Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [39]
The Sharkey children obviously watched too much television. They gathered around my computer, expecting me to unravel this riddle with a few strokes on the keyboard and a knowing look.
‘I have to go out,’ I said.
Red headed for the bedroom. ‘I’ll get you some of my old clothes.’
Genie was disappointed. ‘Don’t you want to build a profile?’ she asked.
‘With what?’
‘With all the evidence that you downloaded from satellite surveillance, obviously. Don’t you watch CSI?’
I ground my teeth. ‘I need to visit the crime scenes first, before they get even more contaminated.’
Herod punched Genie on the shoulder. ‘Moron. He has to visit the crime scenes.’
Genie swatted her little brother with a hairbrush. ‘I know that, Roddy. Don’t touch the jacket. I haven’t cut the security tag off yet.’
Red returned with an AC/DC T-shirt and a purple tracksuit. The tracksuit was so shiny that it seemed to crackle with static electricity.
‘Get that lot on you,’ he said, throwing me the bundle. ‘It’s time to test your disguise.’
We left Chez Sharkey on foot, because two boys on a bicycle would fit the description doubtlessly being circulated by the police. I pulled the tracksuit sleeve well down over my cast.
There was a guard leaning against the front-gate pillar, on stake-out just in case the dangerous fugitive Fletcher Moon decided to wreak revenge on his attacker.
The guard on duty was a Cork man. John Cassidy from Cobh. He had once consulted me on a spate of burglaries across the bridge. I’d pointed him in the right direction and charged him a box of Maltesers. Cassidy had only spoken to me once, but he was a guard and trained to recognize faces. Even ones covered with fake tan.
‘Remember,’ Red whispered out of the side of his mouth, ‘you’re a Sharkey now. People will treat you differently.’
My plan was to sidle past Guard Cassidy with a hand shadowing my face. This was not Red’s plan. He wanted to put my disguise to the test. He grabbed my elbow, steering me right into Cassidy’s line of sight.
‘Hello, guard,’ he said, grinning broadly. ‘Have you met my cousin… eh… Watson?’
Watson? Oh, very funny.
Cassidy grunted. ‘Watson, is it? You Sharkeys certainly do pick names. Genie, Herod and Watson. I have to ask, Red, why Herod?’
‘Mam wanted something biblical. It was her last wish. Herod was all she could think of at the time.’
Red’s eyes were looking somewhere else. Into the past, where his mother was alive and made the house a home. For a long moment he was distant, then his trademark jaunty grin flashed back.
Cassidy turned his attention to me, and I felt as though there was a blinking arrow over my head with my name written on it. He gave me a slow once-over.
‘Just don’t go robbing anything while you’re in town, Watson. I don’t know how things work wherever you’re from, but here in Lock we take a very dim view of vagrant criminals.’
I was dumbstruck. This guard had accused me of being a thief, without knowing a thing about me except that I was a Sharkey. It was slander.
Red elbowed me in the ribs. Cassidy was waiting for a response.
‘OK, guard,’ I said sullenly. ‘I’ll stay out of trouble. No problem.’
Cassidy gave me his version of a scary stare.
‘Just see that you do, or you’ll have me to deal with.’
We were eye to eye, and there wasn’t a flicker of recognition. People see what they expect to see.
‘I’ll have to deal with you.’
‘So long as you understand that, we’ll have no problem.’
‘Not a problem in the world, guard.’
And just like that Fletcher Moon was invisible, hidden beneath an earring and a tracksuit. Watson Sharkey, however, was all too visible, and branded as a thief before he even opened his mouth to speak. Was this what being a Sharkey was like? If it was, I couldn’t wait to become a Moon again.
*
There was a line of cars outside the Moon house. Mam’s Mini, Dad’s Volvo and a police blue and white. Through the net curtain I could see my mother sitting on the couch, her face whiter than her favourite emulsion, Arctic Snow. Dad was there too. I caught