There was nothing the boys could do. Fizz wanted to run out and pull Fish’s tail, take the bucket off, save him from those stairs, but a large plastic screen blocked the pool from his reach (it had stopped them all from getting wet when the squids had amusingly misfired their squirts). Dr Surprise quietly suggested they sit down.
‘But it’s Fish!’ Fizz said to him.
‘Nonsense,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Do sit down, boys.’
As they argued, the sea lion reached the top platform and, in a movement so simple as to prove it had all been an act, tossed the bucket into the air, balanced it on his nose, flapped his flippers in a damp clap and honked a triumphant honk that echoed for seconds round and about.
Then in a swift startling move he flicked the bucket into the air, wriggled off the platform and plunged like a beautiful spinning brick nose-first into the water. So deft was the dive that hardly a ripple arose, hardly a splash sploshed, but a startled flurry of flying fish fanned out in a circle, leaping up into the air from the middle of the pool, fleeing like pigeons from a snapping dog.
It was a spectacular dive and only after everything had settled down did Fizz realise he’d been holding his breath.
With a splash the bucket landed in the water, upside down but floating. From underneath the sea lion nudged the bucket round, and rose up in the water balancing it on his nose, honking again. Only then did Fizz notice Philip the otter in the bucket, looking round in the air as if in surprise.
As he watched open-mouthed at this finale, the showman in him overriding his suspicions, he heard a beeping.
Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep.
It sounded like an electric alarm clock at the beginning of another long day.
As the audience looked around to see where the odd sound had come from Fizz noticed Admiral Spratt-Haddock drop his head into his hands, and then a roar of water splashed up out of the centre of the pool.
The log that Philip the otter had been so calmly lying on throughout the show had reared up, split apart, and lunged at the sea lion with his balanced bucket.
And Fizz saw, with a start, that it wasn’t a log after all, it was a crocodile, and it was chasing the sea lion out of the pool. A loud snap of its jaws and a flick of its long tail saw stillness return to the arena. Once again it looked like a large green-brown log was drifting in the middle of the water, and the Admiral and his prize sea lion (who was also Fizz and Wystan’s prize sea lion) were stood on the concrete beside the pool looking out at the rippling water.
Spratt-Haddock leant down and said something into Fish’s ear the boys couldn’t make out, but Fizz got the feeling it was an apology.
And then the show was over.
The Admiral, the sea lion and Philip the otter stood in front of the little curtain and took a bow, and then they all left, and the only sound was the gentle slurp and splash of water on the poolside tiles.
‘That was Fish,’ Fizz said confidently.
‘Definitely,’ said Wystan. ‘I’d know his nose anywhere.’
‘That was his waistcoat.’
‘Boys,’ said the Doctor. ‘There is more than one sparkly waistcoat in the world.’
‘Not sparkly,’ corrected Fizz. ‘Spangly.’
The Doctor slapped his knees as if it were some sort of answer. ‘I think,’ he warbled, raising a finger in the air, ‘it’s time to go back to the circus. We’ve been away long enough. A good afternoon’s work will take your minds off things.’
With the two grumbling boys in tow the Doctor led his way back through the Aquarium and to the park where the gaily coloured Big Top welcomed them all back home.
Despite what the Doctor said, Fizz and Wystan were decided. They knew their sea lion friend better than anyone. If they couldn’t recognise him then who would? He was missing and that Admiral character had been lurking round the circus with his pet crocodile. Everything made perfect sense. His fish had been stolen and so he’d had to steal a Fish of his own.
As they sat with the Doctor in his caravan, they tried to convince him one last time.
‘But Fish hasn’t been stolen,’ Dr Surprise said, stroking Flopples, his white rabbit, who lay in his arms gently snoring. ‘He’s just wandered off somewhere. He’ll be back. He’s probably back already. Before you start accusing people,’ he went on, ‘you must be sure of all the facts. You know that, Fizz. You have to trust me, I looked closely at the Aquarium and that sea lion wasn’t Fish. I’ve known him for years, ever since he first arrived at the circus, long before either of you got here. He was a young sea lion then, of course, sneaking fish from behind Cook’s back. Oh, it was a big mystery at the time. No one knew where all these fish were going, you see. And Cook was getting angrier and angrier.’
‘Like last night?’
‘Yes, but this was a different Cook. It was after he left that the chap you know as Cook took over. Before our Cook was Cook, he was just Terry Trapp the escapologist’s son. Terry’s shuffled off to the great old circus in the sky now, but it’s good to have a Trapp still in the circus, as it were.’
‘Dr Surprise, what about Fish?’
‘Oh, yes, these fish kept going missing. It went on for days. At first Cook blamed the clowns and he banned them from the Mess Tent. They were angry about that, and there are few things worse than angry clowns. They filled his caravan with custard. Got on the roof and poured it through the air vents until it was full. He had to eat his way out. It was definitely not funny at all. But the fish still kept vanishing. Then he blamed young Miss Tremble. He thought he’d overheard her ask Unnecessary Sid to get her “some kippers for breakfast”. Oh, you should have seen the tears when he accused her. She was mortified. That night the clowns filled Cook’s caravan with horse manure. His tastebuds were never the same after that. The funny thing was it turned out she’d actually asked Unnecessary Sid to buy her some slippers in Belfast, because he was about to go on holiday you see. To Belfast. And then—’
‘Dr Surprise,’ Fizz said quietly, adding a cough and lifting his hand as if he were a schoolboy asking a question (which in a way he was).
‘Yes?’ said Dr Surprise.
‘We don’t care about all that stuff. We only care about Fish today,’ Wystan snapped. ‘We need to rescue him!’
‘Rescue him?’
‘Yeah, from the Aquarium. Remember?’
‘He’s been kidnapped, Doctor,’ prompted Fizz, in a more friendly tone than Wystan. (Fizz knew it wasn’t a good idea to shout at Dr Surprise. Not only was he sensitive, but Flopples was very protective. Fizz had lost his temper with the Doctor once, when he was much smaller, and he still heard the rabbit’s fearsome growl in his nightmares. He didn’t want a repeat of that experience.)
‘What nonsense, boys,’ the Doctor said. ‘There’s a very special way Fish’s whiskers wrinkle when he sniffs. No other sea lion does it quite the same. The Aquarium’s Pescado was not Fish. Not even close.’
‘But it’s obvious what’s happened,’ Wystan said when the boys had left the Doctor’s caravan. ‘When Cook threw a ladle at Fish last night and shouted at him and ran him out of the Mess Tent, then he must’ve been so upset that Admiral Spratt-Haddock could easily come along and lure him away.’
‘You’re right,’ Fizz said. ‘He looked so upset about being shouted at. All the Admiral had to do was wave a bit of mackerel and smile nicely and he would’ve followed him anywhere.’
‘How did he know, though?’ Wystan wondered. ‘I mean that Fish was feeling miserable?’
‘Well, maybe he just got lucky, maybe he was over here looking for something else, but ran into Fish, or maybe . . . maybe Cook’s in cahoots with him?’
‘Blimey,’ said Wystan, running his fingers through his beard, which was a sign that he was thinking. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Cook would love to get rid of Fish, wouldn’t he? So he upset him on purpose, with the Admiral ready and waiting to be nice to him . . .’
‘It was all a plot,’ Fizz concluded, and Wystan agre
ed.
And so the boys had dug their way down to the truth of the matter, unearthed the villains, found their friend and worked out the ‘why’ of the crime. Now all they needed to do was bring the dastardly deed to light, rescue their sea lion and set everything to rights.
Easy.
In fact they’ll probably do it all in the next chapter. I expect.
Chapter Five
In which a plan is set in action and in which an Aquarium is visited, again
I don’t know you. We’ve not met. I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, a sea lion or a shellfish. I can’t possibly know what your life’s like, can I? You might spend lazy sun-filled days on a deckchair sitting on the beach sipping fresh mango juice, humming light-hearted tunes you heard once in a dream, or you might have people looking over your shoulder and breathing down your neck, saying, ‘Do this. Do that. No, not like this. Do it like that. No, not like that. Over here, not there.’
The life of a boy in a circus isn’t a bad life, but it has few deckchairs in it. It is one where people expect you to do things and to be places at certain times and they get upset if you just go off missing in the middle of the day (unless you’re accompanied by a Doctor). So Fizz had to sit through a whole French lesson with Madame Plume de Matant and then his dad lifted him up (with one hand, naturally) so he could clean the windows of their caravan and then he had to sit in the Mess Tent and eat his tea (cod and chips and crispy seaweed, which was a little annoying, since Tuesdays were normally Fizz’s favourite, caravan pie (which is like cottage pie, but moves about more), but while they were at the seaside it was fish every day).
While he was eating he saw Captain Fox-Dingle across the tent. He was just as smart as normal, but the pink of his uniform looked a little dimmer. He was moving his dinner round his plate with his fork but without picking any of it up. It looked like Charles hadn’t improved during the day. This wasn’t the way a happy lion-tamer went about eating his dinner.
Fizz definitely wouldn’t be called upon to do the act tonight.
On any other day he would’ve been heartbroken to miss out, but his head was still buzzing with Fish and the plan he’d come up with. The job before him, the one he had to do, was to find his friend and free him and return to the circus a hero, wreathed in glory and crowned with triumph.
At the end of it, at least Wystan would have an act again. Maybe he’d let Fizz join in: Two Boys & A Sea Lion. It still wouldn’t be quite the same as sticking his head in a lion’s mouth, though. Nothing could thrill a crowd quite like that.
He’d only done the act the night before, less than twenty-four hours ago, but already he missed Charles and his warm meaty breath. He missed the softness of his fur, and the applause.
He pushed the magnificent land lion out of his mind and filled it up with everything he knew about the sea lion and the Aquarium. Okay, he thought, time to get on with this rescue.
He met Wystan outside Miss Tremble’s caravan. She’d gone off to give her pre-show pep talk to her horses and the boys could talk without being overheard.
‘Got everything?’ Fizz whispered.
‘Why are you whispering, Fizz?’ asked Wystan. ‘Tremble’s gone to talk to the horses. there’s no one here.’
‘Sorry,’ said Fizz. ‘It’s just that going on a secret rescue mission like this, well, it seems right to whisper.’
Wystan gave him a look over the top of his beard.
‘Have you got everything?’ Fizz asked again, not loudly, but not so quiet as to be accused of whispering.
Wystan held up a rucksack. ‘I got torches, some rope, Fish’s spare waistcoat and three tins of tuna.’
‘Brilliant. Let’s go.’
It was almost seven o’clock. Everyone was busily bustling round, preparing themselves or tending to the crowds, and no one noticed two small shapes sneaking off into the half-dark of the dusk, through the line of trees and out onto the prom.
‘That was easy,’ Wystan said.
‘Well, it was the easy part,’ Fizz replied.
It was true. Walking away from a busy circus is simple, straightforward, plain sailing. Breaking into a locked Aquarium and finding and freeing and rescuing a sea lion and escaping without getting caught by a dangerous and quite probably mad hook-handed Admiral was going to be a tiny bit harder.
But still, Fizz thought, it is going well so far.
They walked along the prom between the park and the Aquarium, past the shingle beach with its one old beached up-tilted fishing boat. They didn’t feel the need to tiptoe or to sneak. There was nothing odd-looking about two boys out for an early evening stroll. Nothing at all. They were just doing the perfectly normal sort of thing any perfectly normal sort of person might do.
Except for the beard and the long red ex-Ringmaster’s coat, perhaps.
But since there was no one else about (they were probably all at the circus, judging from the crowds the boys had seen queuing before they left) they weren’t noticed.
The plan continued to go well, even if ‘walking along the prom’ was another one of the parts Fizz identified as being easy.
They listened to the crashing waves as they walked along. It sounded like the sea was getting closer and closer. The shingle roared as it was sucked back down the beach with each retreating wave. It sounded, to Fizz’s ears, like Charles when he was having his first roar of the morning. It was deep and long and rumbled in your belly just as much as in your ears, and if you didn’t know it was a friendly lion in the cage you would have probably run in fright or been frozen to the spot in terror.
Charles hadn’t roared that morning when they’d gone to see him. Fizz wondered if he would ever roar like that again: joyfully, full-throatedly.
He tried to push the thought out of his mind. He looked at the sea. Heard it roar again. ‘I read a book once,’ he said, hoping making conversation might stop him thinking sad thoughts, ‘in the library, that said that all cats can swim.’
‘Hmm,’ Wystan said, unconvinced.
‘No, really. They’re actually pretty good at it,’ Fizz went on, ‘it’s just most of them choose not to. It takes them ages to get their fur dry. It’s such good-quality fur, you see, and they’re a bit precious about it. Like to look their best all the time. Tigers though, they don’t care, they look good wet or dry, I guess. They love to swim. In fact, this book said that you’re more likely to get killed by a tiger when you’re swimming than by a shark. Although I suppose,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘it probably depends on where you’re doing the swimming.’
‘In the tiger enclosure at the zoo?’
‘More likely to be a tiger.’
‘In the shark tank at the Aquarium?’
‘More likely to be a shark.’
Wystan stopped walking. Fizz stopped too. (It only seemed polite.)
‘Fizz?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you have to say that about the shark? I’ve got pictures in my head now.’
‘Well, it was you that said about the shark tank and the Aquarium.’
‘Yeah, and it was you that said about sharks eating people.’
Now Fizz was getting pictures in his head too. He’d been concentrating on the tigers. He got on well with big cats (or at least with Charles, who was the only one he knew), and although they were dangerous he had a good idea of how to be safe around them (keep on the outside of the bars, for instance), but now he had a shark swimming round in his head in a huge tank at an Aquarium just like the one they were walking towards, and Fizz had never learnt to swim. In his mind’s eye he was splashing about desperately trying to learn (learning’s a good thing, you usually know more at the end of it) and that huge fin was heading his way.
‘They don’t have sharks here, do they?’ he said, trying to push the picture away with common sense and knowledge.
‘I don’t remember none,’ Wystan answered, ‘but that don’t mean nothing. It was pretty boring in there and I weren’t loo
king too close.’
‘No, me neither. But . . . well, they would’ve been in with all the grey fish, wouldn’t they? Right at the beginning?’
‘I suppose. You’re the one who knows stuff. You read books. Have you read what colour sharks might be?’
‘I think . . .’ said Fizz, racking his brains. ‘I think they’re all grey. Aren’t they?’
‘I guess we’re gonna find out,’ Wystan said glumly.
Just a minute or two later they were stood in front of the Aquarium. The glass doors at the front of the building were locked and, peering through them, they could see dim lights on inside. Grey shapes swam in tanks. Fizz hoped that none of them were sharks.
He hoped none of them were tigers either.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s find a way in.’
Chapter Six
In which some boys attempt to break into an Aquarium and in which, eventually, they do so
The boys skirted round the outside edge of the Aquarium (not in real skirts, which flap about in the wind and get caught up in machinery, but in a metaphorical sense).
The plan was, instead of walking in through the front door (which was locked anyway), to sneak in round the side. When they were watching the show that morning Fizz had noticed that there was a place where the arena’s wall dipped down low. He could see over it from his seat and out to sea. If they could make their way round the outside of the Aquarium to there, they’d be able to climb over. Then, from the pool, they could slip through the curtain that led backstage and find a door. Maybe, if they were really lucky, Fish might be in the pool when they got there, and they could all just slip back over the wall and away. Easy.
‘Yeah, easy,’ Wystan had grumbled sarcastically. But since he couldn’t think of a better plan of his own, here he was, edging carefully.
To the seaward side of the Aquarium a path ran along beside the beach. Fizz had pointed at it, since it led the way they wanted to go, but as they’d rounded the corner it had narrowed. They had to walk in single file. Below them the waves splashed up and down the beach, crunching the hard shingle noisily.
The Boy Who Cried Fish Page 4