by Eoin Colfer
“I like Red,” she said in a quiet voice. “I don’t think it’s fair, blaming everything on him.”
May’s face was flushed, and she toyed nervously with her hair. My detective’s intuition hit me in the gut like a wrecking ball.
“You told Red he was a suspect.”
May nodded. “He’s on his way over. I just texted him a warning, because he’s nice. I didn’t think he’d come over.”
I thought back to my years studying for the Bob Bernstein badge. The recommended course of action in all situations was to avoid confrontation. Avoiding confrontation was an excellent way to keep your blood in your veins and your bones in one piece.
“Thanks, May,” I said, being sarcastic, obviously. “You’ve been a real help.”
May smiled guiltily. “Sorry, Fletcher. You’re nice, but so is Red. Pity you’re on different sides.”
“I hate to spoil the fun,” I said, pocketing my notebook, “but I have some incident reports to chart.”
April pointed over my shoulder. “Too late.”
I turned toward the playing field. One lanky redhead was heading at speed directly for us.
I felt my throat go dry. “He was playing hurling,” I said, my throat clicking as I talked. “How fortunate.”
“I didn’t know that,” said May. “Honestly.”
Hurling is the Irish sporting version of pitched battle. The hurl, or bat, resembles an executioner’s ax without the blade, and serves roughly the same purpose.
May came out from behind the table. “Don’t worry, Fletcher. Red won’t do anything. He’s nice, really, once you get past the mental bit.”
I was not comforted.
Red skidded to a halt before us, kicking up an arc of gravel. He wore faded jeans, and his T-shirt was tucked into his back pocket. He was tall and rangy, bony and muscular. Red’s features were sharp enough to cut logs, and his eyes darted like a hawk’s, taking in the situation. In one hand he held a chipped and banded hurl. In the other a cell phone.
Les Jeunes Etudiantes were suddenly transformed into Southern belles, half flustered, half delighted. Red had a powerful effect on girls; they either loved him or loathed him. Often both on the same day. I don’t know how he did it. A mysterious combination of cockiness and charisma. You couldn’t say that Red was handsome, exactly. But whatever he had was better than handsome, because it would last forever.
“I just got a text, Half Moon,” panted Red, ignoring the girls completely.
I pulled in my elbows and dropped my gaze. This was the nonaggressive stance wildlife experts recommended adopting when confronted by a gorilla.
“May says you’re investigating me. Is that right, Half Moon?”
I could safely answer that one. “Not exactly. You are one of my suspects. Everyone is a suspect until I can clear them.”
Red shrugged on his T-shirt. The garment was emblazoned with the slogan I Fought the Law. Even his T-shirt was against me.
“A suspect for what? What am I supposed to have done?”
“Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “But a lock of hair has been appropriated. Pop-star hair, to be precise.”
Red twirled his hurl expertly. It was a vicious length of oak, reinforced at the oval end by a steel band. Red had embossed his name on the band using roundheaded tacks.
“Appropriated? Precise? What kind of freak are you?” Red leveled the hurl at me. “Listen, Half Moon. I have a hard enough time with teachers and shopkeepers and the police, without head cases like you starting rumors about me.”
Naturally I wasn’t happy about being called a freak in front of a line of pretty girls. But at least I wasn’t a bleeding freak. Not yet.
“Breathe deeply, Red,” I said, raising my palms to show I wasn’t armed. A tip from the Bob Bernstein manual. “By tomorrow you could be off my list for the hair, at least.”
Red moved so fast then that I only saw the first bit and the last bit. In the first bit, I was standing with my palms raised and Red was three feet away. In the last bit I was flat on my back and Red was kneeling on the crooks of both elbows. There was barely enough time to be scared, but I did manage to squeeze it in.
“You’re not getting it,” he said, still reasonably calm. “I don’t want to be on or off any list In fact, I want you to burn the list. Leave me alone, Half Moon, or you’ll be sore and sorry.”
I believed him. Not a doubt in my mind.
May tried to help. She beat Red on the back with an empty cola can. “Get off him, Red Sharkey. You’re not impressing anyone. I’m sorry now I tried to help.”
Red looked up at May. For a moment something new appeared in his eyes. Something like anguish.
“It’s hard enough already, May,” he said. “Being a Sharkey is hard enough, with my family the way they are. I’m trying, you know, but what chance do I have with everyone in this town bad-mouthing me? And now Half Moon is jumping on the wagon.” He tucked the hurl under my chin like a violin. I could feel it against my Adam’s apple. “I’d like to see you try to be me for a day, even an hour. Little weird Fletcher Moon, poking around in other people’s business. I bet your biggest problem is which pencil to write with in your stupid little play-detective notebook.”
In spite of the situation, I felt anger of my own thumping inside my chest. Don’t get me wrong, most of me was terrified, but there is a steel fist of stubborn pride inside me that punches its way out every now and then, especially when someone belittles my profession.
“I could live your life,” I grunted, each word a struggle because of the pressure on my throat. “I could go around bullying smaller people. I could steal stuff that doesn’t belong to me. And you know what? I’m smarter than you, so I could get away with it, too. But you couldn’t do what I do. You couldn’t find a clue if it was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘I’m a clue.’”
This was a long speech, given the circumstances, and pretty well put together, too. Not many kids would have stood up to Red Sharkey like that. Of course, when I say stood up, I don’t actually mean stood up literally. Emotions flicked across Red’s brow, as though his brain was channel hopping. He went through amazement, fury, and sadness among others, eventually settling on a blank expression that reminded me of the one Mel Gibson did in Braveheart, just before he cut some English guy’s throat.
“That’s what you think?” he growled, and the words did seem to come from the back of his throat. “You think all I do is bully and steal?”
“You think I play at being a detective?”
“It is a game,” shouted Red, pulling me to my feet. “A baby’s game. You go around playing detective, and innocent people suffer.”
I pulled away from him. This was too much hogwash for anyone to bear.
“Innocent people like you, I suppose?”
Red gave me his standard-issue charming grin. “Exactly.”
I decided to cut the chase. “Just give me my badge, Sharkey. Give me the badge and the hair thing, and I can close the book.”
Red grabbed my shirtfront, dragging me toward him. It was classic hard man stuff, almost an act.
“I didn’t take your stupid plastic badge, or the hair. So close the book right now, Half Moon. Close it or else.”
Or else what? I wondered, but I never found out, because May’s dad pulled up in a station wagon. He opened a window and called to Red.
“Show some backbone, Sharkey. That boy is barely up to your waist!”
Red had never taken orders well. As far as he was concerned this was between him and me, and none of Gregor Devereux’s business. So rather than release me, he lifted me higher until my shirt tightened at the back, and I was forced to rise to my tippytoes.
I often wondered what would have happened then, if Gregor Devereux had been forced to actually rescue me, but it never came to that, because we had a bit of a movie moment.
Something that sounded like a really big lion purred down the street. I looked over my shoulder to see a large, gold, 70’s BMW pull up to
the footpath, almost nudging the Devereux station wagon. This was the Sharkeys’ car and everyone in town knew it. It had been doing the rounds of Lock since before I was born. Local legend had it that Papa Sharkey won the car from a millionaire German tourist in a game of boules. Legend also had it that the lock on the driver’s door was broken and Papa never bothered to have it fixed, because no thief would be stupid enough to steal Papa Sharkey’s car.
The front window came down smoothly, and a huge head dipped into the light. The face was mostly wild black beard, with two laser-blue eyes that calmly took in the situation.
“Get in the car, son,” said Papa Sharkey. “We’re going to the grave today.”
His voice was impossibly deep and smooth. Like someone had mixed the bass guy from a soul band and the guy who does the movie trailers together in a vat of treacle. A voice like that was difficult to disobey, but maybe Red had practice, because he held on as tightly as before.
Papa spoke again, his tone a shade harder.
“Red. In the car. Now.”
Red glowered for a moment, then swallowed it. He shot me one last loaded look, then released my shoulder, crossing the road to the BMW. He climbed inside the dark interior, and the car pulled away slowly. I didn’t take my eyes off the big sedan until it cut through the estate and out of sight. It would be about three hours before my heart slowed to normal speed.
Mr. Devereux got out of his car and straightened my shirt. “Steer clear of that one, young Moon. He’s trouble. Just like the rest of his family.”
I was inclined to believe it. The police files confirmed that the Sharkeys were indeed trouble. It seemed as though Red was following in the family footsteps, in spite of May’s faith in him.
“Thanks, Mr. Devereux.”
Mr. Devereux slapped a patch of dust from my shoulder. “Call me Gregor. What was that all about, anyway?”
May began loading the stall into the back of the Volvo. “Red is a suspect.”
Gregor Devereux collapsed the legs on the folding table. “Maybe you should just leave that alone, Fletcher. It’s not worth the trouble for a lock of hair.”
I was surprised to find that I was as pigheaded as my mother always said. “I can’t do that, Gregor. I’ve already been paid, so I have to see this through. And anyway, it’s not just the hair anymore. There’s something strange going on in Lock.”
Mr. Devereux sighed through his nose. “Oh, really?”
“Strange little thefts. Mini-disks, record player needles. I need to know why someone would want all these things.”
“I see April has signed you up for Paranoia 101,” said Mr. Devereux. “Okay. It’s your hide. Are we ready, girls?”
April was a million miles away. Probably imagining herself walking down the aisle toward the pop star of the day.
“April, let’s go. May has to practice her dancing. The school show is next week. This year we’re coming home with the trophy. That will show her mother.”
April blinked back to the real world, then ran around to the passenger side, catching my sleeve on the way past “Keep me up to speed.”
I nodded, watching the Volvo full of pink-clad girls draw away.
Up to speed? Suddenly, everyone’s a detective.
That night, back in my office—I say office, but it’s actually my bedroom that I think of as an office. It sounds better if you say to a client: I’ll need to run a few tests back in the office, rather than: I’ll have a look at this with a magnifying glass after I put my PJ’s on.
Officially I was asleep, but actually I was working the evidence. Twenty minutes past Cinderella’s curfew and I was still trawling through the police reports. September seemed to be a busy month for the Sharkeys. Maybe they were getting a head start on their Christmas list.
I had scanned an ordinal survey map into my iBook, layering it over a hundred-square grid. Then I mapped each crime onto the grid using a color-coded system. It took a while, but eventually I had an overview of suspected Sharkey activity in Lock. I studied the plottings for a while and realized if the Sharkeys had actually committed all these crimes then they must be operating twenty-four hours a day, every day. There was the option that they had people working for them. Not all the sharks had to be Sharkeys.
Something rustled outside the house, startling me. I turned off the bedroom light, dropping my gaze to the back garden. After a few moments, my night vision kicked in and I could make out the familiar shapes of walls and bushes. One of the bushes seemed to be moving. Unusual. It was unlikely that I was witnessing the birth of a new mutant species of bush, so I concluded that there was someone behind the plant.
I was correct. Seconds later a hooded head popped from the foliage. This was followed by an arm, which beckoned me down. Strange. Why would someone wish to talk to me at this time of night? Someone roughly my own age, judging by the height.
It’s perfectly reasonable, I told myself. You are a detective on a case. Everyone knows about the investigation, thanks to May. This person lurking in the evergreens must have some sensitive information.
I made sure I had my notebook, pulled on my jacket, and resolved to make my e-mail address more widely available in future so this kind of skullduggery wouldn’t be necessary.
My parents were in bed, having had a rough day raising their children. Hazel was in her bedroom acting out all the parts in a new play entitled Not So Happy Now, Are You? It was a simple matter for me to sneak downstairs.
I did pause for a moment, listening to the voice of reason inside my head screaming: Are you insane? Don’t you watch horror movies? Go back upstairs.
But I was a detective. How could I turn away from this development? Even so, I thought it best to play it safe and take a shortcut through the garage. Maybe I could get a look at my snitch before he got a look at me.
I padded across the kitchen and through the adjoining door to the garage. I had been this way so many times that I picked my way through years of junk without causing the slightest clatter.
One slipped bolt later and I was in the garden, crouching behind Dad’s prized gnome. Dad’s gnome looked pretty traditional, but when Hazel accused him of being old-fashioned, he claimed it was a post-modernist ironic gnome that was mocking its own heritage.
I heard footfalls nearby, and peeked over the gnome’s pointed hat. A huge mistake, as it turned out. Something sliced through the darkness at speed, heading directly for my head. A club of some kind, definitely being wielded as a weapon. I heard the prowler grunt from the effort, like a tennis professional serving for the match. No sooner had I raised my hand to protect my face than it was pinned to my forehead, and everything above my neck seemed to be on fire. The force of the blow lifted me six inches from the ground, sending me sailing into a rock garden.
I lay there unable to do anything except wonder why the stars were going out one by one. I still had the darkness, but no more stars.
DR. BRENDAN’S BEDSIDE MANNER
I WOKE UP ALONE, which I felt was highly unfair. I had always known that someday I would be knocked unconscious; it went with the job. But for some romantic reason I had believed that when I came to, there would be a crowd of concerned family members and admirers hovering around the bed. But there was nobody. Just a sterile hospital room.
The pain was something else I hadn’t bargained for. Every time I moved, it felt as though brain jelly was seeping out through cracks in my cranium. There weren’t, in fact, any fractures in my skull, just bone bruising. A very cheerful doctor explained this to me when he arrived much later on his morning rounds.
“Did you ever see those movies where the bad guys kick the devil out of the good guy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what happened to you.”
Dr. Brendan would have been a dead man if I could have raised my head without squealing like a schoolgirl. Obviously he thought I was four years old.
“The point is,” continued Dr. Brendan, “that those movie guys aren’t really hi
tting each other. In actuality.”
“You don’t say.”
“No really, I’m serious,” continued Dr. Brendan. “It’s all pretend. Human beings aren’t built to take that kind of punishment.”
I closed my eyes, hoping he would go away.
“A knock like you got. Well, you’re lucky to be alive. Okay, you don’t look so good, right now, but most of the damage is just deep bone bruising, except for the nose. Your left hand took most of the force.”
I opened my eyes. “What was that about my nose?”
“Snapped like a wishbone. We’re going to be setting it this evening. And your hand was pounded like a raw steak. Nothing broken, but you won’t be playing the violin for a few months.”
“My head is ringing.”
Dr. Brendan checked my ears with a penlight. “An aftereffect of the trauma. But again, it’s temporary.”
In my mind’s darkroom, a picture of Frankenstein’s monster began to develop.
“You’ll be on painkillers after the operation. Maybe you should get a pair of dark glasses, too.”
“Why? Will the light hurt my eyes?”
Brendan giggled guiltily. “No, just to stop you from looking at yourself in the mirror. You’re going to be quite the troll for a while.”
“Troll?”
“I’m afraid so. For at least two months, ugly is going to be your middle name. And quite possibly your first and last name, too.”
I moaned. Several bubbles popped in my nose.
Dr. Brendan took pity on me. “I’m sorry, Fletcher. I thought a joke might get your spirits up.”
“Spirits up!” I groaned, each syllable sending a laser burst of pain through my nose. “Are you crazy?”
Dr. Brendan hooked my chart on the bed’s foot rail.
“No no,” he said gallantly. “Just doing my job.”
Dr. Brendan held up a few fingers, then decided that I wasn’t concussed and went to fetch my family from the hall.
Mom nearly passed out when she saw my bruised face.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I assured her, trying my best to smile. From the look on my mother’s face, I guessed that smiling made things worse.