“It ain’t a car, you big wazzock!” said Colin.
“No, it ain’t! Wazzock!” said Norma.
“Excuse me,” said PC Middleton. “Please moderate your language, sir and madam. Do NOT call the Detective Inspector a wazzock.”
“Oh! What will you charge us with, then?”
“Yeah, charge us with what?”
“Saying the word ‘wazzock’ in a built-up area?”
“Ha ha ha ha, yeah, a built-up area!”
This seemed to be mainly what Colin and Norma did: what some people call “bantz”. Even though their daughter had gone missing.
“I should inform you, Mr and Mrs Warner, that I have written that down,” said PC Middleton.
“Anyway,” said DCI Bryant, “this car. Vehicle. Whatever. The thing Amy was driv—”
“Sir … would you know how many Zs there are in ‘wazzock’?”
“Twelve!” said Norma.
“Yeah, twelve!” said Colin.
PC Middleton scribbled on his pad, then frowned. “That looks a bit strange. Like how you would write down the sound of someone sleeping.”
“Stop writing, Middleton,” said DCI Bryant.
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Zip it, Middleton! ZIP IT!”
“Right you are, sir.”
DCI Bryant sighed very heavily, and then turned back to Prisha.
“You were saying, Mrs Agarwal …?”
“Yes. Well. Colin and Norma are right, it wasn’t a car. At least, not a normal car. It was more like … something you might see in a cartoon.”
“A cartoon? What kind of cartoon?”
“The Simpsons? Spongebob? Minions? Tom and Jerry? The Amazing World of Gumball?”
“Yes. That’s enough cartoon examples now, Middleton.”
“I don’t know,” said Prisha. “Sort of like an old cartoon that had a car from the future in it.”
“This is what it’s like,” said Suzi, holding up her phone. DCI Bryant and PC Middleton peered at it. “It’s a photo my son took. I copied it to my phone.”
“Oh my goodness …” said DCI Bryant.
“Hmmm …” said PC Middleton, holding his pencil up to the phone.
“Don’t draw it on your pad, Middleton.”
“No, sir?”
“No. We have a photo here. So we don’t need you to do a drawing.”
“Right you are, sir.”
“It kind of is like a cartoon car from the future in an old cartoon,” said DCI Bryant.
“Thank you,” said Prisha.
“But it’s different now,” said Sanjay. “The car. It’s bigger and has new bits.”
“But does it still look basically like this?” said DCI Bryant.
Sanjay looked at it. He nodded.
“And where do you think it – they – might be going?”
Everyone looked to Suzi. She shook her head, looked down, and then, after a little while, looked up.
“My guess is – even though I don’t want it to be true – Scotland. Just past the border, to be exact.”
“so, Rahul …” said Jack, “we’ve definitely got enough power to get to Scotland, then?”
They had been going for about an hour. They had managed to stay off big roads and were now almost out of the city.
“Well … I think so.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Jack.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, Rahul,” Amy said. “That’s Jack being sarcastic.”
“Oh. Is it not good?”
“Well, Rahul,” said Jack. “I’d prefer you to know that we’ve got enough power. Rather than think it.”
“Oh, I see. Well, no, I don’t. Especially not now that you’re with us.”
“Parhewch am filltir …”
“Thank you, sat nav,” said Jack. “That’s very helpful.”
Amy tutted, leant over and banged the sat nav screen with her fist.
“CONTINUE FOR A MILE!” said the sat nav.
“Oh my!” said Janet.
“A MILE! CONTINUE!”
“You fixed it!” said Rahul. “It speaks English now!”
“Yeah!” said Amy.
“CONTINUE! DO NOT TURN OFF!”
“I seem to have made it change personality at the same time.”
“STAY ON THIS ROAD!”
“OK! OMG!”
“Actually,” said Rahul, “I don’t think we can.”
Amy looked ahead. They had been travelling on a small, dark lane. As they approached the end of it, a sign appeared:
“STAY. ON. THIS. ROAD!” said the sat nav.
“We can’t!” shouted Amy, putting on the brake. They screeched to a stop, right by the sign.
“Oh dear,” said Jack.
“CONTINUE!”
“Can we turn that off?” said Janet.
Amy banged the screen again with her fist.
“CYNNWYS!” said the sat nav.
Amy frowned.
“I think that might be ‘continue’ in Welsh,” said Rahul.
“Shall we just go round the sign?” said Amy.
“Um … we don’t know what’s there. I don’t think it’s a good idea. It might be an enormous hole in the road.”
“What are we going to do, Rahul?” said Amy.
“We could get a Welsh–English dictionary?”
“No,” said Amy, “to carry on with the journey.”
“Are we going home, then?” said Janet.
“Yes,” said Jack. “But you have to fly there.”
In response, Janet flapped her wings. In Jack’s face.
“Ow!”
“OK,” said Rahul. “We could turn round. But it’s a long way back to the next road we can take. And Jack is right, I don’t know that we’ve got enough power as it is. So … there’s a field next to us, isn’t there?”
Everyone looked over.
“Um …” said Amy, “I think so. It’s very dark.”
Rahul rummaged in his bag and took out a torch. He turned it on and pointed the beam towards the window. It wasn’t really a window, it was just his section of the glass that made up the roof of the Taylor TurboChaser. But it’s easier to call it a window.
Four pairs of eyes looked out at the darkness, illuminated in patches as Rahul moved the torch along. And then four mouths went …
“AAAAAAARRRGGH!”
… as the beam lit up a pair of eyes staring back at them.
“OK,” said DCI Bryant. He was standing by his police car, outside Amy’s house. “Thanks for all the information. We’ve put out an APB, and—”
“Oooh, APB! Oooh, hello, Kojak!” said Norma. “You’re going to put out a Code Red as well?”
“Watch out, Colombo!” said Colin.
“What are they saying now, sir?” said PC Middleton.
“They are referring to old television detectives, Middleton. As a way of making fun of me,” said DCI Bryant wearily.
“I see. How do you spell ‘Colomb—’”
“Don’t write it down.”
“Are you going to give us a quick CSI as well?” said Colin.
“Ha ha ha, CSI!” said Norma.
“I’ll be giving you an ASBO in a minute …”
That did, in fact quieten Colin and Norma down very quickly.
“Thank you.” Then, to PC Middleton, over some whispering from them, “It means ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Order’.” He turned back to the parents. “APB, meanwhile, means ‘All Police Bulletin’. I’ve sent the picture of the vehicle to our central computer. Which means, in turn, that it will be sent to all police cars presently on the main roads between here and Scotland. So as soon as they are spotted, which I’m sure won’t be long, this will all be over.”
He sounded very reassuring. Although the parents didn’t look very reassured.
“Right. And what should we do?” said Suzi.
“Well …” said DCI Bryant, “just wait in your homes. We will inform you as soon as your children are apprehended.
”
And with that, they got in the car and drove off.
Suzi looked round.
“Are we going to do that? Stay in our homes and just wait? Or are we going to get in my car and look for them ourselves?”
“We are!” said Prisha.
“Er …” said Sanjay. “Shouldn’t we do what the policeman says and—” And then following a very steely glance from his wife: “No, of course. Yes. We are.”
“BRING IT ON!” said Norma.
“What, the ASBO?” said Colin.
“AAAAARGGGGGH!” shouted the four children in the Taylor TurboChaser, a second time.
It was a loud shout, so it was quite difficult to hear, just underneath the end of it, a different sound. But Amy, who had very good hearing, did.
“AARRGGH … Sorry, what was that?” she said.
“AAAAARRGGH … what?” said Rahul.
“AAAAAAARRGGG” said Janet.
“Shush, Janet!” said Amy.
“… GGGGHHHH– OK,” said Janet.
There was a sudden quiet in the car. Rahul flashed the torch towards the side again. Once again, the eyes. But this time, because no one screamed, there was something noticeable about them. They weren’t staring, aggressive, hard eyes. They were lazy eyes.
Soft eyes. They blinked. Lazily, softly. And then the sound again.
“Mooooooooo …”
“Oh,” said Amy. “It’s a cow.”
Rahul flicked the torch across. “Cows. Loads of them. They’re all staring at us!”
“AAAAAARRGHHH!”said Janet.
“No, it’s not really a problem, Janet,” said Rahul.
“Oh, right.”
“Except you’re saying we should go through the field, aren’t you, Rahul?” said Jack.
“Um. Oh. Yes! I was suggesting that. Before we started screaming.”
“So … through the cows?”
Rahul turned to Amy.
“Are you OK with that?”
“Hmm …”
“Remember how you slalomed through dustbins on my dad’s drive?”
“Yeah. But none of those dustbins had udders. Or hooves. Or the ability to move.”
“No …”
“Plus, will the car be able to deal with a field? I mean … it’s not designed for that.”
Rahul smiled. “Well, you say that, but …”
He reached over. In between the two of them was what looked like an electric pump. Which indeed it was. Amy had assumed it was there in case they got a flat tyre. But it turned out it had another purpose.
Rahul switched it on. Nothing, apart from a whooshing sound, happened for a second. And then:
“Whooa!” said Jack.
“What’s happening?” said Amy.
“WHY ARE WE GOING UP?” said Janet.
“It’s an inflatable mattress. I put it underneath the chassis.”
“THE SHASSY? WHAT’S THE SHASSY?”
“The floor of the car, Janet. It’s stuck in between the two bits that make up the floor of the car, like the meat in a sandwich.”
“I’m a vegetarian!” said Amy.
“OK. The cheese in a sandwich.”
“WE’RE GOING UP REALLY HIGH!”
“About twelve centimetres higher than before, Janet.” Rahul turned to Amy. “Welcome to the Taylor TurboChaser four-by-four.”
Amy took a deep breath. The way Rahul had designed the TurboChaser to fit any situation, with all his little add-ons, was incredible, but she was still the one who had to drive it.
And even if he had somehow been expecting that they might have to drive through a field, she had not.
Certainly not a field of cows.
But there seemed to be little choice, except turning back and giving up. Amy was not going to do that. So she turned the steering wheel to the left and pushed the direction lever forward, driving towards where, as the lights on the front of the vehicle showed, a small track led to the field. Of cows.
“Take it slowly,” said Jack.
“Thanks, Jeremy Clarkson,” said Amy.
They went through on to the grass. She could feel how different it was straight away – the car rolled and dragged, the tyres slipping and sliding over the damp terrain. It was harder to control.
“Um … where am I going?”
Rahul hit the screen.
“OH MY GOD! YOU’VE GONE OFF ROAD! I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE! WHAT’S GOING ON?”
“Hmm,” said Rahul, “something seems to have happened to the sat nav.”
“TURN BACK! JUST STOP! PLEASE! THERE COULD BE COWS IN HERE AND EVERYTHING!”
Rahul hit it again.
“Parhewch am filltir …”
“Ah … what did that mean again?” said Amy.
“Continue for a mile,” said Jack.
“Thank you.”
“Happy to help.”
“OK. I’ll just go in as straight a line as I ca—AAARGH!”
That AAARGH was because, in the middle of the line of straightness she was trying to go in, was a cow, quite clearly lit by the bright moon and the headlights.
For those of you interested in cows, it was a Friesian, with black patches on a mainly white body. But really all you need to know is that suddenly there was a big wall of leather, and they were heading right towards it.
Amy swerved to the right, where there was another cow, staring at her in a kind of “this is interesting” way. She swerved again. Everyone in the car screamed. Her hand moved the direction lever forward, slowly, making the engine roar, but without moving forward.
“Why are you revving up?” shouted Jack. “I said take it slowly!”
“I’m trying to get away from the cows! Plus if you knew anything about driving, you’d know I can’t drive too slowly on this grass! We’d get stuck!”
“We’d get stuck!” said Jack sarcastically.
“Yes, we would, actually,” said Rahul, which made Jack shut up quite quickly, because, cool and sarcastic fourteen-year-old or not, he really didn’t want to get stuck in this field in the middle of the night.
Amy swung the car left, then right, slaloming like she had through the dustbins, but now through the cows. It was a great piece of driving, and she seemed to have got them through the field safely. Most of the cows just watched them go by, glad to have something a little bit different going on to break up the evening.
But suddenly …
“OK,” said Rahul, pointing. “If you go through that gap in the hedge there, we’ll be through this field, and we can go out to the road beyond—”
“What’s that noise?” said Jack.
“Sorry, that was me,” said Janet. “I had beans for dinner.”
“No, not that noise – that one; the one that sounds like snarling. And panting.”
“It’s that!” said Amy, pointing directly in front of them.
Janet and Jack leant over from the back.
Lit up by their own headlights, and by the powerful light of the moon, was another pair of eyes, only this time angry, staring, not friendly. Below the eyes was a wide black nose, pierced with an enormous metal ring; and, above, a set of large, sharp horns.
“Hmm. That’s a strange-looking cow,” said Janet.
“Bull, Janet,” said Amy.
“Don’t be rude. It IS a strange-looking cow.”
“No, I mean—”
“OK,” said Jack quietly. “The thing to do is just be very, very quie—”
“And it’s in our way …” Janet continued, leaning over and pressing the air horn.
PAAAAARP!
It really was very loud.
“JANET!” said all three of the others.
“What?” she said, parping it again.
PAAAAARP!
“GET OUT THE WAY, YOU SILLY WEIRD COW!”
The silly weird cow – which, as I think you know, was not a cow – looked very, very angry at the noise.
“IT’S A BULL, JANET!” shouted Amy. “AND … IT’S ABOUT T
O COME RIGHT FOR US!” “How do you know that?” said Janet.
“Look!”
The bull had, indeed, started to do that thing that bulls do, of putting its head down and pawing at the ground with one of its front hooves. Which, it’s true, generally doesn’t mean, “Oh, hi, nice human, please come and give my horns a friendly stroke.”
“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”
“I’ve got an idea!” said Rahul. “I can press the hazard button!”
“How will that work? No one’s here to even see it!”
“It makes the car into a matador!”
“It makes the car into a doormat?” said Janet.
“No!” said Rahul. “A matador! A bullfighter! You must have seen them on the internet! Men in Spain who wear funny costumes and fight bulls!”
“Oh yes. I don’t really approve of them,” said Amy, “because it’s not a fair fight, and they always end up killing the bulls.”
“Can we have the ethical discussion later?” said Jack. “How does pressing the hazard button help?”
Rahul’s finger lingered on the button.
“The way the matador dodges the bull is by using a red cape. So –” he pressed the button, and a red flag came out of the back left-hand corner of the TurboChaser – “we’ll use our hazard flag as a cape!”
“Erm …” said Amy, “don’t they also use red because that colour makes bulls—”
“HE’S CHARGING! HE’S CHARGING STRAIGHT AT US! HE LOOKS REALLY ANGRY!” shouted Janet.
“Yes. That would be the word I was looking for,” said Amy. She looked at Rahul. “I hope this works …”
“So do I,” said Rahul.
A thought came into Amy’s head: The first thing you need to do to get over a problem is believe you can. It was one of her mum’s annoying inspirational quotes! What was it doing in her head now?
Although, weirdly, it seemed to help how she felt about the whole situation. It didn’t help much. But it helped a little.
She pulled down hard on the steering wheel and threw the direction lever forward. The TurboChaser spun round, so that the hazard flag was facing the bull.
“HE’S STILL CHARGING STRAIGHT AT US!” shouted Janet.
“I HATE TO AGREE WITH JANET, BUT HE IS!” shouted Jack.
“Right,” said Amy to Rahul. “I’m going with your matador idea. So when I say now, press the hazard button again.”
The Taylor TurboChaser Page 6