Llama United

by Scott Allen

  He decided that the best way of doing the kidnap would be on the morning of the match when Tim, Cairo and McCloud were out inspecting the pitch. Nobody would ever think one of the llamas could be kidnapped on the morning of the match. Most people would presume Goal Machine had just wandered off – after all, he was a llama.

  All Geoff Coren would have to do would be to sneak into the dressing room, lead Goal Machine away from the team and hide him in his office for the whole match. The crucial bit would be leaving the dressing-room door open, so it would be easy for everyone to assume that the llama had just wandered off. The llamas would then have to play without their star striker and with only ten llamas on the field, so would probably lose. This would be a doddle.

  He looked at himself in the mirror again. ‘You, Geoff, are a genius,’ he said to himself, and then he started brushing his hair again.

  Rumour has it ninety per cent of all the best managers in the world talk to themselves in the mirror as they brush their hair. The other ten per cent are bald.

  30

  THE KIDNAP

  Enfield Hotspurts’s ground was even more impressive than Borwich City’s. It was beautiful, both inside and out. Everything from the main door to the toilets looked expensive. Even the receptionist’s teeth sparkled like diamonds.

  As Geoff Coren had predicted, Tim, Cairo and McCloud were keen to get out on the pitch before the game to have a look at the surface and soak up the pre-match atmosphere. They left all the llamas in the huge dressing room with some water and extra hay and went down the tunnel and out into cavernous 50,000-seat arena. About 600 of these were filled with Llama United fans. Frank, Monica, Molly, Beetroot and Fiona were settling into their seats high up in the stands. Even though they were part of Llama United’s backroom staff they had still had to buy their own tickets, which weren’t cheap; yet another cost to be scribbled down in Frank’s little black notepad. Enfield Hotspurts weren’t giving their rivals any special treatment.

  This was Geoff Coren’s chance! He quickly snuck into the away dressing room with a huge bag of carrots and starting looking for Goal Machine. Geoff Coren wasn’t to know that llamas aren’t that fussed about carrots. They much prefer Worcester sauce-flavoured crisps.

  The changing room stank of llama poo, and Geoff Coren’s nose immediately tried to climb off his face. He pinched his nostrils to stop it escaping and pushed his way into the mass of eleven llamas that were standing in the middle of the room. Now, which one was Goal Machine? From the grainy monochrome picture in Geoff Coren’s secret file, Goal Machine was white with a black flash across his nose. He peered at each llama in turn and held the photo up to their faces. It was hard to tell which one was which; the secret photos weren’t brilliant. Eventually he arrived at one with a black flash across his nose.

  Geoff Coren scooped up the long rope wrapped around the llama’s neck and pulled him towards the door. The llama didn’t seem to be that bothered about being tugged along and happily followed.

  Having made sure all the doors in the dressing room were wide open to make it look like the llama had left of his own accord, Geoff Coren raced the animal along the corridor, into the nearest lift and then up two floors to his office. Once inside the office he emptied a bag of vegetables on the floor, tied the long rope to a heavy gold lampshade he had in one corner of the room and left, locking the door behind him. His plan had worked! He took a quick look at himself in another mirror that was just outside his office, told his reflection he was a ‘genius’ and scuttled off. The game kicked off in just ten minutes. Nobody would find the llama before then and nobody would ever dare look in a well-respected manager’s office.

  As Geoff Coren got back into the lift he sang a little song to himself. ‘Ooh, Geoff aren’t you great. Yes, I’m great. Geoff, Geoff, Geoff. Great, Great, Great.’

  Geoff Coren was not very good at making up songs.

  31

  THE HUNT

  The whistle blew and the quarter-final between Enfield Hotspurts and Llama United kicked off to a huge roar from both sets of supporters.

  Tim was settling himself down in one of the comfy dugout seats when he noticed Cairo standing on the edge of the technical area, pointing and counting to himself. When he’d finished he turned to the dugout, a flash of panic on his face.

  ‘We’ve only got ten llamas!’ he shouted.

  ‘What?’ replied Tim, cupping a hand behind his ear.

  ‘We’ve only got ten llamas!’ Cairo shouted with more urgency over the din of the wild crowd. ‘One of them is missing.’

  Tim got up and began frantically counting the llamas, which wasn’t easy as they were all buzzing about in a blur of purple stripes. But Cairo was right; there were only ten llamas on the pitch. Tim’s tummy flipped.

  ‘We’ll have to look for him while the game is on,’ said Cairo. ‘McCloud will have to manage the team on his own for now.’

  ‘OK,’ replied Tim anxiously. ‘I’ll take the left side of the ground and you take the right side. It’s so big – I’m worried we’ll never find him!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Cairo. ‘He can’t have gone far. It’s a big stadium but someone is bound to notice a rather famous, great big llama wandering about and return him to us.’

  ‘What happens if he’s escaped outside?’

  Cairo shrugged. There was good chance this could have happened, but he didn’t want to make Tim panic any more than he was already. ‘Nah, they shut all the doors once everyone is inside the stadium. I doubt he’ll find a way out,’ he lied. ‘We’ll find him in no time, don’t worry.’

  Tim and Cairo sprinted into the underbelly of the ground and began hunting for the missing llama. We will follow Tim rather than Cairo, mainly because his mission was a bit more exciting – Cairo just got lost near the toilets.

  If you have ever been behind the scenes at a football ground you’ll know it can be a warren of meeting rooms, corporate boxes, restaurants, bars and conference suites. Big grounds like Enfield Hostpurts’s seem to need more of these than anyone else. How many conferences can a football club hold at one time? thought Tim as he charged through another huge room full of empty chairs all looking forlornly at an empty stage. As he searched he could hear the muffled noise of the crowd watching the match, and he could tell it was still 0 – 0 because he hadn’t heard any huge roars.

  When he reached the second level he was presented with a long corridor of firmly shut doors. He tried the first one on his left, which had the name ‘Roberts’ stamped on it. The door opened straight away and it was full of people stuffing their faces with food and drink, chatting and laughing. Nobody seemed to be the slightest bit bothered by what was happening on the pitch. A bored-looking waiter, who can’t have been much older than Tim, was standing in the corner checking his phone. When he saw Tim he slipped the phone back into his pocket and straightened up.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said to Tim as politely as possible. He had been trained to act like this no matter who he was talking to. Tim could be an important billionaire’s son for all he knew . . . dressed in a Llama United tracksuit.

  Tim was surprised to be called ‘sir’ by someone who was probably in the middle of his A Levels. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he bumbled. ‘I was just looking for a missing llama.’

  ‘Aren’t they all on the pitch?’ asked the waiter.

  A tall, thin wiry man in a really bright white suit and red-and-yellow splurgey shirt interrupted the conversation. The man’s outfit was so dazzling it made Tim feel a little bit sick, and it took him a while to realize he was being spoken to.

  ‘I said . . . you’ve only got ten haven’t you?’ he repeated, chuckling at Tim.

  ‘Yes, you’ve noticed.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, not really.’ The brightly dressed man ushered Tim to the window to show him the pitch. ‘Having ten men . . . er, llamas, doesn’t seem to be making much difference at all. Hotspurts can hardly get the ball off them.’

  As he spoke, one of the ll
amas – it was hard to tell which one as Tim was so far up – fired a crashing long-range drive at the Hotspurts goal, but unluckily it cannoned off the crossbar and drifted out for a goal kick. Tim instinctively threw his hands up to his head and let out an ‘Oooooohhh!’ It was mighty close.

  ‘It looks like they’re going to score in a minute,’ said the man.

  Though Tim would have loved to carry on watching through the window, he had to find the missing llama. He was getting hotter and hotter the longer it took.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the thin man in the white suit shouted as Tim backed out of the room and carried on up the corridor. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up. Good luck!’

  Tim tried every door on the left side of the corridor but they were all full of corporate guests eating and drinking and occasionally watching the match. He turned his attention to the doors on the right. There weren’t as many of these and nearly all of them were locked, apart from one that was full of brooms and buckets. Tim puffed out his cheeks. He had a nasty feeling in his stomach he wasn’t going to find his missing llama here.

  He dropped down a few steps into an area that was slightly different from the corporate corridor. These rooms looked like offices. There were three doors labelled ‘Coren’, ‘MacIntosh’ and ‘Dr Baker’. Dr Baker’s was open. It was full of medical kit and a physio table and all sorts of medical bits and bobs; it was the kind of room he could see Cairo in, looking after the llamas after a match. Sadly, there was no llama in here now.

  MacIntosh and Geoff Coren’s rooms were both locked, although he could hear a great deal of noise coming from Geoff Coren’s office, as if someone was wrestling a crocodile. Tim pushed at the handle and barged the door with his shoulder but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, giving it a really big slam this time like the police do in films. But unlike in films, this door remained firm – no eleven-year-old boy was getting past him. The door prided himself on his strength, especially because his brother was a much softer touch; he worked at the back of a fried chicken shop that was always getting robbed, mainly because you only had to waggle his handle a few times and he would open.

  ‘Oi, you!’ came a loud voice from down the corridor. Tim looked up; there was a heavily built man in a smart black suit, white shirt and thin black tie storming down the corridor towards him. He was wearing shades and had a plastic headset coil coming out of his ear. Tim felt his face go hot and his back go sweaty; he’d been caught in the act.

  ‘Oi!’ the bull-headed security guard shouted again as he got closer. Just then, there was a huge roar from the stands above. Someone had scored.

  Tim didn’t have time to explain what he was doing as the man grabbed him by the collar of his tracksuit and frogmarched him back up to the corporate corridor, down a couple of flights of stairs at the other end and through the large stadium front doors, where he threw Tim unceremoniously to the concrete floor. ‘No one is allowed to trespass on football club property, especially not staff offices,’ the man shouted at Tim before turning away and going back into the ground.

  There was another huge noise from the crowd. Had someone scored again? Tim was desperate to find out. He picked himself up and rubbed his knees. How was he going to get back in? Then he saw another door that was wide open, a little bit farther down the side of the stadium. Tim dashed through it and followed the corridor on the other side, which led all the way to the away-team dressing room. Oh no, this is how the llama must have escaped!

  Just as he was about to head back down the corridor and start searching outside the ground, the dressing-room door swung open and McCloud pranced in with the rest of the hot and sweaty llamas behind him.

  ‘Two-nil, laddie,’ he said to Tim with a cheer. ‘Goal Machine is on fire today.’ He grabbed the llama closest to him and gave it a massive hug. This was Goal Machine. You could tell because he had really wonky bottom teeth jutting out over his top lip and a grey flash across his nose. Yep, that’s right – Geoff Coren had kidnapped the wrong llama. The pictures in his secret file were in black and white, making it almost impossible to tell the difference between a black flash across a llama’s nose and a grey one! Although Goal Machine’s terrible teeth should have been a bit of a giveaway. I wonder when Geoff will work out that he’s got things just a teensy bit wrong?

  In the Enfield Hotspurts changing room, Geoff Coren was standing perfectly still, inwardly fuming while his coaching staff shouted at his players. Geoff Coren wasn’t only fuming at the team, he was fuming at his scouts. Had they put the wrong picture of Goal Machine in his top-secret file, he wondered? If the llama with the black flash across his nose was not Goal Machine, who the blazes was in his office?

  Geoff Coren ran upstairs and frantically unlocked his office door. It looked like a bomb had hit it. Imagine ten of the messiest five-year-olds’ bedrooms ever, treble it and add five more. Everything was trashed. All his books had been pulled out of the bookshelf, his lampshade was smashed on the floor, his desk and chair were upside down, and all his memorabilia trophies and pictures were dented, broken or smashed. The double-thickness white carpet had mucky llama footprints and bite marks all over it.

  Standing in the middle of all this carnage was Cruncher, casually chewing a huge wad of paper. Geoff Coren stared at the llama for a few seconds . . . paper . . . PAPER!

  ‘What’s that paper?’ he barked at the llama.

  Cruncher carried on chewing, turning his head away from Geoff Coren in disdain. Geoff Coren scampered around his desk hunting for his pile of lovingly handwritten player contracts. Then he noticed with horror that by Cruncher’s feet was his own personal contract, the one he spent months and months writing. The only copy he had.

  Geoff Coren sprung forwards and launched himself with his arms outstretched towards the pile of paper. But he wasn’t quick enough. Cruncher’s long neck swooped down and the llama grabbed the paper between his yellow teeth and began frantically munching. This was tasty paper.

  Geoff Coren let out a wild banshee-like howl, leaped to his feet and began tugging at the paper that was still poking out of Cruncher’s mouth. While the manager pulled one way, Cruncher pulled the other. The pair of them began dancing around the office in a strange expensive-contract tug-of-war. Neither was willing to budge.

  Geoff Coren tried to judo sweep Cruncher’s front legs but kept missing. The tiny manager’s legs were just too short to make contact. This made Cruncher munch and swallow even more of the contract. Geoff Coren could see months and months of work slipping away down the llama’s throat.

  ‘You furry brute! You can’t eat my contract: I’m Geoff Coren. The greatest manager ever. GIVE IT BACK!’ he screamed.

  Cruncher just kept chewing.

  With all his might, Geoff Coren did one final heave on the corner of contract he had grasped in his hands. But Cruncher’s firm, toothy grip was too strong – and there was an almighty RIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

  Coren went flying backwards with a tiny useless corner of the contract in his hands. As he fell, he caught his heel on the edge of a huge Persian rug and tumbled into one of his heavy gold lamps. The top of the lamp wobbled and then came crashing down on his head. He was out cold.

  Cruncher swallowed what was left of the contract with a satisfied gulp, did a quick wee on the plush white carpet and casually strode out of the room and into the corridor, taking a large bite out of huge painting of Geoff Coren that was hanging up by the door for dessert.

  Tim and McCloud were just about to lead the remaining ten llamas back out on to the pitch for the second half when Tim heard a familiar voice call out to him. It was the thin man in the white suit with the colourful shirt.

  ‘Hey, young fella!’ the man shouted over the crowd of people near the tunnel. ‘I’ve found your missing llama. He was just wandering down the corridor near our box.’ He handed Tim the rope that he was leading Cruncher by. ‘He seems to be OK,’ continued the man, stroking Cruncher under the chin, which the llama clearly enjoyed. ‘He was happily chewin
g his way through a load of paper. Hope it wasn’t anything too important.’

  Tim thanked the man perhaps too many times and gave Cruncher a big hug around the neck. Even though they were two-nil up, it was a huge relief to see him again.

  ‘Nice llama you’ve got there. Great coat,’ said the man, rubbing Cruncher’s back. ‘Anyway, good luck with the rest of the game. Hope you win. I can’t stand Hotspurts.’ He gave a cheery wave and disappeared back into the crowd.

  Just then Cairo reappeared from his wandering round the ground. His hands were bright blue. I have no idea why.

  ‘Oh great, you’ve found him,’ he cried with a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Yes, a nice man I met in one of the boxes found him wandering about one of the corridors. But I have a feeling he had been locked in one of the offices by someone.’

  ‘Probably by someone wanting to cheat us out of a place in the next round,’ said Cairo with a frown. Then his face brightened. ‘Doesn’t seem to be working though does it? Two-nil already, wow!’

  Tim nodded eagerly. It felt like his head was going to explode; he was so happy that his team had done so well even with all these obstacles being thrown in their path. ‘C’mon, let’s finish these cheats off,’ he said, slapping Cairo on the shoulder.

  Having Cruncher on for the second half made it even harder for Hotspurts, especially as their manager had gone missing. Goal Machine notched up another two goals and Llama United left the ground with a very comfortable 4 – 0 win under their belts.

  It was only on the way home that it finally dawned on Tim what had happened that day. Cairo was already on his fifth bottle of celebratory cola.

  ‘WE ARE IN THE SEMI-FINALS OF THE CUP!’ Tim shouted.