I took out the pictures I’d done of the elephant, pig and dog inside the snake.
The one with the elephant fell on the floor. Declan picked it up. He’d been quite well behaved up till then, not acting at all loony, but he made up for that now by running around the room laughing like a maniac.
‘Snakes don’t eat elephants, you idiot,’ he shouted.
‘I know they don’t. And anyway, no elephants have disappeared, not lately. That was just the first picture. But look at these. Snakes eat pigs and dogs, see? And it so happens that some dogs and cats – although not, so far, pigs – have disappeared. And I think we both know where.’
Then I pointed in a dramatic way at Ray Quasar’s tummy.
The dramatic pointing business didn’t have exactly the effect I’d been counting on. I’d been hoping that Declan would break down, sobbing, and admit that Ray Quasar was the murderer and that he was the accomplice.
What happened was more or less the exact opposite of that.
The earlier bout of running around and laughing was nothing compared with this. And when he got bored with running, he tried some jumping up and down on the bed, and then some rolling around on the floor.
It was time I took charge again.
‘Just laughing like a baboon isn’t the same as answering the question.’
‘What’s the question?’
‘Did Ray Quasar eat Trixie – that’s Mrs Cake’s Jack Russell terrier – plus two other dogs whose names I can’t remember, plus Catty the fat, er, I mean, Fatty the cat, and Potty the parrot?’
Declan worked hard to get his face under control. Yes, he was very close to cracking. The case was almost closed.
‘Hello, anyone home?’ he said, knocking on my head with his knuckles. ‘Ray Quasar doesn’t eat pigs, or dogs, or cats, or elephants. He’s too small. When he’s fully grown, he’ll be over three metres long and he might eat a little dog, if there was one going. But not now.’
‘What does he eat then?’
I’d noticed that he hadn’t mentioned parrots.
‘Mice.’
‘Mice?’
‘Yes, mice. Baby mice. Want to watch?’
‘Not really.’
‘Yeah, cool.’
That was Jennifer. She was still holding Ray Quasar, although you could equally say that he was holding her. I half hoped that the snake would attack her, and maybe swallow her down to the waist so I could rescue her from the jaws of the beast, like Tarzan. That would show her how brave I was, as well as going a long way to proving the snake’s guilt. After all, if you’d eat a girl like that, then you’d eat anything – dogs, cats, mushy peas, Brussels sprouts, anything.
But sadly he didn’t try to strangulate and swallow her. He just hung on her arm like a handbag and put his nasty tongue out at me.
‘Actually it’s feeding time now. I’ve got some mice defrosting in the fridge next to the yogurt. Hang on here and I’ll get them.’
Then he ran out of the room.
‘How do you think the interrogation’s going?’ I said to my Elite Force, after a pause.
‘Quite good,’ said Noah, looking down at his feet.
‘Rubbish, actually,’ said Jennifer.
Obviously she’d taken over the family role of moaner.
‘How can you say that when we’re about to see Ray Quasar eat a baby mouse?’
‘Well, I admit that will be quite interesting.’
‘One thing, though,’ said Noah. ‘If Ray Quasar eats the mice, can we rule him out of our enquiries?’
I thought for a moment.
‘Well, yes, we can.’
‘Hooray,’ said Jennifer sarcastically.
‘In an investigation you often make an advance by eliminating suspects.’
Ray Quasar ate the mice.
Four little pink baby mice.
He wrapped himself around them, giving them a good old constrict even though they were already so dead they’d been in the freezer for six months. Then he swallowed them.
It’s a strange world in which eating four little tiny pink baby mice means you are innocent. But we don’t get a choice. This is the only world we have. So I declared Ray Quasar the boa constrictor Not Guilty, and we went home.
But not before Declan gave Jennifer a present – a nasty dried-up old snakeskin that Ray Quasar had grown out of. The way she smiled and blushed you’d have thought it was a diamond ring.
I HAD MORE pondering to do that night. So I was awake yet again when I heard the sound of Rude Word being dragged out of the garage and tied up to the gate post. I didn’t even bother to look.
The next morning I brought Rude Word out some Weetabix. He wasn’t there. I looked under the blankets in his baby bath. No sign.
‘Dad, where’s Rudy?’ I asked when I came back into the kitchen.
My dad looked at my mum. My mum looked at the ceiling. You wouldn’t have thought that ceilings were that interesting.
‘Isn’t he outside?’ she said.
‘No, I’ve just looked. I was bringing him his Weetabix.’
‘Oh no,’ said Dad, in a dramatic kind of way, ‘do you think it’s another of those mysterious disappearances?’
‘That must be it,’ said Mum, still looking very closely at the ceiling. She was obviously going to be a world expert on ceilings. ‘What shall we do?’
This was terrible. It was the worst thing that had happened to me ever in my life. My lovable pet had been snatched. Something horrible was probably eating him right now.
‘You’ve got to phone the police,’ I yelled. ‘And the army. And the RAF. They can send out helicopter gunships.’
Just then there was a screech of tyres outside on the road. I ran to the window, hoping there might be a small crash to see – I don’t mean a bad one with blood, but just one with maybe a dent in the bumper, or a knocked-down lamppost. All I saw was the back of a car driving away at probably about two hundred miles an hour. And something else. A friendly brown-and-black face, pushing its way through our front gate.
‘Rudy’s back,’ I yelled. ‘Rudy’s back!’
‘Oh,’ said Dad, ‘how nice. He must have just gone off for a walk.’
‘Yippee,’ said Mum, but not in the way you usually say yippee – more in the way you’d say, ‘Guess what, my granny died.’
Sometimes grown-ups can be quite hard to understand.
Anyway, I ran out and hugged Rudy and then went to school.
There was high drama at school. As soon as I got in through the school gates I could tell that Declan wasn’t in a happy mood. He was sitting on one of the benches with his head in his hands. Normally at this time he’d be charging around the playground shouting, ‘Bananas,’ at the top of his voice. There was a group of children around him, mainly the Commando Gang, but also a few other kids who were probably hanging around in the hope that Declan would do something loony.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
Declan just shook his head.
‘It’s Ray Quasar.’
That was Nicky speaking. He was one of the nice boys at school, and hardly ever called anyone names or made fun of them unless they asked for it. He was also the best at gymnastics, except for Jenny, and he could do a handstand for the whole of morning break, unless someone pushed him over, which happened quite a lot.
‘What about Ray Quasar?’
‘He’s vanished. Escaped or something. Declan got up this morning and he wasn’t in his tank. He’s too upset to even talk. He hasn’t shouted “Bananas” once.’
‘Blimey.’
Another victim. The pet-eater was moving on to reptiles now, and a suspect had become a victim.
It was time for action. I found the Bare Bum Gang and called a Special Emergency Gang Meeting, to be held in the den after tea. To make sure everyone came, I said we could have two sweets each out of our sweet stash.
I brought my biggest drawing pad and some felt tips. I also brought ten broken pencils and a pencil sharpener.
And two torches, because it was beginning to get dark in the evenings. I needed all those things because I’d decided we had to have a brainstorming session. That is when you have to solve a problem and the first thing you do is write down everything that comes into your head, and then you get rid of the silly things, and what you have left is the answer.
I brought Rudy with me and tied him up outside to guard the entrance.
I was in charge of the pad and the pens. The broken pencils and the pencil sharpener were for Jamie, because he needed something to do while we were brainstorming. Jamie was only the fifth best in the Gang at pencil sharpening, after me, Noah, Jenny and The Moan, but he usually managed to sharpen the right end, and hardly ever shoved a pencil so far up his nose he had to go to hospital to have it removed.
When we’d all finished our sweets, I began.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now, we know that we are dealing with something very evil indeed – probably the most evil thing that has ever existed. More evil than Dracula or a giant clam that grabs you under the water and then drowns you and then slowly dissolves your flesh while you’re still alive.’
There was a gasp from the Gang.
‘And,’ I continued, ‘we’ve also eliminated the two chief suspects from our investigation – Rude Word and Ray Quasar. That leaves us back at square one: just who, or what, is eating our pets? Ideas please, gentlemen, and Jennifer as well – you count as a gentleman, for the sake of this meeting.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ she said.
‘Right then, other suspects – fire away.’
So this is the list of suspects we came up with (I won’t say who had most of the best ideas because that would be boasting):
A tiger
A lion
A leopard (or panther)
A jaguar
A puma
A wolf
A bear (polar, black or grizzly)
A new kind of giant badger, so far unknown to science
A crocodile (or alligator)
Aliens;
Evil people (e.g. cannibals)
Starving people (e.g. cannibals who haven’t eaten anyone for ages)
A shark (e.g. great white, tiger, hammer-head, etc., etc.)
A killer whale
A T. Rex
A velociraptor
King Kong
‘That’s a brilliant list,’ I said. ‘Now we’ll do the second part, which is getting rid of the rubbish ones. Then whatever is left is clearly the culprit.’ I added in a whisper to Jamie, ‘The culprit means the one that did it.’
But Jamie was too busy sharpening the pencils to notice.
Getting rid of the rubbish ones was quite easy. We began with those that lived in other countries, which eliminated the tiger, lion, leopard, jaguar, puma, wolf and bear. Then we got rid of the ones that mainly hunted in the water, which meant the various types of shark, the killer whale and the crocodile (or alligator). Then we dumped the ones that were extinct, i.e. the T. Rex and velociraptor, because everyone knows that the movie Jurassic Park is just made up, except for Jamie who believes everything on the telly is true.
Then we got rid of the cannibals, because cannibals eat people and not pets, and anyway, they usually live in the jungle or on an island.
That left the aliens and King Kong.
‘I was only joking about King Kong,’ said Jennifer.
‘What do you mean, joking? We’re not messing about here, you know. This is a matter of life and death.’
‘I said it because of all the stupid ones that you said, like jaguars and T. Rexes.’
‘Fine,’ I continued. ‘We’ll scratch King Kong off the list. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t him, because he got riddled with machinegun bullets on top of the Empire State Building. That just leaves the aliens.’
There was a shocked silence after that, as the Bare Bum Gang thought about the terrible foe we were up against.
Then Jamie did one of his famous gigantic burps. I haven’t mentioned Jamie’s famous gigantic burps before, partly because I find them disgusting, and partly because I forgot to. They were so loud they didn’t sound human, more like the sound a machine would make, a bit like an electric drill combined with a jet fighter taking off. Jamie was definitely the best at doing gigantic burps, though The Moan was slightly better at farting, which is also disgusting, especially in enclosed spaces such as dens and the International Space Station.
It’s quite hard writing down how a burp (or a fart) sounds, but if I had to try it would be like this:
GGGGRRRRROOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRPP.
Naturally we all looked round at him, not sure whether this was the alarm signal for being attacked (maybe even by the same aliens we’d already identified as the pet murderers), or just one of his ordinary burps.
Throughout all this Jamie carried on sharpening the pencils – interestingly, burping is one of those things you can do while you carry on doing something else, unlike farting or tying your shoe laces, which are things you have to do all by themselves. Then Jamie stopped sharpening.
‘I don’t think it’s aliens,’ he said.
‘Well, who cares what you think, Mr Smelly Burper?’ said Jennifer.
‘Actually, Jennifer,’ I said, ‘everyone is allowed to say what they think in this gang, even if they do disgusting burps. So go on, Jamie. Why do you think it’s not aliens eating the pets?’
‘Well, I think the mistake you’ve made is to think that something must be eating the animals.’
‘But how else can they be disappearing?’
‘Eating isn’t the only way of disappearing something, you know, Ludo.’
‘Oh, so now you’re saying it’s magic? Very likely.’
That was The Moan, being sarcastic again.
‘No,’ Jamie replied calmly. ‘I think they’ve been stolen.’
‘By aliens?’
‘No, by people.’
‘What for?’
‘To sell. For money. To other people who want pets.’
Then Jamie went back to sharpening the pencils. He’d done eight by that time.
The rest of us looked at each other. Noah was the first one to speak.
‘He’s got it, hasn’t he? We’ve been barking up the wrong tree all this time. Nothing’s eating the animals – they’re being stolen. It’s only the fancy pets that have gone, the ones they can sell for a lot of money.’
‘You know what, Jamie?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You’re brilliant. In fact, that was such a good idea, I’ve decided that you’re not the stupidest person in the Bare Bum Gang any more.’
Jamie pulled a strange face, as if he wasn’t sure whether to be happy or annoyed. There’s no pleasing some people.
‘Well, who is then?’ asked Jennifer.
‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Let’s see. Well, it can’t be me, because I’m the Leader. And it’s not you, because you’re on the top table for everything.’ Jennifer smiled a big smile. ‘And Noah, you’re quite clever, except at spelling.’ Noah looked reasonably happy with that. ‘So, it must be you, Moan, I’m afraid.’
‘No way! That’s so unfair!’
‘Look, don’t make a fuss about it. Jamie never minded being the stupidest. He just got on with it and then had his good idea. I suggest that you try harder, and then you can climb up the rankings.’
‘I’m going home,’ he said.
‘Well, you can if you like, but that means you won’t be invited on the best bit of this whole adventure,’ I said.
‘Oh? What’s that then?’
‘The part where we solve the crime.’
SOLVING THE CRIME had to wait until Saturday. By that stage two more cats and three dogs had gone, along with a tank full of tropical fish.
We arranged to meet at the den at zero nine-thirty hundred hours o’clock, which is half past nine. Well, we sort of arranged to meet at zero nine-thirty hundred hours o’clock, but then I remembered that there was still quite good children’s te
lly on then, so we changed it to ten hundred hours o’clock.
I phoned the others and told them to come in disguise, because we were secret agents on a mission.
For my disguise I wore a pair of my mum’s sunglasses and a balaclava. And I brought my plastic binoculars, a magnifying glass and my spud gun, along with a potato for ammunition. In case you haven’t seen one, a spud gun is a gun which fires potato bullets. You have to be careful because they can blind you if you fire it into your eye at short range. Although I suppose you’d have to fire it into both eyes, one after the other, to blind yourself properly, and you’d have to be pretty silly to do that.
I made a mental note not to let Jamie play with the spud gun, even though he was no longer officially the stupidest member of the Gang.
Rudy looked up at me from Ivy’s old bath.
‘Come on, boy,’ I said.
Yes, at long last he was going to earn his place in the Bare Bum Gang.
I realized my mistake when I saw the others waiting for me at the den. I should have explained that the disguise was so that we didn’t stand out. But they would have stood out less if they’d been carrying a huge banner with LOOK AT ME written on it in letters three metres tall.
Noah, who really should have known better, was wearing his Spider-Man costume. The Moan was dressed as a spaceman and Jamie had a cowboy outfit, with a giant cowboy hat, a waistcoat with a silver sheriff’s badge, flapping leather trousers and a gun-belt with two toy pistols. But Jenny was the worst. She had on a pink fairy costume, complete with wings. At least she didn’t have the wand.
‘What are you lot playing at?’ I yelled in desperation.
Noah looked bewildered. ‘You said to come in fancy dress.’
‘I did not. I said in disguise.’
‘I’m sure you said fancy dress.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘Did.’
That could have gone on for hours, but we had work to do.
‘Doesn’t matter now. Jenny, did you bring it?’
‘My wand?’
‘No, not your wand. The thing.’
‘Yes, of course I brought it, I’m not a dummy. But you’d better be careful with it. It was a present to me.’
The Bare Bum Gang Battles the Dogsnatchers Page 4
