Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [66]
‘Where are we going, Red?’ I asked, wind ballooning my cheeks. We were freewheeling down a road pockmarked with potholes.
‘To kick-start this investigation,’ Red called over his shoulder. ‘If you want to know what’s going on in this town, there’s only one place to go.’
‘The police station?’ I guessed.
Red laughed so much he missed a gear change.
‘The police station! Are you serious? No one tells the police anything. No, this is the opposite of the police station. This is where Papa gets all his facts. This place is off-limits to civilians. Papa warned me not to bring you here. But, you know, we’re partners.’
Partners? This was news to me. But good news.
Red steered past Healy Hill towards the suburbs. Not the fashionable suburbs, the other ones.
Red parked outside a semi-detached end house with a CCTV camera mounted in a mesh box over the porch.
We were no sooner off the bike when three tracksuited youths congregated around us.
‘Hey, Red,’ one called, a skinny specimen with Celtic spirals shaved into his hair and half a dozen rings dangling from one ear. ‘I’ll look after the bike for a euro.’
Red rounded on the boy. ‘If anything happens to my bike, I’m going to hold you responsible, Rasher.’
Rasher. There’s one in every town in Ireland.
‘Hold me responsible all you like, your bike will still be in bits.’
Red gripped Rasher’s tracksuit by the waistband and jerked sharply. The entire pull-away bottoms came off in his hands, exposing the unfortunate youngster’s knobbly knees.
‘You get these back when I come out. And if there’s so much as a bird poop on the handlebars, I’ll be wiping it off with your trousers.’
Rasher nodded, dragging his T-shirt down to his knees.
‘No problem, Red, and no charge.’
‘There had better not be, Rasher, or you’ll be feeling the breeze.’
Effective tactics. If every young vandal was forced to do his rounds trouserless, the world would be a safer place.
Red pressed the intercom buzzer.
‘Step on to the frame, please,’ said a voice through the speaker. There was a white square painted on the doorstep. I squeezed on beside Red.
‘Oh, look who it is,’ said a female voice ‘The fugitive himself.’
Obviously the resident had penetrated my cunning disguise. Who was this person, and what did she know that we didn’t?
We proceeded down an ordinary enough hallway into an extended sitting room. Inside this room, an elderly woman sat in the centre of what could only be described as an information empire. Her steel-grey hair was drawn back into a tight bun. She wore a tweed trouser suit and a there was a Bluetooth headset clipped over one ear.
‘My God,’ I breathed.
The old lady had converted her lounge into a situation room. Three plasma TVs were mounted on one wall, running CNN, Sky News and the BBC. Another wall was lined with filing cabinets. These were divided into categories, including thieving, vandalizing and extra-M.
‘What’s extra-M?’ I asked.
The lady swivelled on her chair to face me.
‘Extra-marital affairs, obviously. No one gets hugged or kissed in this town without me knowing about it. You’ll be glad to know, young Moon, that your own parents are kissing nobody but each other. They’re in the minority, I can tell you.’
I was amazed. ‘How do know you about me? Who are you?’
The woman tapped a brass nameplate on her desk. It read Dominique Kehoe. ‘I know all about you, Fletcher Moon. We are two of a kind. I am Lock’s only other accredited private detective.’
‘I’ve never heard about you.’
Dominique smiled. ‘That is because I didn’t want you to, but I have been looking forward to this meeting for some time, even though we don’t work for the same side.’
Another wall was covered with thumbtack-spiked maps. I recognized many of the crime scenes. Dominique had spotted many patterns that I could never have worked out even with my computer.
‘Very impressive,’ I said finally. ‘But these can’t all be cases of yours, so why do you do it?’
Dominique stood.
‘Because information is power, Fletcher. Everyone needs information at some point in their lives, and generally I can