Olivia and the Movie Stars by Lyn Gardner Page A

startled pigeon sitting entirely unperturbed on one of the rafters, watching her. She was so relieved that she sank down on to the top step for a moment. She wished she’d accepted Tom’s offer to come with her. They’d both be laughing together now, while instead she was feeling mighty nervous. Walking the wire had been the easy part. The building felt as if it was about to spring a nasty surprise on her. She stood up carefully and started down the stairs.
    It was darker on the floor below but she could see immediately that the partitions had been cleared and it was almost empty. Where, she wondered, was all the heavy machinery that was causing such disruption to the Swan? But she could see some things stacked in the middle of the room, so she shone the beam of her torch over them. There was a lot of recording equipment, with lights winking on and off allover it, and some massive speakers, bigger than she’d ever seen in her life. There were also what looked like alarm clocks all over the place. It was very odd. She wondered if someone was planning some kind of illegal warehouse party and hoped it wasn’t going to be tonight. The last thing Gran needed was to be kept awake all night.
    She listened hard. She was certain she was quite alone in the building. Then her phone bleeped and she guessed it was an impatient Katie wanting to know where she was. She stepped forwards and something small and furry ran over her foot. Olivia screamed and her hand came down hard on a button that said “Play”. Suddenly the room was filled with a roar of machinery so unbearably loud that Olivia was almost knocked backwards. Her ears hadn’t experienced such pain since she was three and had had a terrible ear infection that needed antibiotics. She fumbled for the stop button and pressed it. For the second time in just a few minutes she sank to the floor. She stayed there quietly for several minutes while her brain worked overtime. She knew now that there was to be no warehouse party; this was all part of MrWilkes-Cox’s plan.
    Olivia headed carefully down to the next floor. Its layout was the same as the one above and she wasn’t at all surprised to find the same arrangement of outsized speakers facing towards the Swan and the same recording equipment and timers. She ignored them and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor. She opened the door and for a moment felt afraid but all she found was a nervous-looking Katie Wilkes-Cox.
    “Quick, shut the door!” said Katie as she slipped in. “What took you so long and what was that terrible noise?”
    “Come and see what I’ve found,” said Olivia, leading the way up the stairs. Katie turned her torch on and followed Olivia to the first floor.
    “Look,” said Olivia, shining her torch over the equipment. The beam settled on the timers, and immediately she realised that they were set to coincide with the starts and stops of the Swan school day. Mr Wilkes-Cox was using noise as a weapon.
    “Wow,” said Katie. “You do have to hand it to my dad – he may entirely lack a conscience ora heart but he is very, very smart.” She sounded despairing. “We’ve got to find a way to stop him.”
    “Ssh!” whispered Olivia urgently. “What was that noise?”

Chapter Twelve
    Over in the Swan, Tom, Aeysha and Georgia jumped at the sudden burst of machinery noise. They stared at each other fearfully. The roar ceased almost as soon as it had begun.
    “Somebody must be in there with Liv and Katie!” said Tom. “I’m going to go over to find out what’s going on.”
    “No, Tom,” said Georgia. “It’s too dangerous. Whoever is in there has obviously already found them poking around. Maybe there was some kind of night watchman we didn’t know about.”
    “Or maybe Katie betrayed Olivia; maybe it was all a set-up? After all, Katie’s got form in that department,” said Aeysha quietly.
    Georgia gasped.
    “Whatever it is, Livy’s going to get into terrible trouble and you