They did the only thing they could think of. They headed for the window ledge. They climbed out on the sill, two storeys above the yard and, balancing precariously, pulled the window shut just as the creature raced towards them. They were safe.
The badger stared out of the window at the two men.
They were safe, but they were trapped.
Chris sprinted from the badger room and into the hall. He was moving fast as the last thing he needed was to attract the creature’s attention. He leaped on to the crate that was blocking the hall and Sam and Brian grabbed his arms and hauled him over to the other side where Amelia was waiting. He needn’t have worried about being pursued. The badger’s eyes never left Lionel and Burt, not even for a second.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Misfits ran downstairs and out into the farmyard. Brian made sure they pulled the front door shut behind them. He checked it three times. The badger was safely locked in.
‘Hey, kids, yeah, you. You can’t just leave us up here,’ Lionel shouted.
The criminal brothers were on the windowsill, gripping the edges of the pebble-dashed wall to stop themselves from falling to the yard below. Neither of them were looking in the window. They didn’t want to remind themselves of what was in there. They could hear the badger clawing at the window of the blue room and it made their blood run cold.
Lionel reached out to see if he could grab the rusty drainpipe that ran down the side of the house. It was just a little too far. He tried again, but when he almost lost his balance he gave up.
‘What are we going to do?’ Brian asked. He was shaking. He still hadn’t calmed down. Neither had Sam. He was more hyper than any of them had ever seen him.
‘We’ve got two criminals on a window ledge, a honey badger in a farmhouse and if our parents catch us we’ll be grounded for a hundred years. Man, I feel alive,’ he said.
‘Well, my hands are clammy, my pulse is twice the normal healthy rate and I feel like I’m going to be sick,’ Amelia said.
‘Exactly. Aren’t adventures great?’
‘We have to make sure that Claws O’Toole is OK,’ Chris said.
‘Who’s Claws . . . Oh, right, got it,’ Sam said. ‘Yes, we will, but first we’re going to do something that you’ve always wanted us to do, Chris: ring Debra.’
‘I thought you did that already,’ Chris said. ‘I told you to. I was quite specific about it.’
‘How was I supposed to ring her when I was doing everything I could to stop those two bubbleheads from getting through the front door?’
‘Well, I couldn’t phone – I had to come up with a plan to save Claws.’
‘So nobody called her?’ Amelia said. ‘Maybe instead of bickering we could ring her now.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Sam said.
Lionel’s voice floated over to them. ‘Hey, come on, kids. We weren’t ever going to hurt you. Have a heart. There must be a ladder around here or something.’
Burt wasn’t saying anything. He was just whimpering to himself.
Sam dialled Debra O’Loughlin’s number.
‘She won’t believe you,’ Brian said. ‘First a ghost, now a badger. I know he’s vicious and all, but if someone told me they were being attacked by a badger I wouldn’t believe them.’
‘That’s why I’m not going to tell her the truth,’ Sam said.
Lionel was still shouting in the background, so Sam went into the empty milking parlour to make the call. He checked around to make sure no one was listening. When Debra answered the phone, he put on a deeper voice, pretending that he was a grown man. He knew Amelia was right, that Debra wouldn’t believe him, but she might believe him if she thought he was someone else. It was another perfect Trick Whittington moment.
‘Hello, I’d like to report an incident at a farmhouse,’ he said.
‘What’s the address?’ Debra O’Loughlin replied.
Sam read out the address from the printout Chris had given him.
‘There’s been a robbery – a burglary. And somebody’s injured. Attacked by a dog. Three dogs. So, we’ll need a wildlife expert too.’
‘I see. It sounds serious.’
‘It is. Very serious.’
‘What’s really going on, Sam?’ Debra asked.
Sam reverted to his own voice. ‘How did you know it was me?’
‘First of all, that fake voice of yours is ridiculous – far from convincing. And, secondly, you’re ringing me from your own phone. The name Sam came up on my caller ID.’
Sam was a little deflated. That hadn’t been his smartest move.
‘I’m on the way to a case, so tell me what’s happening,’ Debra said.
This time he told her and she believed him. Well, she believed him when she’d spoken to all the others and received the photos they’d messaged her of Lionel and Burt stranded on the windowsill.
‘I’m thirty minutes away, I’ll be there in twenty,’ she said.
While they waited for Debra to arrive, Amelia rang Hannah. She was thrilled to hear from them, shocked to hear about the badger and the stolen items in the crate at the bottom of the stairs, and delighted that everything was working out well. But she was bitterly disappointed that she hadn’t been part of it.
‘Stupid grounding,’ she said, over and over again. ‘I wait years for a mystery and then I miss the end of it. How’s that for bad luck?’
Amelia did her best to reassure her that they would have failed if it hadn’t been for her, and when the others chimed in with their thanks she felt better.
Lionel yelped as the badger leaped in the air and clawed at the window again, scratching grooves into the glass. ‘Come on, man, you’ve got to help us. I don’t know how long that window’s going to hold.’
Amelia said her goodbyes to Hannah when they heard a car rumbling down the road.
‘Debra’s here,’ Brian said. ‘She must really have believed you this time.’
The car that arrived in the yard wasn’t a patrol car, though. It wasn’t a car any of them had seen before. It was a nondescript black hatchback, driven by someone who looked vaguely familiar to Brian, even though the driver’s face was obscured by a hoodie.
The car crossed the large yard and came to a stop by Lionel’s Subaru, as Amelia’s phone rang. It was Hannah again.
‘Put me on to Brian. Quickly,’ she said.
Amelia handed the phone to Brian. ‘It’s Hannah.’
‘OK, don’t freak out, but I was going through the photos from the party on my dad’s phone. That necklace Amelia found, the one that was in the attic in the cottage. There’s a woman wearing it in one of the photos. You’ll never guess who it is.’
‘My dad’s girlfriend, Sharon,’ Brian said.
‘How did you know?’
Brian didn’t bother answering. He just handed the phone back to Amelia as the door of the car opened and Sharon Lachey climbed out. He couldn’t say another word. He was in shock.
‘We’re up here, Alex,’ Lionel shouted.
Alex? Why were they calling her Alex? Amelia wondered. She thought the woman’s name was Sharon.
‘The badger’s in the room. We can’t go back in. He prefers attacking men to women, if you know what I mean,’ Burt called. ‘We’re trapped.’
Sharon didn’t bother looking in the direction of her brothers. ‘Who have they called?’
‘I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they made a couple of calls. Could you park the car under us. We can get dow—’
‘Take out your mobile phones, place them on the ground and kick them over to me,’ Sharon, or Alex, said to the Misfits.
‘If you think we’re going to do—’ Sam began.
Skraaaaak was the sound Chris’s mobile made as it slid across the yard and landed at Sharon’s feet. He’d kicked it across immediately.
Sam sighed. ‘I see the old Chris is back.’
‘Sorry,’ Chris said, looking sheepish.
‘What are you doing, Sharon?’ Brian asked. ‘Is someone pu
tting you up to this? Have they threatened you?’
‘Threatened her?’ Lionel cackled. ‘No one threatens our sister.’
‘Your sister? Sharon’s your sister?’
‘Well, it looks like the Scooby Doo gang aren’t as smart as they thought,’ Lionel said with a sneer.
‘We’re not the ones trapped on a window ledge by a honey badger, buddy,’ Sam said.
‘When I get down there—’
‘Shut up, Lionel,’ Sharon said. ‘Brian, I don’t want to hurt you or your friends. I like your dad and you were tolerable enough. I just want to take what’s mine. I’ll move on and we can all get on with our lives.’
‘You left the message in the hallway, the one warning me. That’s why you only left it at my house. You’d have looked suspicious sending that to any of the others. You realized we were investigating that night at the party and dumped the necklace you were wearing so we wouldn’t suspect you and—’
‘This isn’t a discussion, Brian. Just do what I say and everything will be fine.’
‘There’s four of us, there’s only one of you,’ Brian said.
‘Do I appear to be worried about that?’ Sharon replied.
Brian looked into her eyes and he knew she meant business. She was a different person to the one who’d been in his home. She held herself differently; she spoke differently. Had she been acting all the time? He realized he’d never known her. He’d never paid enough attention.
Without warning, Amelia sprinted towards Sharon, head down, charging like a bull. Sharon stepped to her left, dodging the attack. She grabbed Amelia by the collar and held her at arm’s length.
‘That was weak, kid. You really embarrassed yourself there,’ Lionel shouted gleefully. ‘Nobody messes with Alex Lambert.’
‘Is that your real name?’ Brian asked.
Sharon looked annoyed that Lionel had unnecessarily revealed her full name, but she let it pass.
‘It’s not my intention to hurt anyone, but I will if I have to,’ she said. ‘Kick over the rest of the phones.’
‘There’s still three of us and there’s only one of her. We can do this,’ Sam whispered.
‘What about Amelia? She might hurt her,’ Brian replied. ‘And you know what Chris is like. If he tries anything, he’s probably going to get hurt. You don’t want to do that, do you?’
‘No, nobody hurts my brother, except me.’
‘Phones now, unless you want to be responsible for your little friend being in pain,’ Sharon said, tugging at Amelia’s collar.
‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,’ Amelia said.
‘I said now,’ Sharon growled.
Reluctantly, Sam and Brian did as they were told – they kicked the phones across the yard. Still holding on to Amelia, Sharon stamped on each one in turn with the heel of her boot, until they were all smashed up and unusable.
Chris looked as if he was about to cry. He really loved that phone.
‘It’s very simple. We’re going to go into the house and rescue the two men on the windowsill –’
‘Thanks, sis,’ Burt said.
‘– we’re going to take the badger and then we’re going to leave. I’ll lock you in the house and I’ll ring the gardaí personally in a few hours to make sure you’ve been released. I’ll be on my way and we’ll never have to see each other again.’
‘You act like you’re all civilized, but you’re not, you know. You’re horrible,’ Chris said. ‘Why would anyone want to steal a poor little honey badger?’
‘I didn’t. That was down to Dumb & Dumber up there,’ Sharon said.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Burt said. ‘Some obnoxious rich kid wanted a vicious, ferocious animal for his birthday party, like it’d be a cool thing to show off to all his friends, so we got him one.’
‘Except he didn’t want a flippin’ badger, though, did he?’ Lionel said.
‘Not this again,’ Burt moaned.
‘He wanted the world’s most fearsome animal, something like a lion or a tiger or a rhinoceros, I guess, but Alfred Einstein here googled the world’s most fearless animal instead. Turns out that was a honey badger.’
‘I made a mistake, right. Anyone can make a mistake.’
‘Yeah, cos when you want a lion at your party and you get a badger instead, that’s a normal kind of mistake.’
‘Shut up, Lionel.’
‘You shut up, Burt.’
‘Both of you shut up,’ Sharon snapped. ‘The kid is going to take the badger and he’s going to like it. And it’s Albert Einstein. Imbeciles.’
She released Amelia, giving her a gentle shove forward. ‘Get back to your friends,’ she told her.
‘We can still do it,’ Sam whispered.
‘Don’t even think of trying to stop me. If you do, then I might have to implicate someone else in my crimes. Understand what I’m saying, Brian?’ Sharon said.
Brian wasn’t always the quickest on the uptake, but he understood immediately. If he stopped her and she was arrested, she was going to lie and tell the gardaí that Mucky was involved in all of this. His father was many things, but he certainly wasn’t a thief. Brian’s blood begin to boil.
‘I’m going to assume you’ve called the cops,’ Sharon said. ‘They won’t be coming for some time. I’ve reported a number of fake crimes at various locations a little off the beaten track. The Newpark gardaí have never been so busy. So just do what I say and forget any ideas you might have of the cavalry coming to the rescue –’
She stopped talking when she heard the car approaching. It was nearing twilight and the driver had switched the dipped headlights on. The beams jolted around as the car bounced up and down on the narrow, rutted path that led to the farmhouse.
‘What was that you were saying about the gardaí?’ Sam said smugly.
But the car that arrived in the farmyard wasn’t a garda car this time either, and it wasn’t driven by Debra O’Loughlin. It was a big old battered jeep that had seen better days.
‘Who’s that?’ Sam asked.
‘That’s my gran,’ a stunned Amelia said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Florence Parkinson was behind the wheel of the jeep, and Hannah was in the passenger seat. The vehicle came to a shuddering stop. Florence climbed out slowly, leaning heavily on the door for support.
‘Touch of arthritis,’ she said. ‘I should get a smaller car at my age, but I love this old jalopy.’
Sharon, who’d remained cool, calm and collected even when she’d seen her own brothers trapped on a window ledge, seemed a little taken aback when she saw Florence.
‘Now, what’s going on here?’ Florence asked. ‘Hannah said that Amelia, Derek and all the lads were in some sort of trouble.’
Hannah raced over to the rest of the gang.
‘I’m so dead,’ she said, laughing. ‘I snuck out of my bedroom window and got your gran to drive me here. I don’t care what happens to me tomorrow. I had to be part of it. I couldn’t miss out on all the action.’
She hugged Amelia, but let her go when she realized Amelia wasn’t hugging her back. In her excitement, she hadn’t noticed the woman standing ten metres away. She looked at her for a moment, a little confused. Then it dawned on her.
‘That’s Sharon.’
‘Yes,’ Amelia said. ‘Except her name’s not Sharon. It’s Alex.’
‘She’s not trapped like the other guys?’
‘No. And they’re not just some other guys – they’re her brothers.’
‘So, you mean . . . Oh.’
She quickly scanned her surroundings and realized something.
‘I understand that the two men on the ledge are some class of burglar, because Hannah filled me in on some of the story, but she was talking quite quickly, so I might not have grasped all of it. Is that Sharon, the girl Mucky’s stepping out with?’ Florence said.
Sharon looked at her brothers, then looked at the Misfits. Things were getting out of hand. There were too many p
eople involved and the gardaí wouldn’t stay away forever. It had become complicated. Sharon had one rule, a rule that had kept her out of prison for many years: when things get complicated – leave.
‘Alex?’
Lionel couldn’t believe it when he saw his sister heading for the car. She stopped for a moment, looking for her keys. When she didn’t find them immediately, she swore.
‘What are you doing? Don’t leave us here,’ Burt shouted.
‘She’s running away,’ Sam said.
He was filled with a sudden unfiltered energy and he didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t chase after her, not if it meant getting Brian’s dad in trouble. Instead, he jumped up and down.
Hannah hadn’t heard the threat though and she wasn’t about to let Sharon escape. Not after everything they’d been through. She shouted to Florence. ‘Get in the car and start it up.’
Florence, who never normally took orders from anyone, was so taken aback that she climbed in. She was slow, but just fast enough for what Hannah had planned. Hannah jumped in the passenger side as Florence started the jeep. Sharon finally found her keys and climbed into her car.
‘Reverse, Florence, reverse.’
‘I always have difficulty finding reverse . . . Ah, there we are. Where are we going?’
‘There’s only room enough for one car on the road out. If we reverse and block it—’
‘She won’t be able to get past and she can’t escape by car. Got it. So, she’s one of the baddies too, then.’
Florence reversed at speed, the jeep bouncing against the hedge on one side of the narrow path, then the other, before a wing mirror snapped off.
Sharon’s black hatchback raced across the yard. Chris had to jump out of the way. When Sharon saw that her only exit was blocked by the jeep, she beeped the horn in a futile gesture. Florence and Hannah waved at her cheerfully.
They both had the same thought. Florence handed the keys of the jeep to the young girl.
‘You want me to do it?’ Hannah said.
‘We can’t open the doors because we’re too close to the hedges. And I’m not built for climbing out of windows now, am I, dear?’
The Misfits Club Page 20