‘Then how do you know she’ll give you half?’ he says. ‘How do you know she’ll give you any? Money makes people do strange things, you know. Boy, could I tell you some stories.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say, ‘really it is. I don’t even mind if Lisa doesn’t give me any money. She was the one who found it.’
‘I thought she said you both found it,’ he says.
‘Well, it was more her than me, really,’ I say. ‘In fact, I hardly found it at all.’
He studies me in silence for a while longer.
‘There’s something funny going on here,’ he says slowly. ‘I can smell it. There’s something you’re not telling me. And I intend to find out what it is. There have been a lot of handbag snatchings in the last few weeks and I think you might know more than you’re letting on.’
‘No, honestly,’ I say, ‘you’re making a mistake! I know nothing!’
‘That may be the case,’ he says, ‘but all I know is that you and this girl—who may or may not be your girlfriend—are in possession of a handbag—which may or may not be stolen—and that you’re reading a book about criminal masterminds, which for all I know may be stolen as well, and you’re acting very suspiciously … very suspiciously indeed. I think you’d better accompany me inside so I can get to the bottom of this.’
‘But there’s nothing to get to the bottom of!’ I insist. ‘I’m innocent!’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ says Officer Collins.
Great! Just my luck to come face to face with one of the Greatest Crime-fighting Masterminds of the twenty-first century!
As he leads me inside I pass Lisa coming back out.
‘Andy?’ she says.
I shrug and try to act as unconcerned and cool as it’s possible for somebody holding a stolen book while being questioned by the police to be. ‘I’m just helping Officer Collins with some inquiries,’ I say. ‘See you this afternoon.’
I can’t hear her reply as I’m swallowed up into the building.
Officer Collins leads me to a seat opposite the counter. ‘Stay there,’ he says. ‘I’ll be right with you.’
I nod.
He goes behind the counter and disappears down a corridor. He’s probably going to the interview room to put a new globe in the bright light they’re going to shine in my eyes until I break down and confess.
I look around me. There are a few more WANTED posters on the wall behind the imposing wooden counter. And on top of the wooden counter is my mother’s handbag. Officer Murphy is off to the side of the counter in a little glassed-in office still filling out the paperwork. She’s not paying any attention to me at all.
This is my chance.
I can make this whole difficult, embarrassing, uncomfortable situation disappear in an instant. All I have to do is grab the bag, run out of the station and meet Mum at the post office where the bag will be restored to its rightful owner and the book can be paid for. No crimes will have been committed and no messy, embarrassing truth need ever be revealed.
As reluctant as I am to compound my crimes, it’s a no-brainer.
I jump up, snatch the bag from the counter and make a break for it.
I burst through the glass doors, out into the bright sunlight and run down the street as fast as I can—well, as fast as I can clutching a large book in one hand and a bright purple handbag in the other.
I can hear shouting behind me, but I’m already too far away to be able to make out what they’re saying.
I hear sirens.
That’s not good.
A gunshot!
That’s definitely not good!
Collins and Murphy clearly take a dim view of handbag snatching … especially when that handbag snatching takes place in their very own police station.
But it doesn’t matter because I’m almost at the post office.
Just a little further and I can slip inside and lose myself in the queue. They’ll never find me there. And even if they do, Mum will tell them that it’s her handbag and we’ll pay for the book and there will be no more problems.
Except before that can happen there is one problem.
One small problem.
Well, one big problem, actually.
Lisa is standing outside the post office.
And not only does she now see me carrying a handbag—the one thing above all that I wanted to avoid—but she’s standing between me and the doorway to my future as a respectable, law-abiding member of society.
‘Andy?’ she says as I run towards her. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I know this looks bad,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder at the police who are running down the road behind me, guns drawn, ‘but I’ll explain this afternoon!’
‘No you won’t,’ she says, sticking her leg out in front of me. ‘You’ll explain right now!’
I’m going too fast to dodge her leg.
I go flying through the air and end up sprawled face-down on the footpath.
I’m still clutching my book in one hand and the handbag in the other and for a moment I figure I can get up and keep running … but before I can do that Lisa takes matters into her own hands and sits on me.
‘I’m sorry, Andy,’ she says, ‘but it’s for your own good!’
‘Well done, Lisa!’ says Officer Murphy as she arrives at the scene.
‘We’ll take it from here,’ says Officer Collins, grabbing my arms and snapping a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. ‘I knew there was something fishy about you. You’re the handbag-snatcher we’ve been looking for!’
‘I’m not a handbag-snatcher!’ I say. ‘Really I’m not!’
‘But you just snatched a handbag!’ says Officer Collins.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I did snatch the handbag— I admit that—but it’s my mother’s handbag!’
‘You snatched your own mother’s handbag?!’ says Lisa, looking even more shocked than she already was a moment ago. ‘What kind of monster are you, Andy?’
‘That’s exactly what we’re going to find out,’ says Officer Collins, helping me to my feet. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if that book is stolen as well.’
As I stand up I realise that a large crowd has gathered.
And part of that large crowd includes Mum.
She’s peering out from behind the brown-paper-wrapped parcel she’s holding.
‘Andy?’ she says. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Do you know this boy?’ says Officer Murphy.
‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Though at times like this I wish I didn’t. He’s my son. What’s he done?’
‘He stole a handbag,’ says Office Collins, holding it up for Mum to see.
‘That’s my handbag,’ she says. ‘And he didn’t steal it. I left it at the dry-cleaners and I asked him to go and pick it up for me.’
‘That may be the case,’ says Officer Murphy, ‘but he then stole it from the police station.’
‘You stole from a police station!’ says Mum.
‘Well, yes, but it wasn’t really stealing,’ I say, ‘because—’ But before I can make them appreciate the finer points of the situation, the post office manager bursts through the crowd.
‘Officers!’ she yells. ‘Arrest that boy!’
‘We already have,’ says Officer Collins. ‘What else has he done?’
She picks up Criminal Masterminds of the Twentieth Century from the footpath. ‘He took this book without paying for it!’ she says, holding it high in the air for everyone to see.
‘Just as I suspected!’ says Officer Collins.
‘Oh, Andy,’ says Lisa softly, shaking her head. ‘What are you doing with your life? I thought you were only joking when you said you wanted to be a master criminal, but now I see that you really meant it!’
‘No, you don’t understand!’ I say.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ says Officer Collins. ‘You’re on a very slippery slope, young man. A very slippery slope indeed! It starts out with reading books about criminals and then stealing bo
oks about criminals and then stealing your own mother’s handbag, then stealing strangers’ handbags and pretty soon you’re driving stolen cars, robbing banks and running an international crime ring and—before you know it—you’ve earned your own chapter in Criminal Masterminds of the Twentieth Century.’
‘You mean the twenty-first century,’ says Mum, helpfully.
Officer Collins just shrugs. ‘For all I know, madam, your son is so bad that he could already be well on his way to earning a chapter in Criminal Masterminds of the Millennium, but something tells me we might have caught him just in time. I think we can nip it in the bud by waiving the charges and enrolling him in our early crime prevention program. That should scare some sense into him.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ says Mum, almost crying with relief. ‘Thank you so much. I think it would do him the world of good.’
Officer Collins turns to me. ‘You’re a very lucky boy,’ he says. ‘We have a new program starting at two o’clock this afternoon and running every day for the rest of the holidays. If you’d like to accompany Officer Murphy and myself back to the station we can fill out the necessary forms and get you settled in. We’ll have you back on the straight and narrow in no time. What do you say?’
What can I say?
The prospect of spending the rest of my Christmas holidays in an early crime prevention program isn’t exactly appealing. It doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as the circus, as interesting as the zoo, as much fun as the beach or as romantic as a date in the park with Lisa, but I don’t think they’re going to take no for an answer.
And, hey, who knows … it might not even be so bad. Maybe I’ll get to meet some real-life master criminals. And in the breaks—when they’re not telling scary stories about life in the Big House—they’ll probably be able to give me some tips on how to get my career as a master criminal up and running … without getting caught.
Yeah, move over Al Capone, ‘Lucky’ Luciano, Pablo Escobar, The Joker, The Penguin and Squizzy ‘Teaspoon’ Taylor … there’s a new guy in town: Andy ‘Handbag’ Griffiths.
It’s definitely got a ring to it, don’t you think?
It’s generally pretty easy to tell if you are doomed. But if you’re not sure, check the following list. If any of these scenarios exactly resemble your current situation, then you are definitely completely and utterly doomed.
1. The school bully says, ‘Touch me again and you’re dead’ … and you touch him again.
2. Your mother says, ‘Don’t eat the last biscuit or I’ll kill you’ … and you eat the last biscuit.
3. You are at the beach and your parents tell you to wait for one hour after lunch before going back into the water or else you’ll get cramp and drown … and you only wait for 59 minutes and 59.99999 seconds.
4. You are pushing a lawnmower up a steep hill and you slip and fall forward and the lawnmower starts rolling back down towards you.
5. You are flying in a very small plane and you’re having a discussion with the pilot, which turns into an argument that becomes violent and ends only after you throw the pilot out of the plane and then, in the middle of celebrating your ‘win’, you remember that you’ve got no idea how to fly—let alone land—a plane.
6. You jump out of a plane and go to pull the ripcord of your parachute only to realise that you’re not wearing one.
7. It’s a really hot day and you’ve been running around and you grab a bottle of water and drink the whole lot in one gulp and then realise it’s not water—it’s liquid explosive.
8. You are in the bath and you see a shark fin coming towards you.
9. You are in the bath and you see two brown blobs bobbing towards you.
10. Somebody asks you to hold their newborn baby and then they run away laughing and you realise it’s not a baby at all—it’s a bomb with a countdown timer … and it’s going to explode in one second.
11. Somebody asks you to hold a bomb for them and then they run away laughing and you realise it’s not a bomb at all—it’s a baby … with a full nappy.
12. You have just robbed a bank and you jump into the getaway car only to realise that you have jumped into a police car by mistake.
13. You have just robbed a bank and you jump into the getaway car only to realise that you’ve just jumped into one of those coin-operated children’s rides by mistake and you can’t even make it go because all you have is a big bag of hundred-dollar notes.
14. You’ve decided to do your first ever bungee jump and you jump off the platform only to realise that they haven’t attached the rope yet.
15. You hear a weird noise kind of like a piano falling through the air towards you and then you look up to see a piano falling through the air towards you.
16. You have just jumped off a diving board and you’re doing a really fancy dive when you realise there’s no water in the pool.
17. You have just jumped off a diving board and you’re doing a really fancy dive when you realise you’ve dived off the wrong end of the board and are going to miss the pool entirely.
18. You fail to brush your teeth regularly and your gums rot and all your teeth fall out and all you can eat is soup and then the IUSFW (International Union of Soup Factory Workers) orders a worldwide strike, and it drags on and on and on until there’s no soup left in the entire world.
19. You have a lot of nostril hair so you decide to light a match and burn it back a bit but the flames get out of control and your whole head catches fire.
20. You are at the cinema and you put on your 3D glasses and you see a giant hand come out of the screen and it grabs your throat and starts strangling you to death and you rip the glasses off but it’s no use because a giant hand really is coming out of the screen and strangling you to death.
21. You haven’t had much sleep and you are graveside at a funeral and the minister is going on and on and on and you can’t stay awake a moment longer so you decide to just lie down in the grave for a while and take a nap, but you fall fast asleep and nobody notices and they lower the coffin down on top of you and start filling in the hole.
22. You are undergoing brain surgery and you wake up in the middle of the operation to find the surgeon and all the other medical staff are on their lunch break and are dipping their crackers and vegetable sticks into your open cranium.
23. You are an apprentice magician and you’re trying to pull a bunny rabbit out of your hat but you accidentally pull a man-eating tiger out instead.
24. You are enjoying a day out on a boat, doing a bit of fishing, when a delicious-looking ham sandwich comes flying through the air so you grab it and start eating but a massive hook pierces your top lip and you are jerked up out of your boat, pulled down to the bottom of the ocean and reeled in by a man-eating fish.
25. You are driving a car down a really steep, narrow, dangerous mountain road and as you approach a crucial hairpin bend the steering wheel comes off in your hands.
26. You are driving a car down a really steep, narrow, dangerous mountain road and as you approach a crucial hairpin bend the sun gets in your eyes so you pull the sun visor down and a big fat hairy tarantula drops into your lap.
27. You are surrounded by an army of thirty-five skeletons waving razor-sharp swords and all you have to defend yourself with is a pillow.
28. You’re fighting a terrifying monster with six really long arms and laser eyes and twenty-five thousand teeth and acid saliva and eight electric tentacles that extend out of its belly button and electrocute everything they touch and all you have to defend yourself with is a plastic drinking straw.
29. You go to a Poison Apple Festival and you just can’t resist biting into one of those delicious-looking, lovely, shiny poison apples.
30. You are on a sinking ship and there are not enough lifeboats to go around and the captain decides to let people on the boats in alphabetical order beginning with A and your name is Zachariah Z Zuzzlebuzz.
31. You cook up a load of popcorn but you’re in a hurry and can’t
wait for it to cook properly so you end up eating a whole load of un-popped popcorn kernels and then the internal heat of your body starts cooking them and they all start popping at the same time and blow your guts apart.
32. You put your last two-dollar coin in a chip vending machine and the packet of chips gets stuck in between the metal dispenser and the glass and you’re rocking the machine backwards and forwards to try to get the packet free and then the machine starts to fall towards you and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
33. You invent a way to cheat death and you live for four billion years and then the sun reaches the end of its life and becomes a red giant and expands and incinerates the Earth and everything on it, including you.
34. Your tonsils are infected and need to be removed so you go into hospital for a tonsillectomy but they get the paperwork mixed up and give you a headectomy instead.
35. You get a new super-powerful vacuum cleaner and it stops sucking and you put your eye up to the nozzle to see what the problem is and then it starts sucking again and not only sucks your eyeball out but sucks your entire insides out through your eye socket.
36. You are having trouble getting to sleep because there are two violent street gangs armed with chains, flame-throwers and bazooka guns having a turf war right outside your bedroom window and you stick your head out and shout, ‘Hey, you stupid morons, keep the noise down, I’m trying to sleep in here!’ and then they all stop attacking each other, join forces and attack you instead.
Just Doomed! Page 2