Up until quite recently, Snodswallop had been the loveliest, most peaceful village you could imagine. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, where you could take a stroll down High Street and nip into the pub for a pint of beer and a steak and kidney pie. Not to mention the distinct lack of young layabouts with their ghastly mop-tops and that horrid noise they called rock and roll. The good people of Snodswallop would tolerate none of that nonsense, thank you very much.
It was, in short, the kind of place that the city folk would call "quaint" or "isolated" or just "bloody boring." Not that the Snodswallopers cared much for what visitors thought of them. They had their traditions and their isolated stretch of land, and nothing short of Judgement Day itself was going to upend their quiet way of life.
Of course, that was all before the Troublemakers appeared.
At first, the incidents were almost too small to notice. A hairbrush missing from one house, a pair of socks missing from another, a few seed packets missing from the shed of Mr. Brimsey the gardener. Strange, but it was natural to misplace your things every now and then. Only it started happening more and more after that. Mr. Brimsey woke up one morning to find his prize pumpkin gone and all his carrots stolen right from the ground. A few days after that, a riot had nearly started at the pub when all the eggs in the back room vanished overnight. And who could forget the terrible morning when Mrs. Mumford's store on High Street had been robbed of all its tea and sugar?
Most towns would have suspected one of their own at once, but not Snodswallop. Neighbors simply didn't go around looting and thieving from each other in Snodswallop, not even if you looked back five hundred years. Obviously it had to be some sort of outside intruder. Perhaps a roving gang hiding in the hills. The old veterans and hunters took to sitting outside all night with their rifles in hopes of catching the blighters red-handed, but to no avail. Even with guards keeping watch all through the town, the thieves were able to waltz right past them all every time they came. And so the Snodswallopers were no closer to discovering who, or even what, the Troublemakers were.
"Why, it's the fairy folk!" said old Mr. Digby, who drank beer and played darts in the pub yard all day. "Perhaps even redcaps! Don't you remember this past summer, when I saw that great bird flying about just before sunrise? That was fairy magic, that was. And now they've settled near here. They steal whatever they can get their little hands on, and they take it back to their fairy fort in the hills. I've seen their fairy fort, oh yes I have. They've claimed the old bird sanctuary as their own. You can see the tips of their rooftops poking through the trees if you look close enough!" He took another deep, pensive gulp from his pint of beer. "Crooks and varmints, the lot of them. But they can't fool me, oh no…"
He was met with nothing but silence. Except in the rafters of the pub, where a pair of rats munched their biscuits and snickered uncontrollably.
"Fairies!" Nick shouted, pretending to slur his words just as the old man had done. "You ever heard of anything that stupid, Fetcher?"
"Do you think it really was fairies, Nick?" his partner answered, lost in thought. "I want to see the fairies!"
"What? No, no, Fetch, we're the fairies."
"We are?" Fetcher looked disappointed. "Why haven't we got pretty wings, then?"
Nick slapped a hand against his forehead and swore under his breath. "What I mean is, that old codger down there thinks it's fairies been stealing all over town, yeah? Only it's you and me. He's not properly crediting our handiwork."
Fetcher's expression changed as though a small, low-watt lightbulb had switched on inside his head. "Ohhhh. So we aren't going to see the fairies, then?"
"Look, just forget about the bloody fairies. We've got work to do!"
As the sun set on the village, and the Snodswallopers dispersed to their homes, Nick and Fetcher emerged from the pub. They scampered down the narrow stone streets, making their way towards the field on the southern edge of the village. There, a cluster of large bushes grew against an old stretch of drystone wall. The rats dove headfirst into these bushes, making a great amount of noise and rustle.
Then there was the squeal of a small engine suddenly whirring, and out of the bushes burst a red toy Mini Cooper the size of a tricycle. It rolled on through the grass and back on to the main path, its speed only somewhat impeded by the empty wagon it was dragging behind it. Nick sat in the driver's seat of the car, fiddling with the remote controls that steered it. In the other seat, Fetcher hung his head out the window and let his tongue loll out.
"Oi, Fetcher, pay attention!" Nick said. "You still got that list Ginger gave us?"
Fetcher took out the small sheet of paper and unfolded it. As far as lists went, this one was hardly impressive. Short and simple, just a few routine supplies they could nab without incident. Ginger didn't give them big, dangerous jobs anymore like in the good old days. Fetcher wouldn't admit it to Nick, but that relieved him just a bit.
"Is this what we're picking up tonight, Nick?" he asked.
"Of course not. We're picking up that, and then we're going to have some proper fun."
The first stop on their trip was Mr. Brimsey's garden, always a reliable and poorly guarded source. Well, not poorly guarded tonight: the gardener was sitting by his fence with a mallet in his hands.
Nick examined the list. "Let's see here...box of nails, box of screws, box of nuts - she wrote 'not the edible kind' in red ink right here. Oh, and five packets of strawberry seeds. Think you can handle that, Fetch?"
"But what about the gardener?"
With a devilish grin, Nick pointed a thumb at the nearby water faucet and the hose that ran over the fence into the garden. "I'll take care of him."
Mr. Brimsey had very nearly fallen asleep, but he bolted awake with a shriek as the sprinkler in his garden abruptly switched on by itself, spraying him with ice-cold water. He tried to swing his mallet, only to fumble and drop it on his own toes. He howled in pain as he hopped about clutching his swollen foot: in his confusion, he failed to see that he was about to trip over one of his box planters. Down he went, landing face first in one of his own marrows.
Naturally, there was no time to notice Fetcher hurrying to and from the barn, carrying with him a tall stack of boxes and seeds on the way back.
"Did you get the right nuts?" Nick asked him when they hopped back into the car.
"Yep! I bit on one, and one of me teeth fell out."
"Good!"
The toy engine revved, and the red Mini Cooper barreled away into the night.
They cruised down one of the side roads, taking care to avoid the light from the patrolmen's torches. Next on the list was cloth, and the rats knew just where to find plenty of that. They parked outside a backyard close to the center of town and slipped through the unpatched gaps in the fence.
On the other side, ceramic statues stood all around a neatly kept patio. Rabbits with bows on their necks, ladies in powdered wigs and ballgowns, fish in hats...it seemed to Nick and Fetcher that there was a new statue each time they stopped by. The lady of the house must be one of those artistic types. She was certainly one of those daft types, considering how often she left her laundry out on the clothesline during the night.
You needed a bit of creativity to get your hands on these goods. Nick's solution was to pick up Fetcher and throw him into the air. Never the other way around, much to Fetcher's chagrin, though "you couldn't do it anyway," as Nick reminded him. Once Fetcher had managed to grab hold of the clothesline, it was only a matter of scurrying back and forth unpinning everything. Down came each pair of socks, down came the flowery blouse with the puffed sleeves, down came the lacy bra that landed right on Nick's head a moment before Fetcher did as well.
"Got everything!" Fetcher chirped. "Nick? Nick, where'd you go?"
"If you bothered to look where you were falling," Nick said as he shoved him over and got back up, "you would know."
Fetcher was looking around the patio. "Let's take one of the statues again!"
"Words after me own heart, Fetch. But not just any statue. Not a whole statue, either. I've got a plan." Nick pointed up at a stone pedestal, upon which sat a bust of a stern-looking gentleman with a regal air about him.
"You see that bloke?" Nick said. "We're going to take his nose."
Fetcher frowned and cocked his head as he examined the bust. "Just the nose? Why's that?"
"Anyone can just pilfer a whole statue if they try hard enough. But pilfering just a nose, now that takes skill. And it'll make him look much better!"
"It will?"
"Course it will! All the best statues don't have a nose. It's that Egyptian style, you see."
Fetcher did not quite grasp what Nick meant by "the Egyptian style," but he nodded along nonetheless. "Right! So what do I do?"
"You don't do anything. This part's for me, seeing as how you need an expert to do it right. A good thief can't just chip off a statue's nose and just call it a job done. It needs delicate precision, it does. The touch of a master." He hurried back out to the wagon, then returned a moment later with a bright red cricket ball. "That's why I brought this."
Nick pushed Fetcher aside and then stood at the edge of the patio, at an angle with the bust. "I've seen them do this on the telly, you know," he said, readying his pitch. It's not just hitting it from the right direction, you've also got to have juuust the right velocity...like this!"
The cricket ball shot through the air and ricocheted off the bust's face, knocking it off the pedestal and shattering it on the patio. Then the ball went sailing off a different and struck the post of a flower-covered trellis, which promptly collapsed. Finally it crashed through the back window of the house, eliciting a woman's scream and the yelp of a cat.
The rats stood frozen in horror. "Is...is that what you meant to do, Nick?" Fetcher finally asked.
"Just grab the frilly things and run!"
Within a few minutes, lights were switching on up and down the street on both sides of the road. Folks were streaming out of their houses, attracted by the sound of Ms. Sherrington screaming over her broken window, and the night watch came rushing to the scene as well. The culprit had to still be near.
"We ought to spread ourselves out!" one of the constables said. "Establish a perimeter! We'll be sure to catch him then."
A thief who was more cautious or simply more clever would have called it a night after that and made an escape, or found a spot to hide until morning. But where cowards saw a dead end, Nick and Fetcher saw an opportunity. So while the Snodswallopers were on the march, they made their way to the back door of the shop on High Street.
Nick had a fair bit of trouble squeezing through the mail slot, but once they were both through, it was easy to climb up and undo the latch on the door from inside. They propped it open with a bit of wood, and then they drove the Mini Cooper right into the shop. It was time to get to work.
It was like letting a pair of children loose in a room full of sweets - and they did make a point of stealing all the Spangles and the Cadbury's chocolate biscuits. Along with every box of matches, half the food tins, a rainbow's worth of yarn balls, a portable radio, the entire stock of Earl Grey tea and a framed photograph of Her Majesty.
Fetcher glanced about nervously. "You almost done there, Nick? They'll be coming back 'round here any minute!"
"Hang on, don't rush me! I've got to get this just right." Nick was focused on a chalkboard propped up near the cash register, and he had been drawing on it for the last five minutes.
"You might get us caught. Why's it so important, anyway?"
Nick shot Fetcher a dirty look. "Really , Fetch, I thought I'd taught you better than that! I'm working on our calling card. All the big-shot thieves have to have a calling card. Like this!" He brandished his piece of chalk like a baton as he stepped away from the board. "That's how the pros do it."
On the chalkboard, there was now a doodle of a bald fellow with a round head and a long, bulbous nose peering over the top of a brick wall. And just below that, in Nick's scrawly handwriting, were the words WOT NO SUGAR?
Fetcher's face lit up. "Oh, that's a work of genius, that is! Like one of them Pie-cassos!"
By now, the goods were piled high up in the wagon, and the rats had to make sure everything was properly tied down with rope. At least, Fetcher had to: Nick was waiting in the car as he fiddled with the dials on the portable radio. Unbeknownst to them both, a crowd of tired and angry villagers was trudging back up High Street. The sun would be rising soon, and hours of searching had yielded no trace of the mysterious vandal.
"Lovely night's work!" Nick said as Fetcher hopped into the passenger seat of the toy car. "Apart from this bloomin' radio not making a sound...here, see what you can do with it." He handed the radio off to Fetcher, grabbed the car controls and started to drive.
Fetcher looked at the radio for a moment, then said "Did you switch it on?" and pressed a single button.
Nick had not, in fact, remembered to switch the radio on. But he had managed to twist the volume knob up as loud as it would possibly go, among other things.
The villagers heard what happened next from the other end of the street. The rats screamed and covered their ears as a deafening, raucous noise blasted out from the tinny speaker.
"Take out the papers and the trash!" the radio sang. "Or you don't get no spendin' cash...!"
"What did you do, Fetcher?"
"I-I just switched it on like you wanted!"
"Well, now you can switch it off!"
"Look!" shouted Mr. Digby, pointing with a gnarled, quivering finger. "It's the fairy carriage! Catch it before it flies away!"
Nick slammed down on the remote control lever, only to make the car start zooming in reverse toward the angry crowd. Jolting to a stop, he changed direction and sped forward again, all with the music blaring in his face. "Oi, shut up, won't you?" he yelled at the machine.
"Don't talk back," the radio said.
The rats' eyes nearly popped out of their skulls, a moment before Fetcher shrieked in terror and flung the radio out onto the pavement. As loud as the music may have been, it was drowned out by the crowd of villagers that came stampeding down the street after the car.
Fetcher curled up in a fetal position in the passenger seat. "What do we do now, Nick?"
Nick thought it over. At first, the escape plan had been simply driving across the bridge and out of town. But now the rats were headed away from the bridge, and there was no turning around with that mob on their tails.
"Why, it's easy as can be," he said. "We just take the long way around." And with that, he cranked up the speed on the Mini Cooper as high as it would go. "Hang on to your cap, Fetch!"
The little car tore down the streets of Snodswallop, twisting and turning every which way to lose sight of its pursuers. The wagon rattled and nearly tipped over with each sharp curve, threatening to spill the precious cargo. Each bump of the cobblestones felt as though they made the car go sailing into the air, like it had just driven at top speed off a ramp. Fetcher hung his head out the window again, this time to vomit up his biscuits.
None of it was in vain, however. The car was putting distance between itself and the mob. And though the good folk of Snodswallop were numerous and determined, they weren't as organized as chickens could be. They tripped on each other's feet, fumbled with their torches, got stuck in single-file in the narrow alleyways.
Nick cackled as he watched it all through the rearview mirror. "Well, that takes care of those old bats, don't it?"
"Unless they thought of splitting up," said Fetcher.
"They didn't think of-"
" Gotcha, you little vermin!" It was Mrs. Mumford the shopkeeper, suddenly leaping out of the dark to try and tackle the Mini Cooper. The rats screamed and swerved, and the old woman went sailing over their heads, crashing into a trash can on the other side of the alley.
The whole altercation didn't last more than two seconds, but it was enough time for Nick to lose his focus. He turned to the right, drove under an arch and then had to swerve again to avoid hitting a brick wall. And another wall, and another.
"What is it now?" he snapped as he brought the car to a stop.
The rats looked around. They had driven into a tiny, walled-off courtyard full of crates and shelves and dumpsters - the back courtyard of the pub. The only way out was back through the gate into the alley, and they could hear human voices rapidly getting louder from both ends of the path. They were trapped like...no, no, they weren't going to say it.
That was when Nick happened to glance at the corner of the yard, toward the top of the wall. There lay the answer. A broken, lopsided shelf, one of its boards placed at a diagonal touching the roof.
A wicked grin spread across his face. "Well, mate, I would say it's been an honor," he said to Fetcher as he pressed down on the control lever, "but it ain't been an honor just yet."
Mrs. Mumford was the first to come tearing into the pub courtyard, screaming at the top of her lungs with the rest of the townsfolk charging behind her. But then, just as quickly as they had run in, they stopped. The courtyard was empty. There was no trace of the mysterious car, the one they thought they finally had trapped just a moment before. It couldn't have found a spot to hide itself - where had it gone?
"Up and vanished, of course," muttered Mr. Digby. "Just like all fairy things."
One of the men looked up at the roof and gasped. "Look!" he cried. "There!"
The car and wagon were driving along the edge of the pub roof, knocking down tiles as it went. Fetcher stuck his head out the window and laughed at the crowd below, which congealed again as it frantically tried to follow the path of the car. "They're like little ants, Nick!"
"Hush! I got to get this next part just right. You getting that little present ready for them?"
"Sure am!" Fetcher had pulled the lacy bra out and a matchbox out from the pile of cargo. He now giggled to himself as he struck a match and held the flame to the fabric.
The angle of the roof was shallow enough that you could coast across it and pick up speed as you did so. Nick now positioned the car at one end of the roof, keeping his eyes on the other rooftop that stood just past the courtyard.
"Right, then," he said. "If they thought that little stunt was impressive, wait until they see this!"
The car shot forward. The little engine squealed, and the wheels spun so fast that they gave off smoke. The edge of the roof came rushing up, closer and closer...
"WOOOOO!"
The people of Snodswallop froze, mouths all agape, as they watched the toy car and wagon go flying right over their heads. A figure like a tiny man leaned out the driver's side and gave them the "V" sign with the palm facing inward, and another tiny man leaned out the passenger side with a ball of fire in his hands.
"Now, Fetcher!" Nick yelled.
"Bombs away!"
Fetcher chucked the flaming bra, and the people screamed and scattered as it dropped into their midst. It delicately brushed the shoulder of Mr. Digby, who made a noise not unlike a dying cow and then fainted dead away.
As for the car, it landed on the opposite roof in a shower of sparks and continued to speed along. It dropped from the roof down to the brick wall surrounding the yard, and from there back down to the street. After that, it was a straight shot to the bridge over the stream.
"What'd I tell you?" said Nick. "Easy as can be."
The laughter of the two rats echoed through the air as the car and wagon disappeared into the night.
"And so you see, it ended up being a bit more unconventional job than usual," Nick was saying, crossing his arms and wearing a satisfied smirk. "But that just proves how we're the best ones for these sorts of jobs, you see. Fetcher and I, we gave them a right good scare. Veni, vidi, vici."
"That's Italian!" Fetcher chirped.
When Ginger finally looked up from her clipboard, she gave the two of them a terse look and raised her eyebrow. "Mmm-hmm. And that's why you're telling me you deserve extra eggs for this one."
"I mean, we did get everything on the list. And then some. And we got it all back in one piece, 'cept for the radio."
"We had to throw away the radio, you see," Fetcher added.
"Yes, I understand that."
"Because it talked to us. They're not supposed to do that."
"Okaaaay." Ginger took a small step back from them. "Everything else is accounted for, so you can go see Bunty for your pay. Half a dozen, as agreed."
"What?" the rats said in unison. "Come on, what about that part with the-"
"As. Agreed." And with that, Ginger turned on her heel and walked off.
Nick immediately fell to sulking. "I really thought she'd be impressed by that one."
"I dunno," said Fetcher. "Eggs is eggs. But a proper good adventure like that only comes along every now and then."
Nick thought about it. "Yeah...yeah, I guess it does." Then, as though not wanting to admit that Fetcher was completely right, he added, "I still want eggs, though."