The Case of the Stolen Film Read online

  ‘Oh, it’s a good limp,’ said Holly, catching Archie’s eye.

  ‘An excellent limp,’ said Archie.

  ‘If I hadn’t known, I’d have thought you were actually lame,’ said Holly.

  ‘Totally lame,’ added Archie, straight-faced.

  ‘Thanks,’ replied Dante. ‘Hey, I like these guys, Petal.’

  They sat down at the table and helped themselves to the breakfast Miss Gilfeather had laid out.

  In the hallway they could hear someone talking loudly.

  ‘Chase, I don’t know where to start … The whole thing’s crazy …’ he was saying.

  ‘Calm down, Theo,’ said Chase. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat. I need a coffee.’ He led a fair-haired, red-faced man into the room. The man was breathing heavily and flapping his arms agitatedly. Chase poured himself a coffee and sat down. ‘Now what is it?’ he said.

  The other man remained standing, continually moving with nervous energy. He took a deep breath then spoke. ‘We were filming in the desert …’

  ‘Why do we need a boring old desert in the film?’ asked Petal.

  ‘It’s for the opening sequence. It’s symbolic, you know, representing a cultural desert, isolation … that kind of thing,’ said Chase.

  ‘Yeah, well, we got lots of nice shots using the long-angle lens …’ continued Theo. ‘We went early morning and just where you said, two miles down the road from the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. You were right, the light’s real nice at dusk. It made for real pretty shots. The sun was coming up and the desert had a kind of reddish glow.’

  ‘Sounds beautiful,’ said Chase, stirring cream into his coffee.

  ‘Then …’ Theo faltered. ‘Then something got in the way of the shot.’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘Something big. It was in the distance but you could see what it was. There were two of them. I looked back at the film to check.’

  ‘Well,’ said Chase patiently, ‘what was it? A road-runner? A wolf? There’s not much that lives out there.’

  ‘It wasn’t any of those things,’ said Theo. ‘It was … Well, it looked like … You know, from a distance it seemed to be …’

  ‘Spit it out,’ said Chase. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘D … d … d … dragons,’ whispered the red-faced man.

  Petal and Dante hooted with laughter.

  A smile spread across Chase’s face.

  Holly and Archie said nothing.

  ‘I think you may have got the wrong idea about the sort of movie we’re making,’ said Chase, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Look, I know it sounds crazy but I know what I saw and I saw dragons. They looked like those Joshua trees you get out there – you know, all spiky like cactuses, but they had jaws and limbs and they were fighting.’

  ‘How ridiculous,’ said Petal scornfully. ‘Dragons don’t exist in real life, do they, Chase?’

  ‘Not in my experience,’ replied the director ponderously. ‘Look, Theo, I’ll tell you what, let me see the rushes. I’d like to have a look at these dragons. It’s probably just a trick of the light.’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ said Theo. ‘That’s what’s so odd. Everyone will think I’m making it up but I know what I saw.’

  ‘Then let me see the film,’ said Chase firmly.

  ‘I can’t,’ replied Theo. ‘The film’s gone missing. It was stolen.’

  Chapter 11

  Dirk was in the middle of a dream about the moon being a huge orange, which had ripened and was heading on a collision course with earth, when the phone rang.

  ‘Someone get a juicer!’ cried Dirk, waking up with a start. His mouth was parched and two empty bottles of orange squash lay on his desk. He groaned, knocked them on to the floor, and answered the ringing phone.

  ‘The Dragon Detective Agency,’ he said gruffly. ‘Dirk Dilly speaking. How can I help you?’

  ‘Have you just woken up?’ It was Holly. ‘What time is it there?’

  ‘What do you mean there? Where are you?’ said Dirk.

  ‘I’m calling long distance,’ said Holly. ‘I’m in Los Angeles.’

  ‘Los Angeles in America?’ spluttered Dirk.

  ‘No, Los Angeles in Kuala Lumpur,’ said Holly, laughing.

  ‘I thought you were grounded,’ said Dirk.

  ‘We got flown here on Brant Buchanan’s private jet.’

  ‘I don’t trust your dad’s boss as far as I can throw him. In fact, I don’t trust him as far as he can throw me.’

  ‘Nor do I, but that’s not why I’m calling. Have you ever heard of Chase Lampton?’

  ‘The film director? Yes,’ said Dirk. ‘He directed one of my favourite films, The Big Zero. He never made anything as good since, but that one was a classic.’

  ‘Well, he’s making a new film now, only one of the cameras caught something in the desert first thing this morning.’

  ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘Dragons,’ said Holly.

  ‘Rats in pyjamas!’ exclaimed Dirk, sitting up. ‘This is serious. Where’s the film?’

  ‘No one knows. It’s been stolen.’

  ‘You were right to call. We can’t let that film stay in human hands,’ said Dirk. ‘The way things work these days that evidence could be all over the Internet by lunchtime. Then it’s game over.’

  Dirk took down the phone number and address of where Holly was staying and committed them both to memory. Holly said what she knew about where the film had been made and then she told him about their amazing journey to America and how Chase had asked her and Archie to be in the film too.

  After saying goodbye Dirk put down the receiver, opened a desk drawer and pulled out Mrs Klingerflim’s copy of Dragonlore, flicking to the chapter on Desert Dragons.

  The Desert Dragon is different from other subspecies of dragon in that it spits a deadly poison rather than breathing fire. The poison is a potent acid that will cut through the strongest material, fell a mighty tree or kill any creature in seconds. However, Desert Dragons can only hold one dose of poison at a time, which takes them around twenty-four hours to produce. So once the poison is used up all you have to worry about are the teeth, claws and hundreds of spikes which cover their bodies.

  Dirk placed the book back in the drawer and considered the best way to get to America. Flying, swimming or taking the lithosphere tunnel would take too long. If there was a possibility that the film was being watched by a human, he had to move fast. Dirk switched off the TV and headed downstairs.

  He stopped outside the kitchen, where Mrs Klingerflim was clattering about preparing her dinner, humming along to some old crackly jazz that was coming from her tinny radio. She held down a button on top of her oven, creating the hiss of gas and a clicking noise, but failing to light the hob.

  ‘Bother to this old thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Mr Dilly, excuse my language. I didn’t see you there.’

  ‘Let me help you with that,’ said Dirk.

  She stood back. Dirk leant over the hob and sent a tiny flicker of flame from between his two front teeth, lighting it. Mrs Klingerflim smiled and placed a pan of water on it.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Dilly,’ she said. ‘Off out, are you?’

  ‘I’ve got a case out of town so I wanted to let you know that the rent may be a little late and that I won’t be around to help.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said the sweet old lady. ‘I’ve always got Mr Blandford. He pops round sometimes to help out. He put up these shelves.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got an admirer,’ said Dirk, winking.

  ‘Oh, Mr Dilly, don’t be daft,’ said Mrs Klingerflim, blushing and changing the subject. ‘Are you going anywhere nice?’

  ‘California,’ replied Dirk.

  Mrs Klingerflim smiled wistfully. ‘California. How lovely. I went there with Ivor once, you know. Stunning scenery.’

  ‘Dragon-spotting?’ asked Dirk. All of Mrs Klingerflim’s holi
days with her late husband, Ivor, had been research for the book.

  ‘Oh yes, those Californian Desert Dragons are very territorial but beautiful movers. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of one, mind.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said. ‘No skydiving while I’m away, Mrs K.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be too busy wrestling crocodiles,’ said the frail old lady. ‘How are you getting there?’

  ‘Smelding,’ replied Dirk.

  ‘Oh, really? How interesting. Good luck.’

  Dirk left her and went down to the cellar, climbing into the hole Karnataka had made and clawing his way through the broken bits of concrete into the ground. Soon he reached the rock that lay beneath the foundations of the house.

  In the dark Dirk lay flat on the rock and concentrated on relaxing every muscle in his body. It wasn’t easy but after a few seconds he felt a tingling pain on the soft skin of his belly and the underside of his neck and limbs.

  In his book, Ivor Klingerflim described smelding like this:

  The act of smelding is unique to Mountain Dragons and is an extension of blending. Only, rather than repositioning particles that form the colour of a surface over the dragon, it involves the dragon squeezing each particle of his body between the particles that form the rock beneath him. The process of reducing itself to formless particles takes the dragon around an hour but it means there is no resistance and that he can choose to re-emerge anywhere in the world.

  Dirk wasn’t sure about the science of it but he did know that it hurt. The knack with smelding was to stay relaxed during the extremely painful process, which felt like being eaten by a million tiny sharp-toothed fish. It was a technique developed during the Ice Age, when dragons had to travel thousands of miles to find edible vegetation. Dirk was grateful that he lived in more convenient times. It was bad enough when his supermarket got his order wrong and sent him the cheap tins of beans that were all sauce and no beans.

  Eventually he felt himself smelding into the rock, his skin, bones and green blood slipping into the spaces in between the particles. Once fully immersed, it was an odd feeling. Without eyes he couldn’t see anything, and without paws he couldn’t feel anything. He knew he still existed but, without a physical body, there was an extreme lightness to his existence that was ultimately very relaxing. He had heard of dragons who had never reappeared after having smelded and Dirk could understand why. He fought the lethargy that had swept over him and sensed a rock in the Californian Desert where he could begin the equally painful re-emergence.

  By the time he felt sunlight on his face Dirk was exhausted. He looked weakly at the scenery in front of his newly formed eyes. A dusty, stony landscape stretched out in front of him as far as he could see. Strange leafless trees with twisted branches were dotted around, each growing a metre or so apart. The thick branches were covered in light brown spikes with clumps of green spikes at the end. Dirk recognised them as Joshua trees from a nature programme he had seen once. Between them dry shrubs struggled to find enough water to survive. All around were huge piles of boulders and rocks, like the one where Dirk was emerging. The sky was pastel blue with only a couple of fluffy clouds to accompany the blazing sun. There wasn’t a living creature in sight.

  The final piece of Dirk’s claws appeared and he collapsed and passed out from exhaustion.

  When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky and every part of his body ached. Vowing to take a slower but easier route home he stretched, jumped down from the rock and began searching for any signs of dragons. He checked the more healthy shrubs, looking for nibble marks. He examined the ground for footprints. The problem with tracking dragons was that, unlike humans, they left very little indication of where they had been.

  Dirk heard a noise. He stopped dead. Something had moved but all he could see were the strangely shaped Joshua trees. It was probably a desert rat or a wolf but as a precaution he raised himself on to his hind legs and drew his claws, prepared to fight if necessary.

  He remained perfectly still, listening for another sound. He turned round as something flew over him. A weight landed on his back. He stumbled forward, tripped on a root and fell to the ground. Spikes dug into his skin, so sharp he could even feel them through the hard skin on his back. Dirk craned his neck around just enough to catch a glimpse of the spiky face of a particularly vicious-looking Desert Dragon before it pushed his head to the ground. Strong limbs pinned him to the floor and a thin voice said, ‘You looking to rumble, dragon? You come trespassin’ on my turf lookin’ for a fight?’

  Chapter 12

  ‘I surrender,’ said Dirk, hoping that the Desert Dragon on his back had already used up his day’s worth of poison.

  ‘That’s real funny,’ said an incredulous voice. ‘You come struttin’ into my territory, ready to rumble, and you expect me to believe that you surrender? Old Putz ain’t no klutz. You’re a friend of Kitelsky’s, ain’t you? I shoulda saw it comin’, a cheap trick like this. He don’t wanna play fair no more.’

  ‘Listen, Putz, my name’s Dirk Dilly. I’m a detective. I didn’t come here to fight and I don’t know anyone called Kitelsky,’ said Dirk.

  ‘Dirk Dilly? What kind of silly name is that?’

  ‘It’s my name,’ snarled Dirk, ‘and don’t call me silly.’

  ‘You don’t get to give orders on my turf, OK, particularly when I found you with your claws ready flicked,’ said Putz.

  ‘I only drew my claws because I heard a noise,’ said Dirk.

  ‘A noise? I didn’t make no noise. Old Putz is a silent assailant.’

  ‘Sure you made a noise,’ said another voice.

  ‘Kitelsky,’ growled Putz. ‘I knew it. So he is with you.’

  At first it looked to Dirk like one of the Joshua trees was moving, but what Dirk had taken for branches were thick limbs. What had looked like a mound of dead grass at the foot of the tree was a dragon’s head at the end of a long neck, with two yellow eyes set in the middle. A tail swung into view, with a cone of white spikes at the end.

  ‘He ain’t wi’ me,’ said Kitelsky. ‘It looks to me like he’s wi’ you.’

  ‘If he were wi’ me, why would I be pinning him down, which I am doing, I should say, with no small degree of ease and expertise?’ replied Putz.

  ‘Because that’s how you treat your friends, Putz,’ replied Kitelsky bitterly.

  Dirk felt the weight lift from his back as Putz flew at Kitelsky, his spikes splayed out, but Kitelsky was ready for him, diving out of the way, leaving Putz to land into a roll before jumping back on to all fours and squaring off.

  Putz’s skin was lighter than Kitelsky’s, with sharp green spikes on the end of his tail, and, where Kitelsky had a grassy beard, Putz’s craggy chin was visible. He snarled, showing his white teeth.

  Maintaining eye contact, the two dragons started to sidestep, head to head, moving in a circle. A bubbling noise came from the backs of their throats. Dirk edged away.

  As they paced, he understood what Mrs Klingerflim had meant about their movements being beautiful. They stepped in perfect time with each other. It was like watching a graceful dance.

  Then Putz broke step. He opened his mouth wide and spat a stream of luminous green liquid at the other dragon. Kitelsky ducked and the liquid flew over his head, hitting the tree behind him, which hissed as the poison burnt straight through its bark and caused it to fall to the ground.

  Neither Desert Dragon looked at the tree, their yellow eyes remaining fixed on each other as they moved back and forth. Without warning Kitelsky took a sidestep then spat poison at Putz. Putz jumped into the air to avoid it, somersaulting over Kitelsky, who spun round, bringing them face to face again.

  ‘You’re trespassin’ on my turf,’ said Putz.

  ‘This ain’t your territory and you know it,’ replied Kitelsky.

  ‘I’m claimin’ it,’ said Putz.

  ‘You gotta earn it first.’

  ‘Let’s rumble, then.’

  The two
dragons went at each other with claws, teeth and spikes. As vicious as it looked, it seemed to Dirk that they knew each other’s moves so well that they barely made contact. It looked more like an elaborate routine than a real fight.

  After a while the two dragons began to tire.

  ‘Your Mountain Dragon ain’t gettin’ involved, then,’ said Putz, standing back.

  ‘I told you, he ain’t wi’ me,’ replied Kitelsky.

  ‘Well, he ain’t wi’ me either,’ said Putz.

  They both turned to look at Dirk.

  ‘You only get one dose of poison a day,’ said Dirk, who had been ready for this. ‘I get fire 24-7.’

  He sent flames billowing forward, setting the fallen branch on fire. The Desert Dragons stepped back from the burning tree.

  ‘You fire dragons are all the same,’ said Putz. ‘You think you’re so much better than us. It still don’t change the fact that you’re trespassin’ on my turf.’

  ‘Putz, this is Mo’s turf,’ said Kitelsky. ‘And you’re only jealous. Putz is always trying to breathe fire.’

  ‘No I ain’t,’ said Putz.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ said Kitelsky.

  ‘Are there any other dragons in the area?’ asked Dirk.

  ‘Not since Mo left, no,’ said Kitelsky. ‘Just us two. Why?’

  ‘Where were you at dawn this morning?’ asked Dirk.

  ‘We were scufflin’,’ said Kitelsky.

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s when you fight for your territory,’ said Putz. ‘You beat a dragon in a scuffle and you got their turf. We do it at sunrise and sunset on the borders of our territory.’

  ‘Yeah, and you never beaten Mo, so this ain’t your turf,’ said Kitelsky.

  ‘Only cos he ain’t here to scuffle wi’ me,’ said Putz, squaring up for another fight.

  ‘I’m not interested in your territorial disputes,’ said Dirk, sending another blast of fire into the air as a warning.

  ‘What do you want, then?’ said Kitelsky.

  ‘Two dragons were caught on film this morning,’ said Dirk. ‘You know what film is, I take it?’