The Fangs of the Dragon (3 page)

The thief could only have struck when the safe was
already open
.

‘This Rippa bloke,’ I said. ‘Was he here in the room when you opened the safe to show him the comic?’

‘Yes,’ said Ed.

‘Aha!’ I cried.

Ed waved his hands about. ‘Hang on, hang on! I wondered about that myself. But the comic was here when he left. Under lock and key, back in the safe. I put it back in there
myself.’

‘Was Rippa left alone with the comic?’ I asked.

‘Only for a couple of minutes,’ said Ed. ‘I’d just finished showing him the pages. I’d put it back in its plastic wallet, and the doorbell rang. As soon as I came
back into the room, I realised what I’d done! I’d left the comic unattended! But Rippa was sitting over there, looking through some catalogues he’d got with him. The comic was
untouched. Safely in its see-through wallet. He had
not
nicked it.’

I sat on the sofa. ‘Hmm, yes. You’d have to be a pretty stupid and desperate thief to try to snatch that comic from right under your nose.’

‘Exactly,’ said Ed. ‘Even if he’d
thought
about nicking it, he couldn’t possibly have actually
done
it.’

‘Hmm,’ I said again. ‘Well, someone “done it”.’

I thanked Ed for the smoothie, took another biccie for the journey home (‘Ooh, thanks, don’t mind if I do!’) and headed for the bus stop.

Once I was back in my shed, I sank into my Thinking Chair to mull over the facts. Then I stood up, pulled that wretched roll of super-tough heavy-duty repair tape off the back of my trousers,
and sank into my Thinking Chair again.

T
HE SIGN OVER THE SHOP SAID
:
Comix Nirvana
in big bouncy lettering, with
We buy, sell, x-change
in smaller
bouncy lettering underneath. Beneath the sign, on a handwritten sheet taped to the shop window was
No Time Wasters!
(I assumed this sheet meant ‘serious collectors only’, rather
than being some sort of sci-fi warning that the shop was out of stock of something called
The Time Wasters
. But I couldn’t be sure.)

The shop was tucked away at the far end of Frizinghall Street, just outside the centre of town. Opposite it, and a few dozen metres up the road, was La Pizzeria, the restaurant where Ed Foster
worked as a chef.

As soon as I entered Comix Nirvana, I got the distinct feeling I was being watched. And I don’t mean they had CCTV in there. Behind the counter, perched on a high stool and flicking
through a DVD catalogue, was Rippa. His beady eyes followed me as I strolled around the shop, pretending to browse, keeping an eye out for clues.

It was a small shop, no bigger than our classroom at school. Racks of action-packed front covers stretched from floor to ceiling, right around the walls. The ceiling itself was papered over with
old movie posters, announcing that
IT Came From Space
and
The Astro-Zombies Have Arrived
. Beside the counter was a huge wooden box raised up on thick legs, divided up into sections.
Inside each section were some of the same kind of plastic wallets that Ed used, containing comics with covers that were slightly wrinkled and faded.

‘These are the old comics?’ I asked innocently. ‘The really collectible ones?’

Rippa nodded. He was in his early twenties, thin with gelled-back hair, and wore a creased white shirt with a loosely knotted tie. Ed had told me that his real name was Tarquin, and that anyone
who called him Tarquin got something thrown at them.

‘You buying?’ he said.

‘Yes, I might be,’ I said brightly. ‘My dear old gran has given me a whopping great wad of birthday money, and I thought I’d invest it in some vintage comics.’

‘Wise move,’ said Rippa with a smile that made me think of cold gravy. I really don’t like cold gravy.

My mission at Comix Nirvana had two aims: 1) to observe Rippa in his natural habitat, and 2) to see what useful information I could gather. My investigations would meet a dead end, and fast, if
I couldn’t establish more facts about the suspects.

‘Anything in particular you’re looking for?’ said Rippa. He pointed to the wooden box. ‘Lots of rare items in there.’

The rackings around the walls of the shop were crammed, overflowing even, but this wooden case had plenty of space in it. I wasn’t sure what this might suggest: had there been a sudden
rush on vintage comics lately? Or was Rippa simply not very good at keeping old issues in stock? I leafed through the box casually.

‘How about those
Purple Avengers
there?’ said Rippa. ‘I got the whole run from Issue 10 to 25 there. Worth fifteen pounds each, because of their age, but I can let you
have them for a tenner apiece.’

‘Mmm, no,’ I mooched. ‘I’m not really a
Purple Avenger
fan.’ (This was perfectly true – for more on this, see my earlier case file,
The Mark of the
Purple Homework
!)

‘See that one there?’ said Rippa. ‘That’s it, the issue of
Mars Robot Rampage
. You can take it out of the wallet and have a look. Printed in 1938, that was.
Nobody’s got a complete set of those, not anywhere in the world. I’ve only got the one issue so I’m selling it cheap, just thirty pounds.’

I took out the comic and flipped through it. Giant machines with laser guns for eyes zapped up at me from the smooth, brightly printed pages.
Destroy all Earthlings!, Run, Penelope – we
don’t stand a chance!

That settled it. This short conversation had given me
proof
that Rippa was a crook, or at least that he was willing to rip off his customers. In fact, I now had
two
very specific
proofs that Rippa was quite happy to engage in some dodgy dealing.

Thinking back to my meeting with Ed Foster, can you spot what these two proofs were?

Proof 1:
Those issues of
The Purple Avenger
weren’t worth anything like ten pounds each, as Ed had explained to me.

Proof 2:
If that issue of
Mars Robot Rampage
really
was
printed in 1938, it ought to have been in a very delicate, crumbly state. No collector would let someone casually
handle it like that! Rippa was clearly lying about its age.

‘Mmm, I think I’ll leave it for now,’ I said.

‘Don’t leave it long,’ said Rippa. ‘You won’t get offers like this from other dealers.’

‘That’s very true,’ I said, nodding wisely.

I headed for the street. I paused with the shop door ajar. ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘have you got the latest issue of
The Time Wasters
?’

‘What?’ grunted Rippa. ‘No, I haven’t! Can’t you see the sign in the window?’

I
WENT TO SEE
I
ZZY
, Queen Of All Info. Her room was looking particularly fluffy, sparkly and other
girly adjectives. The chunky rings on her fingers caught the light from the glitterball attached to the ceiling.

She set her laptop to sleep and spun round in her swivel chair to face me. She consulted a stack of printouts to re-check her facts.

‘OK, two things,’ she said. ‘First, this Rippa character is perfectly willing to get involved in dodgy dealing.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed that myself,’ I said. ‘What did you find?’

‘Acouple of years ago he was caught out trying to pass a facsimile edition off as the real thing.’

‘A simmy-what?’ I said.

‘A facsimile,’ said Izzy. ‘Now and again, comic companies will republish a particularly famous or popular old comic. Same insides, same covers, and so on. These facsimile
editions are just casual collector’s pieces, really, to give you the look and feel of what an old comic was like, without you having to actually fork out for the old comic itself.’

‘That sounds a bit sneaky,’ I said, wrinkling my nose.

‘Oh, there’s nothing dodgy about it,’ said Izzy. ‘These facsimiles are clearly sold as “not the real thing”. They’re very popular with comics
readers.’

‘And Rippa tried to sell one as if it was old and valuable.’

‘Right,’ said Izzy. ‘If you know nothing about comics, it’s juuust possible that someone like Rippa could fool you into thinking you were buying the real thing. Anyway,
he was caught out at the last minute. He claimed it was a mistake. Which, to be fair, it might have been. But there are some dealers who still won’t trade with him.’

‘Hmm,’ I pondered. ‘Pity Ed Foster isn’t one of them. Anything else on Rippa?’

‘I checked the auction websites. There are several specific trading sites where comics dealers do business. One thing’s for sure: Rippa has never sold, or bought, a single copy of
The Tomb of Death
. Not any issue, not ever.’

‘That’s definite?’

‘Absolutely. And by the way, his real name is —’

‘Tarquin, yes, I know. I’m trying to think of a way to see if he really does throw something at you if you call him that.’

Izzy dropped her pile of print-outs back on to her desk. ‘You know, Saxby, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with Rippa. Looking at the scene of the crime, and what happened,
I don’t see how he could possibly have stolen that comic. Besides, he knows he’s got a poor reputation, he knows he’d be Suspect No.1 in a case like this. He’d be a fool to
try something.’

‘I dunno,’ I muttered. I suddenly remembered those wooden display boxes in Rippa’s shop. I’d wondered why they seemed half empty. And now, a specific question came to
mind: ‘Has Rippa been selling a lot of his stock recently?’

Izzy flicked back through her print-outs. ‘He’s sold loads of stuff in the past couple of months, yes. And by the looks of it, he’s not bought very much.’

Hmm . . .

‘I still think there are better suspects elsewhere,’ said Izzy. ‘What about Ed’s dad, for example? He had easy access to the safe.’

I snapped my fingers. ‘Aha! He has a shop! He could be in debt; he could have all kinds of money problems!’

‘I’m way ahead of you,’ said Izzy quietly, with a smug smile, plucking a sheet from the middle of her print-outs. ‘I’ve already checked.’

‘Aha!’ I cried. ‘What a fool I’ve been not to see it at once! Ed’s dad is in financial trouble! He sees the comic book in the safe! He spots a way to clear his
debts! He takes the comic! He sells it! Suddenly, his money worries are over! Am I right? Am I right?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

‘His shop’s doing really well, actually. Has been for years.’

‘Oh. Another theory blown out of the water, then.’

‘Looks like it,’ said Izzy, doing a slow spin in her swivel chair. ‘But I still think Ed’s dad a more likely suspect than Rippa. Face it, Saxby, this could just be the
case that beats you.’

She eyed me with a sly smile.

‘Never,’ I said, eyeing her without so much as a hint of a sly smile. ‘Nobody gets the better of Saxby Smart.’