The Donut Diaries (11 page)

‘Bouncy bouncy,’ sneered Ivan.

I really hate that kid.

Really.

Hate.

That.

Kid.

‘Stepped in any poo lately?’ I asked sweetly, and got a last cuff round the head as my answer.

We reached Mr Whale’s office.

‘Wait here, Lardy,’ said Ivan, and then the two goons went off to find someone else to torment.

I could see through the frosted glass that there were several people in there. I’ll admit that I was sweating. I guessed that this had to be about the Phantom. But as far as I was aware there hadn’t been any more attacks.

The door opened and a face appeared. It wasn’t a good face to see at that moment.

‘Millicent, in,’ said Crazy Fricker.

What awaited me in the room was pretty close to my dream team, if by ‘dream team’ you mean the group of people most likely to make me want to curl up in the corner and whimper.

Mr Whale was there, of course, looking more like an Evil Baby than ever. Then there was Mr Fricker, who I now saw was wearing his sensible hands rather
than
any special attachments. And, completing the unholy trinity, DOC MORLOCK!!!

Actually, there was one friendlier face in there: Mr Wells. Mr Wells was OK. He said ‘well’ too much, but there are worse faults than that, e.g. looking like an Evil Baby, or enjoying torturing kids on the rugby field, or spending your life looking at poo and telling people to stop eating donuts.

I also noticed that there was a deeply revolting smell in the room, despite the fact that the window was open. And a big fat bluebottle was buzzing around, like a cherry on the cake of irritation.

Mr Whale started talking, although I missed the first part because the horror of all this had rendered me temporarily deaf.

‘… international expert … consultant with the Metropolitan Police Forensic Department … brought in to solve this dastardly …’

I shook my head and tried to get my brain into gear.

‘It is not public knowledge yet,’ continued Mr Whale, ‘but there was another incident. It occurred yesterday. During assembly. The assembly into which
you
were observed sneaking significantly late.’

‘It was my sisters, sir … in the bathroom … and the bus … the driver …’

My excuses petered out, defeated by the looks of disgust, boredom, etc. etc. on the faces before me.

‘It was here. In my office. The inner sanctum. There.’

Whale pointed to his wastepaper bin.

It sank in.

The Brown Phantom had dumped in the acting Deputy Headmaster’s wastepaper bin.

In another situation I’d have been rolling around on the floor. But I realized that I was deep in the poo, just like the poo was deep in the bin.

‘But how do you know it was done during assembly?’

‘The …
object
was not discovered until this morning. It had been covered with a sheet of paper. I called in Doctor Morlock, who is an old friend, as well as someone who has helped me with … well, that’s not relevant. She was able to give an approximate time of …
argh
—’

‘Between nine-seventeen and ten-oh-six yesterday morning,’ cut in Doc Morlock.

‘And I also asked her to use her professional expertise to tell me if there were any other unusual or distinguishing features of the … evidence.’

‘Stool, Mr Whale,’ said Doc Morlock. ‘I like to call a stool a stool.’

‘Fine. Stool.’

‘And’– for the first time the nutritionist looked directly at me, and her mouth was basically the most like a cat’s bum that it has ever been, and it had always been a lot like a cat’s bum – ‘I can confirm that it was a very unusual stool.’

‘How unusual, Doctor Morlock?’

Something about the way Mr Whale asked this made me think that it was prearranged.

‘I have only ever seen one human stool like this before.’

‘And when was that, Doctor Morlock?’

‘It was at the end of last year.’

‘And who did the, ah,
stool
belong to?’

She turned to me again, giving me the full cat’s bum.

‘It belonged to this boy here. Dermot. Dermot Milligan.’

Even though I guess they all knew what she was going to say, there was still a gasp from the other teachers.

‘Well, how can you be sure, Doctor Morlock?’ said Mr Wells, who was trying to stick up for me. ‘Isn’t one,
you know
… just like another,
you know
…?’

‘It certainly is not,’ said the offended nutritionist. ‘I can distinguish between forty-seven different types and sub-types. But this particular stool had large quantities of partially digested banana skin in it, and, as I have said, I have only ever seen that in one human stool sample: Dermot Milligan’s.’

Mr Wells’s face changed. He was remembering my stunt with the banana skin. Suddenly a much
sterner
character replaced the friendly Mr Wells.

‘Well, I see,’ he said.

‘I can explain,’ I said desperately.

I
could
explain it. Last year, Doc Morlock was watching my poo like a hawk to check to see if I was eating any of the banned donuts. If I was, then I was going to be sent to Camp Fatso. My choice was simple: stop eating donuts or get my hands on some 100% guaranteed prime quality, donut-free poo. I came by a dollop belonging to a bad-tempered chimp called Samson, which I passed off as my own.

Samson was too stupid to peel his bananas, which was why Doc Morlock now thought that any human poo with chunks of banana skin in it must be mine. So, to explain why the poo couldn’t be mine would involve admitting that I was a HUGE LIAR. And it would be
Camp
Fatso, here I come.

And anyway, who would believe me?

‘We’re waiting,’ said Mr Whale.

‘I’ve been framed. The whole thing’s a set-up.’

Mocking laughter.

‘And who would want to frame a schoolboy?’

‘I’ve got … enemies.’

Mr Whale shook his head impatiently. ‘I think we’ve heard enough of this, boy. It’s time to confess. If you admit what you’ve done there may be a way to avoid expelling you, although of course you will need some psychiatric assessment, because clearly whoever has done this is mentally deranged.’

‘Look, I absolutely promise that it wasn’t me … That’s not my … Really, it isn’t.’

‘Well, the evidence seems to be clear, Dermot,’ said Mr Wells, looking as if I’d betrayed him.

‘There is one sure way of finding out if this boy is lying.’

These were the first words uttered by Mr Fricker since I’d come in.

Mr Whale looked at him. ‘Oh, and what’s that?’

‘Lie detector.’

‘And you have one of those?’

‘Oh yes, left over from my old SAS days, when I was one of the chief interrogators.’

‘But I thought you were in the Catering Corps?’

‘Well, yes, but we had squaddies pilfering rations all the time. It was my job to track them down and make them confess.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Mr Wells, ‘but I can’t allow one of my students to undergo that sort of interrogation. It’s against the Human Rights Act. I guess.’

Mr Wells was probably trying to help me again, but a lie detector was exactly what I wanted, because for once I was telling the truth.

‘I’ll take it!’ I said. ‘Then you’ll all believe me. Will you at least wait until then before you tell my parents?’

Mr Whale looked around at the others in the room. Then he nodded curtly.

‘When can this be done, Mr Fricker?’

‘Tomorrow lunch time. I’ll bring in my apparatus in the morning, but it takes a while to calibrate.’

‘Let’s hope for your sake, Dermot, that the results are positive.’

‘Negative,’ said Fricker. ‘Positive would mean he was lying.’

Mr Whale did not like to be contradicted.
‘Whatever,’
he snapped, and then we were all dismissed.

I briefly thought about fessing up to Mum and Dad so I could at least get my side of the story in first. But I couldn’t face it. They had troubles of their own. My mum’s company were getting rid of loads of people, and my dad only earned enough from his job to keep him in toilet paper. I had to beat this thing on my own.

I WAS IN
a terrible state this morning, waiting for the lie-detector test. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I could sense that people were staring at me and whispering behind my back. I was used to people laughing at me, but this was different. Suddenly I wasn’t a figure of fun any more. I was …

Evil.

Sorta.

Cooooooooool!

Well, no not really cool. Or cooooooooool! Because, after all, it involved poo, which is the opposite of cool.

When he took the morning register, Mr Wells said ‘Milligan’ in a funny way, which seemed to shout out, ‘Milligan, also known as the Brown Phantom’.

Tamara Bello inched her desk as far away from me as it would go. And Ludmilla didn’t even look at me. So there were a couple of up-sides! I’m kidding. It was all pretty bleak.

At morning break, Renfrew took me to one side.

‘Everyone’s saying it’s you, you know.’

‘The Brown Phantom, you mean?’

‘Yep.’

‘I know.’

‘And are you?’

‘Do you really have to ask me?’

‘Well, it does look bad …’

‘Et tu, Renfrew.’
¹

‘I just had to ask.’

‘Fine.’

I went to the gym at lunch. The guys came with me as far as the door, but left me there. Some things a boy has to do on his own, such as having a wee and getting his fingernails pulled out by Mr Fricker.

The man himself was waiting for me outside
his
office. He hadn’t chosen which set of hands to wear yet, and he beckoned me with a bare stump.

Inside there was a table and two chairs. On the table stood a large box, with dials on the front and wires coming out of the back. On top of it there was a red light and a green light.

There was also a rack on the wall with Fricker’s special hands. He selected a pair encased in tight-fitting leather gloves. These were his much-feared Interrogation Hands. As soon as he had them screwed in, he seemed to change. Gone was the hot-tempered shouty psychopath. In its place was something colder and more clinical and, in a way, even scarier.