13 year-old Danny Hopkins puffed out his cheeks and punted the dented empty coke can lying on the pavement at his feet into the distance. He looked up to watch its flight. It struck a lamp-post and ricocheted into the road. Danny's mind wandered...
'And Hopkins hits the post! Dramatic stuff here at Wembley, with five minutes to go in the World Cup Final, West Germany leading England 1-0. Can super-sub Hopkins be the hero of the hour again, as he was against Brazil in the semi final? Coppell steps up to take the corner and...'
A distant church bell snapped him out of his reverie. He looked at his watch. 8.45. Better get a move on if he wanted to make it to school on time. Not that he wanted to go to school, not today anyway. Not on a Tuesday, with Maths first thing with Mr Wetherspoon. The horrible Mr Wetherspoon, with his stupid ginger beard and his bad breath, who always seemed to pick him out of the class when there was a particularly difficult maths problem on the board.
The same Mr Wetherspoon who always gave you an hours detention after school for not doing your homework. Like he was going to do again today.
Unless he came up with a particularly cunning excuse.
But that was the trick. Mr Wetherspoon may look like a total and complete idiot, but he'd seemed to have heard every school pupil excuse in the book. "I left it on the bus ... a mugger grabbed my bag ... my mum put it in the wash with my football gear ... I didn't know it was for today, honest!" All had been tried, and none had worked. For a maths teacher he was pretty wily.
Stupid maths. What good was it anyway? He didn't want to work in a bank or be a scientist. He wanted to be Stevie Coppell, terrorising the wing for Manchester United and England, or Ian Botham scoring a century against Australia. Or Professor X on the telly, saving the universe from the evil Reptons and getting a knighthood from the Queen before teatime. What good was maths to them? He looked down at his maths book in his hand and said one of those rude words he'd heard his father use whenever the Prime Minister came on the telly. Only not quite so loud as his Dad.
"I could try telling him the dog ate it... Mrs Wells believed me that time in Biology," Of course then he had proper evidence. Kelly had eaten his homework, or at least chewed it a bit. Mrs Wells saw that, and though he got a ticking off, he got away with it. His mum reckoned it was the taste of the glue he was using to stick his graphs in. Billy Watson told him they made the glue out of dead race horses, which was the same as what they made dog food out of so he said, but then Billy Watson said Trevor Francis was better than Kevin Keegan, so what did he know? Anyway, it was too late to back home and get Kelly to chew on it now, not that she'd even want to. Kelly was getting pretty choosy in her old age about her meals. And he wasn't about to chew on it himself. He was convinced that Mr Wetherspoon would know, and then he'd get taken to the Headmaster, and then there'd be a special assembly for the whole school about the dangers of eating maths books. They probably gave you cancer or something, everything gave you cancer these days; at least that's what his Dad said doctors were always saying. You couldn't trust doctors these days, he said. They weren't as good as they were in his day.
He glanced absently into the yard of the old deserted warehouse he passed everyday on his way into school and paused. His mum had always warned him against exploring in there, as it probably housed a load of dossers and muggers. He knew of some older lads who had been in there, or said they had, and all they said it had in it were a load of old boxes and some knackered machinery. A big sign on the door said something about it being owned by the council now. His Dad reckoned they were going to turn it into a car park. Danny wanted it to be a swimming pool or a skateboard park but the council never seemed to do anything to please kids. The so & so's.
Danny frowned. He thought he heard something. A banging and thumping coming from inside the building. Maybe the council was starting to tear the place down. Funny though, there wasn't a van parked out front.
Suddenly a board covering one of the ground floor windows burst off and clattered to the ground. Following close behind it were two struggling figures. One was definitely a man, in a long grey coat with an even longer multi-coloured scarf round his neck. But the other ... it looked like a huge dog, but a dog unlike any Danny had seen before. It was massive, almost like a lion, with coarse shaggy dark fur and a huge head with a gigantic mouth filled with terrible jagged teeth. The man was struggling desperately to keep those teeth away from his throat.
Danny looked around him, wide-eyed with fear and excitement. There was no one in the street, not even a car passing, let alone a copper. It was true what his Dad said; they were never around when you needed them. It was up to him then. Inspector Hopkins of the Flying Squad to the rescue!
"Oi!" he shouted, but his voice was too hoarse. He ran forward on shaky legs and shouted again. This time, man & dog (?) hesitated long enough to look at him. The dog used the distraction to edge its fangs down a little nearer to the man's neck.
"Excuse me, a little help here!" the man cried in a deep voice. Danny ran over and started battering the dog-thing with his maths book. The dog merely glanced at him and snarled. To his horror, Danny realised that its fur was a dark green and it had three red eyes burning in its evil face. The man strained desperately at the thing's throat and heaved its head upwards. Danny nearly gagged at the foul stench coming from its mouth. Danny batted at its head, and the beast whipped round and snapped at him.
"You hairy git!" Danny shoved the maths book deep into its gaping maw and the beast swallowed reflexively. Suddenly it began to choke, and its grip on the man beneath it loosened. He flung it off him with one great heave and rolled to one side, wheezing. The dog-thing landed heavily, still choking and now scratching feebly at its throat, coughing and retching in a vain effort to dislodge the book from its throat.
"Whatever did you feed it?" The man was propped up on his knees and peering at the creature bug-eyed.
"Me maths book. Doesn't like it, does he?"
"He certainly does not," the man replied gravely. "I must remember that, next time I tangle with a Voracian Kill-Hound." He patted his pockets and eventually produced a slim paperback. He looked at the title. "Janes' Book of Sonic Screwdrivers. Do you think that would do the trick as well?"
"I dunno," said Danny honestly. "What's a sonic screwdriver?"
"Well, it's a - aha!" The man pointed. The dog-thing suddenly convulsed and abruptly shimmered out of existence. Danny rubbed his eyes, not believing what he'd seen.
"Cor!" he exclaimed. "What happened?"
"I expect its masters recalled it. All Voracian Kill-Hounds have a demat collar surgically attached, so they can call them off in an instant. Obviously this one realised it's pet had lost the battle and brought it back home." The man stood up, wiping his hands on his coat and trousers. "Not a moment too soon either!"
"Is it, er, gonna come back?"
"I sincerely hope not! Judging from the way it was enjoying your maths book, I'd say its killing days were over anyway. Voracians aren't the most forgiving of species. And I should know!" A big beaming smile spread across his face and he took Danny's hand and started pumping it. "Thank you so very much mister, er..."
"Danny. Danny Hopkins."
The smile became so wide that his face threatened to split, and the pumping handshake became so strong Danny began to fear for his arm. "Mr Danny Hopkins, you've been of immense help, and I am forever in your debt. I'd offer you a reward of sorts but I'm afraid my companion is still in grave peril and I must dash to their rescue..." he winked conspiratorially and said in a lower voice: "as always!" He took his hand away and straightened up. "But I won't forget this, Mr Hopkins. Think on what you'd like as a reward and if it's in my power, you shall have it! But now, I simply must dash. Goodbye!"
With that he turned and dashed back into the warehouse. Danny tottered off after him, somewhat dazed. From the doorway he caught a brief glimpse of a flashing blue light and a strange wheezing groaning sound echoed through the building... then there was nothing.
Danny slowly raised his own hand in farewell. "Goodbye..." he murmured.
In the distance, the church clock began to strike nine. Danny's face fell. "Oh no, school!"
Saying all of Dad's rude words under his breath, Danny broke into a run.
***
"Homework, Hopkins?"
Danny looked at Mr Wetherspoon's desk, unable to meet his eye. "Well sir, y'see, it's like this..." he mumbled hesitantly.
Mr Wetherspoon pursed his lips cynically. "I suppose you're going to tell me a dog ate it."
Danny looked Mr Wetherspoon in the eye and took a deep breath. Mr Wetherspoon's dark frown got darker. Danny shook his head and looked away, defeated. Behind him Jenny Harper giggled and Danny blushed.
"No sir. Yes sir. I mean... you'd never believe me, sir." And he wouldn't. Imagination was never Mr Wetherspoon's strong point. Mind you, neither was his breath freshener.
Mr Wetherspoon sighed with exasperation, and began leafing through his notes to start the class.
"Excuses, excuses... when will you learn, Hopkins? Detention. An extra half hour on top this time. Sit down."
Danny sat alone in the classroom after everyone else had gone, mentally struggling with the extra algebra problems Mr Wetherspoon had left him. The letters and figures swam before his eyes on the book in front of him. It was no good.
"This is hopeless," he sighed.
Suddenly a wheezing groaning sound filled the classroom. To Danny's astonishment, a Police Box materialised in front of the blackboard. Its door swung open and the tall man with the grey coat and long scarf strode out, that huge grin still plastered all over his face.
"Hopeless? Nothing is ever hopeless, Mr Hopkins!"
"Cor!" was all Danny could say. The man bent over to look at his maths book and pulled a face.
"Eurgh, algebra! I hated that almost as much as tri-dimensional field equations. Is that on your syllabus too? Probably not. Oh well." He scooped Danny's work up and beamed down at him. "What say we give this little problem to K9 and you and I go and do something more interesting instead?"
"Wow! Really? Yes please!"
The man ruffled his hair. "I bet you like ... football, right?"
"You bet!"
The man held up a couple of tickets. "England V West Germany all right? Best I could do at short notice!"
"All right? You bet!" He stood up, then hesitated. "What about Mr Wetherspoon?"
The man's face fell. "I've only got two tickets. Do you really want him to come along too?"
"No, no, I mean, he'll be back to check on me."
The man grinned. "Don't you worry now, we'll be back before he knows!"
"How?"
The man waved towards the Police Box. "Come and see!"
Somewhere a small voice inside Danny's head reminded him about mum's words about going off with strange men... yet looking up at this tall man with his funny clothes and crazy hair and crazier smile he didn't seem strange at all. He seemed ... familiar. Like family. A crazy uncle. Not crazy like Geoff Bailey's uncle Herbert, who hung round the park shouting at ducks, but a nice crazy. Eccentric, that was the word. A bit like his Granddad. Granddad was special. This man was too, in a funny way.
Danny grinned back and took his hand, and the man led him into the Police Box.
"Put the kettle on, Romana, we've got company! You know, if you're lucky, I might even be able to get you Alf Ramsay's autograph."
"Who?" asked Danny.
"Who indeed!" the man laughed, and closed the door behind them. A moment later, the Police Box vanished, taking Danny Hopkins on the adventure of a lifetime.
