Mads wished he could have said he was the determined detective his father was, but after finishing out the school day, and being assigned a-million-and-one things to do to catch up on biology, he was exhausted. He barely even made it through dinner and a shower before crashing.
The next morning, he forced himself out of bed. He could easily have slept another two hours. But he was barely ready in time to walk with his cousins, so off he went.
Off to school. Nothing to do here, though, just to read his lessons. He hated bothering Coby and Bradly. They let him in, but he was clearly a spare-wheel.
Biology – study pages 1-124
The day was nearing a close, at least for school, when a friendly voice approached him.
“Hey. Mad, right?” Freda asked.
“It’s… close enough. Freda, is it?”
“That’s right.”
Mads froze. He wanted so badly to just ask her outright about the picture, but he knew she’d hate it. She looked like she was having such a hard time with friends now.
“Um, stupid question, but, do you have a Qixst account? I like to play around with these apps, whenever I get on one, and I heard it was a big thing here, but I… I wanted to try an experiment, and no one else will humour me.”
“Sure… I do…”
“Can I friend you? Follow you? Whatever you do… on Qixst?”
“You follow.”
“Oh. Okay. Can I?”
“Yes!” she laughed. “I don’t control who follows me.”
Mads pulled up her account, followed her, and paused. “Is it possible to send direct messages here?”
“You can DM me if I’m following you, too.”
“Can you…”
“Sure…” Freda laughed awkwardly. “Under… Carlo?”
“Long story. Just, humour me.”
“So, what are you testing?”
“I want to see, if I delete a message, if it leaves a notice about it. Like a ‘you deleted this’ thing.”
“Oh, it doesn’t.”
Just to be sure, Mads sent a selfie to her, then deleted it. No message. “It doesn’t. Okay. But you still have it if you’ve already saved it?”
“Yes,” Freda laughed.
“But neither of us have record of it being sent.”
“No.”
“And, if you go to a cloud backup?”
“A cloud backup?”
“Yeah, like… there: find missing information on the cloud.”
“I don’t know. What does that do?”
“It still has it! ‘Missing photo-message. Do you want to restore?’” With a tap, the selfie was back. “Nice! Thanks for the test buddy.”
Freda smiled. It was obvious that what had clicked in his head yesterday had just clicked in hers. “Let me try that. See what I’ve deleted in the past. ‘Missing photo-messages’. Yes, I want to restore. Who did that restore to?” She hid her phone.
“What are we doing?” Jade asked, meandering in.
“Playing around on Qixst. Did you know that you can restore deleted images?” Mads asked cheerily.
“You… can?”
“Yeah,” Mads nodded. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah. Cool,” Jade nodded back.
“You don’t want to explain something?” Freda asked. “Nothing to say, oh ‘Friend when no one else is’?”
Jade opened her mouth, but closed it again. “You should have just stayed away from Adam.”
“Adam? That’s what this is about? I don’t even like Adam, he just gets me followers!”
“Oh, sure. He’s just casual fan, is he? And I should be, too?”
“Jade, I would never steal Adam, I swear! You ruined my life over… over nothing!”
Mads’s eyes shot open. “The fan!”
He ran off, not even hearing how the conversation ended, punching in the number from the card.
“Agent Levi, speaking.”
“Agent Levi, its Mads. The kid from the plane.”
“Ah, nice. You remembered something?”
“The fan! The old couple, on the right hand side of the plane, and a bit ahead of me. They asked that the fan be turned off, because he had phlegm on his chest or something, and the airhostess-who-wasn’t turned it off! She wouldn’t have been able to clean her prints from it without raising suspicion!”
“So, you think it’ll still be there?”
“It may well!”
“Do you remember the people that fan was near?”
Now, more than ever, Mads needed an accurate answer. “I don’t know their names, but I know they were old. The man had health conditions, and was wearing a red, checked shirt. They got up twice, once near the beginning of the flight, and once near the very end, both times to go to the bathroom. They must’ve been in around 18E and 18F, because they kept having to apologise to the person to their left when they went to the toilet.”
“Right. I’ll track it down.”
“Can you tell me how it goes?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll try.”
Jean d’ Mault = Olof Waldheim
“Earth to Matthias,” Uncle Oliver echoed. “Is there anyone home?”
Mads looked up. “Sorry. I was… trying to study.”
“I know you get square eyes if you stare at a tv screen for too long, so what do you get if you stare at book for too long? Paper-cuts on your eyeballs?”
“I… hope not?”
“Come on. We’re going out for dinner.”
“Special occasion?”
“You cracked a case. Now, your aunt has warned me not to encourage your private investigations too much, but, come on, you made the news. I’ve got to make a bit of fuss.”
“I made the news?”
“Well, not by name, but the detective did credit a “keen eyed passenger” who “noticed that the assailant had touched a fan early in the flight, but forgotten to clean it, leading to the takedown of a dangerous assassin for hire”.”
“Not a very good assassin, was she? Didn’t even kill the pilot properly. I hope whoever employed her got their money back.”
“Mads!” Uncle Oliver laughed.
“What? If they sue for their money back, we’ll know who they were.”
Uncle Oliver shook his head. “You’re a chop. Now, get ready. We’ll be going out soon.”
“Oh, did you hear, I solved two cases?”
“Oh dear. What else did you do?”
“The picture at school.”
“The… picture?”
Mads wanted to share his pride at catching Jade’s maniacal scheming, but he couldn’t bring himself to expose Freda to one more person. “Doesn’t matter. Just one, then.”
Uncle Oliver smiled knowingly. “Okay, then.”