Scam on the Cam (15 page)

You know me. I'm not completely against being the center of attention.

“Hello hello!” I chanted. “Sorry to interrupt. May I borrow a microphone?”

“She's asking for a microphone!” exclaimed the presenter's voice through the speakers. “Who
is
this kid?”

Two police officers were already frog-marching me to the top of the bank, but a murmur rose from the crowd of journalists. One BBC presenter with a camera drew closer to us, shouting, “She's a little girl! You can't arrest her like that, in front of the whole country!”

“I'm not in the least little,” I pointed out; “in fact I'm quite tall for my age, which is eleven and a half years old.”

I was now surrounded with cameras and journalists, and could see my own face on the huge screen above. Shame about the oil and the water, which made my hair all sleek and tidy instead of letting it express its usual wild personality.

Meanwhile, the journalists were throwing interesting questions at me:

“What are you trying to do by this action? Where are your parents? Have you stolen
this boat? Are you protesting against the perpetuation of sheer elitism and class supremacy which the Oxford–Cambridge Boat Race embodies as an annual reminder and celebration of the hegemony of the intellectual ruling classes?”

I said, “Let me explain.”

And then there was silence, and I saw that it was good.

So I went on:

“Friends, Londonians, countrymen. And countrywomen. And countrychildren. This Boat Race is rigged! The Cambridge crew is integrally doped. Without the rowers' knowledge, their coach, Gwendoline Hawthorne, helped by her brother Julius, has been mixing performance-enhancing drugs into their food. On top of that, their cox, Will Sutcliffe, also known as Wally, has, for reasons unclear, been steadily poisoning some selected members of the first crew, and also some unsuspecting members of the public, such as me, my sidekicks, my editor in chief and a pirate. In order to pay for
the poison that he administered through the skin by the means of fake antibacterial gel, he robbed jewelry from barges on the Cam for over a month.”

No noise was to be heard, apart from the clicking of the cameras and the seagulls' laughter. It was super satisfying.

“To sum up,” I concluded, “this Boat Race cannot be allowed to take place!”

And suddenly the noise was deafening, and I was carried away by the policemen who had greeted me, while the presenter's voice above my head was screaming, “And it looks like the race is delayed! The two crews have been asked to row back to the bank and disembark! Are they about to drug-test them? Drug-testing rowers
in the Boat Race is incredibly rare—could this child be right?”

It was much quieter inside the room where the officers took me, and where I had to reveal to them a variety of tedious details such as my name, date of birth and where on Earth my parents may be.

“They must be at home in Cambridge,” I said. “But probably not watching the Boat Race, so I wouldn't worry; like every Saturday morning, Dad must be writing a sermon and Mum must be doing some equations to relax. I'll be back before they even notice I've been up to something.”

But the police officer insisted on calling them. It wasn't wise, as he almost lost his eardrum once he'd told Dad about what I'd been up to. From the other side of the room, even I heard what Dad said, and it wasn't a bunch of words he would have happily repeated in front of his churchgoers.

“Your parents are coming to fetch you,” he said after hanging up, massaging his ear.

“Well, that's good, I guess. I didn't feel like another ride in that sleeping bag.”

“They're not very pleased,” he pointed out.

“They very rarely are. Even when I got first prize at kindergarten for best robot made out of toilet rolls, they were just like, ‘Have you learned to read yet?' Of course I had already, but I didn't tell them because I'm not the kind to brag about being able to read at three years old, even though one must admit it's quite exceptional.”

“I see. You're a bit of a handful, aren't you?” he murmured.

“Police officers in Cambridge have just called,” said a policewoman walking into the room. “They've found child-sized roller skates in Will Sutcliffe's room, as well as the stolen jewelry and tubes of antibacterial gel, which is currently being analyzed. They've been to the cellars of St. Catharine's and have found a chest with bags of powder in it, which is also being analyzed.”

“Well,” said the policeman, “looks like
your version of the events is slowly being corroborated, young lady.”

“Of course, since nothing in the whole history of the world has ever been truer than what I said. Have you got any food, preferably chocolate-based? If not, I'll have to resort to eating my own arm.”

Happily, they had a whole box of teacakes, which I tucked into ravenously, covering the floor with little balls of foil wrapping and my face with chocolate. My arm, meanwhile, was sighing with relief that it wasn't going to get munched on.

“The journalists want to see the girl again,” said the policewoman a little bit later, looking completely exhausted.

“Duty calls!” I sighed, following her outside. “It's the price of success.”

I answered a million questions. I told them about being a sausage roll in the trunk of a van, about frog racing, about being kidnapped by pirates and about the terrible loss of my Phone4Kids phone. I told them about Gemma's
earrings which she should really get back or else she'd lose her power over adults, and about poor Jeremy who must be watching this between two fits of sickness; hello Jeremy! In short, I told them everything.

Finally the police got the phone call from Cambridge confirming that the antibacterial gel indeed contained poison, and that the powder in the chest was indeed dope. The drug tests on the Cambridge crew revealed that they were all drugged. So Will and Gwendoline were swiftly driven to the guillotine and beheaded.

Well, not really, but they did end up in court, just like their fellow lawbreakers arrested in my previous adventures.

And then there was an Announcement:

“Ladies and gentlemen. Due to recent developments, the Cambridge team has no cox, no coach and no crew. As a result, they are forfeiting. The Boat Race cannot take place, and Oxford is this year's winner by default.”

“NOT SO FAST!” howled a voice in the
crowd.

Everyone turned around, and my jaw dropped so low that I felt the soft caress of the wet floor on my chin.

“
Mr. Halitosis?
”

“There seems to be a new development,” said the presenter in the microphone, “as what looks like a group of eight primary school children, accompanied by their . . . er . . . relatively big-boned teacher, are now making their way to the bank!”

“This race must be run!” spluttered Mr. Halitosis into a journalist's microphone. “I mean, rowed. Well, you know what I mean. It must be rowed by people who know the meaning of hard work and effort! It must be rowed by people who aren't drugged!”

“Well,” I said, “if you mean us, we have been eating Mr. Appleyard's food for five years.”

“Hush, Sophie!” he said. “Ladies and
gentlemen, I bring you the Cambridge team that will row against Oxford!”

And he gestured toward our crew, calling, “Gemma! Lily! Solal! Emerald! Ben! Jamie! Kristina! and at bow, Toby! and as cox, Sophie!”

“And after all, why not?” said the presenter's voice as everyone around us was mumbling and muttering in the manner of light and dark blue bees. “We all came to see a race!”

“We saw you on TV,” whispered Toby to me, “and we thought it was a shame to waste a good opportunity to row. So we called everyone and Mr. Halitosis.”

“But you hate rowing!”

“I know,” he said. “I'll have to get over it, though. At least for today.”

He would indeed, as the two rowboats, the dark Oxford blue and the light Cambridge blue, were being wheeled out of the hangar again!

And Will's cox box was being strapped around my head!

And a few minutes later, I was facing Gemma,
at stroke, and the whole of the river Thames, and the whole of the UK, in our boat, rocked by the waves, parallel to the Oxford boat, and eagerly waiting for the starting shot to go—

. . .

. . .

. . .

POW!

“Don't say we won, Sesame. It would be a lie. And it's easy for anyone to check, anyway.”

“Okay, all right, we didn't win. But we finished!”

“We did. And not very long after the Oxford crew!”

“Not very long at all! Well, they had time to have a little shower.”

“A biggish shower, yes. And a sandwich.”

“Maybe a sandwich or two. But we finished!”

“We did! You can say that in the book.”

Following Gemma's advice, I'm not going to pretend we won. But then you wouldn't have
believed me, would you? I only have clever readers.

But there was so much lashing and washing and slashing of the waves!

So many screams and shouts and howls and lung-splitting calls from the banks!

So many cold slaps of wind and freezing splashes and splatters of water!

“Come on, team!” I roared. “Up one, down one! Let's get it up to thirty-eight! And . . . PUSH FOR TEN!”

(No one knew what it meant, myself included, but it seemed to work.)

Never had my crew rowed so fast and for so long!

Never had they been so focused on victory!

Never had they been so brave and so breathless!

And even the greasy, sweaty, faint-inducingly smelly hug of Halitosis was worth it for passing the finish line.

And even Mum and Dad's deadly glares of laser and fire, which accidentally killed fifteen
passersby and seriously injured three others, were worth it for being carried by the crowd in a shower of champagne.

“If I see you opening your mouth and swallowing as little as an atom of alcohol, Sophie Seade,” I heard Mum shout from below, “you will be . . . you will be . . . well, you'll be sorry!”