Neil took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. He unbent his sunglasses and put them on.
‘Forget the photos, Luke. Why was that stuff still on your phone?’
‘What stuff?’
‘What stuff . . . what stuff . . .?’
Neil’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. ‘The stuff, Luke, that you hacked from the bank’s computer? The account details, the security codes, the passwords, the PIN numbers . . .’
It was funny, thought Luke, how the human voice managed to get out through clenched teeth. Then he felt the g-force as the car took off like a rocket. He held on tight but he was still baffled.
‘What’s it matter?’ he said. ‘I only did it because you said I couldn’t. I told you it wasn’t impossible. Difficult but not impossible.’
Neil’s teeth seemed to be grinding now. Then, after driving a mile in less than fifty seconds, he slowed the car to a halt. This time when he spoke, he sounded suddenly remorseful.
‘The thing is, Luke, I have a confession to make. I owe you an apology . . .’
Luke was too surprised to speak.
‘When you’d done the business yesterday – downloading all that stuff, all the bank details and everything, on to your mobile like you said you could – and you gave me your phone to prove it . . . Well, before I gave it back, I did something rather bad. I transferred some of the details on to my own computer. It’s all gone again now – I’ve wiped it. But if anyone looks at your phone, they’ll still be able to link it to me and what I’ve done . . .’
‘Why?’ asked Luke. ‘What have you done?’
Neil sighed deeply.
‘I borrowed some money. I needed a bit for my poor old mum, see. She’s ever so poor, Luke, and she’s got bad feet and lots of other bad bits that can’t be fixed without cash. And she needs to be living in a little bungalow, not on the thirty-seventh floor of a tower block like she is now, where she can’t even take her cat out for a walk. If she could walk, that is, which she can’t because of her feet. But if anyone finds out what I’ve done, I’ll go to prison and my poor old mum’ll be marooned in the sky with her bad bits till she dies. And I won’t even be able to visit her and take her a bowl of nourishing soup every day like I do now . . .’
Luke sniffed, then wiped his nose and eyes on his parka sleeve. He hadn’t realised Neil’s mum was so poorly. He hadn’t even realised he had one.
Nevertheless, Luke was in a difficult position. He had hacked into the bank records and now money had been stolen. It was a serious matter.
‘Of course,’ said Neil humbly, ‘I only took it from the accounts of really, really rich people. And only little bits they won’t even notice. And it’s not really stolen, only borrowed. I shall pay it back a.s.a.p. Every last penny. But until I do, your phone mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. For my poor old mum’s sake.’
Luke was overcome. He wiped his nose on his sleeve again.
‘It’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘I can work out exactly where it fell from the height/speed ratio of the balloon.’
‘You can?’
‘Easy.’ Luke frowned in concentration for a moment, working out the arithmetic. ‘Just follow the signs to Eppingham,’ he announced. ‘It must have dropped in a field near there.’
Neil started the car but Luke put out a hand and stopped him.
‘Call her first,’ he said with another sniff.
‘What?’ said Neil warily.
‘Call your poor old mum and tell her everything’s going to be all right.’
‘Oh,’ said Neil. ‘Oh, right. Yeah. Thanks.’
He took out his own phone, smiled shiftily, and got out of the car. Soon, he was back. The call had been very short.
‘How is she?’ asked a concerned Luke.
‘Who?’ said Neil, startled.
‘Your poor old mum.’
‘Oh, right. Um. Out.’
‘Out? I thought she was marooned on the thirty-seventh floor?’
‘Out of earshot. She’s deaf as well as everything else. Probably in the bath. I’ll try again later. Let’s crack on, yeah? Eppingham, you say?’ The car leapt forward and roared away.
A little while later it had to screech to a halt to let a line of five sheep pass by in the opposite direction. One of them was making a funny noise. Luke leaned out to watch them go. Another one had a surprisingly silvery mouth.
‘Did you see that?’ Luke asked Neil. ‘A sheep with fillings.’
3
The Aliens
Links would have been offended to know that someone thought he was making a funny noise when actually he was singing his latest rap. As the yellow car sped off, the rest of the Rare Breed Warriors joined in with him as he sang.
‘We’s the Eppingham Posse
And for your information
We’s on a mission
To save the sheeply nation.
The Golden Horn Dude
Is deep in the doody
But Lambad’s gonna split
Cos we’s real moody.
The Warrior Sheeps
Is all fleeced up ’n’ ready,
We’s brave and we’s true
And we’s real rock steady . . .’
Sal had never rapped before but she felt as uplifted as the rest of the ‘posse’ by their ‘marching anthem’.
‘Way to go!’ she cried, shaking a hoof approvingly at the nodding Lincoln. ‘Totally fleeced up, man!’
They had turned right at the sunset as Sal recalled suggesting, and they were going so fast she was sure they would reach the North in no time. But then a strong seductive whiff of cauliflower came to them on the evening breeze.
Oxo was first to break ranks. He never forgot that a sheep’s basic purpose in life is to eat. Quest or no quest.
‘Comfort stop!’ he shouted and plunged off the path, through a hedge and into paradise.
Cauliflowers stretched for miles, their white faces glowing in the dusk.
‘Only one stomach full,’ insisted Sal.
But her voice was lost beneath the general chomping. So was the rattle of a passing mountain bike on the other side of the hedge. Tod, the boy from Eppingham Farm, was on his way back from football practice. It was almost dark when he got home. He dumped his football kit in the washing machine, then, as there was no sign of life in the farmhouse kitchen, called upstairs.
‘I’m home, Gran.’
Ida White was actually Tod’s great-grandmother and, as he was an orphan and only ten years old, also his guardian. Tod went upstairs and found her curled up on her bed. She opened her eyes.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Off to school?’
‘No, Gran, I’ve just got home.’
Ida blinked. ‘Really? I must have nodded off. That’s what I get for sitting up with a sick hen all night.’ She smiled hopefully. ‘Does this mean I get lunch and supper all in one sandwich?’
Tod grinned. ‘If you like. Shall I put the TV on?’
‘No, dear, I can do it.’
Tod hurried back down to the kitchen to make Ida a mega sandwich. He loved his gran dearly and worried that she didn’t look after herself properly. He looked around for the five pieces of fruit or vegetable the government said she should have every day. Lettuce, a slice of beetroot. So far so good but there was no more salad stuff. Some mashed banana, she liked that. Strawberry jam? Well, it was home-made with real fruit. He couldn’t find anything else so he sprinkled a few cooked peas on to the jam and slapped on the lid of bread.
When he returned to her bedroom with the supper tray, Gran was sitting up, tutting at the TV screen, which was still blank. That was because she was waving her hairbrush at it, instead of the remote control.
‘Specs, Gran?’ suggested Tod.
She giggled as he found them for her and she put them on. Her tiny eyes twinkled behind the thick lenses. Gran was a thousand times older than anyone else Tod knew but also a thousand times more fun.
‘The peas are nice an
d cold,’ she remarked approvingly as they tucked in. ‘Go very well with the banana.’ Then suddenly, ‘Oh, look. There’s Tony Catchpole! What’s he doing on the television?’
They had tuned in to the end of Organic TV’s news bulletin. There indeed was a very nervous Tony Catchpole being interviewed by Nisha Patel, Organic TV’s popular young female reporter.
‘She’s pretty,’ said Gran. ‘But I wouldn’t wear a cream cotton suit in a farmyard. And look at Tony. He hasn’t even washed his face. What that young man needs is a nice sensible girlfriend.’
It was Gran’s habit to give a running commentary of the obvious whenever she watched television. Tod didn’t usually stop her but this could be interesting.
‘Sshh, Gran, let’s hear what she’s saying.’ He upped the volume with the real remote.
‘I’m Nisha Patel,’ Nisha said into her microphone, ‘and I’m standing here in the yard of farmer Tony Catchpole. Not far from where he had the most bizarre and exciting experience.’
She thrust the microphone under Tony’s nose.
‘Tony, tell us exactly what happened.’
Tony stared solemnly into the camera.
‘Well, they wasn’t acting like sheep normally do,’ he said. ‘They was in a tight circle on the ground and they was spinning faster and faster. Then –’
He flung his arm out to demonstrate what he’d seen and knocked the microphone out of Nisha’s hand. It splashed into a puddle at her feet, sending a shower of brown sludge cascading over her neat cream skirt.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ chuckled Gran. ‘Accident waiting to happen that suit was.’
‘Beg pardon, Miss Patel . . .’ Red faced and flustered, Tony bent to retrieve the microphone and handed it back. Nisha took it, glanced only briefly at the brown stuff now dripping down her arm, and continued with the interview.
‘And what did you see then?’ she asked, ignoring the ooze. And the smell.
‘They just went around and around,’ Tony said. ‘Then they disappeared!’ He leaned earnestly towards the camera. ‘I didn’t get a good look at the spacecraft. My eyes was dazzled, see. But there was this golden glow in the sky and then a beam of brilliant light shot down to the ground. It must have sucked the poor creatures up.’
Nisha didn’t believe in UFOs but she did believe in treating people with respect. She was never rude to those she interviewed.
‘And, uh, could you see how many sheep were actually beamed up into this UFO, Tony?’
Tony nodded. ‘I wouldn’t swear to it, mind, but I’m pretty certain there was five of them.’
‘Five?’ Gran looked at Tod and Tod looked at Gran. Then he turned the TV off.
‘I’ll, uh, just go and say goodnight to Wills and the others,’ he said. ‘It’s cauliflower night tonight, anyway.’
Gran was creaking out of bed as fast as her old bones would allow.
‘It’s silly to be worried,’ said Tod as they went downstairs and found their boots.
‘Of course it is,’ said Gran. ‘So stop it at once.’
Tod hurried to the paddock, forgetting a torch as well as the cauliflowers. He called into the darkness as he walked.
‘Wills . . . Jaycey . . . Sal . . . Oxo . . . Links . . .?’
‘Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness . . .’ Gran clutched Tod’s arm. ‘Look . . .’ She was pointing at a gaping hole in the fence. ‘What could have done that?’
Tod didn’t know. He clambered through and paced every inch of grass in the paddock.
‘They’re not here, Gran . . .’ he said when he returned.
‘Well where are they then?’ Gran’s voice cracked and tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘You don’t think Tony’s right do you, Tod? Tell me they haven’t been abducted by aliens.’
Tod patted her arm as they walked back to the farmhouse.
‘Don’t be silly, Gran,’ he said to comfort her. ‘What would aliens want with our sheep?’
But as he turned to close the farmhouse door, he saw two pinpricks of light dancing at the far end of the paddock that he’d just searched. Tod and Gran watched as the lights bobbed slowly towards them.
‘Maybe we should call the police,’ Tod whispered as the lights turned and bobbed back the way they’d come.
Gran shook her head.
‘What can the police do against aliens?’ she asked. ‘No, we’ll deal with this ourselves.’
She grabbed the broom that was propped in the corner and thrust it at Tod.
‘Here, you have this. I’ll take the mop.’
They hurried softly back towards the paddock and clambered through the hole in the fence. The lights were still moving slowly away from them. Tod and Gran followed silently, mop and broom at the ready. As they got nearer, they saw that the lights were beaming from the foreheads of two dark figures.
‘One-eyed monsters?’ whispered Gran. ‘Careful, Tod!’ She occasionally remembered that as Tod’s guardian she was not supposed to encourage him in dangerous activities.
The figures became clearer. They were bodies, human bodies, bent forward, peering at the grass as they moved across the field.
‘Don’t look like aliens to me,’ whispered Tod. And he suddenly charged forward and rammed his broom handle into the back of the figure in front of him.
‘That’s my boy!’ yelled Gran and she did the same. Her mop handle whumped into the back of the second figure, sending him sprawling face forward on to the grass next to his companion.
‘What have you done with our sheep?’ shouted Tod at his prisoner.
‘Tell us where they are,’ said Gran, prodding her captive in the back. ‘Speak in alien if you like but tell us!’
4
Gran’s Life Savings
Luke slowly turned his head to one side. Neil, flat on his face beside him, was pleading for his life.
‘Don’t shoot . . .’ he begged into the grass. ‘I can explain everything.’
Luke twisted around a bit further and saw that it wasn’t an armed policeman pinning Neil to the ground but a very old lady in a nightdress and Wellington boots. She prodded Neil’s back with her floor mop.
‘They’re Rare Breeds,’ she said fiercely. ‘Where have you taken them?’
Luke turned over and sat up, and Tod saw clearly now that he’d caught, not a one-eyed monster, but a scruffy young man with a head torch strapped to his forehead. The narrow beam of light from the torch bobbed up and down as the man moved his head.
‘It’s much worse than aliens, Gran,’ Tod said. ‘We’d better call the police, like I said.’
‘Nooo!’ The man under Gran’s mop groaned into the grass but still didn’t lift his head.
‘We haven’t taken your sheep. Honest,’ said Luke. ‘We’re looking for my mobile phone. So that Neil’s poor old mum can get her feet done.’
‘What?’ Tod wondered if they might be aliens after all.
The man under Gran’s mop slowly raised his face from the grass, turned and sat up. His head torch had slipped down over one eye like a pirate’s patch and he had a dob of sheep’s poo on the end of his nose.
‘It’s a RAMROM,’ Neil said, shifting the head torch. ‘Silver colour. Where is it?’
Gran didn’t like the way he spoke.
‘Never mind your RAMROM,’ she said, jabbing Neil’s chest with her mop handle. ‘What about my rams? Two of them. And two ewes and a lamb.’
‘We’ve told you we haven’t seen your mangy sheep,’ snapped Neil, scrambling to his feet. He was bold and aggressive now he knew he was only facing an old lady and a boy. ‘Just give us back the phone and we’ll go.’
The old lady prodded him again with her mop handle.
‘You’ll go all right,’ she said. ‘This minute.’ And she continued jabbing hard, forcing Neil backwards across the field towards the hole in the fence.
Luke didn’t need any persuasion. Out in the lane, the head torches shone on a bright yellow car parked against the hedge.
‘Open it,’ said G
ran.
‘What! You think I’d hide your smelly sheep in here?’ asked Neil incredulously, unlocking the doors.
‘He’s got white upholstery,’ said Luke. ‘Even I have to sit on a plastic bag.’
Tod and Gran checked inside the car but found no sign of sheep. Then they had to step back quickly as Neil started the engine and roared away.
‘Don’t come back!’ yelled Tod at the tail lights. ‘Or we will call the police.’
In the cauliflower field, Wills was wishing he hadn’t asked Sal what Soays actually look like. Small and brown would have been fine for him. But not for Sal.
‘Ordinary Soays,’ she was saying now, ‘are very tough, of course, living in the coldest places, but the important thing is their ancientness, the fact that they could be called the ancestors of us all, and are therefore mentioned in many verses of the Songs of the Fleece . . .’
Behind her back, Links and Oxo were pulling faces at Wills, trying to make him giggle.
‘Are you listening to me, Wills?’ said Sal. ‘What good are your human tricks, reading and things like that, if you know nothing about the roots of our sheepliness?’ She sighed. ‘When we’ve completed our mission and got back to Eppingham, I shall have to take you in hoof. A few hours’ tuition every day.’
Links and Oxo snorted with laughter and looked away quickly in case they got a lecture as well.
Sal went back to her supper but Wills wandered uneasily over to the hedge. If they didn’t move on soon, he thought, someone in one of the passing cars would spot them and they would be taken back before their quest had properly begun. They couldn’t risk that. Not if Lambad the Bad was already out there in the darkness, hunting down the Baaton. Wills shivered.
*
In the farmhouse kitchen, Gran had finally warmed up.
‘I suppose we’re back to UFOs,’ she said with a sigh. ‘And you can’t frighten them with a broom handle.’
Tod put four teabags in her mug and while they were brewing he wrote a notice for the village shop window.
MISSING
(POSSIBLY ABDUCTED BY ALIENS)
IDA WHITE’S RARE BREED SHEEP:
• ONE SOUTHDOWN. FAT. CREAMY FLEECE
The Quest of the Warrior Sheep Page 2