The Case of the Stolen Film (20 page)

Locked inside the car, Holly and Archie had watched helplessly as Weaver knocked Mrs Klingerflim into the dark space between the cars.

‘Dirk!' screamed Holly as he took a round of ammunition in the belly.

Callum sat huddled in a corner, repeating, ‘My master, he's here,' over and over again.

‘Shut up, Callum,' said Archie, but he wasn't listening.

‘Look,' said Holly, noticing that while Buchanan had the full attention of the dragons, a door in the black car opened and a shadowy figure lifted Mrs
Klingerflim inside. The man's face was obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. He disappeared into the car, unseen, as Weaver fired the gun a second time.

Seeing that everyone had frozen, Holly said, ‘One of them must have used Dragonsong.'

‘But which one?' asked Archie. ‘None of them are moving.'

‘Except for Weaver,' said Holly, seeing him walk up to his boss and wave a hand in front of his face. ‘We've got to get out. If only we could break the …' She stopped. ‘Of course.' She reached inside her T-shirt and pulled out the dragon claw she wore around her neck. ‘Dragon claws can cut through anything,' she said.

Holly jammed the claw into the door and levered at it. There was a crunch as the claw cut through the lock and the door swung open.

‘My master. He's not moving,' said Callum, slipping out and running to Vainclaw's side. Holly and Archie rushed to Dirk's unmoving body and fell to their knees.

‘Try and push him over,' said Holly but, as much as they tried, they couldn't move him.

‘You want a hand?' said a voice behind them. Holly spun round to see a familiar weather-beaten face
beneath a wide-brimmed hat. She couldn't think of a time she had been as pleased to see anyone. She hugged him then said, ‘Archie, this is Ladbroke Blake, the detective I told you about.' She turned back to him and said, ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Let's get this dragon on his back first.'

Weaver, who had been trying to wake up Mr Buchanan, turned round and said, ‘What's happened to him?'

‘Never mind him, give me a hand,' snapped Ladbroke, staring Weaver directly in the face.

Together, Weaver and Ladbroke pushed Dirk on to his back.

‘I'm sorry, Holly. It looks bad,' said Ladbroke.

Holly forced herself to look. There were three holes in Dirk's chest. She fell to her knees and collapsed into tears, her hands across his belly. ‘Oh Dirk,' she cried. ‘Please say something.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Weaver quietly.

Holly didn't register his words. She felt Dirk's blood fill the gaps between her fingers. She raised her head, looking at the stars, blurry through her teary eyes. This was the end, she thought. He was dead. Dirk was dead. Nothing meant anything any more. After all she had been through with Dirk, protecting mankind from the
Kinghorns, it was a human weapon that had killed him.

Killed.

Dead.

The words lost their meanings as Holly wept.

The pain in her heart was so overwhelming that she barely noticed the dull ache in her leg. But it was insistent. It came from the bone fixed by the Sky Dragon, Nebula Colorado. It felt as if the bone was trying to tell her something.

She remembered Nebula's words –
Part of me is now a part of you
– and suddenly she knew what to do. She didn't know how. She hadn't heard a voice or seen a vision. She simply knew as though she had always known.

‘All of you, hold him down,' she said, wiping her eyes, smearing green blood across her cheek.

‘Holly, he's dead,' said Ladbroke gently.

‘Hold him down,' repeated Holly. ‘You too, Weaver.'

‘What's happened to Mr Buchanan?' said Weaver.

‘Put the gun down and do as she says,' shouted Archie.

Weaver looked like he wanted to say something but he placed the gun on the ground, sat down and held
Dirk's tail. Ladbroke took his head and Archie held his wings. Callum remained where he was, stroking Vainclaw's paw and muttering, ‘My monster, my master.'

Holly placed her hands over the gash where the bullet had gone in and concentrated. She sensed the torn flesh and the open arteries. Then she sensed the metal of the bullet itself. She focused hard and felt warming energy spread from her leg and fill her body. In her mind's eye she could see the bullet lodged inside the bloody mess. She focused on it, hooking it with her thoughts and drawing it out. Her hands remained still, but she could feel the bullet climbing back to the surface until she felt its cold metal in her palm. She closed her hand around it then allowed it to fall to the ground. With the bullet out, she placed her hands back on the wound and channelled the energy from the bone in her leg. By the time she had removed her palms, the wound had healed over.

‘How did you do that?'Archie said.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘But I've got to do the others quickly.'

As she retrieved the second bullet, Dirk's body twitched.

‘Hold him down, make sure he doesn't injure himself,' said Ladbroke.

By the time Holly had extracted the third bullet and healed the final wound Dirk let out a low moan.

Dirk had once seen a TV show in which people described their near-death experiences. Most of them had described seeing tunnels with white lights at the end. As Dirk felt the bullets do their terrible work and his life force ebb away, he hadn't seen anything, but in the darkness he had heard something. At first it was just garbled noise, then he heard a voice he hadn't heard for a long time. It was his mother. He could hear the first words she had ever spoken to him, the first words he had ever heard, as he crawled from the Outer Core as a youngling. At the time he had been too young to understand but now as the words came back he
heard her say, ‘
There, there, little one, you have finished the hardest journey.
' The voice grew fainter and he heard another. It was Minertia. ‘
Because someone needs to know how delicately balanced are the scales between war and peace
,' she said, ‘
someone who cares
.' He heard more voices, speaking over each over, garbled, growing louder and louder like an orchestra of noise.

The voices disappeared and suddenly there was silence – peaceful, endless silence – and Dirk knew that this was the end. This was death.

Then, in the dark nothingness, one more voice spoke.

‘Dirk, come back to me,' said Holly, throwing her arms around him.

Dirk opened his eyes and raised his head. ‘What happened?' he said.

‘You swallowed a little lead,' said a man in a wide-brimmed hat.

‘Ladbroke Blake?' said Dirk, lifting himself up and examining his blood-smeared belly.

‘Dirk Dilly,' replied the craggy-faced man, smiling.

‘It was you that rescued us from the library,' he said, ‘but how …'

‘Enough,' said Weaver, picking up his gun and jumping to his feet. ‘What is wrong with Mr Buchanan?'

‘The same thing that's wrong with all of them,' said Dirk. ‘They're under the spell of Dragonsong.'

‘But whose?' said Holly.

‘I don't know,' said Dirk.

‘As far as I could tell from the car,' said Ladbroke, ‘both dragons sang at the same time.'

‘They must have done it at precisely the same time and entranced each other as well as everyone else,' said Dirk.

‘But how do we get him out of it?' asked Weaver.

‘Like this,' said Ladbroke, slapping Mr Buchanan hard in his face. The billionaire rocked with the force of the slap. He blinked then he looked at Weaver with a vacant smile.

‘Mr Buchanan, sir,' Weaver said, ‘are you all right?'

‘The monsters and the music. Did you hear the music? It sounded for ever. Did you see the monsters? They've gone now but they were here.'

‘What are you talking about, sir?' said Weaver. ‘What's wrong with him?'

‘I don't know,' said Ladbroke. ‘That should have worked.'

‘Pretty music in my head and monsters in my hair,'
sang Brant Buchanan, ruffling his silver hair.

Dirk approached but Buchanan stared straight through him and said, ‘All the monsters have gone now.'

Dirk lifted a paw and slapped him again.

Buchanan swayed and said, ‘Where did the music go? Did the monsters take it with them?'

‘It's like he's still under,' said Holly.

‘Look at the positioning,' said Dirk. ‘Vainclaw and Fairfax were on either side of Buchanan. They must have sung at the same time, wanting to get in first. Buchanan was directly in between both Dragonsongs. He got a double dose. It must have damaged his brain in some way.'

‘Is there a cure?' said Weaver.

‘I don't know. I've never heard of it before,' said Dirk. ‘Why didn't it affect you?'

‘Because he's deaf,' said Ladbroke.

‘Deaf?' said Archie.

‘But you can hear us?' said Holly.

‘I lip-read,' said Weaver. ‘I have done all my life. It's trickier with dragons though.'

‘What about in the car?' asked Archie.

‘It has voice-recognition software installed. I can read everything that is being said inside that car on
a monitor at the front.'

‘So I can't make you forget everything,' said Dirk.

‘Believe me, I have no interest in any of this. Let me take Mr Buchanan back. He needs medical attention. You have my word that I'll destroy his evidence and do my best to keep him away from dragons in the future. I've never liked this project.'

‘I can't see that we have much choice,' said Dirk.

Buchanan staggered over to where Callum was crouched at Vainclaw's feet, stroking his legs.

‘Where is the music?' he said to the boy.

‘I've heard it too. My master used to sing to me, now he hears it himself,' replied Callum.

‘The monsters have gone,' said Buchanan.

‘The monsters are all around us,' replied Callum.

‘Take the boy back too,' said Dirk. ‘Send him back to his father.'

Weaver took Callum and Buchanan by the hand, led them back to the car, then looked back.

‘I don't want my dad to work for Mr Buchanan any more,' said Holly.

Weaver nodded. ‘I'll make sure he gets a fair redundancy deal.'

‘Make sure you destroy all the evidence, Jonnie,'
called Ladbroke.

Weaver nodded, got in the car and started the engine.

‘Is that his name?' said Holly.

‘Yes,' said Ladbroke.

‘How do you know?' asked Archie.

‘The Department knows a lot of things,' replied Ladbroke. ‘Unofficially, of course. Officially we know nothing.'

‘What department?' said Dirk. ‘Who are you?'

‘My name is Pi Blandford.'

He held up a card for them all to see. In bold black capitals it read:

AGENT PI BLANDFORD

Department of Defence against anything that does
not conform to the conventional understanding of
the world as we know it
DODAATDNCTTCUOTWAWKI

Archie and Dirk barely had time to read it before the words faded and vanished, leaving an empty blank card.

‘You're not called Ladbroke?' said Holly.

‘If it helps, Ladbroke is one of my favourite names,' he said.

‘And you know about dragons?' said Holly.

‘Technically, no, the Department doesn't know anything about anything,' said Ladbroke, ‘because the things we investigate do not technically exist.'

‘Isn't that a bit weird?' said Archie.

‘What's weirder? Pretending dragons don't exist or knowing that they do?' said Ladbroke.

‘So you knew right from the beginning?' Holly said.

‘When I first got assigned responsibility for dragons, I found a copy of Mr Klingerflim's book. I decided to check out his widow's house. That was when I discovered Dirk. When I saw you go round, Holly, I followed you home. Listening in on your phone conversations I learnt that your stepmother wanted to hire someone to follow you so I made sure that she found another of my cards.'

Ladbroke held out a cream-coloured card that read:

LADBROKE BLAKE
BLAKE INVESTIGATIONS:

Confidential, Professional
and Affordable Private Investigations

‘Why have you never let on you knew before?' said Holly.

‘The Department has a policy of non-intervention. I'm not supposed to get involved. My job is only to collect information on dragons.'

‘Well, I'd hardly call this non-intervention, Mr Blandford. You're surrounded by dragons and you're talking to one,' said an elderly female voice behind him. ‘I'm not sure you're within departmental guidelines.'

‘Mrs Klingerflim,' said Holly, running to help the old lady out of the car and noticing the nasty purple bruise under her eye.

‘Hello, dear. Hello, Archie. Hello, Mr Dilly.'