Novel - Half Moon Investigations

by Eoin Colfer

  “May. I don’t think you understand what Les Jeunes Etudiantes are all about. We hate boys.

  Especially Sharkeys. Especially, especially burglar Sharkeys. Dad will find these two down here tomorrow and the police can take them away. They’re going to prison eventually anyway. We’re just like, accelerating the process.”

  “But. He’s bleeding. . . .”

  “I wonder if I could divorce you, May. Can you divorce cousins?”

  The girls left, moving up cement steps through a square of moonlight. A wooden door banged into the space, and a bolt rasped across. I was left in total darkness, which was good. I needed a snooze. I turned my face to the tiny stream on the floor and had a little drink. Cool. A bit gritty, but fine. Now, to sleep.

  Something about what happened nagged at me, keeping me awake. April knew who I was. She had seen through my disguise before, so why pretend now that I was a Sharkey? The answer came quickly, even through the fog surrounding my brain. Nobody cared what happened to Sharkeys. Nobody would argue with her plan to lock two Sharkeys in a cellar.

  “Aaah!” said a voice. “My head is on fire.”

  I opened one eye. Red’s head was floating in the blackness. A disembodied head with blood dripping from the chin.

  “Red?” I said. “Where’s your body?”

  The head chuckled, then winced. Ghostly fingers touched a cut on a ghostly head.

  “I really gave myself a whack.”

  I noticed a flashlight under the spirit’s head. Then the rest of Red’s body swam into my vision.

  “You’re not a ghost,” I said, relieved.

  Red beamed the flashlight along the wall until he found a light switch.

  “You better get a grip, Half Moon,” he said, flicking the switch. What seemed to be a blinding glare filled the room. It eventually settled to a watery forty-watt glow. “You heard what they said. We need to get out of here before they get to Mrs. Quinn’s, or Roddy is up the creek.”

  I squeezed my head until the stars disappeared. “Who’s up the creek?”

  “Roddy! Roddy. Keep up, Half Moon.”

  My vision was clearing up a bit. “Reddy, Roddy, there’s only one letter in the difference. That’s confusing when a person is possibly concussed.”

  Red ignored me, shining the flashlight into his backpack.

  “You brought a flashlight?”

  “And antiseptic wipes,” said Red, mopping his forehead with one. “We’re on stakeout, remember?”

  “Technically we’re not on stakeout anymore,” I pointed out. “Technically we’re being held prisoner by a bunch of ten-year-old girls.”

  “No one must ever know about this,” said Red, who looked a lot better now that his face wasn’t completely covered with blood. “I have a reputation to consider. If word gets out that I’d been locked up by a shower of fifth-grade girls, every hard man looking to make a name for himself will come gunning for me.”

  I took a look around. We were in a coal cellar constructed from steel and concrete. It had probably once been an oil tank, but April’s father had converted it. The cellar’s rear wall was piled high with coal nuggets, and thick black dust floated through the pale yellow air. There was one wooden door. And it was, of course, locked.

  Red checked his cell phone for bars. “No reception in here. We have to get out.”

  He tried the caveman method, battering the door with his palm and shoulder. The door didn’t open, but the banging did disturb more coal dust and set sonic waves of hollow booming echoing around the chamber. Just what we needed.

  The booming subsided, and we were left with the sound of Red panting.

  “Less of the panting,” I said. “This place could be airtight.”

  I scanned the walls and roof. There was no way to break out, unless Red had a police battering ram hidden in his magic backpack.

  Red kicked the door a few times. More dust and still no open door. I coughed loudly to highlight the dust problem.

  “Red, that’s not doing us one bit of good, you know.”

  Red whirled. His features were wild. I had never seen him this manic before, not even when he had me pinned to the ground.

  “I have to get out,” he hissed through clenched teeth. Sweat was running down his face, washing away coal dust and blood. “Roddy needs me. I promised Mom I’d look out for him. If he gets kicked out of school, he’ll end up in the pool hall with Ernie.” Red crossed the bunker in two bounds. “You’re the brains. Think of something.”

  Red’s eyes were veined from dust and possibly tears.

  “Okay. I’ll try. What do you have in the bag?”

  Red emptied the backpack’s contents onto the concrete.

  “A couple of cereal bars, my ski mask, and a pair of tights. I lost the grapple hook.”

  I had to ask. “Tights?”

  “You know, for over your head. In case you needed a disguise.”

  “Oh. I think I’m disguised enough, actually. With the hair and the earring and the tattoo.” I spotted something on the floor. “What’s that?”

  Red picked up an iron spike. “It’s a horn from one of the unicorns on the balcony. It snapped off. That’s why we fell. So I suppose your man on the balcony is technically a horse now.”

  The horn was a foot long, and tapered to a dangerous spike. Steel painted dark green.

  “A pity it isn’t magnetic,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, if it were magnetic, then we might be able to draw back the bolt on the outside of the door. Possibly. In theory.”

  Red handed me the spike. “Can you turn it into a magnet?”

  “Well, in a laboratory I could place it inside a magnetic field, or pass a current through it, then the horn would become magnetic.”

  I said this very confidently, as there was no chance that we could actually do it. In fact, all I knew about magnets for sure was that you could drag iron filings around a sheet of paper with them.

  Red grew immediately excited. “We can pass a current through it.”

  I paled under my coating of coal dust. “What?”

  “The lightbulb. All we need to do is pull out the wires.”

  That sounded extremely dangerous. We were more likely to send the horn ricocheting around the cellar than turn it into a magnet.

  “I don’t know, Red. I’m not sure about polarity and all that stuff.”

  “We have to try something, Half Moon. I promised Mom. Don’t you understand? I promised.”

  I couldn’t even begin to imagine what a promise like that meant. But it obviously had a strong hold on Red.

  “Okay. But don’t touch the actual wires and don’t let them touch each other. That much I do know for sure.”

  Red switched off the light and handed the flashlight to me. He then yanked the supply cable from the clips attaching it to the wall and ceiling.

  “Okay,” he said, holding the cable away from his body. “What next?”

  I trained the flashlight on him. “Well, in theory, maybe, I turn on the switch, then you zap the bar. That should do it. If I were you, I wouldn’t stand in front of the pointy end of that horn. You never know where the electrical charge will send it.”

  “You could zap it,” suggested Red.

  “True,” I admitted. “But we’d have to wait a couple of weeks while I worked up the nerve.”

  Red took a deep breath. “Okay. Zap time. Just touch it?”

  “Yes. I think. I’m no expert. But there may be some jittering.”

  “Jittering? What do you mean?”

  “You know, when the power flows into the horn. Try to hold it steady.”

  Red swallowed. He was nervous, but determined. “Okay. Flick the switch when I give you the sign.”

  “What sign?”

  Red took a moment out from being nervous to deliver a withering comment. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll say something like flick the switch.”

  “Right. I’ll see if I can remember that.”

&
nbsp; Red knelt beside the spike, making sure the copper wiring inside the cable had firm contact with the metal horn. “Right, Half Moon. Flick the switch!”

  Every muscle and tendon in my body was tense. My shoulders hunched and my eyes squinted. My toes and fingers locked, and all the injuries of the past few days returned to chip away at the pain centers of my brain.

  I flicked the switch. And nothing happened. Red might as well have been rubbing the horn with a twig.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “Eh . . . Keep it there for a minute.”

  I walked over to him. “Did you hear that?”

  “Sorry, I was nervous.”

  “No. Not that. Do you hear a buzzing sound?”

  Red leaned closer to the unicorn’s horn. “Maybe. I think it’s just the wire scratching the metal. My hand is shaking a bit. But don’t . . .”

  “I know. Don’t tell anyone.”

  Red threw down the cable. “So is this magnetized now?”

  I studied the horn in the torch light. It looked exactly the same.

  “I dunno. Give it a try.”

  “And I won’t get a shock?”

  “Allegedly not,” I said, covering myself against a possible lawsuit.

  Red poked the horn with a single finger. “It’s a bit warm, I think.”

  He fluttered his fingers over the metal, then grasped it gingerly. “No shock. Let’s test it.”

  Red hefted the spike and crossed to the door. “Shine the light here, Half Moon,” he said.

  I shone the beam on the door. There was a damp line across the center.

  “That must be where the bolt is,” I said. “Water gets trapped behind it and seeps through over the years.”

  “Oh, the brains,” said Red, insincerely, I suspect.

  He placed the fat end of the horn against the watermark’s edge, and drew it slowly to the left.

  “Try it,” he ordered, stepping back.

  I pushed. No joy.

  “No joy,” I said.

  Red swore. Then. “Stupid, stupid idea. Making magnets. We need something else, Half Moon.”

  “There is nothing else, Red. Try again.”

  Muttering choice phrases, Red did so, and miraculously, amazingly, unbelievably, on the other side of the door, the bolt started to scrape back.

  “Slow, now, slow. Don’t lose it.”

  “What are you? An expert? Do this every day, do you?”

  “Just go slow. Shut up for once.”

  It occurred to me then that I had just told a Sharkey holding a spike to shut up.

  “Your negative energy is interfering with the magnetic flow,” I said pathetically.

  “Grrr,” said Red. Growling was not good, but it was better than pounding. He went slowly, drawing the bolt back inch by inch. We could hear it scraping along the outside of the door, like a metal thing scraping along a wooden thing.

  Finally there was a clunk, and the door sagged a fraction.

  “Open,” said Red. “I’m finding this difficult to believe.”

  We pushed open the door, and there was May, with one hand on the bolt.

  “April is crazy,” she said simply. “So I snuck back to let you out.”

  I squinted at her. “Did you pull back that bolt yourself, or did an invisible force help you?”

  May looked at me in a way that made me realize how stupid that question sounded.

  “I pulled it back,” she said. “Maybe April is right after all. Maybe all boys are stupid and smelly. You look terrible, by the way. Your head is too big for your body. I know another boy like that.”

  I grabbed the horn. “I have a big head because of all the brains in there. I magnetized this horn, didn’t I?”

  May took the horn and placed it against the cellar’s metal wall. It didn’t stick, not even for a second.

  Clang.

  “Possibly, I should have tried that,” I said, mortified to be outthought by a ten-year-old.

  May turned to Red, who was obviously the sane one.

  “You and your partner better hurry if you want to save Herod. April has talked her dad into going over to Principal Quinn’s. They’re on the way right now.”

  Red was off like a greyhound after a rabbit.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “And keep an open mind on the magnetism thing. You never know, it might have been a factor.”

  I ran after Red, May’s mocking laughter ringing in my ears.

  Mrs. Quinn lived in a town house near Lock’s railway station. She came from a long line of teachers, but was the first in her family to have reached the exalted status of headmistress. Mrs. Quinn credited this to her people skills, no-nonsense approach to discipline, and having the local chief inspector for a husband.

  By the time Red and I arrived on the bike, the Devereux four-wheel drive was already parked in the driveway. Even worse, there was a police car parked in front of it.

  Red skidded to a halt, resting his elbows on the handlebars. “Too late,” he said between puffs. “Mrs. Quinn has already called in the cavalry.”

  I agreed. “I’m sure April’s father insisted on it. Herod is being accused of assault.”

  We stashed the bike behind a neighbor’s wall and crept around the back, where Mrs. Quinn was entertaining her guests on the patio. At least we could hear what was being said. We crawled across the garden on our bellies, hiding below the lip of the deck. I raised my head just enough to spy on the proceedings through the fence uprights.

  April, Mercedes, Mr. Devereux, and Sergeant Murt Hourihan were seated around a pine patio table. Mrs. Quinn was pouring tumblers of cloudy lemonade. April and Mercedes were back in pink mode.

  “I asked the girls to wait until you arrived, Sergeant,” said Mrs. Quinn. “This is a serious matter. Mr. Devereux thought we needed police presence and Francis is away at a conference. How do you like the lemonade?”

  Murt had been trying to avoid drinking what was in his tumbler. He took a swig, and coughed most of it back into the glass.

  “Aagh, hurup,” he spluttered. “God, that tastes like . . . I mean, oh, that went down the wrong way. Lovely, a bit tart, but lovely. Thanks.”

  Mrs. Quinn swilled the mixture around in the base of the jug. There were lumps floating in the hazy liquid.

  “Another drop, Sergeant?”

  “Ah, no. I’m on duty. Anyway, I have a code forty-three dash seven waiting for me in the station, so if we could get on . . .”

  I happened to know that a forty-three dash seven was a maternity leave request form.

  “Of course, Sergeant. Criminals never sleep, eh? Well, you know Mr. Devereux?”

  “Evening, sir.”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Mr. Devereux brought the girls over. It seems they were afraid to come to me at school, in case Roddy Sharkey would see them.”

  “Red?”

  “No, his brother Roddy. Herod, if you can believe it.”

  Murt took out his notebook. “Oh, I can believe just about anything of Master Herod Sharkey. We’ve had words.”

  “His mind is already made up,” whispered Red. “We have to go in there. Give ourselves up, tell Hourihan what really happened.”

  I tugged Red’s sleeve. “Wait. That won’t help anyone.”

  Red shrugged me off. “Maybe not. But I have to try. I promised.”

  “One minute,” I said desperately. “Give me a minute. If I don’t come up with something, then we’ll go in.”

  Red settled back down reluctantly. “One minute. And I hope this plan is better than the magnetism one.”

  I had a feeling that I would be hearing about the magnetized unicorn’s horn for quite some time.

  I returned my attention to the patio. April was giving Murt the big round angel eyes.

  “Mercedes was crying at our sleepover, Sergeant. It was pink night. We’re all in pink, because that’s what girls do, and we’re just like any other girls.”

  Murt cleared his throat. “Pink night? Is
that why I came over here? I have better things to be doing. I promised Art Fowler I’d check his vending warehouse for that prowler that’s been spotted. So I do have somewhere to go tonight.”

  “Ah now, Sergeant,” objected Mr. Devereux. “Be patient. They’re only kids.”

  Murt had heard too many sob stories to be a soft touch. “I’m a busy man, sir. Let’s hear what the girls have to say, and see what has to be done about it. April?”

  “Well, it’s not me, really. It’s Mercedes who has the problem. I’ll let her tell you. Mercedes?”

  Mercedes stood, walking with slow deliberate steps to a better vantage point. She cleared her throat and flicked her hair. Preparing herself to repeat the performance we had seen in the Unicorn Room.

  The performance!

  I pulled my notebook out, flipping to my Unicorn Room notes. I had written down Mercedes’s entire routine.

  I scrawled a cell phone number on the notebook, then passed it to Red. “Text this page to that number.

  Quickly.”

  “Why am I . . .”

  “Quickly,” I hissed. “No time.”

  Mercedes was shaking out her fingers. “Shake shake shake silly supper sausages,” she said automatically.

  This surprised the adults somewhat.

  “Excuse me?” said Murt.

  “She’s nervous,” said April hurriedly. “And upset, too. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” agreed Mercedes, with tears in her eyes. “My puppy got eaten by a wolf.”

  Murt rolled his eyes. “Right, I’m off. Thanks for the wild goose chase, Mrs. Quinn.”

  “No, Sergeant. I’m ready now. Please.”

  “One more chance. And I don’t want to hear the words pink, sausages, or wolf.”

  Mercedes took a deep breath to speak, and Murt’s phone beeped.

  “That was quick,” I said, startled.

  “First sentence only,” said Red, without looking up from his screen. “I’m going to send it in bursts.”

  Murt took out his phone. “Keep going there, Mercedes. I’m a trained professional; I can read texts and listen to sausage stories at the same time.”

  “Oh, Principal,” gushed Mercedes. “I can’t tell. My good and responsible friend April made me come here. But he will kill me if I tell.”

  “I suppose you mean Herod Sharkey?” said Mrs. Quinn, straying from the script.