Sabotage Read Free

basket on the back of Grandad’s bike and set off for Old Joe’s.
    ‘Back again?’ Joe asked when he saw us.
    ‘I lost my lucky coin. Is it okay if we look for it with this metal detector?’ Max asked.
    ‘Of course. But mind, if you find any buried treasure, I want half!’ the old man smiled.
    ‘You’re on!’ I told him.
    ‘Hang on a minute.’ Old Joe walked over to the shed and disappeared inside. ‘You’re going to need these,’ he said, reappearing with two spades.
    I felt a surge of excitement the first time the metal detector bleeped. What if we did find some buried treasure in Old Joe’s garden? It wasn’t impossible. I’d heard stories of people finding old coins worth thousands of pounds. Each time the detector bleeped and there was nothing lying on the surface of the soil (where Max’s coin would have been), we dug a hole anyway, to look for whatever metal was buried there. But, by the time we’d found a pile of rusty nails and other junk, the excitement had worn off and I was finding the whole thing a bit tedious. Mind you, I let Max do most of the digging. After all, it was his coin.
    ‘Maybe your coin isn’t here,’ I said when we’d been searching for over an hour. ‘You could have dropped it somewhere else.’
    ‘Let’s look for a bit longer,’ he said. ‘We’ve nearly covered it all now.’
    A few minutes later the metal detector bleeped again. ‘I really hope this is your coin,’ I said, leaning forward to look at what I’d found.
    It wasn’t. It was a broken old bracelet, coated in dirt. I rubbed at it with the bottom of my tee shirt but couldn’t get any of the dirt off.
    ‘Found something interesting?’ Old Joe asked.
    ‘Just a broken bracelet and some bits of rubbish,’ I told him.
    ‘We haven’t found my lucky coin yet,’ Max said, sadly. ‘I think I’ve lost it for good.’
    ‘No, you haven’t.’ Old Joe held up a coin. ‘I found it in the hen hut when I was cleaning it out.’
    Max beamed. ‘Oh thank you!’ He took the coin from Joe and slipped it into his pocket.
    ‘Maybe you should find a safer place to keep that,’ I told him. ‘Perhaps your stepdad could drill a hole in it for you to make it into a key ring.’
    ‘Hey, that’s a good idea,’ Max agreed.
    No one was in when I got back home, so I decided to try and clean up the bracelet a bit. I washed it and wiped off most of the dirt then polished it dry. I could see now that there was a strange pattern on it. I was so busy studying it that I didn’t notice Mr Smythe come in.
    ‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
    ‘A broken bracelet I found at Old Joe’s.’ I showed him the bracelet. ‘Max lost his lucky coin, so we used a metal detector to try and find it, but we found this instead. It looks really old.’
    Mr Smythe snatched the bracelet from me and studied it. He seemed very distracted, and I thought I saw a spark of interest in his eyes, but then he shook his head. ‘Looks like a bit of old junk that someone won at the fair,’ he said. ‘Where did you say you found it?’
    ‘In Old Joe’s yard. It’s next to that field where you were metal detecting this morning.’
    He looked shocked. ‘Were you following me?’ he accused, glaring right at me.
    I quickly dropped my gaze. When he stared like that without blinking, I found him a little unnerving and, quite frankly, his rudeness was beginning to make me angry. ‘Of course not. We were visiting Old Joe. He’s a friend. That’s when we saw you,’ I said curtly.
    He seemed to calm down a little. ‘I see. Well, metal detecting is a hobby of mine, but, like you, I mostly find junk.’ He handed the bracelet back to me. ‘You might as well bin it.’
    I guessed he was right. What did I want with a broken bracelet? Jewellery had never been my thing anyway. I threw it in the bin and went up to my room to check my email and to see if any of my buddies were on messenger. Gran didn’t have a computer or internet, but Max’s