A Thousand Water Bombs (11 page)

‘Is that it, Keener?’ said the little girl, who had stupid bunches, like dog’s ears, hanging either side of her face.

‘No, Izzy. There are a few more questions.’ I rattled them off, being sure to study her for signs of blushing, fidgeting, loss of eye contact, etc. There were none. I was fairly sure
she was not guilty, so I wrote NG by her name. She watched me.

‘You can go now,’ I said.

She stayed where she was and gave me a sickly smile and I felt my face going the pinky colour.
Yuck, a Year 3 who likes
me!
Luckily it was a boy next: George.

George wasn’t very cooperative. His answers to the seven questions went like this: don’t know, maybe, can’t remember, no idea, spaghetti bolognaise, the tooth fairy, no. He
walked off. I had another kid waiting but first I needed to decide whether George was G or NG. It was tricky. He was fine on the eye contact and stammering and blushing, but when I asked him his
favourite dinner, which we put in to catch the liar out, he was meant to say something like, ‘Why do you want to know that?’ but he said ‘Spaghetti bolognaise’. According to
Jonno’s list, a person who is telling the truth will ask why there’s a random change of subject, but a liar will answer even if the question’s completely off the wall. It worked
with Izzy. She said, ‘I thought this was about the medals, not about dinner?’

‘Are you going to ask me anything or not?’ said the next in line.

I quickly scribbled NG by George and moved on to Ayesha. She had a lot to say and didn’t take any breaths along the way. We’d got as far as ‘Who do you think might have done
it?’ when the bell rang for end of break.

She answered anyway, naming every boy in the class without any gaps. ‘GeorgeCharlieDanBenHughJoeShakil . . .’

I skipped the last question which was, ‘Have you got anything else to say about Jack’s missing medals?’ She was a definite NG.

‘How many did you interview?’ asked Bee.

‘Three,’ I said.

‘One,’ said Fifty. Bee gave him an I’m-disappointed face.

‘Five,’ said Copper Pie, and gave Fifty an I’m-better-than-you face. I gave Copper Pie a how-did-you-manage-that face.

‘Three,’ said Jonno. ‘What about you?’

‘Three,’ said Bee. ‘So that means we’ve done fifteen.’

‘But how many were rotten cheating liars?’ said Fifty.

‘None.’ I shook my head. So did everyone else.

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Bee. ‘It means we know the guilty one is one of the last eleven. It’ll all be sorted by end of lunch. Tribe does it again.’

We did a mini Tribe handshake and plodded back into class.

‘Right class, it’s mental maths. You know what to do. Books out and pencils ready. I’ll read the questions and you answer what you can,’ said Miss
Walsh.

Alice’s hand shot up.

‘No, Alice. There can’t be any questions about this. We do it every week.’

Jamie stood up and shouted out. ‘She’s dropped her pencil, Miss. It’s under Ed’s seat.’

‘Jamie! You do not shout out, you put your hand up. Haven’t we been through this enough times?’

Jamie sat down, said ‘Yes’ and then put his hand up. Ed picked up Alice’s pencil and gave it to Jamie. Callum took it off Jamie and gave it to Alice.

‘Right,’ said Miss Walsh. ‘Are we all ready?’

‘Yes,’ shouted Jamie, with no hand in the air.

Miss Walsh sighed, retied her bun-type thing and read out the first question.

I try and get top marks so I was concentrating quite hard when the Head came in and interrupted Miss Walsh’s flow.

‘You know who you are. The five of you, follow me!’

You can tell a lot by the way people speak. The Head was
not
inviting us for tea and scones, if you get my drift.

In the Head’s office there are pictures everywhere. Loads were done by the kids in school but some are posh in gold frames, and there is a certificate and a photo of the
Head being given a cup and another photo of the Head opening the school library after it was ‘modernised’. I liked the library the way it was before, when the books were all over the
place in no order and you could take out what you liked. Now there’s a system and you have to sign ‘out’ and back ‘in’. (I was having a good look at the walls because
I was too scared to look at the Head.)

‘Enough is enough,’ she said. ‘A kangaroo court indeed! What were you thinking?’

There was silence. So Bee spoke. ‘What exactly is a kangaroo court?’

‘It is a cowboy court.’ The Head looked at our faces and gave us another clue. ‘A court that cannot possibly deliver a sound judgement because it is made up of people who are
not equipped to understand or implement the law. A lawless court. A bogus court. A sham.’

I was getting the picture. The Head had obviously found out about the Year 3 interrogations. And she didn’t seem to be impressed, which was odd considering we were trying to catch the
thief for her.

‘We were only trying to help,’ said Jonno. ‘Flo, Keener’s sister, said that Jack was very upset.’

‘She begged us to help,’ said Fifty, making a prizewinning begging face together with praying hands.

‘What is it about the five of you? I know you to be decent, responsible children, yet you cannot walk around a corner without causing some disruption or other. I have had to talk to you
about bribery, about emails sent without authority . . . Can you not follow the basic rules of school, which are not dissimilar from those of life?’

It was a question, but no one had an answer. I smiled, hoping to remind her of the decent, responsible bit before she handed out the punishment.

‘You will do no more interrogations of the Year 3 class, and you will personally apologise to those you have already quizzed. Mr Dukes is expecting you. Go away, and do not attempt to
interfere further. We, the staff, will address the matter of Jack’s medals. Try, for the rest of the term – which is, after all, the end of your time in this school – to think
before you act.’

Not bad advice,
I thought.

‘Yes, we will,’ said Bee. ‘Thank you.’ As I followed Bee out of the door I mumbled a ‘thank you’ too.

Mr Dukes is Flo’s teacher. He’s all right. We trooped off in his direction.

‘That’s so mean,’ said Bee. ‘We’d have had the case all wrapped up if only she’d let us do M to Z.’

There were murmurs of agreement. Me, I didn’t care about Jack. I was happy to be let off. Fifty knocked on the door and we went in.

‘A-ha!’ said Mr Dukes. ‘Here come the NYPD.’

No one laughed except Copper Pie. ‘New York Police Department,’ he explained. There were a few more giggles. I glanced over at Flo but she didn’t look at me.
Perhaps she
feels
guilty that we’ve got in trouble because of her,
I thought. We hadn’t agreed who was going to say sorry but Jonno spoke first so that was fine. He said all the right
things, as usual, except for the last sentence, which was: ‘If anyone knows anything about the medals but is too scared to tell a teacher you can tell one of us.’

Mr Dukes didn’t like that. ‘Children, you don’t need to turn to the Year 6s, you can always come and talk to me in private, as I’m sure you know.’

He nodded at us, which meant LEAVE. So we did.

‘The mystery of Jack’s missing medals will stay exactly that, I reckon,’ said Fifty.

‘What do you mean?’ said Jonno. ‘Tribe was appointed by Flo to find out who did it. We’re not giving up.’

I should have known.

old-fashioned detective work

Bee’s mum was waiting at the gates again, with Doodle. Bee was about to go with them when Jonno said, ‘Do you want to come round to mine?’

‘Too right, I do,’ said Bee. ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m off to Jonno’s.’

‘But what about Doodle?’ said Bee’s mum.

‘He’s your puppy,’ said Bee, and walked off.

‘Can we
all
come to yours?’ said Fifty.

‘Yeah,’ said Jonno. I was mega-excited because I was the only one who’d ever been inside his house. The others had never seen his fabulous stuff: telly, computer, executive
desk . . .

‘But won’t your dad send us away?’ asked Fifty. We all know Jonno’s parents don’t much like kids.

‘No. He’s too polite. But he might suggest I don’t invite you again, after you’ve gone of course. That’s how it works in our house.’ So we went to
Jonno’s. On the way Fifty made the mistake of asking Bee how the dog was settling in.

‘The
dog’s
fine,’ she said. ‘It’s me that’s not.’

Bee didn’t stop for breath for about ten minutes.

‘Where’d your mum get the mutt from anyway?’ said Copper Pie.

‘Some posh woman Mum works with couldn’t cope. She’d only had him for a few weeks. She told Mum and next thing Doodle was ours. She must have been desperate to get rid of him
– she gave us
everything
free! But that’s not how it’s meant to work, is it? You’re meant to beg for a pet for years. You’re meant to hope every Christmas Eve
that there’ll be a tiny fluffpot in your stocking. You’re NOT meant to have a crazy dog move in with all its rubbish while you’re at school one day.’

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

Jonno’s dad was busy somewhere else but his mum was in the kitchen, writing. She took out her earphones, smiled at us all, said, ‘Hello, I’m Frances. You must be the
Tribe.’

We all said our names.

She smiled (again), put her earphones back in and went back to her writing. The beads in her hair made the same clackety-clack I remembered from the first time I met her. I waited for her to say
something else, maybe offer us a snack, or at least a drink . . . but she was obviously busy.

‘Come on.’ Jonno led us all upstairs to his room and I watched the faces of the Tribers as they clocked all his gear.

‘You are
so
lucky,’ said Bee.

Copper Pie put the telly on and started flicking channels. Fifty swivelled on the see-through plastic computer chair, with his feet dangling because they didn’t reach the floor. Bee had
her mouth wide open. She didn’t seem to know what to do. Jonno did.

‘Right, Tribers. Time for a new plan. We can’t interrogate the Year 3 bambinos so we’ll have to try something else. Ideas?’

Complete silence, except for the commentator yelling from the telly. Copper Pie had found football. Fifty was messing with the web, in between spinning round. Bee didn’t seem to have
anything to say (odd). I was wishing I’d sat on the computer chair before Fifty so I could play the game I played last time.

The complete absence of anyone saying anything was interrupted by Jonno’s mum. She poked her head round the door, nodded towards the telly, raised her eyebrows, smiled, nodded towards
Fifty, who was going round quite fast, shook her head, and left with a beady jingle.

‘Copper Pie,’ said Jonno. No response. He said it again. ‘Copper Pie!’

C.P. answered without taking his eyes off the screen, which was about a nose-length from his nose.

‘What?’

‘Mum doesn’t agree with telly, unless it’s something she approves of, which means David Attenborough or the news.’

‘How come you’ve got a telly if that’s how she feels?’ I said.

‘To watch DVDs when they want me out of the way,’ said Jonno. ‘You’d better either turn it off or kill the volume.’

Copper Pie grunted, and muted.

Fifty slowed down.‘Do I need to get off the chair? I don’t think she approves of spinning either.’

‘No, don’t worry, she can’t see through walls, so you’re safe, unless she checks again.’

I was beginning to see that maybe Jonno’s mum wasn’t quite as fantastic as I thought she was. There seemed to be a lot of invisible rules that I was slowly discovering, like secret
writing in lemon juice slowly turning brown from the heat of a lamp (you must have tried it!).

Fifty hopped off the seat anyway, landed on two feet, immediately wobbled, nearly fell over, wobbled again and finally grabbed Bee.

‘All that spinning has affected your inner ear,’ she said.

Fifty let go, stood up, still weaving slightly from side to side, and made an announcement. ‘So, Tribe, despite the setback of the kangaroo court, has to find the answer to the mystery of
the missing medals. Are we all of the same mind?’ He does that occasionally – speaks like someone in a play.

‘Yep,’ said Jonno.

‘Don’t mind,’ I said. I meant ‘No’ but that didn’t seem the right answer. Copper Pie half turned round, opened his mouth, and then went straight back to stare
at the silent telly instead.

‘Well, if we don’t, it’ll seem like Tribe failed . . .’ said Bee.

‘Same,’ said Fifty.

A bit more silence. I remember thinking that after Jonno joined we’d never ever run out of ideas again. Seemed like I was wrong.

‘We either need to find the medals, or the thief,’ I said. To help things along.

‘We could offer a reward,’ said Jonno.

‘That could work.’ Bee pulled the pocket of her jacket out. ‘But we don’t have enough money.’ Bee never has any money.

‘Maybe we could get chatting to the ones in Flo’s class we didn’t interview and see what we find out.’ A useless suggestion from Fifty, but at least he was trying.

Bee spoke in a very slow you’re-an-idiot voice. ‘The Head’ll
never
guess what we’re up to if we start hanging out with Year 3s. Duh!’