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front door open and they stepped
inside.
    Smoke filled the air. Several patrons were slouched in booths—they looked like they
hadn’t seen the light of day for weeks.
    After Mr Doyle ordered lemonades, they found an empty booth.
    ‘What do we do now?’ Jack asked.
    ‘We wait.’
    The next few hours went slowly. Patience was not one of Jack’s strong points, though
Scarlet was more than pleased to pass the time regaling him with Brinkie’s latest
adventures. She was particularly excited about a model she had recently purchased
of the one hundred storey home where Brinkie lived. Jack had seen it in her room.
The box took pride of place in the middle of the floor, still unopened.
    ‘The finished piece is quite detailed,’ she said. ‘Brinkie’s house, Thorbridge , sits
atop an atoll off the Scottish coast called Skull Island. There are more than a thousand
pieces, including rubber plants you can stick into the ground.’
    ‘A thousand pieces. Sounds like hard work.’
    ‘Not at all,’ she enthused. ‘It will be great fun.’
    ‘Hard to imagine that many people would want to own a model of her house.’
    ‘You read the first novel,’ Scarlet sighed. ‘Surely you can appreciate it as fine
literature?’
    Jack wasn’t sure he’d describe it that way. ‘I think she needs some zombies,’ he
said. ‘Or aliens. An outer space adventure would be exciting.’
    ‘That’s silly. Brinkie isn’t an astronaut.’
    ‘But she could go to the moon. Maybe even to Mars and fight the Martian hoards.’
    ‘I don’t think there are any Martian hoards,’ Scarlet said, rolling her eyes. ‘But
you can always write to Baroness Zakharov. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.’
    Jack was offended. ‘Maybe she would like to hear from me,’ he said. ‘She might be
running out of ideas.’
    ‘Baroness Zakharov will never run out of ideas. She’s an ideas factory. They come
as easily to her as mosquitoes to blood.’
    Mr Doyle intervened. ‘I believe we may have a lead,’ he said. ‘Someone in the corner
has been watching us.’
    He nodded discretely towards a small, dark-haired man with a grey moustache. The
man made his way to the door and motioned them towards the exit.
    Mr Doyle paid their bill and they followed him into a back alley, a dead end illuminated
by a single gas lamp and lined with rubbish bins. The man was nowhere to be seen.
    Then five men, their features in shadow, burst from another doorway. Scarlet immediately
reached for the door they had just stepped through, but it was locked.
    They were trapped.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    A clatter came from behind as the door to the bar suddenly flew open. A man appeared.
    ‘Quickly!’ he said. ‘Inside!’
    Jack, Scarlet and Mr Doyle fled with the men in pursuit, the door slamming shut behind
them. The stranger produced a bar and levered it across the handle, locking it in
place. Another man lay unconscious on the floor at his feet.
    ‘He was with them,’ he explained, grabbing Mr Doyle’s arm. ‘Hurry. It’s no safer
in here.’
    They passed through the bar, the barman giving them a sour look. Jack saw someone
with an eye patch start to rise from a nearby table, but the barman gave him a nod.
A moment later Jack and the others were back on the main street among the crowds.
    ‘I was watching you in there,’ the stranger said. ‘I thought there’d be trouble.’
    He spoke perfect English. He was stocky, with tattoos on his arms of a mermaid and
an anchor.
    ‘I assume you weren’t in there by accident,’ Mr Doyle said.
    ‘Do you know who I am?’
    ‘Obviously an agent with some government organisation. I would guess, MI5.’
    ‘You guess correctly.’ The man introduced himself as John Fleming. ‘Scotland Yard
may have compunctions about crossing country borders, but MI5 has no such concerns.
You’d best tell me what you know.’
    ‘I’m happy to share information, as long as if flows both ways.’
    They stopped at another café. After ordering