bread and stuff. Badger’s just leaving, when Mr Rhydd asks him, “What about your Pedigree Chum for your dogs, Mr Harris?” Badger just says, “My boys’re on a diet, Mr Rhydd.” Dead evil, like that. “My boys’re on a diet.” Then when he’s gone, Kelly overhears Mr Rhydd telling Pete Redmarley’s old biddy that Badger hadn’t bought his usual cans of Pedigree Chum for three weeks.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said, not quite getting it.
‘Yer don’t need to be Brain of Britain to work out what Badger’s Dobermanns was eating for those three weeks, right?’
‘What?’
‘Badger was feeding his dogs the missing kid!’
‘Jesus,’ I actually shivered, ‘Christ.’
‘So if all Badger did was put the shits up yer,’ Moran slapped my shoulder, ‘yer got off lightly.’
A farty ditch’d flooded the bridlepath and we both took a running jump. My superior athletic powers got me over. Moran soaked one foot up to his ankle.
‘So where were you on yer way to, then, Jace?’
(Hangman blocked ‘Nowhere’.) ‘Just out. For a doss.’
Moran’s trainer squished. ‘Must be heading somewhere.’
‘Well,’ I confessed, ‘I’ve heard the bridlepath might lead to a tunnel, through the Malverns. Thought I might go and take a butcher’s.’
‘The tunnel?’ Moran stopped and sort of slapped my arm in disbelief. ‘That’s where I’m going!’
‘What happened to staying with your nan in White Leaved Oak?’
‘I’m going there by rediscovering the lost tunnel, see? The one the Romans built to invade Hereford.’
‘Romans? Tunnels?’
‘How else could they kick out the blinkin’ Vikings? Done my research, I have, see. Got a torch and a roll of string, and everything. Three tunnels go through the Malverns. One’s the British Rail one for the train to Hereford. It’s haunted by an engineer in orange overalls with a black stripe where the train ran over him. The second tunnel’s a Ministry of Defence tunnel.’
‘A what?’
‘A tunnel the Ministry of Defence dug for a nuclear bomb shelter. The entrance is in the garden centre at Woolworths in Great Malvern. Gospel. One of the garden centre walls is a fake wall what hides a vault door, like in a bank. When the four-minute warning goes off, the Ministry of Defence lot at the RSRE’ll be ferried up to Woolies by the military police. Councillors from Malvern Council’ll be allowed in, so will Woolworths’ manager and assistant manager. Then the military police – who’ve kept out all the panicking shoppers with their guns – they’ll be allowed in. They’ll grab one or two of the prettier shop assistants for breeding. Which rules my sister out, don’t it? Then that door’ll close and all of us’ll get blown to Kingdom Come.’
‘Kelly didn’t tell you all this, did she?’
‘Nah, the bloke my dad buys horse shit off of for the garden, his mate’s the barman at the RSRE.’
It must be true then. ‘Jesus.’
In a drift of khaki pine needles I saw antlers, like Herne the Hunter’s. But it was only a branch. ‘S’pose we may as well join forces,’ I said. ‘Hunting the third tunnel. The lost one.’
‘But,’ Moran kicked a pine cone but missed, ‘who’ll do the interview with the Malvern Gazetteer?’
I booted a pine cone way up the gloomy path. ‘Both of us.’
Run across a field of daisies at warp speed but keep your eyes on the ground. It’s ace. Petalled stars and dandelion comets streak the green universe. Moran and I got to the barn at the far side, dizzy with intergalactic travel. I was laughing more than Moran ’cause Moran’s dry trainer wasn’t dry any more, it was glistening in cow shit. Bales of straw made a ramp up to the griddly barn roof, so up we climbed. The cockerel tree you can see from my bedroom wasn’t running left to right now, it was running right to left. ‘Skill place for a machine-gun nest, this barn,’ I said, displaying my military expertise.
Moran squidged off his shitty trainer and lay back.
I lay back, too. The rusty iron was warm as a hotty.
‘This is the life,’ sighed Moran, after a bit.
‘You can say that again,’ I said, after a bit.
‘This is the life,’ said Moran, straight off.
I knew he would. ‘That’s so original.’
Sheep and lambs were bleating, fields behind us.
A tractor was chuntering, fields ahead.
‘Does your old man ever get pissed?’ Moran asked.
If I said yes I’d be lying, but if I said no it’d look gay. ‘He has a drink or two, when my Uncle Brian visits.’
‘Not a drink or two. I mean does he get so fucking plastered he…he can hardly speak?’