Batpants and the Vanishing Elephant

by Jeremy Strong

‘Good idea.’ Dad nodded. ‘Let’s see what we can find out. Take things step by step.’

  ‘Poor popsicle,’ murmured India, wiping her eyes.

  ‘Don’t forget Manley,’ Dad reminded her. ‘The poor guy is tied to a chair with a sock in his mouth.’

  ‘Didn’t they give him lunch?’ asked Finn. ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘It’s to make sure he can’t shout for help,’ Mum smiled, ruffling Finn’s hair.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ he said, wishing he hadn’t been so silly. ‘We should tell the police.’

  ‘That would be sensible, but we can’t,’ Dad explained. ‘The kidnappers said that if we go to the police they’ll harm both Manley and Fudge.’

  ‘No!’ squeaked India.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ murmured Dad.

  ‘Hooooooooooooooooo!’ moaned Batpants, leaping on to India’s chest to hug her.

  That would have been OK, but Batpants is heavy. India stumbled backwards, tripped on the sofa and went sprawling on to it with Batpants still clinging to her.

  ‘Gerroff!’ was the muffled squawk that came from beneath the shaggy orange pile.

  ‘Snnnnnfffff,’ snuffled Batpants, resting her head on India’s shoulder and squeezing India’s cheeks together until she looked like a punctured football.

  ‘We’re going to have to solve this ourselves,’ said Dad. ‘So let’s see what we can find out. We’ll start with the neighbours.’

  We went out and began knocking on doors. Zak paired himself with India, of course.

  ‘To make sure she’s OK,’ he said. ‘She’s upset.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ I said. ‘She’s been squashed and squeezed by an ape, that’s all. You just want to have a big smooch.’ And I made kissy-kissy noises at him. He stuck out his tongue at me. That’s so grown-up for a teenager, don’t you think?

  The first people Finn and I asked live right opposite – Mr and Mrs Choo. It was Mrs Choo who opened the door. She looked at us rather stonily. Actually, it was more like cement than stone and her eyes were fixed on my height-of-fashion twig display.

  ‘Oh. You’re the girl who keeps pushing notes about dolphins and light switches through my letterbox, aren’t you?’

  I didn’t think we were getting off to a good start so I tried to change the subject.

  ‘Have you seen an elephant?’ I asked brightly, nice smile and all.

  ‘Why, have you lost one?’ Mrs Choo laughed, as if it was a joke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Finn seriously. ‘Her name is Fudge and she looks like, well, she looks like an elephant.’

  Mrs Choo eyed me closely. ‘Your hair is full of leaves and twigs.’

  ‘Yes. It’s to show that I am environmentally friendly.’

  Mr Choo came to join his wife at the door.

  ‘They’ve lost their elephant,’ Mrs Choo told her husband. She pointed at me. ‘And she’s environmentally friendly. You can tell by the twigs.’

  ‘The elephant’s called Fudge,’ Finn repeated. ‘She’s got big ears, but not as big as an African elephant. Indian elephants have smaller ears, but African elephants have ears as big as – as big as –’

  Finn’s voice drained away. His eyes were fixed on Mr Choo’s ears. Mr Choo’s ears are MASSIVE. They’re like satellite dishes stuck on the side of his head. He could probably pick up Martian TV with those ears.

  ‘I didn’t see an elephant,’ Mr Choo told us. ‘But I did see a lorry. It rattled the windows. I don’t like those big lorries.’

  ‘Oh. Well, sorry to have bothered you,’ I said.

  ‘You can stop bothering us with things about whales and wind farms,’ Mrs Choo hinted. Her husband put a gentle hand on his wife’s arm.

  ‘It’s their world too, you know. She’s right to be concerned.’

  I smiled at Mr Choo and decided that actually his ears were very nice, in a large sort of way. Nevertheless, I was disappointed. We turned to go and were halfway down the path when I had a thought. My brain was whirring. A lorry? Making the windows rattle? I hurried back just as the door was closing.

  ‘Mr Choo,’ I called. ‘Was the lorry big enough to put an elephant inside?’

  ‘Big enough for three elephants I should think,’ he smiled.

  ‘Hmmm. Can you tell me anything else about the lorry that you noticed?’ I felt like a detective, asking all these questions. Mr Choo thought so too.

  ‘Yes, officer,’ he said with a teasing smile. ‘It was yellow and I think it was a removals lorry, the kind you use for moving house. It stopped just up the road there, not far from your house and it had the name of the company on the side: Packeederm Removals.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Choo.’ I turned and ran after Finn.

  ‘We’re on the trail!’ I told him. ‘And it’s red hot!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We’ve got to tell the others. Come on!’

  Mum and Dad were going door to door with Batpants. The orang-utan had already scared three dogs and five cats. Mum saw us coming and sighed.

  ‘Nobody seems to have noticed anything, but strangely enough they all seem to know you, Tilly.’

  ‘Really?’ I tried to look innocent. I’m pretty good at looking innocent. I guess it’s because I’ve had to practise a lot.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum continued. ‘Our neighbours seem to know an awful lot about dolphins, collapsing icebergs, saving electricity, saving whales, melting glaciers and so on. They tell me that most of their knowledge comes whizzing through their letterboxes when they’re not looking – sometimes three or four times a day.’

  ‘There’s an awful lot to do to Save The World Mum. We can’t just stand about and watch it all go wrong.’

  ‘I know, darling. You’re quite right. I was just a bit surprised – and I’m proud of you.’

  I LOVE my mum! She is amazing.

  But I had big news for them, and I quickly passed it on. By this time Zak and India had come to join us. They hadn’t found out anything useful either, so I told everyone what Mr Choo had said.

  Zak looked mighty suspicious. (Naturally – he’s suspicious of ANYTHING I say.) ‘So, Mr Choo saw a lorry. How many lorries do you think come down our road? Hundreds, I bet.’

  ‘I know, but this one stopped near our house.’ My family looked at me and waited.

  ‘It was yellow,’ I added. They carried on looking at me, so I let them have it.

  ‘There was writing on the side. It said PACKEEDERM REMOVALS.’

  Zak snorted. Mum and Dad smiled. India raised her eyebrows and gave a happy little jump. Zak looked at them. He could tell something was going on.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What?’

  ‘Packeederm Removals,’ I repeated. Zak was still in the dark. (He is SO uneducated. I mean, what kind of school does he go to?) India slipped one arm through Zak’s and pulled him closer. Urrrghh! It must be like hugging a jellyfish.

  ‘There’s another name for elephants,’ she told him. ‘It’s spelled P-A-C-H-Y-D-E-R-M, but you say it like this – packeederm.’

  Finn grinned from ear to ear. ‘Fantasti-bubbly-crumbo!’ he breathed.

  7. Batpants on the Trail

  So, all we had to do now was track down the yellow lorry. That was not going to be easy. That lorry could have gone anywhere – north, east, south or west.

  ‘The kidnappers would have to unload Fudge somewhere,’ Dad mused, running a hand through his long hair. ‘And it would have to be somewhere they couldn’t be seen.’

  ‘Mr Choo said the lorry went up that way,’ I pointed.

  ‘You can’t unload an elephant into a house,’ said Zak. ‘And you wouldn’t put it out in the open in case anyone saw it.’

  ‘You’re so clever!’ India gazed at Zak with starry eyes. Oh dear. Surely she wasn’t going to fall for my darling big sweety-pops brother? Zak grinned and tossed his long hair back from his head. (He loves doing that. He thinks it’s cool, but actually it’s so that HE CAN SEE WHERE HE’S GOING.)

  ‘It would have
to be a big shed, maybe a warehouse,’ Zak suggested.

  Bang! Mum slammed a hand on the table. ‘The trade parks have warehouses. There are three or four of those round here.’

  ‘Fantasti –’ began Finn, but I got my hand over his mouth before he could finish.

  ‘I’m fed up with you saying that all the time. Can’t you think of anything else?’

  Finn looked up at me, his face full of confusion. ‘No,’ was his simple answer.

  At that moment Batpants came into the room with a lampshade on her head.

  ‘Haaaaa, krrrrrrrrrrr,’ she chattered, as she went swanning off round the table, like some top-notch model on the catwalk.

  ‘You look splendid, Batpants,’ said Mum. ‘Here, have one of my handbags. Now go away and leave us in peace. We are busy trying to find Fudge.’

  The ape left us, breezily twirling Mum’s bag on her left arm and spinning the lampshade hat with the other. Peace descended once more.

  Dad spread a local map on the table.

  ‘This is what I suggest,’ he said. ‘Zak and India, you go and search the Oakhill Trade Park here.’ Dad jabbed a finger at the map. ‘Emma, you take Finn and search the Kildare Industrial Estate over here. Tilly and I and Batpants will try Riverside Trade Park.’

  We gazed round the table at each other. My heart was already beginning to thump. It was pretty exciting. Suppose we actually found the elephant and Manley? What then?

  Mum took control. ‘Zak, you’ve got your mobile? Good. I’ve got mine and Aslan has his. We keep in touch, but listen carefully. These kidnappers are criminals and they’re dangerous. We don’t do anything if we see them, understood? If we find the lorry we ring the others and we’ll meet up and decide what to do.’

  ‘I’m cool,’ nodded Zak, and I almost choked.

  ‘No, you’re not cool at all, Zak. You’re more kind of like an ice cream that’s melting fast – all sloppy and dribbling on to the floor.’

  India stifled a giggle, while Zak glared at me so furiously I think he was trying to make me burst into flames.

  ‘You’re an ice cream, silly!’ chortled Finn, just to rub it in. Poor Zak!

  Just then the door banged open and Batpants reappeared, this time wearing a wellington boot on the end of each arm. She had also tried to put a rubber glove on one foot. It flapped madly from her toes, like some strange duck trying to take flight.

  Please don’t ask me why she was waving wellingtons and rubber gloves at us. Batpants does things like that, OK? She’s an orang-utan. You try to explain why an orang-utan wants to do things like that. See? It’s not easy, is it? Maybe she gets bored and has to find something to do.

  I helped Finn remove the boots and glove. ‘Dad, do we have to take Batpants with us? She is such a pain sometimes.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘We can’t leave her behind.’

  So that was that. We set off for different trade parks. Finn wanted to take his Ultra-Death-Mega-Zonic-Ray-Gun with him – the one that made a noise like six police cars having an argument, but Mum said definitely no way.

  ‘But Mum, it’s total death,’ Finn told her.

  ‘And it’s totally not coming with us,’ she warned. ‘It’s too noisy and will give us away.’

  Finn heaved a long sigh. ‘You’ll regret this,’ he observed wisely, as we split up and went in different directions.

  We soon lost sight of the others and it was just me, Dad and Batpants against the Baddies. My heart was thumping again, even though I felt pretty safe with Dad. He’s tall and strong, and I knew he wouldn’t let us get into any danger.

  Riverside Trade Park is pretty big with loads of different warehouses. There are two units that do building supplies. There’s a big motoring place that sells windscreen wipers and batteries and oil and all that kind of yucky car stuff. There’s a massive carpet showroom. Boring! Have you ever been in a carpet showroom? They are so DULL! In any case, we don’t have much carpet at home because of all the animals that go in and out of the house – know what I mean? Sometimes there are accidents of a wet nature, or even worse, a squidgy nature. Carpets and squidge do not go together well.

  So, loads of warehouses and buildings and cars and vans and little roads that go down here and up there and round that, and so on. Lots of people too, wandering about pushing trolleys loaded with plants, or bits of wood, or carrying long rolls of carpet. It was quite difficult to keep track of where we’d been. And all the time we were hunting for this big yellow lorry with PACKEEDERM REMOVALS written on the side.

  Batpants was pretty well behaved, at least to start with. She held my hand and we went wandering about. Several people stopped to talk with us, although really they just wanted to stare at Batpants and speak to her.

  ‘Is that your chimp?’ asked one lady. I wanted to say, ‘No, it’s my pet frog!’

  ‘What does he eat? Are they cannibals?’

  ‘He’s a she,’ I grunted. ‘She’s not a cannibal. Maybe you mean a carnivore?’

  The lady burst out laughing. ‘Silly me! Of course. Carnival. Is she a carnival?’

  I looked at Dad. ‘Help!’ I whispered in a little squeak.

  Dad smiled at the lady. ‘She’s an orang-utan. They eat fruit and vegetables mostly.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the lady. ‘One of them. There’s one like that lives next door to me.’

  ‘Really?’ Dad was very surprised. ‘Your neighbour has an orang-utan?’

  The lady screamed with delight. ‘No! He’s a vegetarian. A vegetarian!’

  Now Dad looked at me. ‘Help!’ he whispered back and we hurriedly moved on. A bit later Dad said, ‘Some people can seem rather stupid, Tilly.’

  ‘I know!’ I cried. ‘That woman was such a twit!’

  ‘And when you meet someone like that you should always try to help them understand. If that woman knew more about orang-utans and understood them then maybe the world would be a better place and orang-utans wouldn’t be in so much danger.’

  I was silent for a long time after that. I was thinking. Dad was right. I decided that next time I met someone who seemed stupid I would be a lot kinder and try to help them understand. Unless, of course, it was Zak. Or Finn. Or that lady again.

  We had just about finished our search of Riverside Trade Park and hadn’t found anything at all. We set off back home.

  There was a thunderous noise coming from the tyre store as we walked past. Several cars were parked outside and men were working on two of them. They were using high powered tools, taking tyres off the cars, putting them on machines and pumping air into them. Sometimes there would be a very loud pop! as a tyre suddenly jumped into the right shape. Batpants was fascinated.

  Too fascinated. She suddenly broke away from me and went lurching up the slope towards the tyre store. The men dropped their tools double quick and went and hid in their office, peering out of the window as Batpants wandered round. I guess they thought King Kong had come to town. An orange, midget King Kong.

  Dad and I hurried after her and tried to get her but Batpants has an Olympic medal for NOT BEING CAUGHT.

  ‘Hoo hooo hooooo ha ha ha ha ha!’

  You’d think she was laughing, listening to the noise she was making. (I think she was laughing!)

  She went zooming up the stacks of tyres. They were piled high on one side of the warehouse, dozens of them. Batpants wandered up and down, bouncing on the tyres and generally having a fine old time.

  Some of the men who worked there began to come out. Obviously they were feeling a bit braver. They shouted at her to come down, calling her a monkey and all sorts. Dad tried to point out that she was an orang-utan but the men paid no attention. In any case Batpants doesn’t like being shouted at. It upsets her, and then she starts to DO THINGS, and today DOING THINGS meant throwing tyres at people.

  Batpants turned out to be a champion tyre-chucker!

  She stood right at the top of the stack, frantically hurling tyres down at us. Away they went, rolling all over the place, knocking
over people and equipment, hurtling into cars and bouncing down the street pursued by a yelling crowd. You’ve never seen such mayhem!

  In the meantime, Dad quietly sneaked up on her from behind and grabbed her by the hand. Batpants stopped, took one look at Dad and clapped her other hand over her eyes as if to say: ‘Uh-oh! I’m in trouble now!’ She’s a scream!

  Dad brought her down and we were busily telling the tyre people how sorry we were and it wouldn’t happen again and all that rubbish, when Dad’s phone rang. It was Zak.

  ‘We’ve found the lorry!’ he whispered into Dad’s ear. ‘It’s here! Come quickly, and tell Mum!’

  8. Disaster Strikes

  Oakhill Trade Park was very different from the one Dad and I had been to. It was smaller, older and a lot more untidy. Riverside had flashy new buildings and lots of trees and grassy surrounds. Oakhill had rubbishy old buildings and not a single oak tree or hill in sight. In fact it had no trees at all. It was grimy, dull and a wee bit scary. It reminded me of warehouses I had seen in films. You know what I mean? You see big, dark buildings with shut doors and you know that something awful is hiding inside somewhere. That’s what Oakhill felt like.

  Mum and Finn were already there. Finn’s eyes bulged with excitement.

  ‘We’ve found the lorry!’ he declared.

  ‘Actually, we found the lorry,’ Zak put in quickly. ‘India and me.’

  ‘Zak saw the lorry first,’ added India. ‘It made my blood run cold, but I felt a lot better when Zak gave me a hug.’ India slipped her hand into Zak’s. ‘He’s such a poppet.’

  ‘A poppet?!’ I creased up. ‘He’s more like an octopus if you ask me.’

  India laughed. ‘Your sister’s funny!’

  ‘Yeah,’ muttered Zak. ‘Funny peculiar – and believe me, Tilly is VERY peculiar. How many people do you know who go around wearing birds’ nests in their hair as a fashion feature?’

  ‘And how many people do you know who look like a zombie going to a zombie-party?’ I answered.