‘Yeah,’ Dante agreed. ‘I like exploring new places as much as the next person but it’s just too hot.’

  Perspiration was streaming down the lad’s cheeks, and he felt as if he was bathing in a bucket of warm cordial.

  ‘And how’s the chafing?’ Alfie said. ‘I’ve got sweat dripping down my butt cr–’

  ‘That’s enough, thank you, Alfie, we get the picture,’ Mr Nutting said, though he was squirming in his shorts too.

  Romilly checked her watch. ‘Right, back here at 12.45 pm and I promise to try and find a lunch spot that’s not too far away.’

  There was a chorus of yays from the children, who naturally split into groups and drifted off to look around.

  ‘Check out the size of those crabs.’ Curtis pointed at a tank outside one of the restaurants. The creatures were as big as the dinner plates they were going to end up on.

  ‘Poor little guys,’ Max said. ‘I don’t like the idea of making eye contact with my meal before I eat it.’

  As they proceeded along the foreshore they saw numerous tanks outside the restaurants full of fish, crabs, lobster, sea anemones and a range of more mysterious creatures.

  ‘I bet there’s air-conditioning in that shopping centre.’ Carlos pointed at a shiny silver multistorey building on the other side of the river called Clarke Quay Central.

  ‘I vote we go there,’ Curtis said. Despite having grown up in Sydney where the summers could be brutal, even he was finding the heat oppressive.

  Yasmina and Harper had found an attraction called the reverse bungy, which was like a giant slingshot that threw the rider high up into the air.

  ‘That looks fun,’ Alfie said. He and Dante charged off to join the girls and see if they could have a go.

  Kensy spied a boat wharf with half a dozen tourist vessels that looked like old barges moored beside it. She discovered they were called bumboats.

  ‘We could take a ride – it might be cooler on the water,’ she said. ‘The next one is about to leave.’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ Autumn said.

  The boys changed their minds about the shopping centre and decided to join the girls on the boat. The vessel soon chugged away from the wharf, heading upstream to take in all the sights of Clarke Quay before turning around and puttering down towards Boat Quay, the Merlion and into Marina Bay, where they passed the ArtScience Museum, built to resemble a giant lotus flower. Autumn snapped away, getting some great selfies of the group. Thankfully there was a cool breeze on board.

  There were other boats working their way up and down the river too. Some of them looked like they were carrying goods from warehouses out to the coast.

  Having done a lap of the waterway, the boat made its way back towards the Clarke Quay wharf. As they motored to the jetty, Autumn pointed at another vessel that was loaded with crates of what looked like live chickens and ducks.

  ‘They’re probably going to be someone’s dinner too – like those crabs and fish,’ she said.

  Their driver pulled up alongside the boat and called something out to the crew in Malay. Autumn wasn’t fluent but she caught part of their conversation – something to do with a drop off point near the Serapong reef. Autumn wondered where that was.

  The impromptu stop gave the children a better chance to see the cargo, and at the bottom of one of the piles, Max spotted something strange.

  ‘Hey, what do you think that thing is?’ he asked. The creature he pointed at was almost pure white and looked as if it had scales.

  Curtis stood up and walked over to take a closer look. The boats were almost touching as they bobbed beside each other.

  He zoomed his camera in as close as he could get and snapped a couple of shots.

  ‘Maybe it’s an anteater?’ he said, showing the picture to the others.

  Autumn shook her head. ‘That’s a pangolin – and an albino at that. I really doubt they should have it. It’s illegal to remove them from their natural habitat.’

  ‘In that article in the paper this morning, it said that one of the creatures that was missing from the zoo was a rare albino pangolin,’ Curtis said.

  ‘Hey!’ Carlos called out to the driver. ‘Is that a pangolin in there?’ He pointed at the crate.

  The man’s eyebrows jumped up and he shook his head. ‘No. No pangolin.’

  ‘Where are you taking this stuff?’ Max asked, but the other driver revved the engine and he took off towards the sea.

  ‘Quick, get a picture of the boat – see if there’s a registration number,’ Kensy said.

  Autumn snapped a dozen photos and got what they were after. ‘I know where they’re heading,’ she said. Max rushed up to the wheelhouse, where their driver was busy steering them towards their final destination.

  ‘Why was there a pangolin on that other barge?’ he asked the driver, but the man frowned at him and didn’t say anything.

  Max tried again. ‘There was a pangolin. We saw it.’

  ‘No. No pangolin.’ The man shook his head, then pretended he didn’t understand anything else Max said.

  ‘We should tell the police,’ Kensy said. ‘We’ve got photographs.’

  Autumn nodded. She was reviewing all the images.

  ‘It has to be that pangolin from the zoo,’ Carlos said.

  ‘Maybe, but even if it’s not, poaching is illegal. It doesn’t really matter how they came to have it – they shouldn’t,’ Autumn said.

  ‘How did you even know what that thing was?’ Kensy asked.

  ‘I did a research project on them a while back. They’re the most highly trafficked animal in the world. Not long ago there were twenty-eight tonnes of pangolin scales found on a ship here in Singapore. More than 37,000 of the creatures would have been killed for that. Those had come from Africa, but the ones here in Singapore are highly endangered as well. It’s a rotten business. Their scales are sought after for traditional Chinese medicine, and people eat them too.’

  ‘Yuck!’ Kensy blanched. ‘That’s gross.’

  The boys pulled faces.

  The boat stopped at the wharf and the children hopped off.

  They could see Mrs Vanden Boom waving at them and hurried up the gangway. Thankfully they weren’t late, and it looked as if everyone was converging on their teacher’s location at the same time.

  ‘We need to call the police,’ Kensy said. ‘They’ll want to know exactly what we saw.’

  The others nodded as Mrs Vanden Boom counted heads and guided them down the quayside to a Malaysian restaurant and into blessed, air-conditioned relief.

  Song Li had been over the house in Wilton Crescent with a fine-tooth comb, but he hadn’t found any fingerprints or samples of DNA that belonged to someone other than the family or their known friends and associates. With the help of a recently developed device from the Pharos lab that detected physical matter, be it a fingerprint or flake of skin, Song had been able to send all data through for immediate analysis and identification. When life returned to normal he would have a word with Miss Kensington about dropping her nail clippings down the back of her grandmother’s couch – and this time she couldn’t blame her brother because as far as he knew Max wasn’t partial to wearing pink polish.

  In addition, the security footage from inside the house showed no activity other than his brother going about his daily business. The camera trained on the front door revealed a delivery of wine that, according to the house ledger, Sidney had been expecting. Song used exactly the same system to document his activities as Sidney did, at Alexandria, which was helpful on the rare occasions that the brothers swapped locations. Both of the men enjoyed handwriting their daily tasks – though it was all logged online too. The camera showed Sidney returning inside not long after he had answered the door, though interestingly there was no footage of the driver. None of it made any sense. It was as if Sidney had literally vanished.

  Song decided to check the cellar. If his brother had taken delivery of the wine as the film showed, then the new bottles would be there. He had to have been kidnapped after that despite there being no evidence of anyone else coming to the house, or of the butler leaving.

  Song hurried downstairs into the vast room with its domed brick ceiling.

  He walked along the rows and rows of vintage bottles. Having checked the house ledger for the most recent order and taken a picture of the page on his phone, Song knew he was looking for a dozen bottles of Felton Road Block 3 Pinot Noir and another dozen of Te Mata Estate Coleraine. According to Sidney’s notes, these were wines from vineyards they had not had in the cellar previously. Dame Spencer had tasted the vintages during a recent party at the New Zealand consulate and told Sidney how much she’d enjoyed them. He’d sourced them through their usual merchant in London, though they had taken several weeks to arrive, according to the date the order was placed.

  Song checked every rack. Sidney’s categorisation was impeccable, and it didn’t take him long to find exactly where the bottles should have been. The spot was empty. His brother had never taken delivery of that order.

  If only Song could find some evidence of the driver.

  He headed upstairs again to the back door, collecting any DNA traces on the way. He had another thought. The footage outside 13 Ponsonby Terrace had been tampered with when the man who had impersonated him attacked the children, so there was every chance that the footage here had been corrupted too. He checked the area around the back door. There was evidence of his brother in some tiny skin flakes, but no one else . . . until he saw some strands of hair sticking to the topiary ball that sat at the bottom of the steps. He scanned them, then sucked them into the machine, which had separate compartments for every sample. It was important to keep anything in case it required further lab analysis.

  The hair was blonde, so it was just as likely to have belonged to one of the twins as anyone else, but when the results came through Song gasped.

  He took out his phone and called Ed.

  ‘I know who took Sidney.’

  Mr Nutting immediately called the Singapore police when Kensy and Autumn told him about the pangolin on the boat. Two officers arrived at the restaurant to interview the children and Autumn sent them all her pictures and told them where the barge was headed.

  Kensy thought it was interesting the police weren’t using the word stolen. As if anyone had ‘misplaced’ a rare albino pangolin along with all the other things that had gone missing

  The police were grateful for the leads, but seemed to be downplaying the very idea that an offence may have been committed – which was perhaps understandable, given the rarity of criminal activity in the country.

  When Max asked if they could keep the children posted about what happened they simply shook their heads and left.

  By the time the children finished their delicious lunch, the blue skies had clouded over and the humidity seemed to have risen even higher. Mrs Vanden Boom suggested that the children might like to sit on the roof of the open-topped bus for the journey back uptown.

  Max checked his watch, mentally calculating the time in London. It was still only seven in the morning, but by the time they reached the Botanic Gardens he’d give his father a call. It was strange to be so far away from home with no idea of what was happening. He felt guilty being here – and even more so because on several occasions he’d caught himself having fun. It just didn’t seem right.

  Kensy tapped her brother on the shoulder. She and Autumn were sitting behind him and Curtis. He leaned around the seat to look at her.

  ‘You okay?’ she whispered.

  Max nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When we get to the gardens let’s try and get away for a few minutes on our own,’ Kensy said.

  ‘Were you just reading my mind?’ Max asked.

  ‘Always,’ the girl replied, and gave his arm a squeeze.

  Harper was at the front of the bus and had thought they could use the time to have a quick quiz – just to keep everyone on their toes given they had no idea what sort of questions they were going to get tomorrow in the game-show style component of the competition.

  ‘That’s a very good idea, Harper,’ Romilly said. It never hurt to have a little more practice.

  Harper stood up and held onto the railing on top of the seat.

  ‘Okay, Central London Free – buzzers ready,’ she announced. There was only one other couple seated among them and they had their headphones in and were pointing at the sights.

  ‘This is going to be fun,’ Magoo said, nudging his wife. But Tippie wasn’t remotely interested. She was desperate to get back to the hotel and had been checking her phone constantly, waiting for confirmation of a hair appointment. She’d got an awful fright when they were hopping on board the bus and she caught her reflection in the windows.

  Harper pulled a piece of paper from her backpack. Apparently she’d come prepared, which Romilly thought very impressive.

  ‘Question one. On the periodic table of elements, what does “W” represent?’

  ‘Tungsten!’ Alfie yelled out.

  ‘You’re supposed to make a buzzer noise first, Alfie. If you just call out the answer we’ll be disqualified,’ Harper shook her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ the lad said. ‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Harper said. ‘But next time buzz.’

  ‘Question two, what is the tallest building in the world?’

  There was a chorus of buzzes and beeps and bleeps. Harper didn’t know who was first and looked to the teachers for help.

  ‘I think it was Mr MacGregor, actually,’ Monty Reffell said.

  ‘Well, that’s not helpful.’ Romilly rolled her eyes. ‘Unless you’re going to put on a uniform tomorrow.’ She glared at the man.

  ‘Please, please let me answer,’ the headmaster said. He was worse than the children.

  ‘Go ahead then.’ the Science teacher shook her head.

  ‘It’s the Burj Kalifa in Dubai,’ Magoo said with a smug nod.

  ‘Correct, but do you know how tall it is?’ Harper added.

  ‘Yes, of course I do. It’s 826 metres,’ the man replied.

  ‘No, sir, it’s 828 metres,’ Carlos said, and Harper gave him the thumbs up.

  ‘Oh bum,’ Magoo pouted. He hated losing.

  Harper continued with another ten questions but there was no clear winner.

  The bus turned left off Paterson Road onto Orchard Boulevard past the rear entrance of the hotel where they were staying.

  ‘Magoo,’ Tippie grabbed her husband’s arm. ‘I’m not feeling well. Could we get off please?’

  ‘Oh, darling, are you all right?’ The man looked at his wife, who apart from sporting a healthy glow, didn’t appear peaky.

  ‘No, I have to get out of this heat,’ the woman whimpered.

  Magoo jumped to his feet and hurried downstairs to see if there was a stop coming up. He was soon back again and didn’t look at all pleased.

  ‘He’ll drop us in Orchard Road on the return loop,’ the man said, mopping at his brow. He took his hat off and his usually wild and wispy white hair was plastered to the top of his head.

  Tippie rolled her eyes and wiped the sweat from the back of her neck.

  ‘Sounds like you’d better have a quiet night, Mrs MacGregor.’ Romilly leaned over from the adjacent seat. ‘You don’t need to come to the reception.’

  ‘I most certainly do. I’m the headmaster’s wife,’ the other woman sniffed. ‘I‘ll be fine after I have a rest.’

  Her phone tinged and she lowered her sunglasses to read the message.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Tippie sighed.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Romilly asked. She hoped there was nothing awry back at home.

  ‘Yes,’ Magoo said, reading the message too. ‘Tippie’s hair appointment’s just been confirmed. That Henry on reception is a gem. Oh, and I need to pop over and pick up the suits I ordered yesterday. The tailors of Singapore are incredible – hard to imagine you can have something bespoke turned around in less than twenty-four hours.’

  The woman elbowed her husband in the ribs.

  Romilly turned away and rolled her eyes. She didn’t think anyone saw her, but Kensy certainly did.

  The girl was thinking about what Mrs Vanden Boom had said to her earlier in the year, that she and Tippie didn’t see eye to eye. Then her mind went to the last line of the note Max had found in Mr MacGregor’s study at school. What did he mean by ‘Romilly must be stopped’? There was clearly something amiss. She’d have to remember to talk to Max about that again – see if he’d made any more progress of late.

  Romilly pushed herself hard up against the seat, feeling the perspiration trickling down the backs of her knees. She would have loved the luxury of having her hair done this afternoon, but that was never going to happen. Tonight, Tippie would appear as glamorous as always, charming all and sundry with her beauty and brains. And as for Magoo – now she knew where he must have disappeared to when they arrived in the city last night. It was all well and good for the MacGregors, while Romilly would do as she always did – the leg work, the hard graft – and without any thanks whatsoever.

  The students lined up for ice-creams at the kiosk en route to the National Orchid Garden, which – Romilly insisted this time – they were going to see. After viewing the orchids they’d take a wander to Swan Lake, where the children could have a bit of a roam around – without leaving the area, of course. The Botanic Gardens were huge with myriad nooks and crannies. The last thing she needed was to lose anyone, and they would only be there for a couple of hours at most. Romilly planned for them to be back at the hotel no later than four so everyone could rest and freshen up before the River Safari.

  The gardens seemed to be a popular spot for the contestants. Romilly had spied the Chinese contingent wandering about, some of the children waving little Chinese flags, while the American team was lined up with her own students in the ice-cream queue. Several of the children had struck up conversations, chattering away about the competition tomorrow and what they thought might happen. Curtis had just met a fellow Australian who was in Team USA and the two were busy comparing notes about their expat experiences.