A Ravelled Flag by Julia Jones

Author:Julia Jones [Jones, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Action & Adventure, Childrens, Fiction, Social Issues
ISBN: 9781899262052
Google: zCLYttKPHR0C
Amazon: B005Z4FR4K
Publisher: Golden Duck
Published: 2011-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Oboe

Saturday 21 October

The only person wearing a tie in the Ipswich branch of McDonald’s that Saturday afternoon was Inspector Flint. And he had no tie pin. Nor anything else that could conceivably remind Anna of Happier Times.

Normally the sight of Flint hogging an entire corner of a café would have filled them all with apprehension but they were feeling too emotionally windswept to care. It even seemed funny.

“Fat spluffer! I’ll bet he was born here, cramming fries into his baby gob and slurping diet Pepsi instead of mother’s milk.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that Flint had a mother? You mean he might once have been human?”

“I don’t think so.”

Thy waited in the small McDonald’s for over two hours and so did Flint. There was no Oboe. Had he ever existed, they began to wonder? Was there some mistake in Anna’s arrangements? Or had it all been a set-up, one more malign happening that they didn’t understand?

Their single comfort was that this time Flint was suffering too. He’d been eating a brunch muffin when they arrived: then they watched him work his way through several cups of tea, a giant 1⁄2lb burger tower, double-fries, extra-large coke and two McSpecials with side orders of onion rings. He had his briefcase with him and made a few ostentatious jottings on his palm pad but, as he wasn’t using his radio or mobile phone in the restaurant, he had nothing else to do and no-one to bully.

Customers came in, stared. Then sat as far away from him as they could.

He tried walking up to the couple of non-white workers behind the counter and asking to see their residence permits.

“You’ll want me birth certificate then, mate. Born here in Ipswich ’Ospital. And me mum and dad. How about you?” was one offended answer: a flood of angry Portuguese and an obviously perfect piece of EU paper was the other.

Flint was driven back into his corner and sat there, glaring and making notes whenever either worker came to the counter. But this was a sideshow: Flint’s way of passing the few moments between meals.

He was there because Anna, Donny and Maggi were there: because someone cleverer than him had used the information from Anna’s old computer to hack in to her messages. He was lying in wait for Anna’s mother or Anna’s mother’s friend.

They had to be glad that Oboe never showed.

Unless Oboe had been Flint all along? Unless it was some other kind of trap?

Their worst moment came when the fat policeman waddled over and offered Anna a special McFlurry in a glass with pink sugar frostings.

Anna was so disgusted she couldn’t speak.

“Ooooh I’ll have it!” said Maggi, testing the theory that Flint considered her sub-human because of her colour.

“That’s not fair!” Donny backed her up. “What about me? Don’t I get offered one? Just because I’m a boy? I like pink. I think it’s really gay!”

“How was your Mummy this morning?” snarled the policeman, plonking the ice cream in front of Anna and stomping back to his seat.

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