Once Brian got past his horror at the idea of dismantling a famous work of modern art, he and Tammy worked quickly. They were a good team – he was an all-round genius and she was a brilliant mechanic. Brian assembled some rotor blades from plywood, while Tammy worked on the mechanism for turning them round and round. Both pigs had suggestions for how to improve Leo’s original design.
‘When this mission’s over, we’ll put this work of art back exactly as it was,’ said Brian. ‘Right?’
Tammy shrugged as she attached the mechanism to the bike frame. ‘You mean, chuck it in a corner any old way? Yeah, we can do that.’ She glanced nervously at her watch. ‘Anyway, the shutters will go back up in a couple of minutes,’ she said. ‘If those baboons get in before we get this baby off the ground, there won’t BE an end to this mission. At least, not a happy one …’
She tightened up the last of the struts. ‘It’s ready for a test run.’
Brian glanced nervously at the shutters. ‘OK, but we haven’t got long.’
Quickly Tammy hopped on to the bike seat and began to pedal. As the chain whirred round, the rotor blades did too, becoming a blur over Tammy’s head.
‘Faster!’ cried Brian.
Tammy pedalled harder and slowly the flying-machine began to wobble up into the air.
‘It’s working!’ cried Brian. His surprised joy lasted for roughly 1.6 seconds, and then there was a CLICK and the steel shutters began to rise.
The four beefy baboons charged into the room. Their muzzles all displayed scarylooking teeth, and it didn’t bear thinking what their long, powerful arms could do to a couple of pigs.
But the homemade flying-machine was hovering at head height now. ‘Jump on!’ shouted Tammy. Brian leapt up and grabbed the bike frame with one trotter. It dipped for a moment, but then Tammy pedalled even faster and the machine wobbled higher.
By the time the first baboon reached them, Brian’s feet were just out of its hairy reach. Grunting in anger, the guard leapt high. Its hand grazed Brian’s trotter, but it couldn’t quite grab him.
Brian looked down at the cluster of furious baboons. ‘So long, monkeys!’ he yelled. Then he realized they weren’t going any higher. ‘Er … Tammy, can you pedal a bit faster, please?’
‘This isn’t very easy, you know!’ snapped Tammy. The bike chain whizzed around, but they continued only to hover in the air. Below them one of the baboons was starting to clamber on to another’s shoulders.
An idea hit Brian – he could lighten the load! With his spare trotter he pulled out a huge book from the special book-carrying pocket he’d sewn into his flightsuit. ‘Farewell, Pop-Up History of Art, Volume 1,’ he said sadly. He threw the giant book down at the baboons.
One of the guards swatted it away easily, but they weren’t so lucky with Volume 2. This struck a baboon on the head and knocked him out cold.
‘That’s better!’ cried Tammy. The flyingmachine was heading up again, out of reach of the enraged security guards. It spiralled around the room, picking up speed in tighter and tighter circles as it neared the glass dome in the ceiling.
‘Watch out, we’re going through!’ cried Tammy.
An instant later they struck the glass. It shattered into a thousand pieces, which rained down into the gallery as the two pigs flew out into the moonlit night. Still pedalling for all she was worth, Tammy glanced down and saw a knot of baboons guarding the parked SkyHogs.
Brian pulled out his radio. ‘We MUST be able to get reception from up here!’ he cried.
Moments later he was talking to Lola. ‘Quick! We need an address in Simian City for someone called Arabelle Van Housen.’
‘Roger that, Bri,’ she replied.
It took the PiPs radio operator only a few seconds to pull up the information on her computer and report back. ‘She’s incredibly rich. She lives in a massive mansion in the hills to the north.’ Lola gave them the address and then signed off.
Tammy turned the flying-machine north towards the biggest house on the biggest hill.
With his radio tucked away, Brian could hold on with both trotters. Even then, his arms were beginning to ache. ‘Wonder how Pete and Curly are getting on?’ he said.
Tammy pedalled on. ‘You know Pete … He’s probably already solved the case and is putting his trotters up.’
Brian said nothing. He had a bad feeling that this case might not be quite so easy.
It took Pete a long time to climb out of the booby-trap pit, sticking his elbows out wide and wiggling upwards, while kicking with his back trotters against the sides. Finally he was able to reach up and take hold of the trapdoor’s edge. Gritting his teeth, he pulled with all his might. It wasn’t easy to haul such a weight – he knew he should have listened to his gut instinct and not eaten an extra helping of chips at every meal.
Finally, he clambered out. But there was no time to catch his breath.
‘Curly!’ he shouted, rushing back towards the door into the little white room. But when he burst in, he saw that the ceiling was back up where it belonged, at the top of the room. As for Curly, apart from a scattering of plaster dust on the floor, there was no sign of the trainee pig whatsoever.
Pete shook a trotter in fury. ‘If they’ve hurt a single bristle on that boy’s head …’
In fact, Curly had not been crushed flat; nor had he been grabbed by Mrs Van Housen’s henchmen. He was actually drinking a cup of tea. (Not that his situation was perfect – for one thing, the tea was a bit milky.) He was also looking at a skinny little spider monkey, who said his name was Vincent.
This was how Curly had met the spider monkey: back in the booby-trapped room, the cracks in the young pig’s plaster cast had been getting bigger and bigger under the pressure of the ceiling. It had been about to burst when someone threw a switch outside the door on the far side of the room. The ceiling stopped, then it began to go back up. Moments later the door opened and a little furry head looked in.
Vincent wasn’t a very big monkey, and it took all his strength to pull Curly back out through the door, which he had propped open.
‘Wait!’ cried Curly. ‘I need to find my friend! He went back the other way! He was going up the stairs for help.’
Still dragging the plastered pig, Vincent giggled nervously. ‘Forget him,’ he said. ‘If he went that way, there’s nothing you can do for him.’
The little monkey had pulled Curly back along the corridor, past the gallery room and into a cluttered artist’s studio, where he’d finally cut the trainee out of his plaster cast.
‘Thanks,’ said Curly, looking around as he stretched his arms and legs. The studio was full of artist’s stuff – paints, pots, brushes, easels, empty frames, canvases – and the walls were covered in half-finished sketches. It was clear that Vincent was a talented artist.
‘May I ask you a question?’ said Curly, sipping his tea. ‘What’s going on here?’
Vincent chewed the tip of his tail nervously. ‘I’m an artist,’ he began, ‘but I’m not very good at thinking of things to paint. I’m good at copying other paintings though! That’s why they keep me here and bring me works to copy.’
‘You mean you make forgeries?’ asked Curly.
Vincent giggled again and bobbled his head forward. ‘Loads of them! They bring them from the National Primate Gallery and I make copies. Then they secretly send the fake back to the museum and keep the original. It was OK at first, but then I got fed up. I tried to leave but Mrs Van Housen’s baboons just brought me back. I’m a prisoner here!’ He grinned slyly at Curly. ‘That’s why I started putting clues in the paintings, so someone could come and rescue me. And here you are!’ Disappointment flashed across the monkey’s little face. ‘Hmm. Hold on though – I rescued you! What are you doing here?’
‘Me and my friends belong to the Pigs in Planes – Animal Paradise’s best crime-fighting unit,’ Curly answered. ‘We’re here to solve this robbery, and we’ll help you too.’
Vincent let out an excited giggle.
Curly didn’t know anything about the clues in Vincent’s paintings but there was still something that didn’t make sense to him. ‘What about the Mona Fleasa? Why didn’t they just return a fake of that in secret, too? Why did they ask for a ransom?’
Vincent plucked a flea from his own fur and popped it into his mouth. ‘Simple. The police interrupted the robbery and almost caught them. Gilbo and George got away, but it meant there was no chance to return the painting in secret. They had to go through with the whole ransom idea.’ The monkey giggled. ‘Mrs Van Housen doesn’t need the money, that’s for sure!’
Curly’s mind was racing. He wished Pete was here – the captain would know what to do. ‘We just need to get out of here,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll call my commanding officer at PiPs HQ.’
Vincent’s tail waved anxiously. ‘There’s no time for that!’ he cried. ‘Follow me!’ The little monkey led Curly out of the studio and through the winding maze of hallways and corridors.
‘They think I’m harmless,’ he whispered. ‘No one cares if I roam the mansion. It’s when I try to leave the place that they get all upset.’
They rode a service lift upstairs and Vincent steered Curly to a window. The young pig looked down and saw dozens of cars pulling up in front of the mansion. A number of monkeys and apes – all stylishly dressed in black – were getting out. Uniformed baboons guided them to the entrance.
‘Mrs Van Housen has invited everyone in the Simian City art world to her mansion tonight,’ hissed Vincent. ‘She’s got a special presentation in mind!’
Curly didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Show me,’ he said.
‘OK, walk this way!’ answered Vincent, and he scurried off, knuckles dragging along the floor.
Curly knew what Pete would say in response to that, but of course the PiPs captain was not here; had he been caught in another of the mansion’s terrible traps … or had something even worse happened?
And so, at the same moment that Pete was doing exactly the same thing in a different part of the mansion, Curly shook a trotter in fury: ‘If they’ve hurt a bristle on my hero’s head …’