Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [40]
Red punched me on the shoulder – his version of encouragement.
‘Keep it together, Half Moon. They can either be sad for twenty-four hours or forever. You’ve got a job to do, so get on with it.’
Twenty-four hours or forever. Twenty-four hours would seem like forever, at the very least. Better get on with it. Time to be a professional.
I nodded tersely. ‘OK. Around the back.’
There was a two-and-a-half-metre concrete wall running along the side of our house. Hazel and I were absolutely and utterly forbidden to climb it, and had been doing so since were five. Red and I scaled the wall using well-worn handholds and footholds. It took me longer than usual with my injured arm. A single crow stood sentry halfway down. The bird played chicken with us until we came too close, then rose in a squawking black flurry of feathers. To me the crow sounded louder than a full orchestra, but nobody came out to check on the commotion.
I dropped down beside the very bushes where my attacker had hidden. Red landed beside me, very quietly. Like someone used to prowling. It struck me that until yesterday he had been my prime suspect.
‘Been here before?’ I asked him, forcing a smile.
‘No,’ said Red. ‘If I had, I certainly wouldn’t be here now.’
I thought about that for a second and couldn’t find a single reason why Red would return to the scene with his victim. Unless, of course, he was insane.
‘Had any check-ups recently? You know, with a psychologist?’
Red raked his fingers through the grass. ‘If you’re not going to search for clues, I am.’
I caught his wrists. ‘Stop it, Red. You’re destroying evidence.’
Red leaned back on his haunches. ‘OK, detective. Detect.’
I studied the area behind the bush, where my attacker must have waited. I didn’t touch anything, just looked. Sweeping my eyes across the ground like twin scanners. It had rained since the assault, so most physical evidence would have been washed away. But maybe there was something.
I found my something tucked in tight at the bush’s base. A single huge footprint.
I pointed it out to Red. ‘Look, a print.’
Red blinked. ‘That’s huge. What is this person? A clown?’
I felt suddenly scared. ‘This is the biggest print I have ever seen. It must be fifty centimetres from toe to heel. This person is a monster.’
We squatted there for a moment, staring at the print, imagining the man who left it. I don’t know about Red’s imagination, but mine was running riot, dressing the man in a black cape and covering his face with scars. He probably had an eyepatch too, and a hump.
‘Where are the other prints?’ asked Red. ‘Did this guy just pogo down from space on one foot?’
‘The rain,’ I explained. ‘It washed away the trail. This print was protected by the bush.’
Red pulled out his mobile phone and used the built-in camera to photograph the print.
‘Just preserving the evidence,’ he said.
I smiled. ‘You’re learning.’
In the Bernstein Manual there is a short chapter on undercover work. The first line says, in capital letters, AVOID UNDERCOVER WORK. Bernstein goes on to say that an undercover assignment is the most difficult type of detective work. This is because it often forces the detective to go against his nature and pretend to be something he isn’t, i.e. a normal person. If the criminal under investigation suspects that the undercover operative is not ‘a stand-up guy’ and is possibly a ‘ratfink stool pigeon’, then statistically the undercover operative has a mere 14 per cent chance of survival.
Encouraging stuff. Especially when I was undercover as a member of a criminal family. Double whammy.
Our next stop was another recent crime scene. Mercedes Sharp’s house. I needed to find a connection