The Hangman's Lair (5 page)

For the tiniest split fraction of a micro-second, the gang stood there, faces bleached by the light beams, eyes goggling, jaws dangling like kiddies’ swings in a gale. Then Moz yelled, ‘Leg it!’

Like crows startled off a fence, they flapped into motion with an almighty series of squawks. Zippy dropped the bundle of money with a yelp and bounded away into the dark, pushing the others aside.

‘Halt!’ boomed my distorted voice. ‘Stay where you are! Get ‘em, Sergeant! Arrest those youths! Oi! Come back ‘ere!’

We gave them time to get clear of The Hangman’s Lair, then Muddy switched the lamps off. By now, we’d both started giggling, but the sudden darkness that fell on us when the lights went out quickly shut us up.

I picked up the bundle, stumbling slightly in the gloom. I pulled a small tear in one end of it, and there, inside, was a wad of crumpled banknotes.

‘Mission accomplished,’ I whispered with a smile.

‘Come on, let’s get out of this creepy place,’ said Muddy.

A
T PRECISELY
8:22
A.M. THE
following morning, I walked past the school gates with more spring in my step than a pair of rocket-powered ejector-boots. I couldn’t quite decide whether to whistle a happy tune or adopt a milewide grin, so I must have looked as though my mouth was trying to dance a tango. But I didn’t much care. The four hundred and twenty pounds was tucked into my pocket. I’d counted the money when I got home from The Hangman’s Lair, and I’d resealed the bundle. It was all there, safe and sound.

Muddy was sitting on the low wall outside the main school building, reading his dog-eared copy of this month’s
Engineering Projects Round-Up.
As soon as he spotted me, he stuffed the magazine into his bag and dashed over to me, his shoelaces flapping around his ankles.

‘We did it!’ he said, almost jumping up and down with excitement.

‘With a bit of luck,’ I said, ‘the gang will be in hiding for a few weeks. And even if they turned up to our prearranged meeting, let’s see . . . about twenty minutes ago, the fact that we’re not there should confirm the idea that the police have caught up with us.’

‘Hah! You think of everything!’ cried Muddy.

I pulled the taped-up plastic bag out of my bag. ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I do. I must say, I’m relieved that this case has come to a successful conclusion. A couple of weeks ago, I was worried that my skills as a brilliant schoolboy detective were going down the pan. But now, once again, I can say that nobody gets the better of Saxby Smart.’

‘Too right!’ declared Muddy. ‘Look, there’s Bob Thompson. Shall we give him the good news?’

‘Let’s,’ I said.

Bob Thompson was lumbering past the gates, a worried expression on his face. As he looked up, I beckoned him over and he veered across the flow of kids like a huge cruise ship changing course.

‘H-have you got it?’ he asked nervously.

I held up the taped bundle. ‘Safe and sound,’ I said.

His face melted into joy. ‘Thank you! I’ve been so worried the past few days. You don’t know what this means to me. I really owe you one. Now I can take the money back to the office, and put everything right, and start turning over that new leaf at last.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to return it to the head?’ I said. ‘I’d happily tell her the full story.’

‘No,’ said Bob, ‘I must do it myself. I must admit what I did, it’s important.’

‘Y’know,’ said Muddy, ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I admire your guts, Bob.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bob with a feeble smile.

I handed Bob the bundle.

His feeble smile suddenly became rather more confident. Then, with one lumbering movement, he barged Muddy and me over. We thudded painfully on to the tarmac.

‘Suckers!’ he brayed loudly. ‘What a couple of prize dipsticks!’

Muddy almost exploded with rage. ‘You liar! You double-crossing, back-stabbing, no-good, miserable . . .’ And the rest of that sentence I can’t repeat here.

With a snort of triumph, Bob Thompson turned and trotted off. He growled at other kids to get out of his way. They did as they were told.

‘We’re not going to let him get away with that!’ cried Muddy. ‘Are we?’

‘No, we certainly are not,’ I said. ‘Come on, he’s heading back out of the gates. We’re going to follow him.’

We had to hurry, to keep up with the pace of his tree-trunk-leg strides. He walked out of the school, crossed the road and turned left towards the town centre. Muddy and I trailed along at a distance, keeping hidden around corners and behind bus stops wherever we could. All the way, Muddy kept muttering more sentences I can’t repeat here.

After a few minutes, it was clear where Bob Thompson was heading. Herbert Street.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Muddy. ‘Is he going back to the gang? He’s not going to return the money to them, surely?’

‘Looks like it,’ I said. I was already getting out of breath. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Izzy was right, I need to get more exercise, nag, nag, but I never seem to have the time, blah, blah, blah.)

‘Why would he do that?’ said Muddy.

‘Remember how he told me that he wanted to join the Herbert Street gang?’ I gasped.

‘Yes.’

‘And remember how there was an initiation test, a test he had to pass before they’d let him join?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, something occurs to me. I don’t think stealing the money was the initiation test. I think that was only part of it. I think the real test was to
get it back
from where the gang hid it.’

‘You mean, he’s used us to do his dirty work for him?’ said Muddy. ‘He didn’t have the brains to pass the test and work out how to find it and nick it back from the gang, so he came to
you?’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘That nasty, gutter-dragging . . .’ Muddy went back to muttering sentences I can’t repeat here.

A couple of minutes later, Bob Thompson turned the corner into Herbert Street. Muddy and I managed to shadow him all the way to the row of shops, by keeping low behind the dotted line of parked cars on the opposite side of the road.

We peeked out from behind a battered-looking blue van. We were just in time to see Bob approach the gang. As before, they were slumped around the nearest car. So much for them being in hiding for a few weeks, I thought to myself.

We were too far away to hear what was being said, but we caught a general tone of friendly greeting as Bob walked up to Moz. As soon as Bob produced the bundle, the gang all sat up, looked at each other and started laughing. Bob launched into an explanation.

‘He’ll be going on about how cleverly he’s tricked them,’ I said quietly.

‘It’s not fair,’ groaned Muddy. ‘Someone
has
got the better of you, after all! A rotten bully like Bob Thompson, too!’

The gang were thoroughly enjoying Bob’s story. They kept shaking their heads and pulling dopey faces. I could imagine what they were saying - ‘So
you
put those kids up to it, man? Yeah? Aww, that was genius! We totally fell for it, didn’t we? Duh! Didn’t spot that one coming, man, we expected you to ambush one of us and start thumping until you got given the location!’

Moz, cackling loudly, batted Bob on the shoulder. Bob flipped the bundle into the air for Moz to catch, and as it dropped into Moz’s hands the rest of the gang began to cheer and clap. Moz ripped open the end of the bundle, and pulled out the contents.

A handful of newspaper, cut to the size of banknotes.

‘Is this a
joke?’
roared Moz. Ah, now
that
we could hear. ‘Where’s our
money?’

Bob said something in a high-pitched whine. He started flapping his hands about. He grabbed the bundle back and tore it apart. No money.

‘Give me that money!’ shouted Moz. ‘Or you get a pounding! Right now!’

Slowly, Muddy turned his head to face me.

‘Saxbyyyyy?’ he said.

‘I told you I think of everything,’ I smiled. ‘I swapped it over last night.’

A furious row had erupted over the road. Bob and Moz were yelling into each other’s faces, Zippy was shouting at the pair of them, and the rest of the gang were circling like vultures around a dead wildebeest.

Soon, the shouting became pushing and the pushing became raised fists. Seconds later, Bob was making a run for it, pursued by the gang who were bellowing for revenge.

‘Come on,’ I said to Muddy. ‘We’d better hurry if we’re going to make it back to school before the bell goes.’

We scurried back the way we’d come.

‘How did you know he was going to double-cross us like that?’ said Muddy.

‘Weeelll,’ I said, ‘I didn’t
know,
but I had a definite suspicion. You see, I could believe his whole story, except for one little detail.’

‘Which was . . .?’

Have you spotted it?

‘He said the gang had taken the cash and sent him packing. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. Bullies like Bob Thompson don’t back off that easily. Besides, if it had happened exactly as he claimed, how did he know that the gang had later buried the money in The Hangman’s Lair? He must have seen them go in there.’

‘So you suspected him all along?’ said Muddy.

‘A bit,’ I said. T suppose I
wanted
to believe him. After all, the prospect of one less bully is always welcome. But, as it turned out, I was right. What he told me was a pack of lies from the start.’

‘And your reputation as a brilliant schoolboy detective remains intact!’ said Muddy.

‘Ahhh, yeeeeah, there is that too,’ I said.

We just had time before Registration to return the money to the school office. Once the Head had stopped thanking me and counted the cash for the umpteenth time, she asked me how I’d managed to track it down.

I thought for a moment, then asked her if that info could remain confidential. I told her that the person who’d stolen the money was receiving, er, punishment for what he’d done, that justice had been served, and that perhaps in this instance the matter was best left alone. She was clearly reluctant to agree, but in the end her happiness at having the money back won the day.

That afternoon, I returned home and went straight to my garden shed. I plonked myself down in my Thinking Chair, propped my feet up on my desk and added some notes to my files.

Case closed.

‘H
MM,’
I
SAID TO MYSELF.

I scratched my chin and looked around me. ‘Hmm,’I said to myself again.

I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do now. So I just said, ‘Hmm,’ again.

I was standing in the middle of the small back garden behind my house. I was in the middle of the lawn and in the middle of a random pile of boxes, paint tins, the lawnmower, a coil of hose, toolboxes, my desk, my filing cabinet of case notes and my Thinking Chair.

I was having a tidy-out of the shed. And it wasn’t going well. There must be a way to get a bit more space in here, I’d thought to myself. There must be some way to arrange all these tonnes of
stuff
so that I’m not having to squeeze around everything all the time.

So I’d emptied the whole lot out on to the lawn. But now, standing there, staring at it all, I hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been forced to share my shed with all that gardening and DIY gear, but there was nowhere else for it to go.

‘Hmm,’ I said, as if saying it enough times and looking thoughtful would somehow give me the answer. I was sure there was more stuff here than I’d started with . . .

‘Hello?’ came a voice from the other side of the garden gate. I looked up to see Amy Parsons, a girl from school.

Everyone called her Parsnip, which they told her was because of her name, but which was actually because she had a nose like a parsnip. She had her long black hair tied up in a tight bun, and was wearing a pair of high-fashion jeans and a purple longsleeved T-shirt, thick with dust at the knees and elbows. Multi-coloured stripey socks poked up from the tops of her almost-new, polished shoes. Her pockets were clearly full of various odds and ends and, as she pulled a stray strand of hair back into place behind her ear, I noticed that the ends of her fingers were grubby. Her face showed a mixture of worry and weariness.

‘Have I come at the wrong time?’ she said, looking at the heaps that were littering the lawn.

‘No,’ I said, ‘you’ve come at exactly the right time. I’m looking for an excuse to leave all this where it is and ignore it for as long as possible. Here, have my Thinking Chair. I haven’t got any other actual seats.’

She perched on the battered old armchair. It seemed very weird seeing it sitting there in the open air. Out in broad daylight, it looked even more saggy and worn-out than it did in the shed. I pulled up a couple of half empty paint tins and sat on those. They were extremely uncomfortable.

‘I need your help,’ said Amy. ‘But I don’t know where to begin.’