Radio Boy and the Revenge of Grandad

by Christian O'Connell

  ‘Why on earth not? That grumpy mad old woman has stolen my cat,’ said Artie. It was hard to argue with him.

  ‘Then they will go round to the house, she will deny she has him like she did last night and they say what? “Well, Mrs Birchem, actually we were spying on you, first with an intergalactic telescope and then with Army-issue binoculars, and we know Mr Bun Face is inside”? She’d just shut the door and call the police.’

  ‘Well, what do we do, then?’ Artie demanded. Silence descended on the shed. Broken by the very loud music coming from within my house. It sounded as if an entire salsa band was in my bedroom. It was Grandad Ray, of course. The band may have been in that huge quiff of his.

  ‘It’s just Grandad Ray … carry on,’ I said.

  ‘This is a time for cool heads and calm thinking,’ said Holly. ‘I know what we do; gather round.’

  So we did, as Holly drew a map of Mrs Birchem’s house, Artie’s house and the nearby park. A very detailed map.

  She took us through the plan.

  ‘I’m not doing that bit,’ said Artie.

  ‘You don’t need to, I will,’ said Holly. ‘We do this tomorrow at sixteen-hundred hours.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Military time – 4pm to you civilians,’ she said jokingly. I think she was joking.

  We went our separate ways, as per Holly’s plan, Artie and Holly back home and me back into the madhouse. Grandad Ray was holding court in the kitchen to a fed-up-looking Mum and Dad.

  ‘Well, the ladies said I was a natural at radio. I couldn’t argue – at least someone in the family is, eh?’ said Grandad Ray as he laughed into my face, nudging me in the ribs at the same time.

  ‘I’m heading up to bed, big day tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Good show?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Yeah, full on,’ I replied, cagily. I didn’t want to get high-pitched now and give the game away.

  After kissing Mum and Dad goodnight, I sped upstairs and into Grandad Ray’s room/my bedroom, and took out the recording device I’d hidden in there earlier to capture his first show. I quickly hid the recorder until I had more time to listen back to how the world’s worst DJ and grandad had got on.

  School carried on unremarkably the next day. The school had let Artie put up some ‘missing’ posters for his cat. Whenever I see those missing cat and dog posters on lamp posts, I always think they should consider putting some lower down, at cat and dog height. Just so they can see them too. A dog might recognise the photo and think, ‘Oh, I saw that guy down the park earlier’. Also, the posters stay up for ages and ages. We never get to hear whether they are actually found. Are they still missing? Might be nice to put a new one up saying: ‘FOUND! TURNS OUT MR CUDDLES WAS ASLEEP IN THE SHED. HA! CATS, EH?’

  Anyway. The three of us met up straight after school by the top gate. Ready to free Mr Bun Face from his old-lady cat-prison. Holly went over the plan.

  ‘I’m still not doing that bit,’ said Artie.

  ‘We know!’ said Holly and I.

  We headed off towards Artie’s house, then I went one way and Artie and Holly the other. The plan was that I would knock on Mrs Birchem’s front door and ask her about Mr Bun Face, saying how I was helping Artie look for his cat and generally keep her talking. Holly would make her way from the park at the back of Mrs Birchem’s house, to her back door. She would then open the back door (hopefully it would be unlocked) as a cat escape route and place a walkie-talkie just outside. Artie would lovingly call for Mr Bun Face into his walkie-talkie and, once he was safely out of the house, they would grab him and run for home!

  At home would be his favourite meal ready in his bowl for him. Canned tuna. Yuck.

  As I approached Mrs Birchem’s house, my walkie-talkie buzzed with ‘Eagle One and Two in the nest’. That was Holly’s code for when they were in position. She was Eagle One, Artie Eagle Two. I was Eagle nothing. Great.

  I buzzed back: ‘Eagle nothing heading to the bad place.’ ‘Bad place’ was code for Mrs Birchem’s.

  I made my way down the overgrown path and knocked on the door. After a short while the door opened and what greeted me was the face of a terrifying cat-napper. I had never seen such evil before in my young life. The old woman was wearing huge thick glasses, so big they made her eyes appear twice the size of her head. She had a small puckered mouth and was holding a knitting needle in her hand.

  I smiled meekly while in my head I thought, Please don’t kill me with a knitting needle and then cut up my body and feed it to Mr Bun Face or Mr Pickles as you now know him, you crazy cat-napper.

  ‘Oh, hi, Mrs Birchem. I hope you can spare me a moment. It’s very sad,’ I said and pretended to start crying.

  ‘What is up?’ snapped a very raspy-sounding Mrs Birchem, who had the kind of croaky voice you hear in TV adverts with old people warning you not to smoke like them.

  As I repeated the script agreed with Holly, round at the back of the house the rescue mission kicked in. Artie and Holly told me what happened later.

  Artie’s version: Holly pushed through a thick hedge and into Mrs Birchem’s garden. She ran in some odd bent-over fashion to the back door.

  Holly’s version: At approximately sixteen hundred hours I made my way through the perimeter hedge that separated the park and the suspect’s property. Adopting a low crouch position to blend in with the natural terrain, I approached the south-facing back door.

  Artie’s version: Holly opened the back door and did something inside, came back out smiling, then put the walkie-talkie by the door.

  Holly’s version: I checked the back door and fortunately it was unlocked, so I made my way into the kitchen and placed a single iced bun on the table. A sign to the suspect we had been there, but nothing she could really prove. A sign and a warning. Leave Mr Bun Face alone or we’ll be back.

  Artie’s version: I yelled, ‘MR BUN FACE … HERE MISTER MISTER BUNNY FACE’ into my walkie-talkie. My heart burst when he came running out. Running because he loved me, and missed his daddy so much.

  Holly’s version: The cat came running out because Artie had a plate with three entire cans of tuna on it. I picked up the walkie-talkie, closed the back door and retreated to the RV.

  RV is apparently code for ‘rendezvous point’ – or meeting place, to us ‘civilians’.

  In other words, my shed. Artie took Mr Bun Face home and Holly came back to the shed to brief me on what had happened.

  ‘You never said anything about leaving the bun!’ I said.

  ‘It’s an old army tactic. Mind games. Spooks the enemy. During the night soldiers would sneak behind enemy lines and leave a message like ‘We were here’ and do nothing else. The enemy would wake up and get freaked out,’ she explained. I made a mental note to never, ever make an enemy of Holly.

  ‘Well, the cat’s back so that’s all good. Mission accomplished. Great teamwork. And thanks to caller Ted.’ I was overjoyed. The Secret Shed Show had come to the rescue.

  Then my phone rang and I saw it was Artie. Must be calling to thank his good buddy for doing this.

  ‘Great to be reunited with Bun Face?’ I said.

  ‘We got the wrong cat!’ said a shocked Artie.

  ‘WHAT!’ I yelled.

  ‘Mr Bun Face has just walked back in. This other cat, the one we took, has three white paws and a bandage over his other paw! We have stolen that poor woman’s cat.’

  And left her a bun, I thought.

  ‘We have to put it back,’ I said.

  ‘Well, obviously!’ said Artie. ‘But how? Luckily my parents aren’t back yet from the bakery so they haven’t seen that we are now the proud owners of two cats. What on earth are we going to do?’

  I could hear munching noises in the background at his end. He would be eating his way through some cakes, I imagined, with the stress of all this. Either that or it was the new cat enjoying its tuna.

  ‘I’ll ask Holly,’ I said. We chatted and another plan was hatched. This one involved putting the
stolen – or as I preferred to put it, ‘borrowed’ – cat back.

  I took Artie through it and told him to try not to worry, we were on our way over. It wasn’t too late and not dark yet, so I told Mum we were doing some revision round at Artie’s. Holly and I arrived quickly at Gateaux Chateau – Artie’s mansion – and were greeted by a sweating, shaking mess of a person. Holly tried to calm Artie down by grabbing both of his shoulders, staring deep into his eyes and saying calmly, ‘It’s g-o-i-n-g to be OK.’

  We found Artie’s cat-carrier/portable cat prison and gently got the stolen – no, borrowed – cat into it. He looked like he was doing time in there. All that was missing were some tattoos and an orange jumpsuit.

  We placed Artie’s dad’s huge skiing jacket over the cat prison and I carried it, hidden by the jacket, over to Mrs Birchem’s house. I made my way down the overgrown path once more, this time with her cat hidden under a jacket. Nothing crazy about any of this. I remembered how I’d promised Mum and Dad I’d stay out of trouble with my radio show, so this needed to work.

  Holly and Artie were behind me as I knocked on the door. Mrs Birchem, a truly scary-looking woman, opened it.

  ‘Hello, you again,’ she said flatly, eyeing me, then Artie and Holly, and I could’ve sworn she smiled slightly. Her puckered mouth moved maybe 0.1 millimetres.

  ‘Yes, sorry, our football has gone into your garden – mind if we have a look for it?’ I said in a very innocent way that I hoped would not translate as ‘I’m very guilty of a grievous cat crime and I’m hiding your stolen cat under here.’

  ‘Why don’t you come on in, then?’ she said in a rather sinister way. We followed her through the house. Something wasn’t right. I could just sense it.

  Holly could clearly smell a rat too, as she nudged me and nodded her head. We arrived in the old woman’s small kitchen, where a cat bed lay empty, with used cans of cat food everywhere. The place stank. The sooner we got out of here, the better.

  ‘Why don’t you all sit down?’ she said, as she sat down at the kitchen table. A ball of wool and two knitting needles were in front of her. ‘I can make you three a nice glass of orange squash or perhaps a tuna sandwich?’

  ‘Oh no, thank you, Mrs Birchem, we have to be going now … once we’ve … er … found the football …’ I said quickly.

  She didn’t answer and it felt like minutes passed in silence. You could have heard a knitting needle drop. Which it did at one point, clanging on the kitchen floor, sticky with cat food and dust.

  ‘I know you have my cat there,’ she said finally, without even looking at us. She picked up the remaining oversized knitting needle and pointed it threateningly at the bulging ski jacket I was holding.

  Nothing. No one said a word. Artie’s stomach responded by gurgling in fear. It spoke for all of us.

  ‘I can explain,’ I said nervously.

  ‘You thought I had stolen your precious Mr Bun Nose cat, didn’t you, Artie Barker? So you got your friends to rescue it. Very clever. Very bad idea, though. Messing with me and my darling, darling Mr Pickles. How could you think my beautiful Mr Pickles was your ugly fat cake-faced cat?’

  ‘He’s not cake-faced! He’s just big-boned,’ protested Artie. Mrs Birchem was right, though, Artie’s cat looked like there were three other cats in it.

  ‘Whatever you say, dear. I was so upset I called my son. He’s a good boy and loves his mummy so he came over here right away. My nice neighbour saw him and told him she’d seen a scrawny red-haired girl and you, Artie, in my back garden. He’s a smart man, my son, and luckily he heard your dreadful radio show. He worked out what you’d done.’

  My eyes had wandered to a faded framed photo on the kitchen sideboard of Mrs Birchem and what I guessed was her son. At first glance it looked like she was posing next to some kind of poor deformed freak at a circus. My eyes couldn’t stop being drawn to the horror of this monstrosity.

  Then it hit me. My blood turned to ice when I finally recognised who the man-thing was.

  Who her son was.

  ‘Would you like to meet my son, you three? He’s here now.’

  The kitchen door creaked appropriately as it opened and a foul-breathed man strode in with a crazed look of satisfaction on his face.

  ‘Meet my son, children,’ said Mrs Birchem.

  And we all looked into the manic, angry face of our evil headmaster. Mr Harris.

  ‘Well, well, this is nice. If it isn’t my three most favouritest pupils in the whole wide world,’ said a very pleased-with-himself Fish Face. He stood next to his bug-eyed, psycho mum. What a gruesome twosome they were.

  ‘Mrs Birchem?’ said Artie, still trying to put it all together.

  ‘Yes, I went back to my maiden name after my husband left me,’ she said. ‘But my son has always been loyal. My wonder-boy Kenneth here.’

  That monster, a wonder-boy? And Kenneth?!

  ‘What shall we do with them, Mother? De-cisions de-cisions,’ said Fish Face slowly. He was really enjoying himself. I’d never seen him look so happy.

  Then, just when I thought this situation couldn’t get any worse, in came Martin Harris. Naturally. Wherever his dad was, so was his faithful gormless henchman. Henchboy. Three generations of mutants.

  ‘What’s up, losers?’ he leered at us. Psycho Nan ruffled his hair playfully. A family of monsters.

  ‘I mean, I should really call your parents, and the police, to report what you did to my poor old mumsy,’ said Mr Harris, still rubbing his chin and thinking. ‘Oh, you’d be in some very serious trouble, and it all started with that waste-of-space radio show, yet again. I’m guessing Mum and Dad wouldn’t be too happy, would they, Spike?’ He grinned so hard I thought his face was going to crack.

  Martin Harris let out a fake laugh that sounded like an old car trying to start on a cold morning. ‘Huh … huh … huh …’ Maybe he hadn’t learned laughter yet.

  Mr Harris continued to smile, obviously modelling himself on those pet sharks of his. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to do that. In fact, I think I’m going to make you an offer.’

  ‘What kind of offer?’ said Holly. She seemed to be unfazed by all of this. Must be that army training – How Not to Be Intimidated by the Enemy. She bent down and fumbled with her shoe and came back up. Now was surely not the time for worrying about shoe-laces?

  ‘I could do … nothing,’ said Mr Harris. ‘I could say nothing. All of this – you stealing my mother’s cat – would be our little … secret. Sounds good, right?’ he said.

  Yep, too good. Where’s the catch?

  ‘What?’ said Martin. ‘But they have to pay.’

  Mr Harris sighed. ‘Patience, Martin,’ he said. He turned to us. ‘You just have to do one little, teensy-weensy little thing in return for my very very kind offer,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked dejectedly. Bracing myself for what was about to come.

  ‘You do not enter the Radio Star competition.’

  ‘WHAT?’ I said.

  ‘Merit Radio will enter Radio Star; you won’t. Leaving the way open for me to win. Proving, once and for all, my glorious radio show is the best,’ he said. He stared directly at me. A sly grin on his face. ‘People will come from far and wide to visit the school and ask to meet the obviously brilliant man who runs such a superb institution and its amazing radio show. They will probably erect a statue of me to commemorate my leadership.’

  His mouth was almost frothing with excitement at his clever plotting.

  This was blackmail.

  I couldn’t say anything. I was dumbstruck.

  ‘Sleep on it, eh,’ said Mr Harris. ‘Then let me know tomorrow. We’ll meet in my office before class.’

  ‘Would anyone like any cake?’ asked Mrs Birchem, bug-eyed mother of a foul and fishy son, holding up a very sharp cake knife.

  Get me out of here. This had turned into an X-rated horror movie.

  None of us said anything. We just stared at her. Who could eat cake at a moment like t
his?

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Harris after a while, putting a restraining hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘We have to be going now, son. Enough fun and games for one night.’ He turned to us. ‘Now if you could just let my poor terrified mother have her cat back,’ asked Fish Face. All this while his witch of a mum cut him a slice of cake, probably made from her most recent dead husband’s body. Get me out of here! Silently, I handed over the cat prison.

  No one said anything as we backed out of the kitchen.

  We made our way out of the den of death and, once safely outside, we quickly walked away. All this over that flipping cat of Artie’s, Mr Bun Face.

  ‘What are we going to do NOW?’ cried Artie.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. Mr Harris had finally won. I didn’t have any choice. Ignore him and he would tell my parents – and he was right, they would go berserk. After everything that had happened last time, and now this. They would end the show.

  I couldn’t enter Radio Star, but it was everything I’d ever wanted. To be trained by the legendary Howard ‘The Howie’ Wright. Now I was going to have to sit back and hear someone else – someone evil – win my dream.

  This was the worst moment of my life.

  I was about to cry.

  But Holly, strangely, looked quite cheerful. She patted Artie on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, I have something up my sleeve. Or my trouser leg, more like.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘This was my whole idea, Spike – rescuing the cat and going to Mrs Birchem’s house, so it’s my mess to fix. Go home, I’ve got this.’ And with that she skipped off towards her house.

  Me and Artie looked at each other. ‘What’s she up to now?’ I pondered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Artie. ‘But if anyone can take on Fish Face, it’s her.’

  ‘How was your day, my angel?’ said Mum when I got back home. She had successfully cornered me as I walked in through the front door of Number 27 Crow Crescent. For once I was grateful for one of her overly strong bear hugs. I felt myself breathe out for the first time in hours. In that little moment, I felt safe.