Chapter Five
At morning break, Tim Wong-Smith sat alone, eating a non-sticky, non-teeth rotting, health-giving muesli bar. I approached and put on a looking-for-sympathy voice and said, ‘Well, what do you think about that, Tim?’
‘Not too bad,’ Tim responded, ‘although I don’t like the apricot ones as much as the pineapple.’
I realised he was talking about his muesli bar, so I said, ‘No, I mean that carrot stuff. What some ratbag wrote on the whiteboard. About me.’
‘Oh, that. Yeah, it was mean.’ He finished his apricot muesli bar and went on, ‘Anyway, how come everyone calls you rabbit boy?’
‘It’s not everyone,’ I told him. ‘At least it wasn’t until this morning. Somebody must have blabbed. The Phantom Blabber.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Tim advised. ‘Just eat your carrot and forget about it?’
‘It wasn’t my carrot,’ I protested. ‘Somebody put it in my desk. As a joke. Ha-ha. Not funny.’ I huffed and puffed for a while, grinding my teeth and hating the world.
‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Tim asked.
‘Find out who put the carrot in my desk and who wrote that stuff on the board.’
‘So, you’re going to do more detective work?’
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’ I asked. ‘I mean, we’re supposed to be a detective team, right?’
‘But we’ve already got a case, Charlie,’ Tim pointed out. ‘Finding out who turned the fans up high and who ruined Thunder, my beloved horse.’
‘Not to mention your chance of winning the art prize,’ I added.
‘Yeah, that still wounds me.’ Tim sighed deeply, then softly beat his heart with a closed fist.
I left him for a moment to recover, then asked, ‘So, what’s next, Tim?’
‘To solve the case, we need evidence, Charlie,’ Tim said. ‘You can’t just say you reckon Sean Dingwall did it because you don’t like him.’
‘Well, it was a start.’ I paused. ‘So how do we get evidence?’
‘We look for suspects.’
‘Like Sean and Mr Sandilands?’ I asked.
‘What have I been saying, Charlie? Sean’s not a suspect just because you don’t like him. A suspect has to have a motive for doing the crime.’
‘A reason?’
‘Yes.’ Tim ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Jealousy, revenge, he doesn’t like you, he’s mad or he did it for thrills.’ He ran out of fingers, but added, ‘And a suspect is someone who has the means and the opportunity.’
‘This is getting a bit complicated,’ I said.
‘It gets easier,’ Tim agreed. ‘So after you’ve found your suspects, you need to look for clues.’
‘What, like fingerprints and DNA?’
‘Yeah, except they’re a bit tricky for schoolboy detectives. Even the Famous Five didn’t get on to fingerprints. As for DNA; forget it.’
‘So what you’re stuck with, is asking questions? Right, Tim?’
‘That’s it. You ask questions, Charlie, and listen to what the suspect says. Sometimes the culprit will give himself away. That’s because the guilty party knows more about the crime than anyone else. If the suspect shows that he or she knows too much, then it’s a clue. Or a dead giveaway, take your pick.’
‘Give me an example, Tim.’
‘Right, let’s say a policeman discovers an injured man in the kitchen of a house. The policeman finds another man lurking outside and asks if he knows anything about it. This other guy says, “Me? No, I didn’t hit him over the head with a baseball bat. I was at the movies when he got injured and I was never even in the kitchen. So I’m innocent.”’
‘I see,’ I said. It was like a fog lifting. It wasn’t lifting very fast, but it was rising all the same.
Tim rolled up the environmentally friendly wrapper of his muesli bar and ate it. It’s a new Australian patent. Paper you can eat. Soon we’ll be having our newspapers for breakfast.
I asked Tim, ‘So, where did you learn all this stuff?’
‘Out of a book.’
This rang a bell with me. I frowned and asked, ‘Was the book called Detective Work for Dummies?’
‘Um, um—’ Tim thought for a bit. Furrowed his brows, scratched his chin, then said, ‘Yeah, that’s the one, Charlie.’
‘Gee,’ I said bitterly. ‘That blabbermouth librarian had it all the time and didn’t tell me!’
‘Okay,’ Tim stood up. ‘I’ve got to go.
‘But hang on, Tim. What are we going to do about that deadly insult? About what was written on the board about me being the rabbit boy?’
Tim started to head off. ‘Oh, I already solved that one.’
‘You did? So come on, who were the suspects and how did you find the clues?’
‘Didn’t need to,’ Tim said. ‘Sean Dingwall did it.’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Saw him do it.’ The bell rang and Tim raced off to get a drink of health-giving water before the next lesson.
In class, I glared really hard at Sean Dingwall, but he had his head down so didn’t see me. Isobel Simms saw my penetrating look and whispered, ‘You got something in your eye, Charlie?’
‘Yeah, Sean Dingwall,’ I answered. But before I could say any more, Mr Sandilands told me to stop gazing around the room with that vacant expression. I turned my attention to what I was supposed to copy from the whiteboard, but suddenly, all the words became a blur. They spun around in a big circle and when they stopped moving, I saw a face.
It belonged to a certain person in this classroom. Now all that swirly stuff didn’t really happen, but if someone made a movie of this story, that’s what it would be like.
Then, inside my brain, little cogwheels began to spin around. A ratchet went click-click while a piston shot up and down. That was me thinking. After a bit more of it, a brilliant idea popped out with a ‘ping’ like the one you get from the microwave oven when it’s finished heating up the leftovers. I could hardly wait to share my idea with Tim Wong-Smith.
He was there at lunch time, in his usual spot. ‘Tim, Tim,’ I greeted him.
‘What is it now?’ Tim answered.
‘It’s what you said: the culprit knows more about the crime than anyone else.’
‘Yeah, go on.’ Tim was cautious.
‘I need to ask you some searching questions,’ I said. ‘Number one. Did anyone examine your damaged horse? I mean closely?’
‘No. You saw me. I went into the art room with it.’
‘What did you do with it after that?’
‘Took it home and tossed it in the wheelie bin.’
‘So everyone thought it got damaged when the fans blew it off the desk?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But it got damaged by somebody standing on it, right?’
‘Yeah, there was a big footprint on it.’ Tim looked at me. ‘What’s your point, Charlie?’
‘Somebody knew it had been trampled on,’ I said. ‘So that somebody must know more about the crime than anyone else. That somebody knew how the damage was done.’
‘Aha,’ Tim said, and smiled. ‘Now you’re getting the idea, Charlie.’ He paused, then shrugged. ‘So, looks like it’s confession time? Right?’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Confession time. We’ve got her!’
‘Eh?’ Tim blinked and looked surprised and a bit relieved. ‘Her?’
‘Rosa Thurwell.’ I folded my arms in a significant way.
‘Rosa Thurwell?’ Tim said slowly. ‘How come?’ Now he was really mystified.
I explained. ‘At the art exhibition last Saturday, she said to me, in words straight out of her own face, she said, “You’re not an art lover. You’re an art destroyer. Stamping on poor Tim’s horse with your big boots.” So how did she know your horse had been stamped on, eh?’ For me it was a moment of triumph.
‘Case closed,’ Tim said, then whistled. ‘So, how are you going to tackle her, Charlie?’
‘I�
��ll think of something,’ I answered grimly.
Just then, I looked around the school yard at all the happy children, running around, screaming, trying to get over the fence or under the locked gate. It reminded me that I was, after all, only a schoolboy and not a famous detective.
Still, everybody has to start somewhere.
When I looked for Tim again, he’d gone. That’s twice he’d done that trick. Must ask him how he pulls it off.
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