Wanted! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘TINA!’

  ‘Keep your knickers on!’ laughed Tina. ‘I’m only winding you up.’

  ‘I don’t wear knickers,’ I snapped back.

  ‘I don’t wish to know that. Now then, back to business. We hypnotize Streaker.’

  ‘How?’

  Tina frowned and stared at the floor. She stared at the wall and the ceiling. I studied them too, just in case the answer suddenly appeared in letters of flame, which, of course, it didn’t.

  ‘We need a bone,’ Tina announced.

  ‘Right,’ I nodded. ‘Shall I saw your leg off?’

  ‘Ha-de-ha. I mean a bone-y bone, the sort a dog might like to eat. We dangle it in front of Streaker, we wave it slowly from side to side, she drifts into a trance and bingo! She’s hypnotized.’

  ‘That might work,’ I said slowly.

  ‘You could sound a bit more enthusiastic.’

  ‘No I couldn’t. I think it’s daft, but it’s the only idea we have, so we might as well give it a whirl. I’ll go on a bone hunt and then I’ll bring Streaker over.’

  You can never find a bone when you want one, can you? I could swear that usually when I go out I see bones everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere, but you know what I mean. You do see the odd one lying about.

  I’ve never thought about this before, but it’s strange, don’t you think? Where do they come from? Bones don’t just get lost. They don’t fall out of your body unnoticed, do they? That would be a bit worrying. You could be walking along when all the little bones in your fingers fall on to the pavement, and that would be really awful because you wouldn’t even be able to pick your finger bones up, because your fingers would be too floppy to pick anything, not even your nose. Tragedy! I’m telling you, the world’s a dangerous place.

  Streaker was at home, keeping pace with Mum on her running machine. My Mum’s a keep-fit fanatic and she’s taking part in a race soon called the Mothers’ Mini Marathon.

  She’s been doing loads of practice. Sometimes Streaker goes on the machine with her. It’s one way of keeping her exercised.

  ‘I’ve done five miles,’ Mum puffed as she jogged nowhere.

  ‘You haven’t got very far,’ I said. ‘You’re still in the front room.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Pant pant. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Tina and I have a cunning plan.’

  ‘Be careful, Trevor.’ Pant pant pant. ‘You’ll be married before you know it.’

  ‘That is not funny, Mum.’

  ‘I know. Marriage never is.’ Pant pant. ‘So what’s the cunning plan?’

  ‘Tina and I are going to train Streaker.’

  SKRANNGGG-SKRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFFUDDD!

  Have you ever seen someone trip on a running machine, fall flat on their face, get their trainer laces caught in the rollers and then almost get gobbled by the machine? That’s what happened to Mum, and the odd thing was she was laughing.

  ‘Train Streaker? Train her? Again? Will you never learn?’

  Huh! I put Streaker on her lead and marched off. Mum could rescue herself for all I cared. There I was, taking responsibility for the dog, just like she and Dad had told me to, and now she was laughing at me.

  I went outside and hunted for a bone. I found one eventually, quite a big one too. Maybe it came from a dinosaur. Maybe that’s why they became extinct – their bones kept falling out. A tyrannosaurus wouldn’t be much use with floppy legs, would it?

  ‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Tina when Streaker and I got to her place. ‘Look, even Mouse is interested.’

  An enormous roll of shaggy carpet with a tongue at one end had just wandered into the room. He stood at my feet, gazing up at the bone, his huge tongue dribbling on to my trainers. Lovely.

  I managed to get Streaker sitting on the carpet, Mouse too – a giant and a goblin – that’s what they looked like. Tina found some string and tied it to the bone but as soon as she dangled it in front of the dogs they leaped on it, and Tina. She vanished beneath a doggy volcano.

  A muffled cry escaped from somewhere underneath all the fur and legs.

  ‘Get off! Trevor –help!’

  I waded in, trying to pull the dogs off. Mouse stood on one of my feet. Streaker tried to climb over my head. I lost my balance and the next thing I knew all four of us were rolling about. By the time I managed to crawl clear I was covered in dog hair and scratches. Tina lay on the floor, completely still.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. She gave a weak shake of her head.

  ‘Need help,’ she groaned. ‘Think I need the Kiss of Life.’

  ‘No way,’ I told her, leaping to my feet.

  ‘Kiss of Death, just possibly.’

  That made her sit up. ‘You are so unromantic,’ she complained. ‘OK, just hold on to the dogs this time, will you? Ready?’

  The three of us sat in front of Tina in a neat row – Mouse, then me, then Streaker. It took several goes to get Streaker sitting the right way round, but at last all was set. Tina set the bone swinging.

  ‘Look into my eyes,’ she began. ‘Look into my eyes.’

  ‘Look into my nose,’ I mimicked.

  She ignored me and carried on. I realized that both dogs’ heads were swinging back and forth in time with the bone. It was working!

  Tina sniggered. ‘You’re doing it too, Trevor.’ I let go of the dogs and tried to hold my head still. Meanwhile the bone came to a stop and the dogs seemed to be in a trance.

  ‘Now what?’ I whispered. Tina bit her lower lip and giggled nervously. ‘You don’t know, do you? You’ve hypnotized the dogs but how are you going to get Streaker to stop stealing food? You can’t tell her. She doesn’t even understand her name, so how do you expect her to understand you saying she mustn’t steal a four-cheese pizza with salami, tomato and mushroom topping with extra garlic?’

  ‘Shut up, I’m thinking,’ murmured Tina.

  She frowned at Streaker. ‘Bad,’ she growled, pointing at the bone. ‘Baaad.’

  ‘Oh great, that’s bound to work.’

  ‘Can you do any better?’ Streaker’s nose was leaning further and further forward. ‘BAAAAAAD,’ Tina growled, and at that same second Streaker’s head shot forward and seized the bone. Mouse did the same and the next second a bone war exploded across the room, round the room, up the walls, over the sofa, behind the sofa and through the table, which Mouse ended up wearing like some strange kind of shed, until it fell off with a loud crash.

  That was when Tina’s father appeared and banished us all outside with a few well-chosen words. (‘Go! Out! Now!’)

  ‘So now we know that hypnotism doesn’t work,’ I sighed, and we set off back to my house.

  ‘But my hypnotism did work,’ Tina corrected. ‘I just didn’t know what to do once they were under my spell. I failed on a technicality.’

  ‘What next?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she beamed. ‘Hypnotism was my idea. Now it’s your turn, so what are you going to do, Mr Brainbox?’

  With a squeak of brakes a small white van pulled up next to us. On the side, in big red letters, were the words DOG WARDEN. The driver’s door opened and out climbed a small, scrawny woman with short, spiky hair. She yanked a baseball cap on to her skull.

  She wore a black T-shirt, and across the front it said: ‘THE TERMINATOR.’ Across the back it had: ‘Mission Statement: SIT UP AND BEG – OR ELSE!’ Her dirty black jeans were ripped in several places and big bunches of keys jangled on her belt.

  The woman skewered us with a steely glare and made her way round the van. Tina slipped her hand into mine. I would have let go, but this dog warden woman was seriously scary and I reckoned Tina needed protection.

  3 Fishy Business

  ‘Them’s dogs,’ snapped the Warden.

  ‘Ten out of ten,’ Tina whispered, edging behind me.

  ‘They your dogs?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You keep ’em on leads,’ the Warden added sharply, ‘or I’ll have ’em. I�
�ll have ’em faster than you can say “dog’s dinner”.’

  ‘Dog’s dinner,’ said Tina. She just can’t keep her big mouth shut. She puts her foot in it every time.

  The Warden didn’t like that at all. Her eyes became thin slits and she stared at Tina very hard, and then at me and then at Streaker and Mouse. Some kind of activity was taking place in her brain. You could almost hear her two brain cells calling to each other. A smile slid on to her face. It wasn’t a pretty smile, more of a nasty grin. Both the dogs crept behind us and hid. So did Tina. Then me.

  ‘Let me take a wild guess,’ snarled the Dog Warden. ‘What we have ’ere is Trevor an’ Tina an’ Streaker. Am I right? I am right, aren’t I? Oh ho ho, you should see your faces. That’s given you a shock, hasn’t it? Oh yes, I know all about you. Been warned, I have. Been told to keep an eye on you lot, oh yes. One step out of line from any of you an’ you’ll be in the back of my van before you can say …’

  ‘Dog’s dinner?’ Tina repeated.

  See what I mean? Even now, when she was standing in front of Death Incorporated, she couldn’t resist it. Who needs enemies when you’ve got Tina on your side?

  ‘No, little Miss Smarty-Pants, before you can say “Mrs Bittenbott”, which is my name, see, an’ a name you should remember cos it means Trouble, see? An’ I’ll have him too,’ she added, pointing at Mouse. ‘Where did you get him from, anyways? Elephant house at the zoo?’ The Warden burst out laughing and she headed back to the van. As she got in she called across to us. ‘Elephant house! Ha!’ She drove off, still laughing.

  I was stunned. I stood there, staring after the van. So did Tina. ‘She knows our names,’ I croaked.

  ‘She knows about Streaker,’ Tina muttered.

  ‘Sergeant Smugg,’ I said.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Boffington-Orr,’

  Tina chimed in.

  It was a while since I’d had any trouble with Sergeant Smugg and his boss, but it seemed as if they were up to their old tricks. If they’d been allowed to imprison dogs in the Tower of London and execute them, that’s what Smugg and B-O would have done by now. A dog warden was the next best thing as far as they were concerned.

  ‘Problems,’ I grunted.

  ‘Big problems,’ said Tina.

  ‘And you said “dog’s dinner” to her,’ I pointed out. ‘That was a lot of help. You could set up a shoe shop inside your mouth, what with the number of times you’ve put your foot in it.’

  Tina tipped her head to one side and eyed me with a little smile. ‘That’s what I like about you – your sense of romance. Not to mention your freckles and the way you blush when I talk about you. You’ve gone very red, Trevor.’

  ‘Sunburn,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s walk down by the lake. Hardly anybody goes there so at least Streaker will stay out of trouble – and you won’t have the opportunity to put both feet in your mouth again. I thought Streaker was enough of a liability but you’re just as bad.’

  I call it a lake but it isn’t really. It’s more of a pond, overgrown with reeds and grass round the edges. Sometimes you see small kids down there trying to catch tiddlers, and sometimes there are grown-ups trying to catch whoppers. I don’t see much point in fishing. All you do is stand there all day and nothing really happens and then you go home. You’d be better off buying a goldfish and putting it in a tank. Then you could stay indoors and watch it all day, sitting down.

  There were a couple of anglers down there, rod in hand and hunched over the water. A rod twitched violently and one of the fishermen leaped to his feet and stared at a foaming patch of water. There was something rather familiar about him.

  ‘It’s that big ’un, Smugg!’ he yelled triumphantly. ‘It’s the big ’un!’ The fisherman was Chief Superintendent Boffington-Orr himself. I could hardly believe it. We’d only just been talking about them and there they were just metres away from us, our two deadliest enemies. I grabbed Tina and tried to pull her back, but she just stood there, gawping.

  ‘I didn’t know they went fishing,’ she said.

  ‘Poor fish.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I hissed. I could feel the terrible twins of Doom and Disaster approaching fast.

  Sergeant Smugg was on his feet too, staring open-mouthed as his boss heaved on the line and began to reel in a large, quivering fish. Don’t ask me what it was – a haddock probably – that’s the only fish I know and I’ve only ever seen one of those covered in batter and surrounded by chips.

  The two policemen seemed pretty excited, but that was nothing compared to Streaker. You’d think she’d just been fired from a giant catapult. She almost took my arm off and I had to let go of the lead. Talk about a bolt of lightning! You couldn’t even see her feet touch the ground she was moving so fast.

  Boffington-Orr was swinging the fish on to the bank. I could see it all happening even before it actually did. I was living that moment in the middle, you know what I mean? It was one of those times when you know exactly what the future holds, like when you kick a football hard, your foot misfires and the ball heads straight for a window. You know there’s going to be a big smash, but there’s that moment when the ball’s left your foot but hasn’t hit the window yet and you know it’s going to and there’s nothing you can do.

  The fish was dangling over the bank, a glittering and wriggling prize. The two policemen were shouting and clapping each other on the back and grinning from ear to ear. They hadn’t seen us yet, or Streaker.

  Then she arrived. Streaker leaped like a shark surging out from the dark depths. Way into the air she went. Her jaws snapped shut, but the monster fish gave a flick and Streaker missed by a whisker and then phwooosh! She was gone in a black flash. The rod whipped about as the fish twitched like crazy. A moment later it slapped B-O hard across the face with its tail, twice, splip-splap. He staggered back into Sergeant Smugg. For a moment they teetered on the edge of the bank, wildly grabbing at each other as they fought to keep their balance. Then they fell.

  SPLAAAASH! SPLOOOOSH!

  I grabbed Tina by one arm and whirled her round. ‘Don’t look back,’ I hissed. Just walk away quickly. Pretend nothing has happened. Maybe they didn’t see us. Maybe they didn’t recognize Streaker.’ We beat a hasty retreat and the sound of splashing and loud cries slowly drifted out of our hearing. Presumably the fish escaped.

  ‘They must have seen us,’ I moaned. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Tina answered.

  ‘Don’t panic?’ I cried, panicking like crazy.

  ‘Keep cool,’ Tina advised. ‘We need to think and you can’t think properly when your brain is turning cartwheels.’ She rested her hand on my arm for a moment and looked at me. ‘Take a deep breath. Count to eleven.’

  ‘Eleven?’

  ‘It’s one better than ten,’ she smiled, and that made me laugh. I relaxed a teeny bit. ‘Good. That’s better. I’ll take Mouse to my house. Streaker’s probably gone home, so don’t worry. We’ll think of something. We always have. We’re a good team, you and me – the best.’

  I desperately hoped she was right, and headed for home. I found Streaker with Mum and Dad and an odd-looking man. There was no sign of the fish.

  The visitor wore heavy, black-rimmed Clark Kent spectacles, although that was where the resemblance to Superman ended. His hair stood on end. It reminded me of when Dad sowed a new patch of grass in the spring. You know what grass looks like when it grows from seed and first comes up? It’s dead straight and spiky. That’s what this man’s hair looked like, except it wasn’t green. It was blond, which looked rather strange on a man of at least fifty. He saw me staring.

  ‘Picked up the wrong, wrong, wrong packet of hair dye,’ he explained, pulling a daft face, as if to say ‘Aren’t I a silly-billy?’ (Short answer: ‘Yes, you are.’) ‘Was going to make it black, but it came out like this. Stupid, stupid me.’

  I looked to my parents for some kind of help but Mum only raised her eyebrows while Dad shrugged. �
�This is Mr Whiffle,’ he said. ‘He’s a Dog-Behaviour Specialist. He’s going to train Streaker. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before.’

  4 Shocking Events

  Mr Whiffle unpacked his equipment, setting up a low metal platform on folding legs. Tall rods at the corners arched over to the opposite corners, making the whole thing look like a miniature cage. All rather sinister, I thought.

  He uncoiled several coloured wires, attaching them to the rods with crocodile clips. Then he produced a car battery and connected the other ends of the wires to that.

  Even Mum and Dad were looking nervous by this time.

  So was Streaker. She was trembling.

  ‘You’re not going to electrocute her?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no, no, no,’ declared Mr Whiffle. ‘This is perfectly, perfectly harmless. There’s just a tiny, tiny, tiny electrical charge. It’s quite, quite safe – see?’ Mr Whiffle stuck a crocodile clip on his finger and beamed at us.

  I leaned forward. ‘What happens if it’s switched on?’ I asked, turning the dial beside the battery.

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT!!!

  What an interesting experiment! Mr Whiffle almost hit the ceiling. He came crashing down on the platform, crushing it beneath his weight. Sparks went flying in every direction and the Dog-Behaviour Specialist began a very exciting dance. I couldn’t see the exact steps because his legs were moving so fast, and he was making peculiar noises too, like a DJ sampling.

  ‘SW-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-sw-switch it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it OFF!’ he yelled.

  Dad flicked the dial. Mr Whiffle collapsed in a chair and at that moment there was a loud hammering on the front door. My heart sank. I was pretty sure who that was going to be, and I was right.

  Mum opened the door to a pair of drowned policeman in fishing gear. B-O and Sergeant Smugg launched into a volley of accusations, dripping and shouting on the doorstep, while Dad stood behind Mum, shaking his head.