The Mystery of the Squashed Cockroach

by R. A. Spratt

  Fin was lying in bed, happily dreaming about robots that dispensed chocolate, when somewhere in the back of his mind he became aware of a tapping sound. It wasn’t a frequent tap. There was no pattern. Just a tap, a long pause, then another tap. It sounded almost as if something was hitting a sheet of glass. Something small like a pebble. Then suddenly – CRASH!

  Fin sat bolt upright. Broken glass was littered all over his bed and a large rock was lying on his bedroom floor. His first instinct was to run to the door and get out of there, but there was broken glass everywhere and he had bare feet, so he hesitated. Then he heard a very pleasant feminine voice call out, ‘Yoohoo, is anybody home?’

  Fin reached for his sneakers, jammed them on, then went over to the window. It was pitch black outside. Suddenly, something small and hard hit him in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Ow!’ cried Fin.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said Loretta. Fin could see her in the dark. She was holding a flashlight.

  ‘You threw a pebble at my head!’

  ‘I didn’t know your phone number,’ said Loretta.

  ‘And you smashed my window with a rock,’ said Fin.

  ‘Well, the small pebbles weren’t waking you up,’ reasoned Loretta.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Help,’ said Loretta. ‘I’ve got a problem. And it’s really serious.’

  Fin’s heart swelled in his chest. This was it. This was his moment. He would get to be a knight in shining armour. There was literally a damsel in distress coming to him and asking for help.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fin bravely. He tried to make his voice a little deeper than usual, to sound more impressive. ‘I’ll save you.’

  Just as his dream seemed about to come to fruition, a nightmare unfolded before his eyes. Something shot across the front lawn. There was a terrifying scream of ‘Hiiiiyaaaahhh!’ followed by another terrified scream of ‘Aaaaaggghh!’ as April flew through the air and crash-tackled Loretta to the ground. All while Pumpkin bounded around them both, barking.

  ‘I got her!’ called April happily.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Fin, horrified to see the most beautiful girl he had ever known in real life pinned beneath his violence-prone sister.

  ‘She smashed your window,’ said April. ‘I heard it. I snuck out to catch her before she ran off. You’re welcome, by the way.’

  ‘She came to ask for help,’ said Fin.

  ‘Is that true?’ asked April.

  ‘Yes,’ said Loretta, trying to brush the dirt out of her mouth.

  ‘Why did you break the window then?’ asked April.

  ‘He didn’t wake up when I threw a pebble,’ said Loretta.

  ‘That would be right,’ said April, helping Loretta up. ‘He sleeps like the brain dead.’

  Just then Joe arrived in Fin’s room. Even in the moonlight he could see that there was broken glass all over the floor. But he had shoes on, so he crunched over to the window and saw April trying to brush off a very dishevelled Loretta.

  ‘What’s g-g-going on?’ asked Joe.

  ‘I need you to come over to my house, right away,’ said Loretta.

  Loretta led the way across the Peski kids’ garden, through a hole in the fence, which looked like it had been made recently with a chainsaw, and into her own yard.

  ‘You’d better whisper from now on,’ said Loretta, as they pushed through a dense thicket of bushes.

  ‘Why?’ asked Fin. ‘This is your garden, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course, silly,’ said Loretta. ‘But Mummy and Daddy are paranoid about burglars, so they’re likely to shoot first and ask questions later.’

  ‘They’ve got g-g-guns?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Oh no, they could get in trouble with the medical practitioners board if they shot someone with a gun,’ said Loretta. Joe looked relieved. ‘They’ve got tranquiliser darts,’ she added, ‘and capsicum spray. The type you get in Mexico that, I’m pretty sure, isn’t legal here.’

  Eventually they emerged onto a lawn and saw Loretta’s actual home. It was magnificent. It looked like an architect had been given a great deal of money to come up with a dwelling that would be appropriate for a settlement on Mars. There were very few right angles, just lots of domes and curved glass walls. Not the type of thing you’d expect to see when you push through a vandalised fence and a hedge in a small country town.

  ‘Cutting people open must pay well,’ commented April.

  ‘It’s r-r-rude to talk about how much money people earn,’ chided Joe.

  ‘Oh, it’s no secret,’ said Loretta. ‘Mummy and Daddy are loaded. Doctors get paid squillions. Then they invest that and get squillions more. In fact, some of their investments were a little shady, which is why they had to spend so much on the house. A couple of years ago the tax department was targeting coronary surgeons with offshore bank accounts, so they needed to get rid of a lot of cash quickly.’

  Loretta led the way around the side of the house. The Peski kids assumed they were heading to the front door, but Loretta stopped suddenly next to the wall.

  ‘This way,’ she said, as she grabbed hold of a drainpipe. Then, with surprising agility, she scrambled quickly up it to an open window on the second floor.

  The other three stood and stared.

  April was the first to respond. ‘Okay,’ she said, with a shrug. Then she shoved Pumpkin inside her jumper and scrambled up herself, grabbing the lintel and vaulting into the room.

  Joe held the downpipe and gave it a little shake. It was PVC. He wasn’t confident it would take his greater weight. ‘Y-You first,’ he indicated to Fin.

  Fin gaped. He was not athletic or agile, and he had very little upper-body or grip strength. He silently begged his brother with his eyes to forbid him to do this, but Joe was not fluent in silent eye language, particular when it was dark and he couldn’t really see the eyes that were appealing to him.

  Fin swallowed hard, grabbed the drainpipe and tried to shinny up, the same way April and Loretta had. After a flurry of exhausting activity, he stopped to rest. He looked down to see that he was only two feet off the ground. At this point, Joe took pity on his brother. He put his hand firmly on Fin’s butt and pushed him up as high as he could reach. Fin was then able to stretch across and grab the windowsill. From there he scrambled inelegantly inside.

  ‘Couldn’t you just let me in through the f-f-front door?’ Joe asked Loretta.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Loretta. ‘Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t like that. They don’t like me having friends over. Particularly late at night. And particularly not boys. They’re very judgemental about boys.’

  Joe weighed up the pros and cons of being caught by two tranquiliser-gun-wielding surgeons in their daughter’s bedroom. It didn’t seem worth the risk.

  Up in the bedroom Pumpkin barked loudly. There were responding barks from not far away, but these barks sounded like they came from much bigger dogs.

  ‘I wouldn’t stand there though,’ said Loretta. ‘The Dobermans have just woken up and they’re trained to bite intruders.’

  The barks were getting louder. Joe could hear the dogs running through the bushes. Suddenly, two hounds burst out on the other side of the lawn. They didn’t look like regular dogs, they looked like wild beasts of prey ruthlessly running down their dinner in the wild jungle. Joe did not hesitate. Adrenaline surged through his body. He jumped and grabbed the windowsill, pulling himself up. He was soon sprawled upside down on the floor of Loretta’s bedroom.

  ‘Well done,’ said Loretta.

  Joe looked about. Loretta’s room was amazing. Everything was either white or pink, and he had never seen so many unicorns in his life. There were stuffed unicorns, paintings of unicorns, model unicorns hanging from the ceiling, a unicorn bedspread and unicorn-patterned curtains.

  ‘You like unicorns, huh?’ said Joe, trying to be polite when really he was shocked. He knew stereotypically girls were meant to like pink fluffy unicorns, but growing up with Apr
il he had never actually witnessed this level of unicorn worship through interior decoration before.

  ‘No,’ said Loretta, chuckling. ‘They’re very silly, but Daddy likes to think I like unicorns, and I like to keep Daddy happy. It makes him less observant of my other interests.’

  ‘Like housebreaking,’ said Fin.

  Loretta laughed. ‘Oh no, that’s the least of it.’

  ‘Blah blah blah,’ said April rudely. ‘You’ve dragged us all over here on a school night when we should be asleep, so how about we get on with it. What’s your problem?’

  Loretta grew sombre. ‘There’s been a murder!’

  The other three stared at her. Murder was obviously very serious, but Loretta didn’t look devastated, which was confusing for them.

  ‘Did you do it?’ asked April.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Loretta.

  ‘Who’s d-d-dead?’ asked Joe. He was the one with closest to normal human emotions, and he was very concerned by the turn of the conversation.

  ‘Mr Bottomley,’ said Loretta.

  ‘Is that a teacher at your school?’ asked April. She didn’t know anyone other than teachers who still had to be referred to as ‘Mr’.

  ‘No, Mr Bottomley means much more to me than that,’ said Loretta. Her eyes began to water and she bit her lip. ‘He’s my Gromphadorhina portentosa.’

  ‘Your what?’ asked Joe.

  ‘My Madagascan hissing cockroach,’ said Loretta. ‘Come and see.’

  She led them over to two large doors in the far wall of the room. The Peski kids assumed it was a walk-in wardrobe, but when Loretta threw open the doors they were in for a shock. Clothes took up only a fraction of the space. The rest of the wardrobe looked like an evil villain’s lair. There were monitors showing live feeds from security cameras, a whole chemistry set-up where a strange green liquid was bubbling away and a pegboard on which hung a wide variety of power tools and even a couple of things that looked like weapons.

  ‘Cool,’ said April, as she reached for a slingshot.

  ‘Mr Bottomley lives over here,’ said Loretta. In one corner of the wardrobe there were three aquariums. One was full of water and contained fish.

  ‘Is that a piranha?’ asked Fin, looking at the unusually large teeth on one of the fish.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Loretta with a wink. ‘It’s illegal to keep piranha in this country.’

  In another aquarium there was an enormous black snake coiled up in the bottom corner. But the third aquarium appeared to be empty. There were only a few rocks and plants.

  ‘What are we looking at?’ asked Fin.

  Loretta just pointed.

  Under the leaves there was a large brown shiny lump. At first glance Fin had assumed it was a rock. But it wasn’t.

  ‘That’s a cockroach?!’ exclaimed April.

  ‘It’s huge!’ exclaimed Joe. It was twenty times larger than Fin and April’s cockroach.

  ‘They’re bred as pets,’ said Loretta. ‘They’re very affectionate and they hiss in the most charming manner.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s dead?’ asked Fin. ‘I’ve heard about cockroaches being frozen in snow, then waking up when the snow thaws as if nothing happened.’

  ‘It’s twenty-one degrees in the tank,’ said Loretta, pointing to a thermometer stuck to the side of the aquarium. ‘How could he have frozen?’

  ‘He could be st-st-stunned,’ said Joe.

  ‘Cockroaches are covered in chitin,’ said Loretta. ‘In terms of surface area to volume ratio they are better protected than an armoured personnel carrier. What on earth could stun him?’

  ‘It definitely looks dead to me,’ said April, tapping the side of the clear glass. ‘Lying on its back with its legs in the air is a pretty compelling set of symptoms.’

  ‘Perhaps he died of old age,’ said Fin.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Loretta. ‘Madagascan hissing cockroaches live up to five years in captivity. Mr Bottomley was only four months old and he was in perfect health when we bought him two weeks ago. I have a certificate proving that from the breeder and an independent vet who checked him.’

  ‘What about natural causes?’ said Fin. ‘Perhaps he picked up a disease.’

  ‘How could he pick up a disease?’ asked Loretta. ‘Cockroaches spread disease, they don’t catch them themselves. Besides, he’s the only Madagascan hissing cockroach in a five-hundred-kilometre radius. There are no other cockroaches of his species that he could have caught a disease from.’

  ‘So you suspect foul play?’ April leaned in to get a closer look at Mr Bottomley. Pumpkin leaned in as well, but he was thinking more about whether the brown shiny lump would taste good.

  ‘Could it have been your parents?’ asked Fin. ‘If our dad found a cockroach in an aquarium, I’m pretty sure he’d kill it.’

  ‘Daddy ordered the cockroach for me,’ said Loretta. ‘Given how much he paid for Mr Bottomley, it would be very silly if he murdered him two weeks later.’

  ‘And your mother?’ asked Fin.

  ‘She’s a surgeon,’ said Loretta, as if that explained everything.

  ‘So what?’ asked April. ‘Do you think because she’s a medical professional that she’s too rational to kill a cockroach?’

  ‘No,’ said Loretta. ‘I’m saying, if she had any murderous impulses, I’m sure she’d take it out on her human patients first.’

  ‘What was the murder weapon?’ asked April, changing the subject.

  Fin snorted a laugh. ‘You’ve been playing too much Cluedo. Do you think it was Professor Dumbledore in the conservatory with a candlestick?’

  April opened the lid of the small aquarium, peered inside, then sniffed. ‘Bug spray.’

  Loretta gasped and clutched her chest.

  Fin patted her shoulder. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t want her to think he was taking advantage of her grief. ‘At least it would have been quick,’ he said reassuringly.

  ‘Quick!’ exclaimed Loretta. ‘Have you ever seen a cockroach killed with bug spray? The poor things flail about for ages. Even after they’ve collapsed on their backs their little legs flinch and shudder for an eternity.’

  ‘Spraying a cockroach in an aquarium isn’t very sporting either,’ said April. ‘It doesn’t have any chance to escape. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, only more sensible because if you actually shot a fish in a barrel, you’d probably shoot a hole in the barrel as well and then you’d get your feet wet.’

  ‘So not only did someone kill my beloved pet and potential champion,’ said Loretta, ‘they broke into my house to do it!’

  ‘They probably broke into your house while you were out breaking into other people’s houses,’ said Fin.

  Loretta glared at him. ‘The fact that it is ironic does not make it any less painful.’

  Fin blushed.

  ‘But who would do something so … so …’ said Joe.

  ‘Cruel,’ said Loretta.

  ‘No, so …’ began Joe.

  ‘So vicious?’ asked Fin.

  ‘No, I was going to say s-s-so weird,’ said Joe.

  ‘A competitor,’ said Loretta coldly. ‘Cockroach racing is a serious business. Lots of people would want to bump off Mr Bottomley.’

  ‘They might want to, but who’d break into a house to do it?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Anyone,’ said Loretta. ‘This town may seem nice and friendly, but let me tell you, once a year they all go cockroach crazy and lose their minds.’

  ‘You’re going to have to narrow down the list of suspects,’ said April. ‘Is there anyone in particular who might have it in for your cockroach?’

  ‘Well, Matilda Voss-Nevers was very cross with me after last year’s race,’ said Loretta.

  ‘You know her?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Loretta. ‘We were both in the same heat last year. She was angry because my cockroach was much faster than hers, especially after it bit her cockroach’s leg off.’

 
‘She’s definitely crazy enough to pull a stunt like this,’ said April.

  ‘Anyone else?’ asked Fin.

  ‘It could be one of the competitors from last year’s final,’ said Loretta.

  ‘Why? What happened last year?’ asked Fin.

  ‘I didn’t break any rules,’ said Loretta defensively. ‘The accusations of cheating were totally unfair.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked April.

  Loretta looked only the tiniest bit shamefaced when she confessed. ‘I used a hair dryer.’

  ‘But cockroaches don’t have hair,’ snapped April. She was confused now, which always made her angry.

  ‘No, but they are highly sensitive to every small disturbance in the air,’ explained Loretta. ‘That’s how they detect approaching threats. So if there is even a tiny movement in the atmosphere, they’ll react with lightning-fast reflexes.’

  ‘Hence the hair dryer,’ said Fin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Loretta. ‘You see, it’s in the rules that you can’t touch your cockroach once the race begins, but there was nothing to say you couldn’t blow your cockroach in the rear with a 1000-watt cordless hair dryer.’

  ‘So you won?’ said Joe.

  ‘No,’ said Loretta sadly. ‘People got surprisingly upset. There was a riot. Several cockroaches were lost and the race was abandoned.’

  ‘So that’s why everyone in town hates you,’ said April. ‘Apart from your personality, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid people in Currawong don’t embrace imagination in sportsmanship,’ said Loretta.

  ‘You mean cheating,’ said April.

  ‘I prefer to think of it as “competitive innovation”,’ said Loretta.

  April fake coughed. ‘Cheating.’

  ‘So Mr Bottomley’s killer c-could be anyone in town,’ said Joe.

  ‘That’s why I need you to help me,’ said Loretta, turning to April and Fin with a disarming smile. ‘You’re new and no one likes you.’

  ‘Hey, how did you know that?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Intuition,’ said Loretta kindly. ‘No one will mind if you ask some questions.’

  ‘Why don’t you investigate yourself?’ asked April.