Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [4]
This was ridiculous. This was not how detectives worked.
‘Go on, Fletcher,’ said April Devereux, managing to speak and pout at the same time. ‘Do us all a favour and prove I’m telling the truth.’
I grimaced at the gathered crowd.
‘What can I do? I don’t have the facts. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
Bella glared at me. ‘You better begin,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Or I’m going to roll over and crush this ant. Then I’m going to take your precious shield and stuff it somewhere painful.’
I paled but not as much as Herod.
‘Hurry, Moon,’ he said urgently. ‘If I get crushed, my family will come looking for you.’
I felt as though I had wandered into somebody else’s nightmare, but it was too late to back away slowly and close the dream door behind me. There were a hundred eyes on me, all expecting a rabbit out of a hat.
Doobie elbowed me. ‘Go on, Fletcher,’ he said. ‘You can do it.’
I suspected that Doobie wanted me to enter the fray so that he could have my badge when I didn’t come back.
April Devereux’s gang of April clones stamped and pouted at me. It was quite unnerving. They generally looked so pink and harmless.
‘I can’t do anything here. You need a referee, not a detective.’
Herod’s forehead was quite red now with the effort of hanging on.
‘You better help, Half Moon. I’m warning you.’
There was no point in arguing. You couldn’t debate with Herod Sharkey. It would be as pointless as trying to sell the vegetarian lifestyle to a T-rex. The best thing to do would be to turn around and leave. So I gave that a try, but the crowd was not as eager to let me out as it had been to let me in. I was an interesting wrinkle in an otherwise boring headlock fight. The kids surged forward, forcing me closer to the fight itself.
As I was bumped backwards, I realized that I was in a very vulnerable position. All Herod had to do was scissor his legs.
Herod must have realized this too, for he suddenly kicked his skinny legs up and wrapped them round my neck. My balance was off, and I toppled to the ground, bouncing off Bella’s thigh on the way down.
The other kids cheered. This was a positive development as far as they were concerned.
I was disgusted more than afraid. Herod was only ten, and small for his age, so he couldn’t do much more than keep me on the ground, not in this position. But time was ticking on and soon the bell would ring, and Principal Quinn would make her way out here with her dogs, Larry and Adam, to see what the problem was. And the rules said that anyone caught in a fight paid a little visit to her office.
Herod’s bootlaces were wedged up under my chin and his feet were hooked together. I tried to unwind them, but unfortunately I was one-handed. Bella had rolled over my right arm. It felt like I had been steamrollered. Surely my arm was cartoon flat.
‘You better start thinking, Half Moon,’ said Herod. ‘Otherwise we’re going down to the office together.’
‘Yeah, Half Moon,’ chimed in Bella. ‘Get your thinking hat on.’
Apparently I was the bad guy now.
There was a simple solution. Simple but not very macho. However, I had little time and no options. With my free hand, I grabbed Herod’s left heel and tugged off his climbing boot.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing? He’s stealing my shoe.’
I wasn’t, of course, stealing his shoe. What I was doing was much less dignified. Before Herod could figure out what was going on, I grabbed his foot and, with my index finger, began tickling the sole.
‘What?’ squealed the ten-year-old. ‘Not fair! Stoppit!’
To give Herod his due, he held on for ten seconds before wriggling off Bella’s back and out of range. He was on his feet with tears of anger in his eyes.
‘What kind of fighting is that? That’s baby fighting.’
He was right, of course. But I was a thinker, not a fighter.
I knelt up, coughing. ‘Listen, Herod. I’m willing to look into this organizer thing, but you have to let me follow proper procedure.’
I picked up Herod’s boot, holding it out, mainly to show everyone that I wasn’t trying to steal it.
Things