The Mystery of the Squashed Cockroach

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Whoops, sorry,’ said Professor Maynard, releasing the trigger. ‘I’m sure with a bit of water it’ll perk up again.’ The plant was now slumped and dripping brown green gloop. ‘Never mind about that,’ said Professor Maynard, stepping in front of the plant so the children would stop looking at it. ‘I expect you’re surprised to see me.’

  This was an understatement. Professor Maynard had only been to their house twice before. Once when their mother had locked herself out, and another time when their mother forgot to come back from a conference in Uzbekistan and Professor Maynard had popped over until they could arrange a babysitter.

  ‘I’m here to give you some very good news,’ said Professor Maynard. She smiled happily to emphasise how good the news was and how lucky they were to be about to hear it. ‘Your mother is in jail in a secret prison somewhere in Eastern Europe and will probably be there for a very long time.’

  The children were horrified.

  ‘How is that good news?’ asked April.

  ‘Because she’s not dead,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘We’re all very relieved she’s not dead. The Kolektiv can be a little trigger happy, so she dodged a bullet there. Literally, in fact!’ Professor Maynard laughed at her own joke. Although, to the children, it did not seem terribly funny.

  ‘Why is she in jail?’ asked Fin. ‘She’s a palaeontologist. Did she do something wrong to a woolly mammoth bone or something?’

  ‘W-W-What’s she even doing in E-E-Eastern Europe?’ asked Joe.

  ‘She didn’t say anything about leaving the country at breakfast this morning,’ added Fin.

  ‘Yes, well, she’s not allowed to tell you things like that,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘You don’t have clearance.’

  ‘What?’ said April. She was finding this conversation very confusing and upsetting, and when April was confused or upset it was usually only a short time before she started wrestling.

  ‘I have been authorised to give you some basic details,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘But it’s very important for your own safety that you don’t know too much. So I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to have lots of questions, but please don’t ask them because I won’t be able to answer.’

  The children just stared at her. Now they were all confused.

  ‘Your mother is not a palaeontologist,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Well, technically she is. She’s fully qualified and her PhD is genuine, but that’s only a cover. She did her doctorate thesis over a rainy weekend to give herself a nice credible backstory.’

  ‘Then what is she?’ asked Joe.

  ‘An international super spy,’ said Professor Maynard.

  ‘What?!’ yelled all three children in unison.

  ‘Yes, it is surprising, isn’t it?’ agreed Professor Maynard. ‘That’s why she really is such a top agent. She’s just so good at convincing people she is a dowdy middle-aged academic, that it’s no trouble at all for her to slip into another country and bump off a head of state.’

  ‘She assassinates heads of state?!’ said Fin.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Forget I said that. And I mean that. Forget it, because if you don’t, I have access to equipment that will make you forget it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fin, starting to edge away.

  ‘Now, I don’t want you to worry,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘We are doing everything in our power to get your mother out. We’re looking at the satellites, diverting submarines and planning a precision missile launch any day now. But in the meantime, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to pack a bag and come along with me.’

  ‘W-W-What?’ asked Joe. He was speaking for Fin and April here as well. This accurately summarised their sentiments.

  Professor Maynard wagged her finger at Joe and chuckled. ‘Uh-uh, no follow-up questions, remember? And I must urge you to hurry.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘There is a Kolektiv hit team on its way here right now. They should be arriving in about ninety seconds. So if you could pack a few things in the next seventy seconds or so, that should give us enough time to run out to the car and get away before they start firing.’

  The children wasted the next five seconds just staring at the crazy lady who had burst into their house.

  Professor Maynard shook her head sadly. ‘I knew there would be follow-up questions. There always are. Don’t worry, I understand. You’re children. You’re in shock. I’ll have my people handle it.’ Professor Maynard brought her wrist to her mouth and barked into her cuff. ‘Alpha team! Go, go, go!’

  There was a one-second pause, then twelve burly, black-clad men burst into the house. Three of them grabbed the children. Another grabbed Pumpkin. They heard the man scream in pain as Pumpkin bit him. The others streamed upstairs. The children were bustled outside into a black mini-van parked by the kerb. The other men were now streaming back out of the house, carrying the family’s assortment of suitcases with loose socks and undies half-hanging out of their hastily shut lids. ‘House is clear!’ barked the last man out.

  ‘Good work,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘But we’ll have to do some spring cleaning before the Kolektiv boys arrive.’ The driver passed Professor Maynard what looked like a can of whipped cream. She ripped off the lid with her teeth and tossed it through the open front door of the house.

  ‘Fire in the hole!’ yelled Professor Maynard. The men took cover and Joe, Fin and April watched as their normal suburban home exploded in a ball of fire.

  ‘Hit it, Eric!’ Professor Maynard told the driver, and the mini-van squealed away. April and Fin whipped around. Through the back window, they caught a glimpse of a black BMW turn into the street just as the mini-van disappeared around the corner.

  ‘You just blew up our house!’ wailed Fin.

  ‘Correct,’ said Professor Maynard, turning to smile at the three children on the back seat. ‘Although technically the house belonged to the agency, so I was just blowing up our own property.’

  ‘But the stuff inside the house was ours,’ said April. You could tell she was in shock. Partly because she was shaking and her lips were starting to turn blue, but also because she hadn’t attacked Professor Maynard yet, which would have been her normal reaction to someone destroying all but a suitcase worth of her things.

  ‘I know,’ said Professor Maynard, in the tone of voice of someone trying to be kind when they’re not naturally good at it. ‘But you have to try to focus on the positive side. You’re not dead.’

  ‘You have a very l-l-low benchmark for p-positive,’ stammered Joe. He was in shock too. Being a teenage boy, Joe was terrible at dealing with emotions. There is something about hormones that makes emotions go crazy for most young people between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. He wasn’t sure what to be the most upset about, the fact that his mother was in a foreign prison or the fact that the olives he had been about to eat were now a smouldering pile of ash.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Not the prison where they’re holding Mum?’ asked April.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ chuckled Professor Maynard. ‘I’m taking you to your father’s house.’

  ‘What?!’ exclaimed all three children.

  ‘Your dad,’ said Professor Maynard, just in case the three children didn’t know what the word ‘father’ meant. That would be odd, because two out of three of them had done incredibly well on the IQ test the agency had secretly performed on them by posing as student teachers and infiltrating their preschool. Only April hadn’t because at the age of four she had refused to do the test, saying tests were patriarchal.

  ‘But why would we visit him?’ asked Fin.

  ‘We haven’t seen him in years,’ said Joe.

  ‘We’ve never seen him,’ said April, indicating herself and Fin. Their father had left shortly after her birth, a fact that may go a long way towards explaining April’s hostility to male authority figures.

  ‘We don’t want to go and stay with that deadbeat!’ said Fin, starting t
o get angry. When your house has just been blown up, it’s easy to get worked up quickly. ‘He’s never wanted anything to do with us. He’s always been too busy winning the Chelsea flower show and travelling the world searching for new and exotic plants. We don’t want anything to do with him.’

  ‘Besides, isn’t he in P-Papua New Guinea?’ said Joe. ‘Collecting samples of some r-rare carnivorous orchid?’

  ‘I thought it was a dahlia,’ said April.

  ‘Mum told me it was a tree fern,’ said Fin.

  ‘Yes, your mum is very convincing, isn’t she,’ said Professor Maynard proudly. ‘She always performs off the charts in her lying tests.’

  ‘You test lying?’ asked April.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s an essential skill for a secret agent to be able to lie up hill and down dale.’ She chuckled again. ‘She once lied her way into Tehran’s secret service headquarters by telling the guard she had dropped a contact lens in the bathroom. He spent quarter of an hour on his hands and knees helping her look for it. All the while, she was downloading data from their mainframe using a scanner she had hidden in her handbag.’ Professor Maynard sighed happily at the memory. ‘She doesn’t even wear contacts.’

  ‘So where is Dad?’ asked Joe. He was the only one who had any lingering regard for their father, because he was the only one who could remember him.

  ‘In hiding,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘For the first eight years of their marriage your father was entirely convinced that your mother really was a dedicated palaeontologist. He was as happily married as any man who would secretly prefer to sit around in his underwear can be.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ asked April.

  ‘He went out to dinner with your mother,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘It was a big deal for them. With three young children, they rarely ate out. Regrettably, a terrorist from Interpol’s top ten most wanted list sat down at the next table. Obviously, your mother was duty bound to follow the reprobate to the bathroom, choke him with his own neck tie and call in a military helicopter to extract him from the roof of the building.’

  ‘And Dad saw the whole thing?’ asked Fin.

  ‘No, actually,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Your father is such a passionately dedicated horticulturalist that his ability to not notice things is off the charts.’

  ‘You secretly tested that too, didn’t you?’ asked April.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘It’s probably why he and your mother had such a happy marriage. He never noticed anything she was up to. The only problem on this occasion was that the restaurant served particularly delicious iced tea. Your father had drunk three glasses of it and, having a healthy urinary system, he needed to use the rest room at precisely the same moment your mother was dragging the terrorist up the stairs by his feet.’

  ‘What did Dad do?’ asked Joe.

  ‘He started to hyperventilate,’ said Professor Maynard, ‘which was probably for the best because he passed out, giving your mother time to get the terrorist into the waiting helicopter. But just as she was coming down the stairs to get your father out of the restaurant, the other members of the terrorist cell arrived.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Fin.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Your mother is excellent at knife fighting, so she was never in any real danger, but I think the brutal way in which she broke the noses, collarbones and kneecaps of her assailants scared the living daylights out of your dad. One of the terrorists got away before your mother could subdue him and your father’s identity was compromised.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Joe.

  ‘We had to hide your dad, for his own good,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘He was scared of your mother too.’ She turned to Fin. ‘You know how you totally freak out about spiders?’

  ‘How do you know I hate spiders?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Oh, we know everything about you,’ laughed Professor Maynard. ‘You’d be amazed at the nooks and crannies we’ve stuck secret cameras in just so we can keep an eye on you. Anyhoo, the way you feel about a big hairy spider is the same way your father feels about your mother.’

  ‘He screams and tries to run away?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘But usually his legs go to jelly so he doesn’t get far.’

  ‘So you’re sending us to stay with him?’ asked April incredulously.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘It’s the safest place for you. Now that your identities have been compromised.’

  ‘What do you mean our identities have been compromised?’ asked Joe.

  ‘We don’t know what your mother has been forced to tell the Kolektiv,’ said Professor Maynard.

  ‘You just said she was off the charts at lying,’ said Fin.

  ‘Yes, but they know that too,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘They figured out her identity from her cover ID. That’s how they found out about your house. It’s only a matter of time before they discover she has three children, and they’ll want to get hold of you to use as leverage against her.’

  ‘What’s Mum been doing?’ asked April.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘I wish I didn’t know. And it’s my job to know everything.’

  ‘I’m f-finding this hard to f-follow,’ said Joe.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘It’s pretty simple really. You’re going to go and live with your dad. He lives in a lovely country town called Currawong.’

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said Fin. ‘That’s the name of a place?’

  ‘It’s a delightful town,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘We’ve enrolled you in the local school. It will be splendid. Like a holiday! The only thing is, you’ve got to totally forget your surname was ever Banfield. You’re getting a new name.’

  ‘What’s it going to be now?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Peski,’ said Professor Maynard.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it is irritating,’ said April. ‘But what’s our new name?’

  ‘No, Peski is your new name,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘P-E-S-K-I with an “I” you see, not a “Y”. It was actually your father’s maiden name before he got married. His family changed it from Peshcynski after they emigrated from Poland when he was a baby.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Joe. ‘How can he have a maiden name? I thought women had maiden names.’

  ‘That’s not very progressive of you, is it?’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Why should it always be the woman who changes her name when she gets married?’

  ‘Because it is,’ said Fin.

  ‘Yes, well, in this case your father agreed to change his name to your mother’s name,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Although, of course, Banfield isn’t really her name either.’ Professor Maynard laughed at the irony of this.

  ‘It’s not?’ said April. This, more than anything that had happened in the last twenty minutes, made her want to punch something. It was one thing to have to change your name for security reasons, but it was another to find out your name had always been made up for security reasons.

  ‘Oh yes, she just came up with that one off the top of her head,’ said Professor Maynard, reminiscing. ‘Probably because she was putting on a bandaid while looking at a field at the time.’

  ‘So we’ve got to start our lives over in a new house, at a new school, with a dad we don’t know and our name is going to be “Peski”,’ said April. ‘You do realise that everyone at school is going to tease us, calling us “The Peski Kids”.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘The Kolektiv is after you now. Having a silly name is the least of your troubles.’

  Wherever Currawong was, it was a long car ride. Fin had asked why they couldn’t take a helicopter and Professor Maynard had characteristically just laughed. She said helicopters were only for fictional spies like James Bond. Real spies had to use quieter means of transport. They drove all afternoon and into the night. The mini-van had snacks, but they were health food bars and fruit, so
while the children didn’t starve, they weren’t happy.

  Eventually they all found the least uncomfortable positions in their seats and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of the engine and Pumpkin’s gentle snores. If during the long night the van did bump over anything and jolt them awake, there was nothing to see. It was pitch black outside. There were no street lights. All they could see was the long country road stretching out ahead of them as far as the glow of the headlights could show. They soon drifted back to sleep again.

  ‘Wakey, wakey!’

  The children were awoken by the irritating cheerfulness of Professor Maynard. They grumbled and groaned as they stretched and sat upright. It was early morning. Looking out the window they could see they were bumping along a long dirt driveway, a line of trees either side.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Home!’ said Professor Maynard.

  Fin sniffed. He didn’t want to cry. But he had just remembered that their real home had been blown up yesterday and that their mother was in prison at an undisclosed location. Admittedly, she had never been the most motherly of mothers, and now it turned out she had been lying to them all their lives because she was a super dangerous spy, but she had always been cheerful and available for hugs. Fin would have quite liked a hug at that moment.

  ‘Dad lives here?’ said April, peering out at the beautiful rolling lawn and tall deciduous trees drooping with a thick canopy of impossibly green leaves.

  ‘He does indeed,’ said Professor Maynard.

  ‘All these years I’ve imagined him living in a treehouse in Papua New Guinea,’ said April.

  ‘I’m sure he could build you a treehouse,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘He’s certainly got lots of trees and he’s good at tinkering with things.’

  The van bumped around a bend in the driveway and up ahead they could see a house. It was an old ramshackle farmhouse with two storeys and a verandah wrapped all the way around the outside. It desperately needed repainting. There was an odd assortment of junk abandoned everywhere and the corrugated iron roof looked alarmingly rusty. But even with all those faults, it looked somehow elegant. A tired and genteel home surrounded by so much abundantly healthy vegetation. In contrast to the abandoned, rusty machinery of indeterminate purpose, the flowerbeds were overflowing with beautiful arrangements of decorative plants. Bees and butterflies darted in and out of the exotic flowers.