‘I don’t think it’s twisted,’ said Fin. ‘I think it’s broken.’

  ‘You’re a doctor now, are you?’ said the Cat Lady sarcastically. ‘Where did you get your medical degree? Did you download it from the interweb?’

  ‘No, I’m not a doctor,’ agreed Fin, ‘but that big bit of bone poking through your skin is a bit of a giveaway.’

  The Cat Lady looked down at her own foot, her eyes gaped and she fainted. Then Mrs Bellamy fainted and the child who lost their iceblock started wailing even louder.

  ‘You’d b-b-better call an ambulance,’ said Joe, turning to Constable Pike, who still held his upper arm in a brutal grip.

  ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job,’ said the constable, although his head was whipping back and forth as the crowd yelled at him. He was clearly caught up in a moment of indecision.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m on it,’ said April, holding a phone to her ear. ‘Emergency services? We need an ambulance outside the Currawong Post Office, asap. We’ve got two old ladies down and Constable Pike has a possible case of brain damage.’

  ‘I do not have brain damage,’ yelled Constable Pike, then he noticed the phone April was using. ‘Hey, that’s my phone.’

  ‘You should just be grateful I took your phone and not your gun,’ said April, tossing the phone back.

  Constable Pike had to juggle it one-handed before he had it safe in his fingers.

  ‘And that would have been easier if you’d let go of my brother,’ said April.

  ‘You’ve let your out-of-control dog traumatise another pet, created a public disturbance and now grievously injured a vital member of our senior community,’ said Constable Pike. ‘I’m not letting any of you go anywhere.’

  ‘The fine for failing to control a dangerous dog is $1000,’ said Mayor Albright.

  ‘What?’ said Fin. ‘I would have thought it would be more. Pumpkin could have killed someone.’

  ‘I’ll kill you in a minute,’ said April, grabbing Fin by his collar.

  ‘All right,’ said Joe, ignoring his brother and sister and reaching for his bulging wallet.

  ‘No!’ cried April, clutching his hand. She had high expectations for that money, and she did not want to see it wasted. She turned to Constable Pike. ‘There must be another way.’

  Constable Pike pressed his lips together and looked mulish for a moment. ‘Well, strictly speaking the penalty is a $1000 fine, or fifty hours community service,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’ll take the community service,’ said April.

  ‘Fifty hours each,’ said Constable Pike. ‘I’m holding all three of you responsible.’

  ‘Joe and I didn’t do anything,’ protested Fin.

  ‘He felled the Cat Lady,’ said the constable.

  ‘She j-j-jumped on my foot,’ argued Joe.

  ‘Then you should have moved it first,’ said Constable Pike.

  ‘What are we going to do without a Cat Lady?’ asked Mrs Bellamy.

  People in the crowd started to mutter things like ‘Yeah!’, ‘That’s right’ and ‘The cats won’t be safe’.

  ‘The Cat Lady is getting old,’ said Mayor Albright.

  ‘What did you say?’ mumbled the Cat Lady. She was starting to regain consciousness. She was still confused, but she looked like she wanted to jump up on her one remaining good leg and punch the mayor.

  ‘No one likes statistics,’ said Mayor Albright soothingly. ‘But you have to accept that your age is one, and it’s increasing. It must be nearly three digits.’

  ‘You, boy, help me up,’ the Cat Lady demanded of Fin. ‘I’m going to show the mayor just what an old person can do.’ She pulled herself up using Fin as a crutch.

  ‘The mayor does have a point,’ said Constable Pike.

  ‘What?’ demanded the Cat Lady.

  ‘Not about you being old,’ said Constable Pike placatingly, ‘about us not being able to cope without you. The August winds will be here soon and you know that’s peak cat crazy season. You need to train up an apprentice. A new generation to rescue cats.’

  ‘But I hate young people,’ said the Cat Lady.

  ‘We all do,’ agreed Constable Pike. ‘But it’s got to be done.’

  ‘Blah!’ said the Cat Lady, in disgust.

  ‘Apprentices aren’t all bad,’ said the mechanic from the garage. ‘You can tell them to make you cups of tea.’

  The Cat Lady nodded as she considered this. ‘I do like tea.’

  ‘There, you see,’ said Constable Pike. ‘It would be good for you to train up some new blood.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I’ll take this one.’ The Cat Lady pointed at Fin. ‘He’s the right height for me to lean on.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be taken!’ panicked Fin.

  ‘You should have thought of that before you brought a deranged dog into town,’ said Constable Pike.

  ‘But I hate the dog and the dog hates me,’ argued Fin.

  Pumpkin barked an ‘arf’ of agreement.

  ‘Tough,’ said Constable Pike.

  Dad was out in the garden, trying to repair the turf where the flaming computer had landed the day before. Fixing the dent was straightforward enough, it was just like repairing a giant golf divot. He slid a pitchfork under the depression and levered the soil back up. But the grass itself was ruined. It wasn’t just a burn, it was a chemical burn, plus there were bits of burnt plastic everywhere.

  ‘It will grow back.’

  Dad looked up to see Ingrid standing over him. He flinched. Dad flinched when most people approached him. But when six-foot-tall, gorgeous athletic women snuck up on him completely silently, that caused an extra big flinch. It was also weird that he was the only person she spoke to in English. He didn’t like being part of a secret. Secrets were so stressful to keep.

  ‘What?’ asked Dad.

  ‘The grass will regrow,’ repeated Ingrid.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Dad. ‘It depends on the chemical composition of the accelerant. If it’s in the soil, that could poison the roots.’

  ‘You’re more concerned about the grass than the computer, aren’t you?’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Well, I don’t much like computers,’ admitted Dad. ‘And lawn is harder to grow than you would think.’

  ‘You need to be careful,’ said Ingrid.

  Dad looked her in the eye. Not something he normally did with anyone, but with her flat Scandinavian accent it was hard to gauge when there was extra meaning behind her words.

  ‘I’m always careful,’ said Dad. This was true. He always checked that the stove was off seventeen times before he left the kitchen. Even when he hadn’t been using the stove.

  ‘What was on the computer?’ asked Ingrid.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘Joe said it had a game called Ping.’

  ‘Pong,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘No, not Ping Pong,’ said Dad. ‘Just Ping.’

  ‘No, Pong. The game is called just Pong,’ argued Ingrid, her cool slipping a little.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Dad.

  ‘As sure as an axe to the head,’ said Ingrid.

  Dad gulped. ‘Is that a common expression in Sweden? Of ancient Viking origin, perhaps?’

  ‘No,’ said Ingrid. ‘It’s simply something I know from experience to be true.’

  Dad gulped again and started trembling.

  ‘There must have been something on that computer, some data that someone was looking for,’ explained Ingrid.

  ‘It’s only an old desktop,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve had it for ages. It’s one of the few things I took when I left …’ He looked at his shoes. ‘When I had to leave my family.’

  ‘Could your wife have used it?’ asked Ingrid.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Dad. ‘The computer was in my office. She wouldn’t sneak in there.’ Dad suddenly realised what he had just said. ‘Of course she could have snuck in there. She’s an international super spy. She wasn’t even my wife. Not technically, because her whole identity was make-believe.’

  ‘Okay, but whoever broke in went to a lot of trouble to destroy it,’ said Ingrid, trying to get the conversation back on course. ‘So they must believe there was important information stored on there, but they couldn’t crack her encryption.’

  ‘Oh, the computer isn’t destroyed,’ said Dad.

  ‘What?’ said Ingrid.

  ‘I wrote my PhD on that computer,’ said Dad. ‘I wasn’t going to leave it vulnerable. I disassembled the casing and lined the hard drive with asbestos. I wasn’t going to let six years of research go up in a house fire.’

  ‘So you can access the files?’ asked Ingrid, looking marginally interested (which is Swedish for super excited).

  ‘If I can get through the molten plastic, and if the impact from the fall didn’t cause irreparable damage,’ said Dad. ‘Maybe.’

  They heard the crunch of footsteps on the driveway. Joe, Fin and April were returning from town.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ demanded April rudely.

  ‘Um,’ said Dad, he wasn’t as gifted a liar as his former wife. ‘Um … I, er … I don’t know.’ He looked to Ingrid for help and that gave him an idea. ‘Because, of course, Ingrid speaks Swedish. And I don’t. Speak Swedish, that is.’

  ‘Har du ett problem med det?’ asked Ingrid.

  ‘I don’t trust her,’ said April.

  ‘Don’t be r-r-racist,’ chided Joe.

  ‘I’m not being racist,’ said April. ‘I’m being beauty-ist. I don’t trust good-looking people.’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t come around to be good- looking,’ said Dad in alarm. The last time he had sought the company of an attractive woman it had ended very badly. He’d found himself married to a highly violent international super spy. On the bright side, he did have three children as a result. So there were swings and roundabouts.

  ‘Socker,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Did she just call me a sucker?’ asked April.

  Joe pulled out his phone. ‘I’ll look it up.’ He tapped in the word. ‘Socker m-means “sugar” in Swedish.’

  ‘Oooh,’ said Dad, turning to Ingrid. ‘You want to borrow a cup of sugar? Perhaps you’re baking a cake?’

  Ingrid nodded and smiled. Dad flinched at the smile because it made her even better looking.

  ‘Hah, good luck,’ scoffed April as she strode past them towards the house. ‘We never have any food because Joe eats it all.’

  Joe smiled apologetically. ‘S-sorry, but it’s true.’

  The kids all disappeared inside.

  ‘I think that is as good as it is going to get,’ said Dad as he brushed the lawn lovingly and stood up.

  ‘You need to fix that computer,’ Ingrid whispered so the kids couldn’t hear her talking English. ‘If we know what they were looking for, we’ll know who they are.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it,’ said Dad. ‘Apart from anything else, I would hate to lose the original file with all my PhD research. I found out some very fascinating details about orchids.’

  Ingrid rolled her eyes.

  When Dad got back inside Joe, Fin and April were in the kitchen. Joe was searching the cupboards for something to eat.

  ‘There’s no food,’ Fin complained to Dad.

  ‘There’s flour and water,’ said Joe. ‘I can bake bread.’

  ‘Ugh,’ complained April as she sat on a stool at the kitchen bench doing nothing to help. ‘That takes hours.’

  ‘I picked some spinach,’ said Dad, pointing to a flower vase full of big green leaves. ‘Would you like me to steam it for you?’

  ‘I’d rather starve to death,’ said April.

  Joe poked his head out of the cupboard to talk to Dad. ‘We have to report to the p-p-police station next weekend. First thing Saturday m-m-morning.’

  ‘Why?’ worried Dad.

  ‘Pumpkin trouble,’ said Fin.

  Dad looked even more confused. ‘But the Pumpkin Festival is months away.’

  Pumpkin barked. ‘Arf!’

  ‘Oh, that Pumpkin,’ said Dad. ‘Oh dear, I can’t say I’m shocked.’ He eyed the diminutive dog nervously. ‘What do you have to do for your community service?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Fin.

  ‘Constable Pike said it would be a s-s-surprise,’ said Joe, pulling a jar of capers out of the back of the cupboard and reading the expiration date.

  ‘But he was grinning smugly about it,’ said April. ‘So it can’t be good. I don’t know how that man managed to graduate from the police academy. He’s clearly power mad. I’m amazed he passed the psychological testing.’

  ‘Maybe he cheated,’ said Fin.

  ‘You can’t ch-ch-cheat a psych test,’ said Joe.

  ‘Sure you can,’ said Fin. ‘You just put the opposite of what you really think. If April did that, she’d come across as being as peaceful as the Dalai Lama.’

  ‘That undemocratically elected hack,’ said April.

  ‘Do I have to do anything?’ asked Dad. ‘Like sign a form, or promise to look after you better?’

  ‘It’s f-fine, Dad,’ said Joe.

  ‘If anything needs signing, Fin will forge your signature for you,’ said April reassuringly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dad.

  ‘But you might want to stay close to the phone next Saturday,’ said April. ‘Because if we have to go to the retirement home to talk to old people, I can’t guarantee I won’t get in a fight. Old people are so short-tempered.’

  Just then, the telephone started ringing and ringing. Dad acted like there was no noise.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ asked Fin.

  The phone kept ringing.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll hang up eventually,’ said Dad.

  Joe looked about. ‘Where is the phone?’

  Dad looked shifty. ‘Oh, er … I hid it.’

  ‘Why?’ asked April.

  ‘I don’t like the telephone,’ said Dad. ‘They can use it to keep track of you.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Dad.

  ‘PICK UP THE TELEPHONE!’ a familiar feminine voice boomed throughout the house. The children had heard the voice before.

  ‘Is that Professor Maynard?’ asked Fin.

  Professor Maynard was their mother’s boss. For many years they had thought she was their mother’s boss at the natural history museum, but really she was their mother’s boss at a top-secret international spy agency.

  ‘W-w-where did her voice come from?’ asked Joe.

  Dad leaned in and whispered. ‘She hid electronic devices throughout the house.’

  ‘I CAN HEAR YOU WHISPERING!’ bellowed the voice of Professor Maynard. ‘PICK UP THE PHONE.’

  Dad begrudgingly went over to the refrigerator, pulled it out from the wall, reached in behind and removed a telephone that had been gaffer-taped to its back.

  ‘No wonder he takes so long to answer when the school rings him,’ said April.

  Dad pressed the green button to accept the call and Professor Maynard’s face appeared on the small screen.

  ‘What have you all been doing?’ demanded Professor Maynard.

  ‘It’s spring,’ said Dad, ‘so I’ve been fertilising my bulbs and getting ready to put in my tomato plants.’

  ‘I’m not talking about gardening!’ snapped Professor Maynard. ‘I’m talking about your mission.’

  ‘We have a mission?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Your mission was to go to a tiny country town and blend in quietly so that Kolektiv operatives don’t hunt you down and kidnap you to use as leverage against your mother.’

  ‘We’ve been t-t-trying,’ said Joe.

  ‘According to my sources, you’ve nearly burnt down your house, you’ve created a scene on the main street of town and you’ve been given fifty hours of community service for breaking town by-laws,’ accused Professor Maynard.

  ‘We didn’t set fire to the house!’ protested Fin.

  ‘And it’s not our fault if the whole town is crackers,’ said April.

  ‘No excuses!’ snapped Professor Maynard. ‘I have invested considerable agency resources into ensuring your safety. All you had to do was pretend to be normal, and you failed. You have let me down!’

  ‘The children have had to do a lot of adjusting,’ said Dad defensively.

  ‘They’ll have to do even more adjusting if they’re kidnapped by the Kolektiv and imprisoned in the same jail as their mother,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘Stop drawing attention to yourselves.’

  ‘They’ll be doing community service with the police sergeant next weekend,’ said Dad. ‘They won’t be able to get into trouble with him keeping an eye on them.’

  ‘You’d better be right,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘You can’t afford to blow your cover.’ Professor Maynard hung up, disappearing from the small screen.

  ‘She was in a grumpy mood,’ said April.

  ‘I HEARD THAT!’ boomed Professor Maynard’s voice.

  The following Saturday it was a cold morning in Currawong. A light fog still hung over the town as the Peski kids pedalled their bicycles lethargically down the main street. The only one among them who was happy about being up so early was Pumpkin. He ran along next to April’s bike, barking joyfully.

  ‘You’re going to get in trouble for bringing Pumpkin,’ predicted Fin. ‘He’s the whole reason we got community service in the first place.’

  ‘I’m not buckling to this town’s anti-dog attitude,’ said April.

  ‘They’re not anti-dog,’ said Joe. ‘They’re anti-P- P-Pumpkin.

  ‘Well, I’m anti anybody who’s anti-Pumpkin,’ said April defiantly, as they arrived at the police station.

  ‘Why do we have to be here so early?’ grumbled Fin.

  ‘Whenever adults think of something horrible for children to do, they always want to start first thing in the morning,’ said April.

  Joe bent over to lock their bicycles to the white picket fence outside the police station.

  ‘No one’s going to steal them,’ said April.

  ‘Yeah, they’re right outside the police station,’ agreed Fin.

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said April. ‘Constable Pike is too much of a buffoon to scare anyone off. I mean the bikes are homemade, they’re not worth stealing.’