Scam on the Cam (14 page)

“Well,” said Julius, “hurry up, we haven't got very long.”

Presently the boot opened, and there was light. And two faces topped with blond hair.

“Sesame!” chorused the two siblings.

I would have replied, as I'm usually quite polite, but I didn't exactly have the time. As fast as lightning, I leapt out of the boot—but clearly not fast enough, as Gwen caught me . . .

. . . and I slipped out of her arms like a bar of soap, in a splatter of oil!

Unlike my phone, I didn't shatter into pieces as I fell to the ground, but swiftly did a few forward rolls. Julius was right behind me as I got up again—but WHIZZ!—he slipped and skidded on the trail of oil that I'd left on the ground and SLAM!—he fell heavily on his back.

I ran away through the parking lot. The weather was all lovely and bright. The sun was nice and fresh in the sky like a tangerine sorbet. For a late afternoon sun, it didn't look tired at all.

In fact, it didn't look like a late afternoon sun. It looked just as if it was . . .

“The
morning
?” I gasped, running into one
London street and then another, and tumbling down a flight of steps. “It's Saturday morning? Then when Will opened the trunk earlier, I'd slept the whole night in that van? But then it means . . .”

. . . and right then I had to stop as I'd reached a howling, screaming, laughing, cheering crowd, glued to the barriers overlooking the river Thames . . .

“. . . then it means . . .”

. . . and I ran down bank after bank after bank of people pressed against each other, a tidal wave of dark blue and light blue, shaking flags in the air . . .

“. . . then it means . . .”

The Boat Race is NOW!

“Sorry, sir, but when does the Boat Race start?” I asked a random Oxford supporter, painted dark blue from head to toe in the manner of a Smurf.

“The men's first crews? They're racing in about ten minutes,” he said. “The women's teams have just raced, Cambridge won. Look, the men are getting ready!” he added, pointing at a giant screen above the crowd.

Indeed on the screen everyone could see the Cambridge and the Oxford teams, all of them looking remarkably nervous, standing in two neat lines next to the river, surrounded by journalists. The poisonous Will Sutcliffe was there, equipped with his cox box, and just
then Gwendoline arrived and started to pat the shoulders of all the rowers in the Cambridge crew.

“And the coach of the Cambridge team is here,” roared the presenter, his voice magnified by the amplifiers on either side of the screen. “Gwendoline Hawthorne, twenty-two years old, is encouraging her boys to beat Oxford! She also seems to be hugging what looks like an oily teddy bear. Anyway, in the midst of rumors about the general state of health of her team, it looks like Oxford may have the psychological advantage . . .”

“Where is it?” I asked hurriedly. “The starting point of the race?”

“Oh, up there,” said the Oxford fan, pointing
vaguely at the river. “But I wouldn't go there, if I were you—no point! You won't see anything. You should stay here and watch them pass by!”

“I'm not interested in watching them pass by. I'm interested in stopping them from racing!” I exclaimed, and started to run.

Well, that was the intention. Because I ran into a very compact group of Cambridge supporters, crawled between their legs, emerged within a wave of Oxford fans, squeezed between them and proceeded in this extremely inconvenient fashion until I finally managed to pop out of the giant crowd and actually start to run.

Seven minutes now! And I had no idea how far I was from the starting point. If only I'd had my roller skates! But that treacherous Will must have left them in his room.

So I had to run.

In my socks.

The problem is, whether in socks or not, as you may or may not know—and I admit it freely, because I have many other qualities—I'm not a very good runner.

Not a very good runner . . . at . . . all.

Not . . . even . . . a little . . . bit.

I'd managed a minute and a half of sprinting before it started feeling like I was about to spit out my own lungs, while both my kidneys were shattering into millions of pieces, not to mention my extraordinarily painful knee joints. In my mind I could hear Mr. Halitosis shouting at me, “Faster, Sophie Seade, faster! Your jogging style reminds me of a seal hauling itself onto an iceberg!”

I understood now that he was cruelly right.

Panting, I stopped somewhere along the bank and wheezed and coughed and cursed myself. Ah! Wouldst that I were a professional marathon runner! But alas, not a drop of that talent in my otherwise excellent blood: it had to let other people have their chance too.

Leaning over the barrier, I spotted the starting
point of the Boat Race. It was astronomically far from where I was standing. No way at all I'd get there in five minutes.

It was all over. The criminal Cambridge team would race with a criminal cox and a criminal coach.

I couldn't stop them.

Unless
 . . .

Unless I could somehow get to that little Zodiac that was moored down there near the river.

Unless I could get to it before its owner, who was standing on the bank looking at the river through binoculars, noticed what I was doing.

Unless I could get to it and manage to find out how to make it start before anyone could stop me.

I had to be fast.

“Hey! Hey, you! That kid's just jumped on my boat! Hey!”

“Come on,” I whispered to the engine, “come on, how do you work? How do you start?”

And once again my fabulously well-connected
brain saved the day, because it somehow seemed to remember what it had seen Gwendoline do the other day on the motorboat in Ely, even though I couldn't even remember looking at her then.

It told me calmly to turn the key in the ignition.

It then told me to pull on the rope, several times, until the engine started to putt-putt in the manner of Dad having found Peter Mortimer's offering of half a squirrel on his pillow.

It then told me to grab onto the rudder.

And then it told me to GO!

SPLASH! went the water behind me as the owner of the Zodiac fell into the Thames while trying to jump onto his boat.

VROOM! went the Zodiac on the water in a very straight line until I figured out how to steer it.

It was going slightly faster than a falling meteorite, and stood almost vertical on the water, but supersleuths like me are endowed with a splendid sense of balance. In about twelve seconds, I was as wet as a halibut. Of course, I couldn't resist doing a few circles on the water and then accelerating a little bit more, but you wouldn't have resisted it either.

But I did remember that I was on a mission.

Conveniently, the starting point of the race was getting closer and closer—and to my horror, I spotted the two teams settling into the boats and strapping their feet into place.

So I slashed through the water, slaloming around the journalists' boats, speeding up nearer and nearer to the start . . .

“Stop that boat!” shouted someone.

“And there seems to be an incident near the start of the Boat Race,” said the voice of the presenter in the amplifiers. “An unidentified Zodiac is absolutely rushing toward the Cambridge and Oxford boats . . . Oh my
goodness! It's going to hit them! . . . No, it isn't! It's braking! . . . It's stopping near the bank . . . Well, the police are now running down in full gear to welcome our unwanted guest . . .”

Silence.

Then:

“What on Earth . . . ? It's a
little girl
!”

There wouldn't have been more police officers if I'd been trying to steal the Queen. I looked up, half-expecting to see a dozen more parachuting down with loaded Kalashnikovs, but unfortunately I only saw seagulls and pigeons.

In the middle of the river, the two long rowboats were rocked by the downwash from my Zodiac, but all the rowers and the two coxes were staring at the bank. On the bank, there was me, there were journalists, there were the police and a crowd of hundreds of people, each of them staring at me with eyes like this: O O.