Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 21

Chapter 21
Attack Of The White Van Man

“OOGAH!”

The tarmac hit Ant like a black oily hammer. Despite the ropes, he managed to roll, but the gravel still grated slivers of skin from off his arm and side.

Cleo was worse off. She hadn’t rolled. She was lying motionless on the white line, moaning gently.

Suddenly, she sat up on her skinned knees and yelled into the fog at the receding lights of what might look, to a casual onlooker, like a moving car.

“CURSE YOU, RICHARD TURPIN!”

The Moving Car’s lights veered upward sharply, as if it were accelerating up a hill of impossible steepness, then faded into the mist. Small bolts of tame lightning still fizzled through the grass.

“CLEO!” yelled Ant. “LOOK OUT!”

He yanked Cleo off the highway just before a real set of car headlights steamed straight through the space where she’d been sitting ranting at Mr. Turpin. The lights were accompanied by a blare from the horn, and an enraged look from the driver of the car, a big black man with a beard birds might nest in.

“Mr. Turpin set us down as gently as he could”, said Ant, “considering we had to look as if we hadn’t been set down gently. We had to look as if we’d jumped out of a moving car rather than stepped out of a flying saucer.”

“Mr. Turpin takes vicious pleasure in the pain and suffering of others”, complained Cleo. “Unlike that nice Commodore Drummond. He’s quite good-looking for a gentleman of a certain age, you know.”

The car had screeched to a halt a few hundred yards further on. Ant suspected the driver of the car was about to give himself and Cleo a Bloody Good Piece Of His Mind.

“Cleo, the Commodore hasn’t got any legs.”

“He doesn’t need legs in space. Though Mr. Turpin’s better-looking, I think.”

Ant was amazed. “You think Mr. Turpin is good-looking?”

“Oh, yes. He’s an absolute studmuffin. Such a waste.” Cleo began working her way backwards across the grass towards a stile leading off the road into the country park. Once she was at the stile, she pushed and wriggled herself upright.

Ant paused to think a minute.

“Wait a minute.” Ant’s mental processes clanked into action at lightning speed. “You fancy him.”

“I do not. In any case, you fancy Lieutenant Farthing.”

Ant was outraged. “Do not!”

“Do!”

The door of the car banged shut. Well-heeled shoes crunched on asphalt.

“I think”, said Ant, “that it might be a good idea to not be here.”

Cleo struggled up onto the top bar of the stile and wiggled her bottom towards Ant. “Well, reach around and untie my wrists, then.”

Ant moved closer and worked himself upright next to her. “It might be better if we went a bit further into the woods and did it there. That big black guy looked a nasty customer.”

“Just because he’s black”, said Cleo, “doesn’t mean he’s violent.” Luckily, he didn’t actually seem to be coming their way. Ant could see his silhouette through the fog. He was unrolling a piece of paper from a cardboard tube, and seemed to be sticking it up inside a telephone box Ant could dimly see further down the road. Maybe, Ant thought, he was a manager advertising a band.

“Hold still”, said Ant. “There; I think that’s done it.”

“Result!” Cleo skipped away, rubbing her wrists. “Ooooh, that does feel good.”

Ant waddled up onto the stile and presented his wrists. “Well, don’t just stand there, numbnuts, come back here and do me.”

“Never insult anyone”, Cleo said, “when you’ve both hands tied behind your back and your back to them.”

“Just because you’re black”, reminded Ant, “doesn’t mean you’re violent.”

“Don’t you believe it, honey boy - hang on.” Cleo’s voice fell quiet.

“Don’t tell me”, said Ant. “There’s dog dirt on the top of the stile. There is, isn’t there?” His face went almost wistful. “Sweet dog dirt of planet Earth, how I have missed you -”

Cleo grabbed Ant’s shoulder and span him round.

The stile was plastered with Ant and Cleo’s faces.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? shrieked a poster in huge red letters. Underneath it was a recent picture of Cleo smiling beautifully and accepting a Prize for Achievement in full school uniform. Underneath this, in handwritten letters, were the words AND THIS BOY??? and a blurry photo of Ant, looking very young, grinning weirdly with a bright red face and his hair sticking straight up in the air as if he’d been electrified.

“You look like a cretin”, said Cleo.

“I was upside down on a climbing frame at the time”, explained Ant. “That’s funny. Mum took that picture years ago. Dad burned all of his photos when Mum left.”

100 THOUSAND POUND REWARD!!!! screamed the poster; and underneath, had a third picture of a combed-haired hippy wearing a morning suit, smiling at the camera.

“Ohhh dear”, said Ant. “Cleo, we have to get home straight away.”

“I’m not arguing”, said Cleo, “but why?”

Ant pointed at the sentence underneath the picture, which said:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? HE IS THOUGHT TO BE INVOLVED WITH THEIR DISAPPEARANCE!

Cleo squinted at the photo. “Is that man Special Operations? I don’t recognize him.”

“That’s my dad, Cleo. That’s his wedding photo, minus my mum. See the tear where the photo's been ripped in half? Only my mum keeps photos like this. My mum’s behind all of this, I know she is.”

“I hope”, said Cleo, “that your dad’s not been arrested.” She undid Ant’s hands while he sat on the stile reading about himself.

Underneath the poster on the stile, printed on poor quality paper that had wrinkled in the rain, was a second, smaller sticker which said:

DID YOU SEE 7 OR 8 LARGE BLACK VAN’S FILLE’D WITH ARME’D MASKE’D CHILE’D ABDUCTERS ON THE M1 SOUTHBOUND BETWEEN JCTNS. 15 & 16 ON SEPTEMBER 3? IF YES, RING DAVE ON THIS NUMBER: 07714 012352.

“No”, said Ant. “Purely on the basis of spelling and grammar, I think my Dad’s still very much at large.” He looked up the road where a telephone box marked the beginning of a village. “We could call him from here, if he’ll accept the charges.” He thought about this a second, then clapped Cleo on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s try it anyway.”

Cleo grabbed Ant by the arm. “No, Ant, I don’t think so.”

Ant stared at her in amazement. “Why not?”

“Look at the sticker carefully.”

Ant peered at it.

“Someone’s put another sticker over the telephone number.”

Cleo nodded. “Someone who wanted us to ring the wrong number. Someone who wanted anyone who saw any big black vans to ring the wrong number.” She mouthed the words at Ant: Special Operations.

Ant gulped, just at the moment that a hand slammed down on the stile near Ant’s own.

“GOOD MORNING”, said the man on the end of the hand. He was very big. His hand looked like a pork chop someone had carved into the shape of fingers. He was cheerful enough, or at any rate, he was smiling. He was standing on the path into the country park on the other side of the stile, and was wearing a Gore-Tex parka and a pair of walking boots. He was also wearing his socks outside his trousers. Ant wondered if he knew.

“YOU LOOK A LONG WAY FROM HOME”, said the man. “WOULD YOU LIKE A LIFT?”

Ant looked in the direction of the telephone box, and the village. The first house was inside spitting distance. He turned back to the man.

“How”, said Ant, “do you know we’re a long way from home?”

“OH, BUT YOU DEFINITELY LOOK A LITTLE LOST”, said the man, grinning.

“Why do you have one hand behind your back?” said Cleo.

The man continued to smile broadly and climb over the stile. He was having to do this slowly, as he had one hand behind his back.

“Run”, said Cleo.

Ant turned to run - and ran straight into the chest of another very large man.

“Grnk”, said Ant, and collapsed onto all fours, holding his nose, which was weeping blood.

“Hey, careful with the head butts, big guy”, said the man, who was holding a cardboard tube, and called out to the man on the stile, “I’M SORRY, MATE, I DIDN’T SEE HIM -“

- and here the man’s voice tailed off, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing, and he said:

“- Anthony?”

Then he looked past Ant, and said:

“...Cleo?”

Ant’s vision unblurred enough for him to look up and see that the man he’d headbutted was big, black, and, if a couple of feet and a beard was taken off him, not unlike Cleo.

Cleo’s dad looked past Cleo towards the man in the Gore-Tex parka. “HEY! HEY, YOU! I WANT A WORD WITH YOU! OI!”

But the man had already turned tail, and was running towards a large, unmarked white van that had swept out of the fog behind them. The van slowed down for just long enough for him to clamber into its passenger door.

Behind Cleo's dad, another face was emerging from the mist - a greasy mop of greying hair underneath a tatty woollen hat and scarf that both said ARSENAL.

"Who's that, Len? Are you okay? I could have sworn you said - ANT! CLEO!"

Cleo forced a smile.

“Er - hi Dad”, she said. “Uh, I am - we are - really, really really pleased to see you.”

© Dominic Green 2008