‘It won’t hold them long, Blonde,’ he shouted, ‘but it will buy us some time.’
Janey picked up her own power hose, and at exactly the same moment they each opened a nozzle to full throttle. Water cannoned at Copernicus and Paulette from either side and they crashed heads as the full force smashed into them. They clung to each other miserably, being tossed around in the cabin as if they were sitting in a whale’s spout.
Suddenly the doors to the car wash opened behind them. Janey turned around and almost dropped the hose in astonishment. Four humans and a cat had been through the car-wash Wower. She was used to seeing Trouble with his quiff and Al Halo in his denim boiler suit, but the others were transformed. G-Mamma was resplendent in a fuchsia-pink trouser suit, with a gold-loop SuSPInder hooked casually around her waist and large fluorescent Ultra-gogs beneath a rippling orange headscarf. A similar suit in olive green with military buttons fitted Mrs Halliday perfectly, and poised next to Trouble was Gina Bellarina, SuperSPI.
‘Wow,’ said Janey and her father in unison.
Jean Brown was completely transformed. Her short brown hair now clung to her skull in the sharpest of burnished gold bobs. Enhanced by wing-framed Ultra-gogs, her eyes glowed with hazel fire, and from head to toe she was encapsulated in a shimmering bronze SPIsuit. To Janey, standing open-mouthed with a gushing water cannon in her hand, her mother looked like the statuette given out at the Oscars.
The Wower had not, however, been able restore all Gina’s spy memories and skills, so the old Jean Brown was still in charge of the new image.
‘Janey, you’re here! What are you doing? And Abe, you’re back!?’
‘Sorry, Jean, no time for fond little catch-ups,’ roared G-Mamma, whipping around like a deep-pink cyclone. ‘Water rats incoming! Furry formations at one-eighty degrees!’
‘Trouble, sit on this hose!’ Janey waited until the cat was in position, training the water jet on Paulette and Copernicus, then ran to join her SPI unit at the doorway to the car-wash shed. She gulped. ‘Oh. My. Word.’
The rats had been Wowed too – and it was so diabolical that Janey could hardly bear to look.
spy-cats, rat-dogs
‘It’s a m-m-monster!’
As it did to everyone that passed beneath its sprays of technological brilliance, the Wower had taken the best features of the rats and enhanced them. And the best feature of the water rats was the fact that they were completely loyal, sticking to each other through good times and bad like stinking, noxious glue.
The creature prowling the floor of the car wash, drooling saliva from its blood-red jaws, appeared at first glance to be a ferocious tan-coloured Dobermann. But it was actually five different entities, one forming each leg, the fifth straddling the others to make up the body and head. Around the whole nightmarish creature was a caul, oozing with slime and gore as it encased the water-rat-beast in a kind of glistening bubble.
Alfie charged forward, Boy-battler poised. As his fist pummelled the foul creature the head snapped and slavered at him; Alfie’s hand bounced back off the surface of the bubble and flew back into his face. ‘Agh!’ He slumped to the floor.
The bubble’s protecting it, thought Janey.
‘Al!’ Mrs Halliday sprang forward and dragged her son out of harm’s way as quickly as possible. Janey squeezed the middle finger of her ripped Girl-gauntlet. A shaft of intense light shot into the creature’s eyes and it howled with pain before knocking her out of the way.
G-Mamma body-rolled to Janey’s flank, pushed her sideways and then continued to crawl beneath the belly of the beast, avoiding the five snapping faces. She whipped off her gold-chain SuSPInder and threw it over the creature’s back, trying to lasso it from underneath. It reared up, tossing its head to and fro in rage and ripping the chain from her hand. ‘Bad beastie!’ she shouted. ‘Sit!’
The creature was now making for the doorway. Mrs Halliday attempted a swipe at it, catching the beast a glancing blow on its back, but her hand simply ricocheted off the protective bubble and she was propelled back with a great force. Suddenly, Gina Bellarina was left alone in the doorway to face the hideous enemy.
‘Jean, look out!’ Abe Rownigan and Alfie were now tying Paulette and Copernicus up with one of the hosepipes, face down on the gravelled track of the car wash. The scarlet angry skin on the back of Copernicus’s neck glistened beneath the edge of his mask.
The monstrous rat-beast slavered savagely. ‘Look out, it’s after you, Mum!’ shouted Janey, racing towards her mother.
‘Oh, is it now?’ said Gina Bellarina sternly. ‘Well, I’ve had quite enough of being attacked in my own house –’ she karate-chopped the creature’s skull – ‘and my own business –’ she kick-boxed the beast in the chest – ‘and alongside my own friends and family.’ As a finale, she leaped up in the air and drop-kicked her dazed opponent.
Janey wanted to cheer at the magnificence of Gina Bellarina, but as she reached her mother and turned around she knew that it was too soon to celebrate. The beast was back on its feet, moving relentlessly towards the source of its irritation and focus, who was sitting obediently on a hosepipe, lapping occasionally at the sprays of water that spurted past him.
‘It’s after Trouble! Run!’ Janey raced towards her Spycat and shoved him out of the beast’s way. Trouble was thrown up in the air but managed to rotate, land on his feet and take off around the shed like the hare on a greyhound track, his go-faster stripes a blur and his quiff streaming straight out behind him like a flag.
The rat-beast lifted its head to the pink afternoon sky and yowled menacingly, then coiled its muscles. It took off after Trouble, lurching grotesquely as the five creatures coordinated their vile slinking movements into one.
Suddenly the evil robot voice of Copernicus coughed into life. ‘Ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well.’ He barked his horrible rasp of a laugh as one hand snaked out of the coil of hosepipe in which he was imprisoned and pointed the nozzle at Trouble’s retreating back. He was trying to train the few drips of water still coming from the hose on to her cat.
And suddenly Janey got it.
‘Dad, G-Mamma, that’s why they kept Trouble in that tank while they were doing experiments on him! That glimmering skin-thing the rat-beast is covered in – it’s like the SPIder bubble we landed on at the bottom of the Death Drop. I think that’s why cats have nine lives – they’ve got a natural protective bubble around them! That must be why all the pictures of Trouble at the Sun King’s Spylab were shiny. His bubble was working. But think about it . . .’ She dropped her voice so Copernicus couldn’t hear. ‘The rats had to make a raft for themselves when they went over the dam. When Alfie blasted them away with water jets, they couldn’t do anything about it. And cats – normal cats – hate water, don’t they? It’s all because the nine-lives bubble doesn’t work in water! Cats know they can’t be protected when they’re wet; they know they could die!’
G-Mamma sucked her teeth, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Impressive, Blonde. If you think you’re right, prove it!’
Trouble was racing towards Janey, frantically trying to escape the snapping, five-headed beast snarling at his tail. ‘Trubs, come here!’ she called, patting her chest so that he leaped up into her arms. ‘Now everybody grab a bucket!’
Jane Blonde held her Spycat in front of her and knelt on the floor. The rat-beast bounded towards them, baying for revenge. Janey didn’t budge. The creature lunged, and Janey and Trouble were suddenly confronted with the creature’s underbelly and the five gnashing hellhound heads.
‘Claws out, Spycat!’ she screamed.
Trouble instantly reached out his paw, flipped the sabre-edged claw out in front of him like a flick knife and allowed Janey to draw it along the water rats’ shimmering skin shield, slicing through the gore like butter.
‘Perfect!’
As the beast’s front legs drew level with her head, Janey grabbed the power-hose and thrust it through the hole she had just made in the protective bubble.
The creature sailed over her head as if impaled upon the hose, and Janey squeezed the trigger and let loose with the water. At full pressure it rocketed from the nozzle, driving a deluge between each of the rats. The five creatures shot in different directions across the forecourt, whipping around and spinning in the torrents.
‘Now!’ yelled Janey. Her father, G-Mamma, Alfie, Mrs Halliday and her mother leaped forward, each carrying a heavy metal bucket that they slammed down over the nearest rat. With a spy sitting on each bucket, and a steady supply of water to hand, there was no way they were going to get away this time. Copernicus and Paulette were snarling and squirming madly, and the Sun King mask had slipped a little to reveal the blackened maw that was his damaged throat.
Janey looked up, panting with relief, to congratulate the others, but stopped when she heard a smattering of applause from behind her. ‘More!’ somebody yelled. ‘Best launch I’ve ever been to!’ cried another voice.
The customers who’d been queuing to get the best deal at Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines lined the entrance to the car wash, whooping and clapping with all their might.
‘They think we staged the whole thing!’ said Jean Brown.
There was a long pause, and then someone said gently, ‘We did.’
Abe Rownigan winked at Janey as he put his arm around Jean’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Jean. In hindsight it was probably all a bit too realistic. But I’m glad we put on a good show. I mean, even you believed it.’
‘I . . . Yes, I . . .’ Janey’s mother shook her head several times. ‘What is this? What’s going on?’
But there was no answer and the crowd was baying for more action. So after a few moments Jean Brown stepped up to the ribbon across the driveway to the car wash and karate-chopped it in half. She grinned at the clapping audience. ‘Um, I . . . I declare Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines – open!’
‘Don’t you ever do that to me again, Abe Rownigan,’ said Janey’s mother as the customers drove in. She looked down at the metallic sheen of her bronze SPIsuit in bewilderment. ‘Disappearing like that, and then all this. Never again. Do you promise?’
Janey looked on, a little tearfully, as Abe Rownigan took a ring from a little black box in his pocket. He put it on Jean’s finger, then pressed her hand gently. ‘I do, Jean Brown. I do.’
And he smiled regretfully as Janey’s brain-wiped mother collapsed into her husband’s arms.
furry ends
‘So, let’s get this straight,’ said Alfie, hauling his bag up on his shoulder. ‘Your Uncle Solomon, who we know is really your dad, Boz Brown, worked out this freezing thing and turned a frog into a mouse.’
‘That’s about it,’ said Janey.
Alfie was still puzzled. ‘Then he turned the Sun King’s – well, Copernicus’s – top spies into rats because they’d discovered the secret to a cat’s nine lives? And ever since, my f— oh, I can’t even say it – HE has been on a mission to get them changed back?’
‘Yup.’
Janey hoped he would leave it at that – because there was something else she had to keep secret. The evenings that followed the car-wash incident had included some terribly serious conversations with her father and G-Mamma. Janey was adamant that nobody else – not even Alfie – was going to learn that her dad had actually used the Crystal Clarification Process to change one human into another. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell them that he had performed the procedure on himself and was now living among them – as Abe! Only G-Mamma knew the truth.
‘What about Paulette?’ she asked, throwing Alfie off track. ‘Are you interested in getting to know her more?’
‘No way. Nor our f— HIM. How did Mum ever love somebody like that? She says he changed, but really, that much? Anyway, it’s a bit difficult to get to know someone when they’re a snowman. Or, you know. A snowgirl.’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean.’
Everyone in the SPI unit had agreed that changing evil villains into living creatures was far too dangerous, so now a row of seven glistening statues lay preserved forever in a special freezer in a secret location far away.
Janey grinned at her friend. ‘Now that’s all sorted out, there is just one thing I’d like to know – that room behind the mops in the caretaker’s cupboard? When we questioned Paulette she said she was in the cupboard because she had to get a message to her dad without anyone hearing. I honestly don’t think she even knew about the secret room. So what’s it all about?’
Alfie shrugged. ‘Mum refused to tell me,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘We’re really early. Why don’t we go and see for ourselves?’
The Spylets flitted through the half-empty corridors. From outside the caretaker’s cupboard they could hear that the radio was playing to itself again and a deep male voice was humming along.
‘Ready?’ said Alfie. ‘Now!’
They turned the handle and opened the door together. The caretaker, complete with yellow rubber gloves, spun round from his bucket collection.
‘Mr Saunders!’ cried Janey.
Mr Saunders hastily removed the rubber gloves. ‘Ah . . . hello. Um, oh dear . . . Look, I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anybody else about this, Janey, Alfie. I just . . . I just needed the extra money. And then your mother said I could use this funny little room behind the wall, and . . .’
‘What for, sir?’ asked Alfie.
Their teacher blushed furiously. ‘For my band to practise in. The acoustics are really good in there, and I’ve soundproofed it with egg boxes . . .’
Janey suppressed a giggle. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone, Mr Saunders.’ She couldn’t imagine who would believe them anyway. A new song had just started on the radio. ‘Er, Mr Saunders, do you know this song?’
It was the same one Abe Rownigan had recorded on her iPod.
Mr Saunders nodded. ‘It’s “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder. He wrote it for his daughter when she was just born, I believe.’
And Janey smiled the biggest and widest grin ever.
When the Clean Jean van pulled up to the school gates that afternoon Jean Brown popped her head out of the window. ‘You can get in next to me today, Janey.’
‘What about Abe? Is he busy?’ Janey threw her bag into a bucket and settled into the car. For two weeks she’d been banished to the back seat as Abe Rownigan supervised the early stages of the business launch, froze a few spies in his spare time and proved a dab hand at spaghetti bolognaise. Alfie declared his cooking to be even better than Clod’s.
‘Yes, but, um, not exactly,’ said her mother, biting her lip. Suddenly she swerved into a parking space and turned to Janey. ‘Abe won’t be around much any more, Janey. He’s gone up north today.’
Janey felt as though her heart had fallen through the floor of the car. ‘He’s gone? He can’t have! Why?’
‘He’s got some other business interests he wants to pursue. We’re so well set up already that Abe can just be a silent partner, and I can manage everything on my own.’
‘What about you and him . . . what about him being my new father?’ Tears spilled down Janey’s cheeks.
‘Oh, Janey. I know you liked him. And I did too. I still do! But we both just felt that we had too many other things going on. And just knowing him has made me stronger, Janey. It really has. I’m very happy with the business, and I’m very happy just being with you. But one day perhaps, because of Abe Rownigan, we’ll both be ready to accept someone new.’
Janey slumped in her chair. ‘What was so important he had to run off like that?’
‘I don’t know, some crisis with his next venture,’ said Jean. ‘Anyway, as I said, the new business doesn’t sound my cup of tea at all. Something to do with . . . with metal underwear.’
There was an abrupt silence. ‘Metal underwear?’ said Janey. ‘Do you mean . . . Copper Knickers?’
‘That’s it! Very odd idea. It must be a trade name for something.’
But Copernicus was safely incarcerated
in a deep freeze. Janey sighed. It was her dad’s message to her. He had tried to come back as a normal person, and it hadn’t worked. It had put Janey and her mother in mortal danger. Now he’d gone away again for their sakes. Maybe they could never be together, just a normal family. That was the trade they had to make – the pay-off for being spies.
Her mum was watching her fearfully. Leaning over, Janey kissed her on the cheek. ‘Come on, Mum. Fish and chips for tea.’ Her dad’s favourite.
‘Chip shop here we come,’ said Jean Brown.
After eating, Janey slipped through the fireplace to the Spylab. G-Mamma looked up guiltily. ‘Caught me in the act! I just always wondered what Trouble would look like with curls.’
Trouble, who had been put through the Wower, mewed at Janey helplessly. A large ringlet drooped down over one of his huge green eyes. ‘You OK, Trubs?’ said Janey.
‘Are you OK, Blonde-girl?’ G-Mamma teased another roller out of his quiff.
Janey shrugged. ‘Well, sort of. But my dad’s disappeared. Again.’
‘I thought as much when I saw he’d sent you a message.’ Janey’s SPI:KE swivelled around on her stool and clicked open an email. ‘Can’t tell iggly squiggly of what he’s on about, as usual.’
Janey looked hard at the email entitled ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but’. There were just four words:
furri ends
no oS
‘It’s the rats, isn’t it? Furry ends.’ said G-Mamma.
Janey played with the letters in her mind – and soon knew what the message really said.
f(ur)riends
nooS
She grinned. ‘It’s all about you, G-Mamma. You, and the others.’
‘I do NOT have a furry end! I can’t speak for your mother, of course, but—’
‘No,’ soothed Janey. ‘It’s kind of a dingbat. It’s a nice message. He says, “Sorry sweetheart, but you are surrounded by friends. Back soon.”’
Jane Blonde: Spies Trouble Page 14