S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B. (15 page)

‘If you say so,’ the teacher said wearily. ‘All right, Armstrong and Bond, come in and join the rest of the year group – and for heaven’s sake don’t get lost
again.’

‘No, Miss,’ the boys mumbled as they entered the gallery.

The teacher rolled her eyes at the man. ‘Kids!’ she exclaimed.

Apart from the throng of schoolchildren sprawled across the room, a handful of adults were scattered around the gallery, studying the collection of paintings, sketches and
cartoons that filled every available inch of wall space.

Archie and Barney positioned themselves at the far end of the school group, frowning appreciatively at the pictures on display as they tried to discreetly assess everyone else in the room.

Perusing one wall was a smartly dressed elderly couple. Further along a young couple, wearing denim jackets and carrying motorbike helmets, were admiring a portrayal of David Beckham as a saint,
complete with gold-leaf halo.

Three people were looking at the display on the opposite wall. Judging by his posture and size, one was a teenager with the hood of his grey sweatshirt covering his head. Next to him stood a
young man with a ponytail and straggly beard, the sleeves of his orange fleece pushed up to show his strong sinewy arms. The third character wore a black leather trench coat belted tightly round
his impossibly small waist, the collar turned up to meet the baseball cap on his head. He was clutching a polythene bag in one hand and holding a chocolate bar in the other.

‘Man, I’m starving,’ Barney groaned.

‘Let’s try and concentrate on the mission,’ Archie whispered. ‘We’ve got about thirty seconds.’

‘Well, I’m not sure who the target is,’ Barney replied, ‘but that couple in denim look well dodgy. I mean, you have to ask yourself what they’re doing carrying
those helmets.’

‘It’s a long shot but maybe they came on a motorbike,’ Archie whispered. ‘Like the one parked outside?’

Barney glanced through the window and saw a petrol blue Yamaha 950 tourer standing next to the kerb. ‘Boy, they’re good,’ he whispered knowingly. ‘The fox is going to
stalk the ugly ducklings and see if they’re really swans.’

‘Right-oh,’ said Archie. He watched Barney cross the gallery and stand unnaturally close to the female biker.

Sensing his presence, she turned and asked sharply, ‘Kann ich ihnen helfen?’

Cheeks glowing, Barney smiled innocently and said, ‘Na, ich just looken aus die picturos.’ As the couple edged away from him Barney turned and gave Archie a furtive thumbs up.

‘Way to keep a low profile, Barney,’ Archie muttered to himself. Turning to take in his surroundings, he felt a strange sense of unease creeping up his spine. Something wasn’t
right, but he couldn’t for the life of him pinpoint exactly what it was. It was as if he was looking at a photograph that was slightly out of focus.

Once again he studied each person in the room, his stomach tightening with the growing feeling that he was missing something obvious.

‘The bag!’ Archie said aloud as the blurred picture pulled into focus.

The plastic bag carried by the skinny figure in the leather trench coat bore some nondescript green writing. The words were all creased up because he was clutching the bag by its neck but in a
flash Archie had just realised that the scrunched-up letters spelled the words Bure Stores – the name of the newsagent less than a mile from his father’s house. The brightness of the
bag’s coloured lettering suggested it had probably been pulled off the roll at the checkout within the last seven days. What were the chances of this man having been to Archie’s local
shop less than a week ago? Either it was a pretty unbelievable coincidence, or he was looking at the person who’d run his father’s car off the road a couple of days ago. Archie
didn’t believe in coincidences.

His heart racing, he spun on his heel and saw instantly that his suspicions were correct.

‘Barney!’ he yelled. ‘Look!’

Barney turned and followed his friend’s pointing finger towards the front of the gallery. The figure in the grey hoody was holding the door open while the skinny guy in the black trench
coat was backing out on to the street. And he was dragging the bearded man in the orange fleece with him!

No one else had noticed what was happening. Realising he was the only one who could stop the kidnap, Archie rushed for the door. Immediately Barney followed but he was still at least fifteen
metres away.

Nimbly Archie sidestepped a teacher and weaved between two pupils. But then he was engulfed by a group of schoolkids.

All he could do was watch as the skinny man abducted the target. One exceptionally long leather-clad arm was clamped around the bearded man’s chest, the other over his mouth to stifle his
protests. The figure in the hoody followed them through the door, which slammed shut behind them.

‘They’ve got him!’ Archie despaired as he broke through the crowd. ‘Right from under our noses.’

‘Why didn’t anyone stop them?’ Barney gasped.

Archie nodded to the two bikers who were facing the door, smiling and clapping politely. ‘They think it was some kind of show, like a play or something.’

‘Oh yeah, that famous play
Man Kidnapped from Gallery
.’ Barney sighed. ‘We need to call this in to IC.’

Archie looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Or . . . we could go after them ourselves,’ he suggested. ‘Come on!’

Archie pelted across the tiled floor, yanked open the gallery door and rushed out on to the pavement where the two kidnappers were manhandling the bearded man along the street.
The victim was bucking and thrusting furiously but the man in the trench coat had a vice-like grip on his torso. The hooded youth was holding the man’s ankles together and wrapping duct tape
around them. The victim’s wrists were also bound tightly with tape.

As Archie started running towards the car he heard Barney exiting the gallery behind him.

‘Do not engage,’ Barney wheezed. ‘I repeat, do not engage.’

But Archie was sure the kidnappers were the same people who had run his father off the road and he had only one thing on his mind as he sprinted along the pavement.

‘Stand down, Agent Yankee,’ Barney puffed half-heartedly, before throwing his hands up in despair and joining the chase.

When Archie reached the kidnappers they were bundling their victim into the back seat of a BMW parked fifty yards from the gallery.

‘Let him go!’ he shouted, grabbing the hooded youth’s arm and pulling him off his captive’s legs.

The figure turned and squared up to Archie, who intuitively dropped to a crouch and jabbed his right fist into his opponent’s stomach, doubling him over. Immediately Archie swung his leg
in a horizontal arc along the ground, sweeping the kidnapper’s feet from under him and knocking him flat on to his back.

Watching from a distance, Barney’s mouth fell open. ‘Where
did
he learn to kick butt like that?’

Leaping over his prostrate adversary, Archie threw himself at the other kidnapper from behind, clinging to his black leather coat like a wildcat attacking an antelope. The man’s shoulders
felt eerily wiry under Archie’s grip. Ignoring the boy grappling with him he concentrated on bundling the bearded man into the BMW before closing and locking the door. Only then did he stand
upright, lifting Archie’s feet a metre off the ground. With a small but powerful flick of his shoulders he swung Archie off his back, grabbing one wrist and one ankle as the boy tumbled
towards the pavement.

Barney watched in horror as the tall skinny figure swung his friend back and forth a couple of times before effortlessly tossing him away as if he were no heavier than a sack of rubbish.
Archie’s arms and legs flailed helplessly as he sailed into the air before coming down hard on the pavement about twenty feet away, grunting loudly as the impact punched the wind out of his
lungs.

‘Hey!’ Barney yelled, rushing to help Archie to his feet.

The tall skinny man strode towards Barney with a jerky gait, as if he was walking on stilts. By now the youth in the hoody had recovered from Archie’s attack and he too approached the
boys, walking with a teenage hip-hop limp.

Archie and Barney stood shoulder to shoulder, considering the double trouble closing in on them.

‘I don’t like the look of the tall guy,’ muttered Barney. ‘His head’s way too small and his legs have got too many joints.’

‘And he’s freakishly strong,’ added Archie. ‘Not to mention creepily wiry.’

As Archie spoke the teenager’s hood slipped back, revealing a wide, flat head that appeared to be covered in rotting scales. His bulbous eyes stared unblinking from either side of his
skull while his fat-lipped mouth opened rhythmically into a perfect circle.

‘As for him,’ said Archie, his pulse racing out of control, ‘there’s definitely something fishy about that guy.’

The two muggers stalked towards the boys.

Archie raised his hands in readiness, while bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. ‘Come on then, Fishface.’

‘Yeah, come on then, Stickman,’ goaded Barney, but with much less conviction.

Nobody moved for a moment then suddenly the fish-like boy rushed Archie, throwing a barrage of punches.

Archie responded without thinking, springing backwards to keep some distance from his attacker. His arms were no more than a blur as he reacted to the flurry of punches coming at him,
frantically thrashing his hands in front of his face. Only when there was a lull in his attacker’s advance did Archie realise that he hadn’t been struck once.

Driven by sudden confidence, Archie rallied with an onslaught of his own. As if his arms were being controlled by some unseen ninja he threw three, four, five stiff, straight blows that
connected with his opponent’s body, driving him backwards across the pavement. When the fishy kid attempted his own counter-attack, Archie stood his ground, allowing the mugger to come within
striking range before retaliating. Planting his left foot, he leaned back then fired out his right leg like a piston that drove into his enemy’s solar plexus, leaving him curled up on the
ground, gasping for breath.

‘Where did that come from?’ Barney asked, his eyes bulging with amazement.

‘I’ve no idea!’ Archie laughed, staring at his own hands as if he’d never seen them before. ‘I just relaxed, I suppose. Let my instincts guide me – just like
my dad told me to do.’ To underline his newfound expertise, Archie unleashed another flurry of punches to warn off the wiry guy, finishing with a spectacular jumping back-kick. When he landed
he looked up to see that his enemy was no longer lurking. Thinking he had scared the stickman away he turned, laughing and panting, to enjoy Barney’s reaction, then a tide of utter terror
engulfed him.

The stickman had Barney by the throat, holding him at arm’s length three feet off the ground in a frightening display of his strength. Barney’s face was deep purple and his eyes were
swollen. A strangled choking noise escaped sporadically from his gaping mouth. His feet were kicking wildly but Archie could tell his friend’s fight was fading.

Emitting the sort of scream you might expect from someone being dunked in a bath of boiling water, Archie sprinted across the pavement and launched himself at Barney’s
attacker.

‘Haaaiii-yyaaahh!’

Driving one knee upward to propel himself as high as possible, he leaned back so that his body and legs made one straight horizontal line. Like a human torpedo, Archie speared through the air.
His aim couldn’t have been sweeter and his feet hit his opponent’s upper torso with immense force.

‘Oooff!’ He felt as if he’d just launched himself against a brick wall. His joints crumpled, his knees buckled up to his chin and he fell stunned to the floor. Only when Archie
lay groaning at his feet did the strange mugger acknowledge his presence, turning his head briefly and stooping to get a close look at him.

Staring up from the ground, Archie caught his first glimpse of the face hidden beneath the peaked cap and turned-up collar – and what he saw chilled his bones to their marrow.

The man’s head was covered in glossy orange skin and horribly deformed, as if it had been squashed and stretched into an elongated egg shape. What looked at first glance like a dollop of
frogspawn on either side of his enemy’s head Archie quickly realised were two clusters of tiny eyeballs, each one staring menacingly at him. Protruding from the creature’s cuff was a
segmented orange arm that was no thicker than a broom handle and covered in thorny white hairs. At its extremity the limb split into two pointed digits that were wrapped around Barney’s neck
with lethal force.