“They won’t. Why should they think to?”
“Boys! Come down here, will you?”
It was Omri’s dad calling, peremptorily. They started to walk as slowly as they dared down the stairs.
“And your burn?” whispered Patrick.
“Maybe – we might say we’d had a bonfire in the garden and that you cracked me over the head with a lighted branch.”
“Oh, great! Try saying that and I really will crack you!”
So that was it. They didn’t try to explain the little holes, and the police assumed that the skinheads had been vandals as well as burglars and didn’t examine them too closely. They went over everything else for fingerprints but said that although there were quite a few, the chances were against them catching the thieves who – technically speaking – weren’t thieves after all, because they hadn’t actually got away with anything.
Omri told the bonfire story without bringing Patrick into it. He just said – the inspiration of the moment – that they’d used a whole can of lighter-fluid to get the fire going and that he, Omri, had struck the match while his face was over the wood. His parents, who had been positively bursting with pride at the way the boys had rid the house of intruders, abruptly changed their views about Omri’s brilliance.
“How could you be so unutterably DAFT as to light a fire like that, you little HALF-WIT!” his father expostulated. “How many times have I told you—”
A cough from one of the policemen interrupted him.
“Excuse me, sir. Were these two lads alone in the house?”
“Er—”
“Because as you no doubt know, sir, it is severely frowned on to leave any young person under the age of fourteen alone in a house at night.”
“Of course I know that, Sergeant, and we never, never do it. We always have a baby-sitter. Very punctual and reliable. She was due at seven tonight, and when we went out we assumed she was a couple of minutes late… She’s never let us down before.”
“And where is this person, sir?”
“She never showed up, Sergeant,” said Omri’s father shame-facedly. “Yes, I know what you’re going to say, and you’re perfectly right, we are to blame and I shall never forgive myself.”
“I dare say you will, sir,” said the sergeant levelly, “in time. But it would have been much harder to forgive yourself, if worse had befallen.” Both Omri’s parents hung their heads miserably and Omri moved closer to his mother who looked as if she might burst into tears.
“This is not exactly what you might call a – salubrious neighbourhood, especially after dark,” went on the policeman. “Only this evening, a lady was mugged at the end of your street – pulled right off her bicycle, she was—”
“Her bicycle!”
This from Omri’s mother, whose head had come up sharply.
“Yes, madam…?”
“Who was she – this – lady who was mugged?”
The sergeant glanced at his companion.
“Do you remember the name, George?”
He shrugged. “Some Polish-sounding name…”
Omri’s mother and father exchanged horrified looks. “Not – was it Mrs Brankovsky?”
“Something like that.”
“But that’s her! Our baby-sitter!” cried Omri’s mother. “Oh, heavens – poor Basia—”
“‘Basha’?” inquired the younger policeman. “Is that her name, or what happened to her?” And he suppressed a snigger. But the sergeant gave him a stern look and he subsided.
“There’s nothing humorous about it, George.”
“No, sergeant. Sorry.”
“You’ll be glad to hear she’s not badly hurt, madam. But she had to go to hospital, just for a check-up, like. The muggers got her bag, though.”
“Oh, this is terrible! What kind of district have we come to live in?”
Ah, thought Omri. Now maybe you’ll realize what I’vebeen going through, walking along Hovel Road! They’d never accepted before that it was a horrible area and that he’d been scared.
The policemen took all the details and descriptions of the skinheads.
“Could you identify them if you saw them again?” asked the sergeant.
“No,” said Patrick.
Omri said nothing. He knew he would see them again, like on Monday morning on the way to school. Whether he would decide to shop them, or not, he had yet to decide.
Adiel and Gillon came home from their film just as the police were leaving.
“And who are these young gentlemen?” asked the sergeant.
“They’re Omri’s older brothers.”
“What’s going on?” asked Adiel.
“We’ve had burglars,” said Omri quickly.
“WHA-AT!” yelled Gillon. “They didn’t get my stereo! – Did they?”
“They didn’t get a thing,” said their father proudly. “Omri and Patrick chased them off.”
The older boys gaped at each other.
“Them and what army?” asked Gillon.
Patrick stifled a sudden nervous giggle. “Only a little one,” he murmured. Omri nearly felled him with a heavy nudge.
There was a lot more talking to do – Adiel and Gillon had to hear the whole story (except that of course it was nothing like the whole story) all over again. They were absolutely agog, and even Gillon could find nothing sarcastic to say about the way Omri and Patrick had dealt with the situation.
“You’re a pair of nutters,” was the worst he could think of. “Those thugs could’ve flattened you. How did you know they didn’t have knives?” But there was more than a hint of admiration in his reproof.
Adiel, the eldest, said, “Right couple of heroes if you ask me. We could’ve been cleaned out.” And he gazed lovingly, not at his little brother, but at the television set.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time they’d drained the last of their hot chocolate and been gently shooed off to bed by Omri’s mother. She gave Omri a special hug, being careful of his head, and hugged Patrick too.
“You’re fantastic kids,” she said.
Omri and Patrick looked uncomfortable. It simply didn’t seem right to either of them that they were getting all the credit for driving off the intruders single- (or double-) handed, when in fact they’d had a great deal of help.
As soon as they got up to Omri’s bedroom in the attic, they locked the door and made for the desk.
They’d had to make a hasty decision, before the return of the parents, to leave things as they were, not to send anybody else back after they’d dispatched Corporal Willy Fickits and his men. As Patrick pointed out, “We don’t know how the wounded would stand the journey. Besides, we can’t send the Indians back to their time without Matron, we can’t send her back to hers, without them – and we certainly can’t send them all anywhere together!”
And Omri agreed. But they’d both