lips move too.

  Then suddenly he gets up. It's hard to tell, but he looks angry when he does it. Something about the way he pushes himself back from the table. Then he's out of the frame for a long time, and I'm about to fast forward the file when he comes back. He sits again, but he keeps shaking his head. Then there's this really long section of the recording where he's got his head in his hands. And then he's rubbing his face all over, covering his eyes. When I next see them, there's a moment when it looks like he's actually crying.

  But then things go crazy. He starts swearing. I can hear it so loud I panic, but then I remember it's only in the headphones. I won't say the word, but he uses it over and over and over. It's the one beginning with F. He shouts it really loud.

  And then there's a couple of minutes where he leaves the chair again. And then when he's back I see right away he's holding his cell phone. I snap to attention.

  He's calmed down now. He just sits there, staring at the phone – not like he's using it, more like he's thinking about using it, because I can see it's still switched off. Every now and then his thumb hovers over the button, like he wants to turn it on, but something's stopping him.

  Bang!

  Then there's a moment that makes me literally jump. Real suddenly he slams the phone down against the edge of the table. It must have made the laptop jump too, because the image suddenly changes, like the screen got knocked and the angle of the camera changed. Now it shows the door of the kitchen, and I can't see Tucker. But then I can. Because the next thing I see is Tucker walking through the door, outside.

  I'm baffled by this. He's still got no top on, just a pair of jeans, so he can't be going out for the day. I'm about to fast forward again, but then he comes back in. The next thing is the laptop is suddenly slammed shut, and the recording ends.

  I rewind a bit and watch it again. This time I try to focus on whether he's carrying anything as he walks out of the kitchen. It's hard to tell for sure, but it looks as though he has something black in his hand – the cell phone. And it's definitely clear when he comes back that he's not holding it – I get a clear view of his hands as he walks up to the laptop to close it.

  So then I minimize SpyCatch and think. For years now I've had a weather station mounted outside my bedroom window. It also has a camera that pointed down at the beach, and everything was linked to the internet so that people could actually find out the weather and actually see the surfing conditions on Silverlea beach, before they drove down from Newlea. But it wasn't a very good camera, it only took one picture every hour, and then some water got into the lens after a storm, so that the image was all misty. So about a year ago I bought a better camera on eBay, one that records actual video. You're supposed to be able to log in from anywhere in the world and see the view from outside my bedroom window, in real time, and high definition. The problem is, the camera was second hand, and I couldn't find any instructions for how to set it up, so I never managed to get it to connect to the internet. I did set it up though, the camera had the same bracket as the previous one, so it's outside, actually recording right now.

  So I go onto my other computer and I log in, then I rewind the recording all the way to 08:47 yesterday, and I'm a little bit surprised to see there's an image there. Nothing happens for a while, it's just the normal view of the clifftop, Dad's truck, and the beach below. But then, at 08:56:12 Tucker suddenly emerges into the frame. He's quite small, since the camera is zoomed out, but it's obviously him. He goes out to the front, by the cliff edge. He stands there for a second or two, and then he pulls his shoulder back, and throws something far out over the edge of the cliff.

  You can't see what he throws from the image – it's too small. But I already know what it is from the laptop footage inside.

  Twenty-One

  The second piece of software I installed is called Keylogger Free. It's something that logs your keystrokes – that's everything you type into the keyboard – and again it does it secretly so that whoever is typing doesn't know that they're being recorded. If you don't know about key loggers then you definitely should. They're used all the time by computer hackers and cyber criminals. They use them to get people's passwords or bank card numbers. There's a good chance your computer might have one on it right now. You should definitely check. People think that proper anti-virus software just protects them from viruses, but they also work against key loggers. That's one of the reasons it took me so long time to get everything set up the other night. I had to work out how to stop my own anti-virus system popping up. You do have a good anti-virus don't you? You really should.

  Anyway, I look through the results now. It gives me another list of files, and I can click into the box titled 'keystrokes' and I can see exactly what Tucker has typed.

  At 08:47 twelve seconds Tucker typed this:

  Hounds Beach Classics Jewelry Store secrity guard

  Then he deleted the word 'secrity' and changed it to 'security'.

  Then he didn't type anything for a long time. I guess this was when he was reading. When he next typed it was this:

  "Adam Smith security guard Classics Jewelry"

  Keylogger doesn't have any pictures or anything, and I can't see where he typed it – in what program I mean. I would be able to if I had the full Keylogger software, but this is only the free trial version, and some of the features are restricted. But it's pretty obvious that he was searching online. So I copy what he typed and then go to Google and paste it.

  I hit search. There's over 3 million search results. For a moment I think I'm going to have the same problem as before, not knowing which page to load. But then I notice something, right there on the first page of the search results, a few of the links are in a different color. You know the color that internet links change to when you've already looked at them? So it turns out I can see exactly which links Tucker clicked. The first one he looked at is from the Western Enquirer newspaper. I've never heard of it, but when I click it this is what it says:

  Security Guard Killed in Armed Raid

  A father of two died tonight after being shot three times during an armed raid on a Hounds Beach jewelry store. The raid took place on Tuesday morning, at Classics Jewelers, a family owned store which has been trading over 50 years. It’s believed a masked man holding a pistol entered the store and demanded items from the display cabinets. It's believed Adam Smith, who was employed as the store’s security guard, then challenged the raider, who opened fire. Mr. Smith was shot three times, dying later in hospital. The store has issued a statement confirming it was attacked this morning, and that it will be closed until further notice. It also offers its condolences to Mr. Smith and his family, and states that everyone involved is praying for him.

  I stop reading. I check the date. The robbery happened two weeks ago. I think for a minute, then I read the whole thing again.

  It all fits. It's pretty clear.

  I do another google search, this time for Hounds Beach. I've never heard of it, but it turns out to be a little town about thirty miles up the coast from Crab Creek. That's the town where Dad comes from. And where Tucker comes from too. Where he was living until two weeks ago, when he turned up here.

  I go back to Tucker's search, and read the rest of the links – they're all newspapers or news sites, and the only thing he reads on them are articles about that robbery.

&
nbsp; I think about calling the police. I could add my bed to the barricade of the door, so that there's no way Tucker can get in before they arrive. But then I realize I can't call them. Because of Dad. The police will want to know how come he's away, and how come he left me alone in the house with a murderer. So instead I make sure I've got all the evidence saved and backed up, and I think about what to do next. Pretty quickly I get an idea.

  Twenty-Two

  Obviously I spend the rest of the evening in my room, it's not safe to go downstairs with Tucker.

  Slowly it dawns on me that I'm going to need proper evidence. I can prove that Tucker read a newspaper article about a robbery, but that doesn't prove he was the robber. And even my video of him throwing his phone off the cliff doesn't prove anything. It's not illegal to throw away a cell phone. Except for littering.

  But if I could find his phone. Then I'd have evidence. Real evidence.

  The cliff here at Littlelea is 60 meters high, but it's only the bottom part that's completely vertical. At the top, you can climb down a little way and there's lots of little ledges where bits of grass grow and birds nest. You shouldn't though, because it gets steeper and steeper, and if you slip there's nothing to stop you falling all the way down to the beach. Sometimes it happens to sheep. You never see them fall, but I find them on the beach, dead with all their bones broken.

  I watch the video of Tucker throwing his phone, and I try to work out exactly where it might have landed. You’d think he’d have a good throw, but he doesn’t stand right by the edge, presumably because he’s worried about falling over. And he throws it at an angle, maybe to get it more out to sea. So after he releases it there’s a moment when he leans forward – as if he's waiting for the splash – but it doesn’t come.

  Then I notice it's two in the morning, and I decide I had better go to bed.

  In the morning, I have a really good idea.

  I go downstairs like any normal morning. Tucker is still asleep in the lounge, and it feels weird to know he's a murderer and I'm alone in the house with him. But I try not to think about it. I have breakfast, I feed Steven and then I make it look as if I'm going to catch the school bus, just like a normal morning. But instead of putting Steven back in my room, I take his box outside. Tucker is awake by now, so I shout to him that I'm going to school, but instead of going down the lane to get the bus, I grab Steven and carry him in the opposite direction, along the coast path to the beach. When I'm well out of sight from the house, I open the box and lift him out.

  Steven is quite tame now, so there's no danger of him flying off and not coming back. In fact I'm more worried that when he does have to fly away he won't want too. Right now he just stands in front of me, stretching his wings and waiting for me to throw pieces of fish up in the air for him to catch. But I don't do that.

  Instead I pull my cell phone out of my pocket, and show it to Steven. I let him have a good look, tipping his brown head onto one side, and inspecting it with one eye. He pecks at it gently.

  "That's it Steven," I tell him.

  Then, when he starts to lose interest, I pick up the phone, and I pretend to throw it. And then quickly I hide the phone behind my back, so that Steven doesn't know where it is. He looks a bit confused for a second, but then he goes back to staring at me and squawking a little bit.

  "Find it!" I say. But Steven ignores me. So I try again. Getting him interested in the phone, and then pretending to throw it along the cliff. This time Steven just holds his head on one side and watches me, like he thinks I've gone mad.

  I try again, this time smearing a little of fish paste onto the back of my phone. We keep some for when Dad isn't able to get fresh fish from the harbor. This makes Steven a lot more interested. At first he pecks at the phone enthusiastically, and then he looks affronted at me when I throw it away.

  It lands a couple of meters away, on a tuft of grass. Steven continues looking at me for a moment, then walks over to the phone and starts pecking it again, scraping little beak-full’s of paste every time.

  "Bring it here, come on Steven. Bring it back." I pull out a small fish from the Tupperware box in my bag, and hold it out to Steven. At once he flies back to me to take it, but I shake my head.

  "Uh huh. Bring the phone." Steven tries to prize his beak into my closed fist, but I don't let him, and instead I go to the phone and point at it.

  "First the phone. Then the fish."

  I don't know if you've ever trained a herring gull, but you do need a lot of patience. It takes me an hour of this before he does what I want, picking up the phone in his beak and flying it back to me. I give him loads of praise, and he hops up and down squawking, and flapping a fish up and down in his beak before tipping his head back and swallowing it. And maybe an hour after that, I've got him reliably flying after my phone when I toss it away, then bringing it back, and dropping it, before I feed him a fish.

  So then I move onto the next part of my plan. I pick up my phone, and this time I pretend to throw it. But I don't really. I just pretend that it's gone in the direction that I saw Tucker throw his phone on the video. And this time I hide my phone properly, slipping it into my jacket pocket and zipping it closed.

  "Come on Steven! Find it. Find it!" I call, and I shoo him away up into the air. For a few moments he just beats at the air around my head, but I keep waving him away with my arms. Eventually he gets the idea and takes off properly, but he just starts to glide back and forth above me, riding the air currents rising up the cliff face. Again I wave towards where Tucker's phone must be, out on the steeper part of the cliff. But Steven won't go there. He just circles above me, and then after a while he lands and watches me.

  After another hour I give up. Apart from anything else, I've run out of fish. So I walk back up the cliff path. I slow near the top, but as soon as I can see the house I can see that Dad's truck's gone. That's good, because it means Tucker must have gone out somewhere. So that means I'm able to go to the top of the cliff, at the spot where Tucker threw his phone from, and get a better sense of where it might have landed.

  I stand there for a while. I consider throwing my phone down, trying to recreate Tucker's throw, this time with Steven watching? But I've kind of lost faith in Steven a bit, so I don't do that.

  Instead I go to the storage shed we have in the yard, and I dig around until I find some rope. There's a length I salvaged a few years ago, after some fishing tackle got washed up on the rocks at the other side of the headland. It took ages, but I managed to recover about forty meters of it, only I haven't known what to do with it since, so it's just sat in the shed. Now I tie one end carefully around our gatepost, giving it a good tug to make sure it's solid. Then I put knots in the rest of the rope so it's easier to climb. Then I toss the open end down the cliff so that it disappears out of sight. And then, with Steven still watching me, I begin to climb down towards where Tucker must have thrown the phone.

  I get about five meters down when I wish I had some sort of harness. It’s not the effort of holding my weight, it's because my hands start to get sweaty from nerves, and I realize that, if they slip on the rope, there would be nothing to stop me falling, and I'd end up like one of those sheep. But I force myself to go on, because I've started now.

  Slowly I lower myself down, stepping on the ledges in the cliff face, or just leaning back against the earth. A few times l dislodge loose bits of mud and stones, and they tumble away below me, some getting caught on other ledges and some disappearing over the edge. It makes my hands feel even more sweaty.

  There's a big ledge about five meters below me, and I aim to get there, thinking it might be where the phone ended up. I pay out more and more rope, telling myself to keep gripping it, because my hands are getting more slippery all the time. Eventually I get there, and I can relax a little. I look around at my feet, searching for the black plastic of a phone, embedded somewhere in the grass, but I can't see it. Eventually I know I'll have to go lower.

  But as I do, stepping off
the ledge, I realize I’ve been stupid. Looking above me I can’t see anything except the cliff, so I can’t keep check on the house and when Tucker is coming back. It’s a horrible thought. He could be there already, at the top of the cliff looking at this rope stretching out from the gatepost and leading out over the cliff edge. If he is, he's gonna know right away that it's me, because no one else ever comes to this part of the cliff, not since the footpath was closed. And he's gonna know exactly what I'm doing too, because obviously he knows he threw his phone down, and he knows it got stuck in the cliff, so he’ll work out I’m looking for it.

  And if he works that out, he’ll know I know he's a criminal. And worst of all, I'm giving a really easy way to stop me. All he has to do is cut the rope.

  I try to convince myself this is crazy – if he cuts the rope I’ll fall and I’ll die. And surely he wouldn’t actually murder me? But the more I think about it, the more worrying the answer is. He was prepared to murder a security guard to get away when he robbed the jeweler’s, so what’s the difference between that and murdering me? And my death wouldn’t even look like murder. People would think I was counting nest sites or something like that, and just slipped.

  I get this sudden strong urge that all I want to do is pull myself back up the cliff face right away, and get away from the drop that's hanging beneath me. My hands sweat more, and the feel the rope slippery under my fingers. I try to calm myself, and move a few steps up, to a another mini ledge where I can take some of the weight off my hands. I try to slow my breathing. I look down at my feet, I scan the ledge, hoping against hope that maybe I'll find the phone here, so I can get off the cliff face. But there's nothing there but the scrappy rock-nests of terns and a few tufts of grass. I don't really care. I just want to get out of here.