Free Invisible! by Robert Swindells

sure.’ The sergeant stood up. ‘We’ll be on our way.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Wouldn’t want to keep you because you never know – you might have to go out looking for Noddy or somebody. G’night, sir.’

Rosie got up and followed the officers out.
    â€˜Excuse me?’
    â€˜What is it, miss?’
    â€˜Sowerby Old Hall. Has it got like a gateway in a high hedge so if you were walking you wouldn’t see a car coming out till it was practically on top of you?’
    â€˜It might have. Why? Been there, have you?’
    â€˜N-no. We might have passed it last night though, me and Mum.’
    â€˜Very likely, if you were on the Sowerby road. See anything suspicious, did you? Loiterers, parked motor?’
    â€˜No. We were looking for …’
    â€˜I know. Peter Rabbit. Listen. If you do see or hear anything, you’ll be sure and let us know, won’t you?’
    â€˜â€™Course I will. G’night.’
    â€˜OK if I go out after tea, Mum?’
    Mummy Bear was mashing potatoes while her husband set the table. She nodded. ‘I suppose so, sweetheart, but it’s not a very nice evening. Something important to do, have you?’
    â€˜I think so, yes. I’ll try not to be late.’
    By six o’clock it was windy as well as wet. She didn’t fancy the climb to Inchlake Ring so she used the fairy ring on the school field, packing her clothes in a plastic carrier bag which she hid in the long grass, weighted down with a stone. It would be dark soon, and it was unlikely that anyone would visit the field tonight.
    The wind drove a cold drizzle that plastered her hair to her scalp and made her shiver as she hurried towards the Kippax home. This was why she’d decided not to involve the others – they’d have been half-frozen and ready to give up before the job was done.
    The place was in darkness. No car stood onthe drive. When the security floodlight snapped on in response to Rosie’s movements, the ring of raindrops round the basketball hoop became a circlet of diamonds. The light didn’t worry her. In fact it made her task much easier, and if some busybody neighbour wondered what had triggered it and came to take a peek, he’d see nothing.
If old Kippax had a guard dog instead of a floodlight
, she thought,
it would be a different story.
    She circled the house, triggering another light round the back. There was a garden shed with a window in the side. She wiped off rainbeads and peered in. The light helped, but the shed held only a clothes-spinner, some tools and a motor mower. No life-size statue of Poseidon.
Who the heck’s Poseidon anyway?
    She tried to see into the house, but all the curtains were drawn. That left the garage. The double garage.
Plenty of space in there, but no window. Drat!
    She was standing, shivering a bit and wondering what to do, when she heard a car approaching. Powerful headlights slashed across the driveway as a BMW turned in. Rosie sidestepped as the car came growling up the drive, and seized the opportunity to peer insidethe garage when its doors swung up automatically and the headlights illuminated the interior. She glimpsed a tall, angular object draped in a shroud of shiny black plastic like a giant bin-bag.
That could be a statue
, she told herself.
A life-size statue. It’s Daddy Bear’s height. A peek under that plastic’s what I need. Just a peek.
    She wasn’t going to get it though. As she stared, the car rolled into the garage and the door began to swing down behind it. If there’d been time to think, she wouldn’t have done the crazy thing she now did, but there wasn’t. The door was half down when she dashed forward, ducked, scuttled under the descending rim and jumped clear. As the garage door clicked shut, the car doors opened and three people got out. She was trapped with the family Kippax.

‘Are we watching
The Simpsons
, Mum?’ Lee hovered