She reached into her fairy costume. The thing she pulled out looked, for a second, in its shimmeriness, like part of the costume. It was the snakeskin she’d been given by Declan. I took it and crouched down in front of Rudy.
‘Here, boy. Come snuffle this.’
Rudy instantly waddled over and went into hyper-snuffle mode. He was definitely excited about the snakeskin.
Then, before I could stop him, he sucked it into his slobbery mouth, gave it a quick chew, and then swallowed it down, the way you would a slice of bacon. All that was left in my hand was the last bit of skin from the back end of the snake.
Unfortunately Jennifer saw it all.
‘You beast!’ she screamed, and aimed a big kick at Rudy.
At least that’s what I thought she was doing. She was actually aiming a big kick at me. It landed on my bottom and I went sprawling face first on the ground.
It’s always embarrassing when someone kicks you up the bum and you end up flat on your face. It’s doubly embarrassing when the thing doing the kicking is a big pink fairy.
I thought about kicking her back, but decided not to for three reasons:
It’s wrong to kick girls.
Jennifer was allowed to be upset because her present had been eaten by Rudy.
We had to get on with the mission.
Oh, and:
She’d only kick me again, even harder.
‘I’m sorry about the snakeskin, Jenny,’ I said. ‘But there’s something more important going on here. There’s a real snake to save, along with other nice pets.’
I think the others were actually quite impressed with my behaviour. Sometimes being a Great Leader involves getting kicked up the bum by a fairy and rising above it to save kidnapped parrots, snakes, fat cats, etc.
I took Rudy’s ugly face in my hands.
‘OK, boy,’ I said. ‘Listen like you’ve never listened before.’ I dangled the last bit of snakeskin before his snuffly nose and said, ‘Find, Rudy, Find.’
Rudy looked up at me, his milky eyes trying hard to understand. I felt the Gang watching closely. If this didn’t work, there was no way I could carry on as its Great Leader.
Come on, Rudy, I begged silently.
Then there was a little wag from his tail, and his mouth opened into an eager grin. He heaved himself up and began to trundle off in the direction of the park.
‘It’s working!’ I yelled. ‘Follow Rudy, everyone.’
IT WAS LUCKY that Rudy wasn’t one of the fastest dogs, because then he’d have been out of sight in no time. Even a medium-paced dog would have been too much for us to keep up with. But Rudy didn’t really run at all. He moved with a sort of rolling waddle, with a bit of staggering thrown in. So we jogged along with him quite easily.
We reached the park, and then went across the waste ground beyond it, and then past the sewage works, and then through some back gardens, and then through some front gardens. By that stage we were deep in enemy territory, by which I mean the New Estate, where our old rivals the Dockery Gang lived. But they weren’t around. They were probably watching telly or mugging old ladies while we were saving the world. No one saw us, which was lucky, considering how silly the others looked. I mean the cowboy, the astronaut, Spider-Man and the fairy.
I was very impressed with Rudy. He just went straight on, never turning his head, never changing pace. He was like a small, podgy, ugly, hairy guided missile.
He must really have liked the taste of that snakeskin.
Past the New Estate it gets a bit creepy. There are some low concrete buildings there and no one even knows what they’re for. Then you get to lots of lock-up garages, hardly any of them with cars in, and it always seems dim and dingy, even on a sunny morning.
Finally Rudy came to a row of garages. There was graffiti written all over the doors, and I don’t care how rude the rude word was that we named Rude Word after, I don’t believe it was as rude as the rude words we saw there.
‘Cover your eyes up, Jennifer,’ I said.
I was worried that she might faint if she read the really rude words. That can happen to girls sometimes, especially if they get over-excited, or put knickers on from last year that are too small for them and cut off the circulation to their brains.
‘Cover your own up!’ she replied.
But there wasn’t time for an argument, because Rudy had homed in on one of the garages. He stuck his nose into the gap at the bottom of the door, as if he was trying to squeeze under it. There was a big padlock on the door.
‘This is it,’ I said.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ said The Moan, pressing his ear to the door.
‘I think there are windows at the back – let’s go and see,’ I said.
I dragged Rudy with me, but he really wanted to stay snuffling at the door.
There was an allotment at the back of the garages. Allotments are supposed to be where old men in flat caps grow their vegetables, but this was pretty manky, as allotments go. There was nothing there you’d want to eat – just old prams, broken bottles, sheds that looked like they’d been bombed in the war and left for dead, and lots and lots of weeds. Oh, and some Brussels sprouts.
‘It’s horrible back here,’ said The Moan.
You couldn’t argue with that.
The garage we were looking for was right in the middle of the row, but from behind it was hard to work out which one it was. Each garage had a small window at the back, most of them grimy and dusty and covered in cobwebs. They were too high to see through, so I had to get Jamie to lift me up. The first one I looked in was empty. The next had rolls of carpet right up to the ceiling. The third window was so dusty and filthy I could hardly see through.
‘A bit higher,’ I said to Jamie.
He grunted and lifted me higher.
‘Anything there?’ asked Jennifer.
‘Can’t . . . make . . . it . . . out.’
‘Glasses,’ said Noah.
‘What?’
‘You’ve still got the sunglasses on. It’s why you can’t see.’
‘Oh yes.’
I put the sunglasses in my pocket.
‘Bozo,’ said The Moan.
‘Get down, dog,’ shouted Jamie.
I looked down and saw Rudy jumping up. This must be the right one.
I peered again. It was definitely better without the sunglasses. There seemed to be wooden boxes. I strained through the gloom. There was chicken wire in front of the boxes. Then I saw a pale glint in the darkness.
An eye. A sad eye, looking out at me. Then more. Hundreds of them.
‘Yes,’ I hissed, ‘it’s them! It’s the pets!’
I CLIMBED DOWN, nearly falling into a patch of nettles. Then Jamie had to help the others get up to see, while I patted Rudy and told him what a good boy he was.
‘I actually think you’ve got something right for a change,’ said The Moan.
‘What shall we do now?’ asked Noah.
I did some quick thinking.
‘Easy. We’ve got to rescue them. We’ll be famous. I expect we’ll be on the telly, and there’s probably a huge reward, maybe a million pounds.’
‘Really?’ said Noah hopefully.
‘No way,’ said The Moan. ‘A hundred pounds at the most.’
Then we had a long discussion about how much the reward would be. In the end we decided it would be £18,000. Then we realized it was a really hard sum to divide £18,000 by four, so we decided we would settle for £16,000, which was £4,000 each.
‘But how are we going to rescue them?’ said Noah when the finances had been sorted out.
‘I’m going in,’ I said, sounding incredibly brave, I thought. ‘Then I’ll hand them out, one at a time.’
I searched around until I found an old crate to stand on, which was much better than having Jamie huffing and puffing with me on his shoulders. Back at the window I could see light seeping through a crack in the garage door. The cages were all around the walls, piled on top of each o
ther. There must have been thirty or forty of them.
I realized that this was a major pet-smuggling operation, probably controlled by the Mafia, the Triads or the Jacuzzi. You’ve probably heard of the Mafia, and the Triads are like them except from China, and the Jacuzzi are like them but from Japan. The Jacuzzi have tattoos all over their bodies and they chop you up with Samurai swords if you forget to bow to them in the right way.
I poked my finger around the window to see if I could open it. It didn’t budge. Then I tried to remember if there was anything in my book of How to Be a Spy about opening windows, but I came up blank. What I needed was the book of How to Be a Burglar.
So I got down off the crate and found half a brick.
‘You can’t!’ said Noah. ‘It’s vandalism.’
‘Go on,’ said The Moan. ‘It’s an adventure.’
Jennifer gave me a quick nod.
Jamie picked his nose, looked at the bogey, thought about eating it, then flicked it away. He was definitely becoming more civilized.
I paused for a moment to think over the rights and wrongs of what I was about to do. Then I smashed the window.
Now, obviously, as Noah was trying to say, smashing windows is one of the naughtiest things you can do – much, much worse than weeing on the toilet seat or hiding your granny’s false teeth. But this was for a good cause, saving animals from deadly peril, etc., etc., and besides, it’s always fun to break glass.
The sound should have got the animals excited. But apart from one small meow, a single bark, and what might have been a hiss, they didn’t make much noise.
‘They’ve been drugged,’ I said.
It was then that I heard voices coming from the other side of the garage door.
‘Sshhh!’ I whispered to the others. ‘They’re here!’
‘Who?’
‘The baddies.’
I ducked down below the level of the window and froze. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they sounded gruff and rough and definitely Japanese.
It was the Jacuzzi hitmen for sure!
Suddenly the door was wrenched open with a loud scraping noise. I peeped one eye over the window frame. I saw two figures outlined against the bright sky. One of them was holding something fluffy by its long ears.
A bunny!
‘That’s right,’ said one. ‘Shove it in that cage there.’
He didn’t sound very Japanese, but you never know for sure. Then there was exactly the sound you’d expect to hear if a big rabbit was being pushed into a small cage.
‘That’s the lot,’ said another voice. ‘I reckon we’ve got every decent pedigree pet in this town. Must be at least five grand’s worth of cat, dog, parrot and rabbit in here.’
‘Yeah,’ said the first voice. ‘Time to shift ’em. Let’s go and get the van.’
They scraped the door shut behind them.
I jumped down and told the others what I’d heard.
‘We haven’t got long,’ I said. ‘And this could be dangerous. Highly dangerous. Like playing with fire while you’re holding two sticks of dynamite and you’re suspended over a live volcano with a tidal wave coming.’
Jamie’s mouth opened. Even Jennifer looked impressed.
I continued: ‘We don’t know who’s been stealing these animals, but I think we can safely say that they’re not very nice people. Who knows what they’ll do if they catch us here.’
I didn’t mention Samurai swords or getting sliced up like salami.
‘Anyone got a mobile phone?’ I asked.
They all shook their heads.
‘My dad says they give you brain cancer,’ said Noah.
‘My mum thinks they’re common,’ said Jenny.
‘OK. In that case we have to run and get help. Right, Moan, you and Jennifer go and phone the police from the phone box on the High Street.’
‘It always smells of wee in there,’ said Jennifer.
‘You’ll have to put up with the smell of wee this once. Tell the police it’s a double emergency and they have to come right away, even if they’ve got another job to do, like chasing bank robbers.’
They both nodded.
‘Jamie, you don’t live far from here – can you run home and get your dad to come?’
‘You bet,’ he said.
Jamie’s dad looked like Frankenstein’s monster, but he was actually very nice and a big softy.
‘Tell him to bring his cricket bat,’ I added.
‘What about me?’ asked Noah.
‘You and me are going to try to rescue as many pets as we can, in case the police and Jamie’s dad don’t make it in time.’
‘That’s so brave,’ said Jennifer.
‘Well, not really,’ I said modestly.
‘Seems stupid to me,’ said The Moan, but that was to be expected from him. ‘It isn’t a job for kids. You should come with us.’
‘Pah,’ I said. ‘Running away is for cowards. OK, let’s synchronize watches.’
‘Why?’ said The Moan.
‘Because you’re supposed to. It’s now ten thirty-five oh hundred hours o’clock precisely. Jamie, that means the little hand is pointing to the—’
‘I know,’ said Jamie, quite crossly.
I got out my spud gun and the potato and loaded up.
‘Be careful,’ said Jennifer, and kissed my cheek. Normally, of course, I would have had to wipe it off. But as this was a special occasion I left it there. I gave her a quick, brave smile, and then said, ‘OK then – go, go, go, and good luck on your missions.’
NOAH, RUDY AND I watched the others run away in various directions across the allotments.
‘Just us, now,’ I said.
I put the loaded spud gun back in my pocket and climbed onto the crate. With the glass broken I could put my arm through (very carefully, as broken glass can kill you as easily as a nuclear explosion).
I flipped the catch and the window creaked open. I heaved up onto the windowsill and then jumped down into the dark garage.
It was pretty smelly in there. The pet-snatchers hadn’t bothered to take the animals outside for walkies (or flyies – in the case of the parrot), so they’d all had to do their poos in their cages.
I looked in each of the cages. There were all kinds of fancy dogs, the sort you see posh ladies carrying around in their handbags. There were beautiful fluffy cats, any one of which might have been Fatty the Persian. There were two parrots, one grey one and another that looked like it had been painted by a little kid determined to use every colour in his paint box. I wasn’t sure which one was Potty. I tried saying, ‘Hello, Potty,’ to each of them, to see if they’d answer back, but they just looked at me like I was mad.
I found Trixie. I put my fingers through the wire and she tried to bite them off. Some things don’t change. And in the next cage there was good old Ray Quasar, boa constrictor (or was it python?). He stuck his tongue out at me in a friendly way.
‘Hurry up.’
That was Noah outside, sounding anxious.
I picked up a cage with a cat in it. It was heavier than I expected. I carried it over to the window. I’d forgotten that the window was so high. I stretched up and balanced the cat cage on the ledge.
‘Here,’ I said.
I saw two hands reach up and take the cage.
We got two more cages out, one with a small yappy dog and the other with the bunny rabbit.
But then I heard the sound I’d been dreading – the sound of the thieves’ van pulling up outside. Noah heard it too.
‘Get out of there,’ he hissed.
I ran to the window. I stretched and stretched, but it was too high to climb out of. My heart was racing and sweat poured down my face, making my balaclava all clammy.
‘I can’t reach it,’ I said to Noah. ‘Run away and save yourself.’
‘But . . .’
‘That’s an order.’
I knew then that I had only one chance. I ran around the garage banging on the tops
of all the cages, trying to get the still half-drugged animals riled up. The dogs started barking, the cats spitting, the snake hissing, the parrots squawking.
‘What a racket,’ I heard one of the pet-robbers say. Then I head the grating sound of someone trying to open the padlock. I had just a few seconds more. I flicked open the little catches on the cages and opened the doors.
There was one that took a bit of nerve to reach inside.
The garage door was being dragged back. Full dazzling light hit my eyes.
It was now or never.
With a yell I kicked over as many cages as I could, sending cats and dogs and parrots leaping and flying in all directions. Then, with a mighty effort, I hurled the long, heavy body of Ray Quasar at the shape of the first man. Then I did a quick draw with my spud gun and fired it in the face of the one behind him.
At the same moment I leaped forwards. I was at the heart of a snarling, snapping mass of angry animal flesh. And Trixie was doing more than her fair share of snapping. Good doggie!
I saw the startled look on the face of the man just before the snake hit him. Ray Quasar wrapped himself round the man’s neck and shoulders as he fell back. The second man also staggered back, hit right on the end of his nose by the spud bullet.
There was a space for me to escape through. If I could only slip past them I knew that I could get away.
I was out of the door, almost there, almost free. Then I felt a hand reach out and grab the back of my balaclava. I ducked and squirmed and the balaclava came off in the man’s hand. But I had slowed down, and now he moved to block the way.
It was the one I’d hit on the nose with the spud gun. He wasn’t a Japanese Jacuzzi after all, but just an ordinary man in a tracksuit top and jeans. There were still animals milling around, but they weren’t the threatening pack that they’d first been when they burst out of their cages.
The man didn’t look very happy, but at least he wasn’t wrestling with a metre-long snake like his friend, so he should have been thanking his lucky stars, if you ask me.
The Bare Bum Gang Battles the Dogsnatchers Page 5
