Free Borribles Go For Broke, The by Michael de Larrabeiti

houses, some others up on the roofs. Men from vans three, six and nine will guard all escape roads. You let anyone who looks like a Borrible in, but you don’t let anyone who looks even remotely like a Borrible out. At exactly eight thirty I will arrive in van number one with the prisoner. This is an ambush that must work. You will be in position by midnight tonight. I don’t want anyone even to suspect that you are there … I have made arrangements for the vans to be hidden in lock-up garages until they are needed. Are there any questions?’
    There were none.
    ‘Right, men,’ continued Sussworth, ‘it only remains for me to commend the work you’ve done in the past and hope for even better in the future. Remember this is our finest hour. This little blighter we’ve nobbled knows what we want to know and I’ll sweat it out of him just as soon as we’ve captured his mates.’ The inspector slipped from his desk and stretched out both his arms. ‘I have only one ambition and I know you men share it with me … to rid this city of Borribles. They are a threat to any normal way of life. They say they don’t want much and I say that’s too much. They say they want to live their way and I say they ought to live the way everyone else does.’
    Sussworth’s eyes swivelled in his face and he dropped his arms to his side. He stood straight and stiff and he gazed up at his men. ‘Go and prepare yourselves,’ he said. ‘That is all.’
    The policemen saluted their officer, nodded at Sergeant Hanks and left the room, shuffling down the stairs one after the other. When they had gone Sussworth fell back into his chair, exhausted
by the effort of his speech. He groped for his cup and held it out, at arm’s length, to the sergeant. He needed a refill.
    ‘Oh, sir,’ said Hanks, taking the cup like it might have been a holy chalice, ‘you certainly know how to inspire men. You stir their blood, sir, make their hearts beat the faster. I see it as clear as day.’
    The inspector stared dreamily at the surface of his desk. ‘It is only because I always tell them the truth,’ he said, ‘and the truth is what men want to hear.’
     
    It was a languid dawn that rose over Eel Brook Common and the Borribles were early awake in it. The night had been warm and sleep difficult. The travellers had arrived in the middle of darkness and hidden themselves in the tiny front garden of a house that faced the common, screened from view by a low wall of brick and a scraggy privet hedge. All night the windows in the street had hung open and gross adults in their beds had snored and blasted their way through sleep, grunting and shouting in their dreams.
    ‘Blimey,’ said Twilight, ‘if only we could harness all that energy and gas we could obliterate the SBG in five minutes.’
    Slowly the sky over London paled and became purple. Traffic started to growl in the main roads like an old monster, the stars glittered one last time and front doors slammed as bus drivers left home for work. Bedroom lights came on brightly and then faded as the day grew stronger; the grunting and snoring softened to nothing. The Borribles rubbed their eyes, sat up and peered through the hedge across the empty yellowness of the flat common.
    ‘Bloody parks,’ said Spiff, ‘draughty old dumps. Just look at it, nothing to steal for miles. I don’t know how anybody can like them.’
    It was true that there was little to be seen except, on the far side of the field, a few small wooden huts behind a hedge and an iron railing. It was the sort of place in which park keepers store their tools and eat their sandwiches.
    ‘I bet that’s where they keep the horse,’ said Sydney.
    ‘Finding the horse,’ said Vulge, ‘is easy; it’s getting it away from keepers and keeping it away from keepers that’s tricky.’

    ‘It’s difficult to disguise a horse,’ said Twilight. ‘I mean you can’t stick it on wheels and shove it down the street like it was a toy, can