Not Just a Witch

‘Where was he, Miss?’ asked the fat policeman.

‘At the back of the coalshed,’ said Heckie. ‘The obvious place to look for a baby, I’d have thought.’

‘But how did he get there?’

Heckie felt sorry for the fat policeman who so much wanted to have something to put in his notebook. ‘You want to look for a tall man with red hair, blue eyes, a black moustache, an orange anorak and purple socks. I saw him climbing over the garden wall. It’ll be him who put Basil among the coals.’

‘But what would be the motive?’ asked the policeman with the walkie-talkie.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Heckie. ‘Revenge. Someone getting their own back. He’ll have bought one of Mr Boothroyd’s bath plugs and found it leaked. You know what it’s like when all the hot water drains away and you’re sitting in an empty tub all cold and blue with goosepimples . . .’

But when they had dropped Sumi off in the taxi Mr Boothroyd had been forced to pay for, Heckie turned to Daniel, looking thoughtful and serious.

‘You know, Daniel, I shall have to change my plans entirely. I had no idea people would make such a fuss and be so unreasonable. I thought they’d come to me and say: ‘‘Please, Heckie, would you turn my drunken husband into a dear chimpanzee?’’ Or: ‘‘We feel that Uncle Phillip, who is a handbag snatcher, would do better as a Two-toed Sloth.’’ That kind of thing. But now I see it isn’t so. I shall have to work in the strictest secrecy. Evil-doers will have to be flushed out!’ She peered at Daniel. ‘Might one ask why you are snivelling? Is it because there’s no one at home?’

Sumi’s parents had been there to welcome her, but Daniel’s house, as the taxi drew up, was silent and dark.

Daniel shook his head. ‘I don’t mind being alone.’ He wiped away the tear in the corner of his eye. ‘It’s that lovely bulldog. I miss him so much!’

Heckie examined his face in the light of the lamp. ‘You know, you have the right ideas. Yes, I think I might be able to use you. For I have to tell you, Daniel, that I have just had a vision. I see a band of Wickedness Hunters! Children and witches together, uniting to rid Wellbridge of Wickedness! Yes, yes, I see it all. But first, dear boy, I must get myself a familiar. What a good thing that tomorrow is Sunday. Come after breakfast and we’ll go to the zoo!’

Chapter Five

When Daniel called at the shop the following morning, he found Heckie feeding her hat.

After the quarrel with Dora Mayberry, Heckie had crept back and gathered up her Ribbon Snakes and King Snakes and the Black Mamba, and they now lived in a tank in a room behind the shop, eating boiled eggs and hissing and not being a trouble to anyone. It would have been easy for her to weave them together again and wear them on her head, but she hadn’t the heart, and because she knew that Daniel was a boy who could be trusted with people’s sorrows, she told him what had happened and how dreadfully she missed her friend.

‘We had such plans, Dora and I. She was going to have a little business making garden gnomes and nice things like that, and gradually fill the park with interesting statues. Only statues of wicked people, of course. Dora was Good, like me. Come and see her picture.’

She took Daniel up to the sitting-room and showed him the photo of Dora which she had turned with its face to the wall. The stone witch, with her square jaw and piggy eyes, was not beautiful, but Daniel said she looked interesting, like a prize fighter.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Heckie, and sighed. ‘And you should have seen her on the netball field! But it’s all over between us.’ And she turned the photo back to face the wall.

When they had fed the other animals in the shop, Heckie went to the larder to fetch a carrot. The carrot was about half a metre long and as thick as a thigh and scarcely fitted into the shopping basket, which was a tartan one on wheels, but Heckie said it would do for their lunch.

‘My friend grows them for me. She’s a garden witch – there’s nothing she can’t do with vegetables, but they do come out rather big.’

‘What I was wondering,’ said Daniel as they wheeled the carrot towards the zoo, ‘was why you need a familiar? I mean, they’re animals that help witches to do their magic, aren’t they – and you changed Basil all right without one?’

‘I don’t need one, but I want one. And nothing ordinary like black cats or toads. I bet Dora’s trailing round with a bontebok by now at the very least.’

Wellbridge Zoo was small, but pretty and well-kept, with flower-beds between the cages. Daniel went there often because his friend Joe, whose father was a keeper in the ape house, could get him in free.

‘Now to business,’ said Heckie when they had paid and gone through the turnstile. ‘You know what we’re looking for?’

‘An animal that’s fierce?’

‘Well, not so much fierce as powerful. Mean. Strange and perhaps a little throbbing; that kind of thing.’