Max Champion and the Great Race Car Robbery

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Grandfather Gus put another log in the stove and patted the seat beside him. “In that case, come and sit down here beside me, and I’ll get out my photograph album and show you pictures of some of the things Arabella and I got up to in those days.”

  Seated next to his grandfather, Max looked at the dusty album with its collection of old photographs. On the first page there was a large picture of what Max now recognised as a Champion. It was a large green car with the number five painted on its side, and Grandfather Gus, looking much younger, was standing proudly beside it.

  “There we are just before setting off for India,” said Grandfather Gus. “Did I ever tell you we went on a great car rally all the way to India?’

  Max was astonished. “That must have taken ages,” he said.

  “Yes it did,” said Grandfather Gus. “There were fifty cars involved, you know, and we were all trying to get to India as quickly as possible. But it took two months, as I recall. And we were driving every day – mile after mile every day. I had somebody to read the maps for me, of course.”

  He turned the page to show Max the next photograph. “Here we are in France,” he said. “Just before we went over the Alps. We were in first place at that stage – way ahead of everyone else.”

  He turned another page. Now he was in Turkey, parked outside a cafe in Istanbul, holding a large glass of fizzy drink and smiling at the camera.

  “That drink was sherbet,” said Grandfather Gus. “It was sweet and delicious, and it tickled the inside of your nose as you drank it.”

  In the next photograph they were on a narrow mountain road. It made Max’s stomach turn just to look at the drop at the edge of the road – it went down and down, until it reached a river at the bottom of a gorge. The river was so far down below that it was no more than a thin silver ribbon, but Max knew that if the car fell off the side of the road it would not take long for it to plummet all the way to the bottom.

  “That was pretty dangerous,” said Grandfather Gus, pointing to the drop. “One little mistake and, oh dear, we wouldn’t have stood much of a chance.”

  Max did not like to think of it. “Well, you made it,” he said. “And that’s what counts.”

  “We were still in first place at that point,” said Grandfather Gus. “But that was to change once we reached India.” He looked dejected. “I still feel sad about what happened.”

  Max waited for him to explain.

  “Here we are,” he said, turning the page to reveal the next photograph. “Broken down.”

  It was a sad picture. A cloud of steam was coming from Arabella’s engine, while Grandfather Gus and his map reader stood by helplessly.

  “It just suddenly exploded,” said Grandfather Gus. “We were in the middle of India then, and only a few hundred miles from the finishing line.”

  “You must have been so disappointed,” said Max. “Just when everything was going so well, that happened.”

  Grandfather Gus shook his head sadly. “Yes,” he said. “And do you know something, Max? I think it was sabotage.”

  Max frowned. He had heard the word before, but was not quite sure what it meant. But seeing his expression, Grandfather Gus went on to say, “I think that one of the other competitors put something in our fuel. There were signs that the fuel inlet had been tampered with, and that would explain why the engine exploded.”

  Max was outraged. “Did you know who it was?” he asked. “Did you report them?”

  Grandfather Gus sighed. “I had a good idea who it was,” he said. “But I didn’t have any proof.”

  Max waited for him to say who it was, and when the answer came he was not altogether surprised.

  “There’s a man called Adolphus Grabber,” said Grandfather Gus. “He was one of the other entrants. He was racing one of his own cars – a car called the Grabber Guzzler, because it used so much fuel. It was really a pretty horrible car, actually, but he was very proud of it and he wanted to win at all costs. I think he was the person who sabotaged my beautiful Arabella.”

  “So what happened next?” asked Max.

  “Well,” said Grandfather Gus, “there was not much I could do. We were in the middle of nowhere with a car that was not going anywhere. The nearest garage was miles away and poor old Arabella simply wouldn’t budge. And not only that – we had very little water with us, and next to no food.”

  He smiled at Max.

  “But just when things were looking very grim, something turned up – as it often does.”

  “A towing truck?” asked Max.

  Grandfather Gus laughed. “No, not that, but something every bit as useful. Do you think you can guess?”

  Max tried, but could not think of anything.

  “An elephant,” said Grandfather Gus at last. “It was one of those working elephants that they have in India – you know, the ones who help carry great trees in the forest, once they’ve cut them down.”

  “He came along all by himself?” asked Max.

  “No,” said Grandfather Gus. “He had his keeper with him. They call those people mahouts. And this one was riding along on top of the elephant, when he came round the corner and saw us by the side of the road.

  “He was a very kind man,” continued Grandfather Gus. “When he saw that Arabella was broken down, he offered to tow us with his elephant. He had a thick rope with him and it did not take him long to tie one end to Arabella and the other to his elephant. Then the elephant started to walk, while I sat at the wheel of the car to steer. It was no effort for such a strong creature – he hardly felt the load at all.”

  “You were very lucky,” said Max.

  “I know that,” said Grandfather Gus. “And it was a great deal of fun as well. He towed us for two days, all the way to the finishing line in Delhi. And although we came last in the rally, there was still a great crowd waiting to cheer us over the line. When they saw us arriving under elephant power, they cheered and cheered. They brought garlands of flowers for all of us – and for the elephant too – and they let off fireworks to mark our arrival. It was spectacular.”

  Max could imagine the scene, but there was something he wanted to know. “Who won in the end?” he asked. “It wasn’t …”

  He did not finish his question. “I’m afraid it was,” answered Grandfather Gus. “Adolphus Grabber won, in his Grabber Guzzler.”

  Max looked down at the floor. He felt miserable, even just hearing about this – how much worse must poor Grandfather Gus have felt?

  “But, don’t worry,” said his grandfather. “It doesn’t matter too much who wins a race – what really matters is that you enjoy it, and that you play fair. If everybody plays fair, then everybody has a good time.”

  Max looked at the picture of the car. “What happened to Arabella?” he asked. “Did she stay in India?”

  “Yes,” said Grandfather Gus. “I couldn’t fix her there, and so I had to leave her. It broke my heart, but there was not much else I could do. I have no idea what happened to her, but I suspect that she was broken up for spare parts.”

  Max snuggled up to his grandfather. He was the wisest, nicest grandfather anybody could possibly wish for, Max thought, and yet he had been so unfairly treated by Mr Grabber. Sometimes the world seemed so unfair: good people were tricked or bullied by bad people, and the bad people seemed to get away with it. If only he could do something about it, he said to himself. But then he thought: What can I possibly do? And the answer, it seemed to him, was: Not much.

  The following week was an important week for the town in which Max lived. Although not very much happened there normally, there was one day in the year when the whole place came alive. This was the day of the town sports, when everybody joined in races and tug-of-war competitions and high jump – and everything else that you find on a typical sports day. At the end of the day, prizes were awarded to the winners, and this was followed by a dance in the town hall. It was a day that everybody looked forward to, even if they could not run very fast, nor pull
all that hard in the tug-of-war, nor even jump very high in the high jump.

  Max liked running. He was in a running team at school, and he had spent some time training for the town sports, in which he would be entering the boys’ mile event and the long jump. He was also a member of a team that was hoping to do well in the relay race.

  Grandfather Gus always attended the town sports. For most of the time he just watched, but there was one event he always entered – the grandfathers’ weightlifting competition – and the previous year he had come third and won a large bronze medal. He was very proud of this medal and he hoped that this year he might win something again.

  “You never know,” he said to Max.

  When the time came to line up for the relay race, Max and his three teammates made their way to their various positions around the track. The way a relay race works is that the first member of the team sets off and, after running all the way around the track, hands a baton over to the second runner. That person then completes his or her circuit before handing over the baton, and so on, until it is the last member of the team who crosses the finishing line. Max, who was the fastest member of the four of them, would be that last runner.

  Max was excited. There were five teams competing in the race, but he thought his team had a good chance of winning. As he stood in place, watching the first of the runners set off, he noticed something that made him catch his breath. One of the runners, a boy of about Max’s age who was standing next to him, had his name emblazoned on the front of his shirt: Pablo Grabber.

  Max wondered whether he had misread the name, but another glance showed him he had not. And at that precise moment, Pablo Grabber looked back in his direction and gave him a sickly smile.

  “Have you done this before?” Pablo asked him.

  Max pulled himself together. At least Pablo was speaking to him politely, and deserved an answer. “Yes,” he said. “I ran in the relay race last year.”

  Pablo nodded. “I’ve won the last ten races I’ve entered,” he said, casually. “Every one of them.”

  Max was surprised that anybody could be so boastful, but he tried not to show what he felt. “Well done,” he said.

  “Ten races. And this one will be the eleventh.”

  Max looked at him in astonishment. How could he possibly know that he was going to win this race?

  Pablo smiled again. “Sorry about that,” he said. “But perhaps you’ll come second – if you’re lucky.”

  “We’ll see about that,” muttered Max, keeping his voice down. Pablo did not hear this, and continued to stretch and run up and down on the spot as he waited for the baton to do its rounds.

  At last the third runners were approaching the line where the fourth and final runners were poised, ready to go. Max found himself crouched next to Pablo, but he tried to avoid looking at the annoying and boastful boy. His eyes were fixed firmly on the track ahead, and when his teammate came up behind him, the baton held out to be passed on, Max was off in a great burst of speed.

  He did not see Pablo – nobody saw him, because cheats are often very careful to make sure that nobody sees them cheating. So nobody saw Pablo put his leg out just as Max began to run, and nobody saw how Pablo’s leg brought Max down on the track, a hard, grazing, painful fall right at the very beginning of the lap.

  As he fell, Max saw Pablo shoot past him. And as Max picked himself up, gingerly testing to see that no bones were broken, he saw Pablo speeding down the track, at the head of the other contestants. It was too late for Max to rejoin the race, as the others were now so far ahead. Even if he had been wearing jet-propelled shoes, he would not have been able to catch them up.

  Pablo won, crossing the finishing line well ahead of the others. As he did so, he raised his arms in triumph, and then gave himself a good round of applause. Soon he was joined by a large man wearing a white suit. This man seemed very pleased with Pablo’s performance, patting him on the back and congratulating him in a loud voice. From where he was standing – close to the place where he had been tripped up – Max was able to hear what was being said.

  “Well done, son,” shouted the man in the white suit. “That showed them!”

  So that’s Mr Grabber, thought Max. He took a good look at his face; it was a mean face, the face of a person who would stop at nothing to get his way. It was a greedy face too – the face of one who wanted everything he could possibly have, leaving little for anyone else.

  Max was still staring at Mr Grabber when his grandfather came to his side. He had just come second in his weightlifting competition – not a bad result for a man as old as he was.

  “That’s him,” he said, following the direction of Max’s gaze. “That’s Grabber for you – and his son, that little rat, Pablo Grabber.” His grandfather paused, and then put an arm around Max’s shoulder. “I saw what happened,” he said, lowering his voice. “They thought nobody saw, but I did.”

  “They’re cheats,” said Max. “They’re just a couple of cheats.”

  “Yes,” said Grandfather Gus. “They are. But they seem to get away with it, don’t they?”

  “One of these days they won’t,” muttered Max.

  “I hope you’re right,” said Grandfather Gus.

  They did not stay for the prize-giving – it would just have been too painful. Pablo Grabber won six races altogether – and he cheated in every one of them. Collecting his trophies, he smiled for the newspaper cameras.

  “How do you feel – winning all these trophies?” asked one reporter.

  “Pleased,” said Pablo. “Mind you, I was expecting to win them.”

  Max tried not to think too much about the Grabbers after that. Just remembering being tripped up in the relay race was enough to make the back of his neck feel warm, and so he decided that the best thing to do was to forget about it. He had learned that lesson from Grandfather Gus, in fact, who had told him that the way to deal with disappointments was to stop dwelling on them. “The more you think about things you don’t like,” he said, “the more they can get you down. Stop thinking about them, and they go away.”

  Max had asked him whether he was sure about this, and Grandfather Gus had replied that he was very sure. “Try whistling,” he said. “Or try making lists of things you like. That’s the way to do it.”

  It seemed to work, and Max found that he had not given the Grabbers so much as a passing thought, when his mother suddenly announced that she had a big sandwich-making job coming up – and it was at Grabber Mansion.

  Grandfather Gus frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “You shouldn’t be making sandwiches for people like that.”

  Molly laughed. “They won’t be eating them themselves. They’ll be for their guests. They’re having a big party up there.”

  “I bet their guests will be every bit as nasty as they are,” said Grandfather Gus. “Nasty people often have nasty friends. Everybody knows that.”

  “I can’t afford to turn the job down,” said Max’s mother. “There’s not all that much work about these days.” She sighed. “Mind you, I don’t know how I’m going to manage. They want two thousand sandwiches for all those guests they’re having. Two thousand! How can I be expected to make that many sandwiches, single-handed?”

  “Get somebody to help you,” said Grandfather Gus. “What about your sister?”

  That was Max’s Aunt Elsie – an expert sandwich-maker, known for her fine cheese-and-tomato sandwiches.

  “She’s already working that day,” said Max’s mother.

  “Or your friend from down the road,” suggested Grandfather Gus.

  “She’s gone off to see her sister,” said Molly. “She’s going to be away for weeks.”

  Max had an idea. “What about me?” he volunteered.

  Grandfather Gus turned to look at him, with surprise. “You?” he said. “But you already have a job, Max. You cut lawns. You wouldn’t have time to make all those sandwiches.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” sai
d his mother. “It’s very kind of you to offer, but you have quite enough to do.”

  Max was determined, and would not take no for an answer. “I have plenty of spare time,” he said. “And I really want to help.”

  “Bless you,” said his mother. “But I don’t want you to work every hour of the day.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Max. “And I really do insist, Mum. You must let me.”

  Max’s mother looked at Grandfather Gus. He hesitated, but then nodded. Turning to her son, she said, “You’re the kindest, nicest boy. You really are. And if you insist – which I think you do – then I’ll accept.”

  Max was pleased. “Where will we be making them?” he asked.

  “In Grabber Mansion,” replied Molly.

  “That great big place you pointed out the other day? The one with fountains and statues? That place with all those trees around it?”

  “The very place,” said Molly. “Exactly the sort of place you’d expect people like that to be living in.”

  “You be careful,” warned Grandfather Gus. “I don’t like the thought of my family going there. I don’t trust any of those Grabbers.”

  “We’ll be careful,” said Max’s mother. “You agree, Max?’

  Max nodded. “Very careful,” he said.

  Although the house belonged to the Grabber family, Max felt excited at the thought of going there. He had never been in a house that large, and he wondered how you would find your way around such a vast building. He also wondered whether he would see Pablo Grabber, and whether Pablo would remember him as the boy he had tripped up at the sports day. He might not, of course, because people like Pablo Grabber were always pushing and shoving anybody who got in their way, and could not be expected to remember every time they did it.

  Molly had been told to report to Grabber Mansion early on the morning of the party, which would take place at three o’clock in the afternoon. All the supplies for the two thousand sandwiches had been laid out, ready to be loaded into her van, and Max helped to carry these out of the kitchen. There were two hundred loaves of bread, fifty cartons of butter, one thousand tomatoes, four hundred hard-boiled eggs and forty-five jars of strawberry jam. There were other things too, for what Molly called her “speciality sandwiches” – twelve jars of anchovy paste, twenty tins of tuna and over fifty metres of cucumber. It all amounted to a vast pile of food that would soon be transformed by Molly’s hard work and skill – and Max’s too – into two thousand delicious sandwiches.