Friday and Melanie went to stand by Halley.

  When the battle started, Brad guided Sir Stabsalot to pierce the claw of The Scorpion and wrench it off, turning it into a shoebox on wheels. The Trash Can cut off the blades of The Windmill in seconds and hacked out the wheels from under it.

  Now Sir Stabsalot and The Trash Can faced off.

  ‘Are you worried for him?’ Friday asked Halley. Halley still had her phone in her hand, but she wasn’t looking at the screen, she was actually watching the match.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ said Halley. ‘He’s the best robotics engineer in the world. No-one can beat him at this sort of thing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Melanie. Suddenly Sir Stabsalot started to charge at The Trash Can. The Trash Can didn’t move. It waited, completely motionless – then, at the last second, it dropped its chainsaw, twisted the blade ninety degrees and slid the edge under Sir Stabsalot. The forward momentum of Sir Stabsalot drove it up the flat of the blade, then suddenly the chainsaw whipped up, flipping Brad’s robot over entirely. It crashed on its back, making the horrible sound of components smashing loose from their housings.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Halley. ‘No-one is better than Brad at this sort of thing. He designs robots for all the Robot Wars TV shows.’

  The crowd roared with approval. Brad’s robot was on its back. It couldn’t move. It was defenceless. The Trash Can moved in, raising its chainsaw to destroy the robot entirely.

  ‘They need to stop the battle,’ said Friday.

  ‘It’s a fight to the death,’ said Halley. ‘No-one is going to stop it now.’

  ‘No, they need to stop!’ declared Friday. She surged forward, pushing her way through the crowd until she was at the pool edge, then she jumped down into the pool.

  This was a mistake. Apart from the fact that she was jumping into an enclosed area with two weapon-wielding robots, the pool was made of concrete and she had jumped into the deep end. Dropping 2.2 metres onto concrete is not good. Friday collapsed on the ground. The Trash Can’s chainsaw was about to slash Sir Stabsalot right in front of her. If the chainsaw didn’t hit her, torn sheet metal or even an entire robot could.

  ‘Get out of the pool!’ yelled Dr Dalecki. ‘You’re in the danger zone.’

  The DJ cut the music.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘You have to stop the battle.’

  ‘It’s a fight to the death,’ said Dr Dalecki.

  ‘Get out of the pool, Friday,’ said Brad. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself and me.’

  ‘And me,’ said Halley. ‘It’s fine if you carry on like Nancy Drew, making a fool of yourself back in your boarding school. But the name Barnes means something here. You can’t come to our workplace and humiliate us all.’

  ‘The delicacy of your professional reputation is beside the point,’ said Friday. ‘This battle has to be stopped because that robot is cheating.’

  ‘Robots don’t cheat,’ said Brad. ‘They’re robots.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Friday. ‘So then it follows that a robot who cheats can’t be a robot.’

  ‘What is she talking about?’ asked Halley.

  ‘She’s going into Hercules Poirot mode,’ said Melanie. ‘She’s read too many Agatha Christie novels and is imagining she’s in a drawing room twirling a moustache as she reveals the true nature of the crime.’

  ‘When I first saw The Trash Can I thought it was a joke,’ said Friday. ‘The Trash Can casing offers barely any protection and it has a high centre of gravity. In terms of physics, it’s a terrible design. Shoddy workmanship, shoddy materials. The engine is under-powered and it moves slowly. But the chainsaw is something else. Dexterous, powerful and fast. When it defeated our robot, it sliced into the gap next to our circular saw with precision.’

  ‘So they built a better robot,’ said Brad. ‘Stop being a poor sport and get over it.’

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘That robot arm is not a better robot. It’s beyond anything a robotic engineer could build. The only way you could build a weapon-wielding arm like that is with millions of years of evolution.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Dr Dalecki.

  ‘It’s not a robot,’ said Friday. She walked over to The Trash Can.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Dr Dalecki. ‘That thing is dangerous.’

  ‘I know,’ said Friday. ‘Because the most dangerous thing on earth is – man.’

  She whipped off the lid from The Trash Can and revealed a tiny man inside, sitting on top of a remote-control vehicle.

  ‘Hello,’ said the man.

  ‘The jig is up,’ said Friday.

  ‘I thought so,’ said the man.

  ‘They had a midget in their robot this whole time?!’ said Dr Dalecki.

  ‘Little person,’ said Friday. ‘Do you prefer to be referred to as a little person or person of short stature?’

  ‘I prefer Tony,’ said Tony. ‘But little person is the preferred descriptor.’

  ‘That’s so unethical,’ said Dr Dalecki.

  ‘No-one is more unethical than a competitive scientist,’ said Friday.

  ‘You brought in a little person?’ accused Dalecki, turning on the team operating the robot.

  ‘Tony is a physicist on the HERA experiment,’ said the operator. ‘It was his idea.’

  ‘It’s patronising of you to assume I wasn’t complicit,’ said Tony. ‘My intelligence does not correlate with my size.’

  ‘Your immorality doesn’t either,’ observed Friday.

  ‘Why should it?’ argued Tony. ‘Just because I’m a person of short stature doesn’t mean I’m more virtuous. I’m just as capable of cheating as you.’

  ‘Are you attacking us for catching you out for cheating?’ asked Dr Dalecki.

  ‘No, he’s deflecting our justified indignation and the possible implications for his professional career by changing the subject,’ said Friday.

  ‘Just get out of the pool,’ said Dr Dalecki. ‘Your team is disqualified.’

  The crowd cheered.

  After The Trash Can had been expelled, Brad’s team went on to win in the final, which they were all very smug about. Even Halley put down her phone long enough to give him a kiss.

  ‘That was a very strange competition,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Friday. ‘I don’t think nerds should be allowed to compete in something that resembles a sporting event. They’ve got too much suppressed rage from being bad at sport.’

  The following day, there was a knock at the door and Friday opened it to find Uncle Bernie standing on the doorstep. ‘Friday, can you come and help me raid a house?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you need my help?’ asked Friday. ‘I thought you were really good at raiding houses. No-one knows all the sneaky hidey-holes rich people use to conceal their contraband better than you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know I can search a house,’ said Bernie. ‘But there’s something going on here in Switzerland. They’ve figured out how to get things past Interpol.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Friday.

  ‘We usually have a pretty good idea when someone is going to try to get a major artwork out of the country,’ said Bernie. ‘These things are in the courts for years. Families of Holocaust victims will trace the documentation of their families’ possessions and work out where they are now. Then they’ll pursue their return through the courts. That whole process takes years, decades even. If the person holding the object doesn’t surrender it, we know they’re going to try to get it out of the country, and we increase the surveillance at the border.’

  ‘We saw cars getting searched when we arrived at CERN,’ said Friday.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bernie. ‘That’s what they’ll be looking for. But they haven’t found anything. So they’ve searched the house and there’s nothing there either.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll come and take a look,’ said Friday.

  When Friday and Melanie went with Bernie out to the carpark, Ian was leaning against the car waiting for them. Friday’s heart rate went through the roof. She hadn’t seen him for two days. He looked better. The big bandage was gone, replaced with a smaller adhesive dressing on the back of his head. The bruising around his eyes had faded. It still looked dreadful, but now, instead of being blue and black, it was more in the yellow-and-green end of the colour spectrum. The guilt welled up in Friday again. She had to talk to him. To reassure herself it was still Ian. Her Ian.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be resting,’ said Friday. Even to her own ears this statement sounded unnecessarily hostile.

  Ian’s brow furrowed. He didn’t respond. He just looked confused.

  ‘He’s doing better,’ explained Bernie. ‘He’s meant to be getting moderate exercise and mental stimulation now.’

  They all climbed into the car. Ian in front. Melanie and Friday in the back. There was awkward silence for the first five minutes. Eventually Bernie broke the silence by explaining the case.

  ‘A writ was issued a week ago,’ said Bernie. ‘They have an original Raphael drawing in there. They were ordered to surrender it. But they’re denying it’s on the property.’

  ‘Surely if they have a Raphael, someone’s seen it in their house,’ said Friday. ‘That’s not the type of thing you’d leave in a box in the attic.’

  ‘Oh no, they had it in pride of place over the mantelpiece,’ said Bernie.

  ‘That’s a terrible place to display art,’ said Friday. ‘So much temperature fluctuation and so many smoke particles.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bernie. ‘They should have to surrender the painting just for being such terrible conservators of a significant artwork.’

  ‘So where do they claim it’s gone?’ asked Friday.

  ‘He’s saying he lost it in a card game last year,’ said Bernie. ‘And he can’t remember the name of the guy who won it.’

  ‘Convenient,’ said Friday.

  ‘It hasn’t crossed the border,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s got to be in their house. We’ve been watching it all week, stopping any outgoing delivery vans. But nothing. It’s got to be still in there, so we’re going in.’

  As they turned into the street, they were met by an unexpected sight. There were cars parked everywhere. All along the road. Up on the grass verges. Double parked in driveways. And they were all fancy prestige cars. Many of them with drivers standing around smoking cigarettes, chatting with each other or looking at their phones.

  Bernie pulled up in front of the lakeside mansion they were supposed to be raiding. There were two Swiss border-control cars there, waiting for them. Bernie rolled down his window.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘A party,’ said the commander.

  ‘What?’ said Bernie. ‘They haven’t left the house for a week and now they’re hosting a party?!’

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ said Friday. ‘All these guests as well as caterers, florists, all coming and going. They probably staged this whole thing just so they can sneak the drawing out.’

  ‘Apparently, it’s their wedding anniversary,’ said the commander.

  ‘But he’s only been married five minutes,’ said Bernie. He turned and explained to Friday. ‘He left his third wife after she caught him having an affair with the entertainer from their kid’s birthday party.’

  ‘He ran off with a clown?’ asked Friday.

  ‘No, she was a balloon artist,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Classy,’ said Friday.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ asked the commander. ‘Some of Switzerland’s most influential people are in there. It would be more politic to wait till tomorrow.’

  ‘It’ll be gone by tomorrow,’ said Bernie. ‘They’re using their rich and powerful friends as a smokescreen. The Raphael is more important than any of them. I’m going in, and I’m getting it back.’

  ‘There will be hell to pay,’ said the commander. ‘They will complain to every one of our seniors, every news channel and every politician.’

  ‘That’s why I’m such a good Interpol officer,’ said Bernie. ‘No-one thinks much of me to start with. When it comes to reputation – I’ve got nothing to lose.’

  Bernie led his team up the driveway and banged on the front door with his fist while yelling, ‘Interpol! Open up. I have a search warrant.’

  It only took two seconds for the door to open, and Bernie was greeted by a very polite and very formal butler. The house behind him was empty, but they could hear the party. It was evidently happening out in the backyard. Bernie had been expecting to have his way blocked, but no-one tried to stop him.

  ‘Okay, you know the plan,’ said Bernie to the group of customs officers. ‘Spread out and start searching. Take your time, be methodical, search everything.’

  Friday walked through the foyer and into a large room. It was obviously the rich person’s equivalent of a living room, but it was more like a ballroom in size and with a huge sunken couch in the middle. The far wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass sliding doors, which allowed a spectacular view across a rolling lawn that sloped down to the shore of Lake Geneva. It was gorgeous. Their personal jetty stretched out over the water and an open-sided marquee had been erected on top, where all the guests were assembled, eating and drinking and listening to a live band.

  ‘It’s not over the fireplace,’ said Melanie.

  Friday turned back to look at the room again. There was a large fireplace and there was a picture on the wall above it, but it was not a renaissance masterpiece. It was a tacky print of dogs playing poker.

  ‘He’s making fun of me,’ said Bernie.

  ‘It’s not in the house,’ said Friday.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ said Bernie. ‘If he’s got a safe, I’ll find it. I’ve got metal detectors. Unless it’s made of silicon, I’ll find it.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t taunt you like that unless he knew he’d snuck it past you already,’ said Friday.

  ‘I’m so sick of rich people,’ growled Bernie. ‘Where is he?’ Bernie strode out through the glass sliding door and down towards the jetty. Friday hurried after him. Her uncle didn’t often get angry. She didn’t want him to do something he would regret.

  Up ahead there was a live band playing jazz music, cocktail waiters carrying around champagne and finger food, and all the guests were dressed in black tie. People were laughing and having a wonderful time. They hadn’t noticed what was going on yet.

  Bernie in his scruffy grey suit with the pizza stain on his tie looked out of place. Ironically Friday with her shock of peroxide blonde hair, punk coat and nose ring fit right in.

  ‘Hunziker, where’s the Raphael?’ demanded Bernie.

  ‘Barnes, my good fellow,’ said Hunziker. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I’ve told you I don’t have that piece anymore. Surely you believe me?’

  ‘My people are searching your house right now,’ said Bernie. ‘If it’s there, they’ll find it.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Hunziker. ‘Then they’re going to be wasting their afternoon. No matter, I’m sure there will be lots of leftovers after the party. We’ll be able to provide them with a nice meal.’

  ‘Then what? You’re saying you’ve snuck it out already, are you?’ said Bernie. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Now you’re being quite a bore,’ said Hunziker. ‘I’ve been very patient with you. You’ve been watching my house and harassing my staff, going through their vehicles all week. I’m really quite cross. The police commissioner is here with his daughter. She went to school with my wife. And over there is the Minister for Justice. I think I’m going to have a word with them about your behaviour. Harassment, bullying, it’s all very vindictive of you.’

  ‘Sweetie-pie!’ a young woman called shrilly from the marquee on the jetty.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Hunziker. ‘It’s time for the cake cutting. This is my wife’s first marriage. She’s very proud of our anniversary. And I’m very proud of her.’

  ‘He’s not lying,’ said Melanie, as they watched the billionaire walk away.

  ‘If it’s not in the house and he hasn’t snuck it out,’ said Friday. ‘Where could it be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bernie. ‘We’ve searched every car. Every boat. Every parcel to come or go from here.’

  The band stopped playing and Hunziker held up his hand to get everyone’s attention.

  ‘Thank you all for coming today, to help me and Melinda celebrate the six-month anniversary of our marriage which, for me, have been the happiest six months of my life,’ said Hunziker.

  ‘Okay, that was a lie,’ said Melanie.

  ‘The word anniversary comes from the Latin word “annus” meaning “year”,’ muttered Friday. ‘You can’t have a “six-month anniversary”. Anyone who butchers vocabulary like that is clearly immoral.’

  ‘Melinda has brought me so much joy,’ continued Hunziker. ‘She is the perfect woman.’

  ‘Lie, lie,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Apart from being our wedding anniversary,’ said Hunziker. ‘We are also launching Melinda’s balloon business. So I want to make a toast. Everyone please raise your glasses – to Melinda and her balloons!’

  ‘Melinda and her balloons!’ everyone repeated.

  As they raised their glasses, waiters stepped forward, pulled on ropes, and hundreds of pink and white helium balloons floated out from under the jetty.

  The crowd gasped and applauded. It was very beautiful. The shiny balloons floated on the breeze out over the blue lake and into the crystal-clear alpine sky. Each balloon was dangling a string with a paper love heart.

  ‘That’s how they’re doing it!’ Friday exclaimed.

  ‘What?’ said Bernie.

  ‘The Raphael drawing is on paper,’ said Friday. ‘It weighs practically nothing. They’ve tied it to one of those balloons and it’s floating away.’

  ‘No!’ said Bernie.

  Friday looked at Hunziker. Like the rest of the crowd, he had turned to watch the balloons float over the lake. He had a huge smug grin on his face.