by Andrew Cope
The puss sank deeper into Sophie’s lap. Once my bald bits have grown back, that is. Shakespeare lolloped on to his side and raised his paws just enough so Sophie could access his white underbelly. He closed his eyes in sheer bliss. It’s great being a spy cat. But even better being a family pet.
‘Mr Big is of course denying everything,’ smiled the professor. ‘But you can never deny the truth.’
22. Lie Detector
High-security police cell, Scotland Yard, London
Mr Big was bandaged from head to toe. Bumping into the electric fence was the equivalent of being struck by lightning. He’d developed a twitch. He wore dark glasses to protect his puffy eyes and a baseball cap to protect his sensitive scalp.
‘It’s all a big mistake,’ he said. ‘You can’t prove anything. I was just doing a simple gardener’s job at Huntingdon Hall.’
‘And you knew nothing at all of an illegal safari scam?’ asked one of the detectives.
Mr Big twitched as he tried to look horrified. ‘That’s such a terrible accusation, Sergeant,’ he said, adjusting the professor’s newly invented thinking cap. ‘I’m offended. Are you calling me a criminal? I have feelings, you know.’
The police officer in the next room purred with delight as he watched the laptop screen. Of course I knew about it. It was my idea! I was going to finally get rid of that dratted dog and get rich in the process. And those pesky interfering pups.
‘And you know nothing of the plot to kidnap pandas from Edinburgh Zoo?’ enquired the police officer.
‘Nothing, Officer, I swear,’ came the words from his mouth.
I planned the whole thing. And Red Drum. And the Crufts winner, came the words on the laptop. I am the most evil genius in the world. Too clever for you. The police will never ever get me to admit anything …
Six months later …
Mr Big looked rather small, standing alone in his prison cell. He squinted through the iron bars and watched the rain beating down. Some might say he looked like a caged animal.
He turned and sat down on the single bunk and stared at the bare brick wall. It wouldn’t be long before he was out of there. He hadn’t yet worked out how to escape, but he knew he would find a way – he always did. And, when he did, he knew exactly where he was heading. The hunt wasn’t over yet – in fact it had only just begun …
From safari to skyscraper …! Turn the page for a sneak peek at another exciting
adventure …
Andrew Cope
SPY DOG: STORMCHASER
1. KEN’S INVENTION
Fifty-five years, three months and two days ago …
Even by old-fashioned standards, Mr Dewitt was old-fashioned. He’d risen to head teacher by insisting things were done the right way. His way. It was a very simple system. He would write on the blackboard, in exaggerated loopy handwriting, and the children would copy it down. Facts mostly. And if it wasn’t done properly then it had to be done all over again. ‘Dewitt Again’ made sure of that.
6D smelt of egg. In the winter the smell of egg was overpowering. In the summer the stench was even worse. Mr Dewitt ate egg-and-cress sandwiches for his elevenses, egg-and-cress sandwiches for his dinner and egg-and-cress sandwiches if he needed a snack in-between times. It would be fair to say that Mr Dewitt liked egg. He also had a plentiful supply. Every morning for the past fifty years, the headmaster had wandered down to the chicken shed at the bottom of his garden, returning shortly afterwards with half a dozen freshly laid eggs. Every single day. Mr Dewitt knew a thing or two about chickens. In fact, he considered himself to be a bit of an ‘egg-spert’.
In his classes there were very few questions and absolutely no nonsense. If they weren’t copying things from the board, the general rule was that the children worked in silence. And if they were copying things from the board, the general rule was that the children worked in silence too. Silence ruled while he wandered between the pupils, shoes creaking, occasionally walloping his ruler on to the desk if a child appeared to be slacking.
Which is why he loved his two top students, Maximus and Kenneth. No ruler was required. In a lifetime of teaching, he had never known ten-year-olds with such keen minds; brain-boxes that soaked up information. For him, Maximus and Kenneth were proof that copying from the board was the way forward. After all, if it worked for them, then it should work for everyone. Even better, the boys seemed to spur each other on, both trying to be top of the class. They excelled across the board – if you discounted sport, that is; they preferred to exercise their brains instead. Maximus was slightly chubby and insisted on keeping his white lab coat on, even in PE. He’d recently received a football in the face and his spectacles were held together with a sticking plaster provided by matron. Kenneth, on the other hand, was tall and gangly. Although he looked built for long-distance running, he often struggled to coordinate his limbs and found himself spreadeagled on the track. He was a running joke.
But what the boys lacked in PE, they made up for in mathematics and science. And here they were, about to demonstrate their skills at the esteemed end-of-year head-to-head ‘show-and-tell’. Mr Dewitt believed in competition. He’d drummed it into the children that taking part was for wimps. It was the winning that mattered. Kenneth and Maximus had spent the entire Year 5 working on their own top-secret science project that they were about to demonstrate to the class.
A slightly nervous Kenneth was up first. ‘Ah-hem,’ he began, clearing his throat. There followed a long pause. Everything about Kenneth was long. His long, slender fingers led to overgrown, yellowing fingernails that tapped impatiently on everything he touched. A slightly crooked nose seemed to protrude from the middle of his pimpled forehead and continue down to a thin, pointy chin. Even his own mother probably wouldn’t have considered him a ‘looker’, even if she had really bad eyesight. His nostrils flared with every breath, accompanied by a high-pitched whistling as the air was sucked all the way up. A steady stream of snot continually oozed out; only to be licked from his top lip by a long, lizard-like tongue.
‘Thank you, sir, for allowing me to address the class,’ he blurted at last.
Mr Dewitt nodded. ‘Get on with it, laddie,’ he said. ‘It’s sports day, so we all want to be outside.’ In other words, Mr Dewitt wanted to be outside.
‘Err … Yes, sir. As you can see, I have written a few ideas on the board behind me.’
Forty children gasped at the series of diagrams and equations that filled the entire blackboard. All looked completely bemused, except young Maximus, who sat nodding appreciatively. Chemical imbalances in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere. Impressive. He knew the bar was set high.
‘I have been investigating the atmosphere,’ announced Kenneth. He turned to an object on Mr Dewitt’s desk and whipped off the tea towel, revealing a small metal dish with an antenna. ‘This is my Climacta-sphere 1960.’ Mr Dewitt’s left eye twitched: he didn’t like surprises. Unless he had agreed to them first, of course.
Kenneth was encouraged to hear someone stifle a ‘Golly gosh’. He continued with renewed confidence.
‘The Climacta-sphere 1960 shoots particles into the sky.’ He paused for effect, eyes darting around the room. ‘And I have found a secret ingredient that has the power to change the weather.’
There was an audible ‘Wow!’ among Kenneth’s classmates. The headmaster twitched again. Emily’s hand shot up. Mr Dewitt trusted Emily to ask a good question, so he nodded approvingly.
‘Wowee! So you can create sunshine!’ she beamed. ‘You can make it so we don’t have dreary grey days?’
There was a pause as Kenneth’s feet shifted awkwardly and he looked away. ‘My experiments are in the early stages,’ he mumbled through his nose. ‘At the moment, I can create the opposite. As you know, my father owns a chicken farm and I’ve harnessed the power of chicken waste to create clouds.’ He extended a bony finger, pointing at the left-hand side of the board. ‘This is how it works.’
His audience
looked on, goggle-eyed at the jigsaw of chalked numbers and letters. ‘Small scale at the moment,’ he admitted with a shrug. ‘You might have noticed, I’ve managed to create a cloud at home?’
Forty pairs of eyes grew wider still as they tried to picture the eerie farm on the hill above the town. It sure was dark and thundery up there. Come to think of it, the farm was almost always hidden behind a cloud these days. Emily’s hand shot up once more. She got the nod. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘What’s the point of dark, grey clouds when you could have nice blue sky?’
Kenneth Soop’s mouth opened but no words came out. He was devastated. Emily – wonderful Emily, the light of his life, the girl he admired from afar – didn’t get it. What’s more, she was putting the boot into his invention. Emily didn’t like it … His droopy shoulders slumped and his long nose pointed to the floor as he heard the other children mumbling in agreement. Kenneth was only ten years old but he already knew he was different. He loved darkness and clouds. He’d recently experimented with adding more of his secret formula and his hilltop farm had enjoyed thunder and lightning for a whole week. He’d sat in his bedroom gazing through the storm at the sunny town below and had never felt happier. He just didn’t understand why everyone else seemed to like gloriously hot, sunny days. For Kenneth, grey was the new blue.
‘A jolly good effort,’ congratulated Mr Dewitt, not sounding particularly jolly. ‘A secret ingredient that changes the weather is, indeed, of considerable scientific importance. Maybe just needs a little refinement before it’s ready to go,’ he barked, with a twitch.
Young Kenneth tried not to sag on the outside but part of him was shrivelling on the inside. His classmates didn’t get it. Mr Dewitt didn’t get it. He blinked back hot tears and the urge to run and hide. One day, he vowed, everyone would realize just how valuable a dark cloud could be.
‘Next up,’ prompted the head teacher, nodding to the ten-year-old in a white lab coat, ‘young Maximus Cortex.’
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Books by Andrew Cope
Spy Dog series in reading order
SPY DOG
CAPTURED!
UNLEASHED!
SUPERBRAIN
ROCKET RIDER
SECRET SANTA
TEACHER’S PET
ROLLERCOASTER!
BRAINWASHED
MUMMY MADNESS
STORM CHASER
Spy Pups series in reading order
TREASURE QUEST
PRISON BREAK
CIRCUS ACT
DANGER ISLAND
SURVIVAL CAMP
Spy Cat series in reading order
SUMMER SHOCKER!
BLACKOUT!
SAFARI
SPY DOG JOKE BOOK
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First published 2015
Text copyright © Andrew Cope, 2015
Illustrations copyright © James de la Rue, 2015
Written by Andrew Cope and Will Hussey
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-35719-5
