Mystery At Riddle Gully (6 page)

‘Step back!' said Pollo, hefting the axe onto her shoulder.

Will's eyes widened in horror. ‘Stop! We can't just cut a hole with an axe! My stepfather would suspect something straight away.'

‘It's a lot better than trying to beat the fence unconscious like
you
were doing!'

‘I wasn't trying to beat the...' Will huffed. ‘I tried to prise off some pickets by leaning the plank against them and jumping on it, only I wasn't heavy enough.' He looked sideways at Pollo. ‘But you're here now.'

Pollo looked doubtful. Clutching the axe handle, she jiggled her shoulders around, very much like someone who wanted nothing more than to swing an axe. Eventually she lowered it. ‘Okay then,' she said. ‘Convince me.'

‘See here?' said Will, pointing towards the base of the fence, about half a metre above the ground. ‘On each panel the pickets are nailed to this bit of wood going across. So if we wedge the plank against the pickets about here—' Will jammed one end of the plank into the track and the other against the pickets above the crossbar ‘—and put our weight on the plank here—' he indicated with his foot ‘—it should make the nails pop out. Simple!'

He jumped onto the ramp made by the plank and started bobbing up and down.

‘Maybe if we hit it with the axe a couple of times to get it started...' said Pollo.

‘No, this will work. You'll see.' Will edged along the plank closer to the fence and held out his hand. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘I need your weight on here too.'

Pollo dropped the axe and cautiously stepped onto the plank alongside Will.

‘One, two, three!' said Will. Will hung onto the fence and Pollo gripped his shoulder as they jumped up and down in unison.

Cracks began to appear between the pickets and the timber crossbar. Pollo and Will jumped higher and the cracks widened so that with every bounce they caught glimpses of Will's backyard. But after another minute of bouncing the pickets were still firmly attached. The cracks looked as wide as they were going to get.

‘Now
can we bash it with the axe?' puffed Pollo.

‘If we could just find a bit more weight...' said Will, looking around.

At that moment they heard a loud rustling in the undergrowth beside the track. Shorn Connery appeared, weeds sticking out either side of his mouth, his rope strung from one bush to another. He paused in his chewing.

Baa-aa-aah!

Will and Pollo looked at one another.

Thirty seconds later, Will had the back half and Pollo the front half of a loudly protesting sheep. Will was grabbing the fence for balance, Pollo was grabbing him and Shorn Connery squirmed and bleated between them. They jumped up and down on the plank together, their eyes glued to the base of the pickets. It was working. The cracks were widening with each jolt.

If they could just hang onto Shorn Connery a few seconds longer...

Suddenly Will felt the fence beneath his hand shifting away. As his arm stretched out, he looked up to see the entire panel of pickets that he was holding onto toppling slowly towards his backyard. It creaked and squeaked like a falling tree, Will then Shorn Connery then Pollo, in slow motion, tumbling up against it. The panel and its passengers hit the earth with a juddering crash.

No one moved. The three lay sprawled across the fence panel inside Will's backyard in a tangle of limbs and woolly legs. A cool evening breeze drifted over them
through a two-metre gap in the fence.

Shorn Connery was the first to rise from the pile. He scrambled onto his hooves and shook himself from head to tail. He glared down at Will—
Baaa-aaa-aaah!
—then galloped away into the murky dusk.

Pollo stood up, bending and straightening her arms and legs, testing that everything was in working order. She looked down at Will. ‘I guess you've got yourself a hole now.'

Will remained on his back. This had been a really bad day. A really, really bad day. He lay there, staring at the bats flitting across the sky. If only somehow he could join them.

Will stood by silently as Pollo brought the axe down, punching out a hole in the panel of pickets big enough for a sheep to have got through.

She threw the axe aside. ‘I'll be off then!' she announced, looking at the first stars glinting in the purple sky. Soon it would be completely dark.

Will checked his watch. HB and his mum would be back any second. ‘Aren't you going to stay and help me put the fence back up?'

‘Sorry, I'd love to,' said Pollo. ‘But I'd better find Shorn Connery while there's still a smidgen of light.'

Will squatted and tried lifting the fence panel off the ground. It buckled, threatening to snap. He looked at Pollo like a castaway watching a ship about to sail on by.

‘Okay, okay,' said Pollo. ‘One more minute. Then I'm gone.'

Will stood in the yard and Pollo on the track. Together they pushed and pulled until the fence panel was back in position. Will secured it with fencing wire from HB's shed while Pollo held it steady.

Alone on her side on the fence, Pollo peered up and down the track through the gloom. Where was Shorn Connery this time? She hoped he hadn't gone back to the cemetery.

Just then Will's voice called through the pickets. ‘Err ... Pollo?' He sounded nervous. ‘We've got a slight problem.'

As he spoke, something tickled Pollo's knees. She looked down. Shoving its way through the hole in the fence was a springy grey mop between two big twitching ears.

‘He's been in my mum's flowerbed ... by the looks of it.' Will's voice was mournful.

Shorn Connery looked up at Pollo, his puzzled eyes blinking stiff white lashes.

Baaa-aaa-aaah!

Pollo grappled with Shorn Connery's rope lead. It was stretched taut, twisting around his neck and disappearing through the hole in the fence. ‘He's caught up!' she shouted. ‘You need to pull him back out to loosen the rope!'

Pollo pushed Shorn Connery's chest and Will pulled
on his hind legs until eventually they had his head on the same side of the fence as his body. Will untangled the rope and passed it back to Pollo. They tried to reverse the process, Pollo pulling, Will pushing. But Shorn Connery, meanwhile, had spotted Angela's flowerbed again. He wasn't going anywhere.

Will, heaving with his right cheek buried in the greasy wool of the sheep's rump and his feet spinning in the dirt, stole another glance at his watch. It was a wonder Angela and HB weren't home already.

Abruptly, Shorn Connery stopped fighting and stiffened to attention. Will peeked through a narrow gap to see Pollo, in the half-dark, waggling the end of a carrot. Shorn Connery suddenly muscled forward like his life depended on it. Will gave him one last shove and he catapulted through the hole, out of Will's yard and onto the trail. Will leaned against the fence and slid down into the dirt, turning his back to the sheep, the hole and the entire sorry business.

Only then did he look up to the back step of the house.

Angela and HB stood on the step, their racquets and jaws dangling. Will managed a limp wave.

‘Who would've expected it? The sheep came back to life!' he called.

Through the hole in the fence he heard a snort and felt the sharp jab of a finger in his back. Pollo whispered through the fence, ‘Meet me back here at twenty-one hundred hours.'

Angela descended the steps and began crossing the lawn, HB following slowly.

Will lowered his face and shielded his mouth with his hand. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Nine p.m., dummy!'

‘No—I mean why am I meeting you back here?'

His mum was in front of her flowerbed—not so much a flowerbed anymore as a stalk bed, Shorn Connery having beheaded most of its inhabitants. She was shaking her head and making a series of whimpers as she formally identified the corpse of each flower. HB joined her, gently squeezing her shoulders with his big hands.

‘If you don't meet me I'll spill the beans about you and your fires and your fence holes and your sheep that come back from the dead!' whispered Pollo, jabbing Will's back with each point.

Will sank lower in the dirt. As soon as he got out of one mess he jumped straight into another. The graffiti that had started everything seemed a lifetime away.

‘Nine p.m. sharp—or you're toast!' said the voice through the fence.

Angela and HB walked over to where Will was slumped in the garden bed. They stood looking down at him.

‘I gather the sheep wasn't dead in the first place, then,' said HB, leaning back to scan up and down the fence, squinting in the near darkness.

‘Yes ... yes!' said Will. ‘That's what I meant to say. I
thought
the sheep was dead, but it turned out it wasn't!' Through the fence, a finger poked him in the back.

‘HB, do you know what he's talking about?' said Angela.

‘Err, yes, love. But I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Best you tell her, son.'

Will recounted the story he'd spun earlier, Pollo's
finger stabbing him with each porky.

‘Good grief!' said Angela when he'd finished. ‘You poor thing, trying to make a veggie garden for me and having to chase a sheep around half the afternoon instead!' She looked at HB. ‘Amazing, eh?'

‘Yes-sir-ee,' said HB. ‘Amazing.' Scratching his head, he added, half to himself, ‘Though I'm still trying to work out why the devil I didn't notice this ruddy great hole in the fence when I was talking to Will before.' He began tugging on his earlobes.
‘And
I forgot to take my wallet to tennis. I think I might be losing it.'

Will was beginning to feel like an insect skewered to a corkboard. The minor detail of the position of the hole had never crossed his mind. It was always the details with Hairy!

‘Honestly, HB,' said Angela, helping Will to his feet. ‘Will's had a stinker of an afternoon and my flower garden looks like a bed of nails—and you want us to worry about you?'

HB bowed his head. ‘No. You're right, love. Sorry.'

Angela held out a hand to Will. ‘Come on inside now, love, and clean up. We brought home some pizza.
Love on the Wing
starts at eight-forty-five. We should just make it.'

Will fell in behind as they trudged up to the house. ‘Did you say
Love on the Wing?'

‘I know, I know! It's a chick-flick but I've got birthday rights, haven't I? It was either that or that horrible sci-fi
thing. HB's really looking forward to it.' She grinned at HB. ‘Aren't you, love?'

‘You bet,' said HB, his face glum.

Will had to meet Pollo. She had way too much dirt on him not to. ‘Would it be okay with you guys if I didn't come?' he blurted.

Was that enough? Did he have to invent a reason why he didn't want to go with them? He hoped not. He was starting to lose track of all his stories.

His mum and HB looked at one another.

‘I mean, we'll all be eating together beforehand!' said Will brightly.

‘Well, I suppose you don't have to come,' said Angela. ‘You've had a rough afternoon. We can bring you back a chocolate bomb—as long as you're okay with being home alone. What do you think, HB?'

‘He'll have
The Force
to keep him company,' said HB.

‘Yeah, right,
The Force!
Excellent!' said Will. ‘I'll record it for you!'

‘Well, if that's what you'd prefer...' said Angela. She suddenly chuckled. ‘How about, if you don't come with us, you have to watch
Golden Summers
with me on Monday night? It's the season finale—the big wedding!'

HB bent down to Will. ‘It's only a half-hour episode. Take the deal, son. I wish I were in your shoes.'

As his mum punched HB on the arm, Will sighed. In my shoes? That's funny. I don't want to be in them at all. Every step I take, I just fall flat on my face.