3.00 AM
I am jolted out of sleep by the sound of distant crowing.
It’s not unusual to hear crowing at this time of night; roosters have a terrible sense of timing. But this is a very particular crow.
‘Wake up wake up wake up! Message passed on from Matey! He saw the truck with no lights! Wake up wake up wake up!’
I’m so excited that I fall off my perch in the wardrobe and tumble to the floor. But I’m up again straight away, flapping onto the bed and squawking in Olive’s ear.
‘Wake up! The rooster network has sent a message!’
‘Go away,’ she mumbles, and she pulls the pillow over her head.
I burrow underneath it and peck her ear. She squawks and throws the pillow at me. ‘I’m trying to sleep. Go away.’
But this is far more important than sleep. I keep pecking Olive’s ear until at last she rolls over and glares at me. ‘This had better be good,’ she says.
I semaphore an urgent message, but she’s too sleepy to understand it. So I hunt for her phone, drag it over to her and wait impatiently while she turns it on.
‘THE THIEVES,’ I write. ‘DIGBY’S ROOSTER MATEY SAW A TRUCK WITHOUT LIGHTS. HE SENT A MESSAGE.’
Olive stares at the phone as if she’s forgotten how to read. She sits up. She blinks and rubs her eyes. ‘You mean it worked?’
‘WE HAVE TO TELL CONSTABLE DAD. GET HIM OUT THERE STRAIGHT AWAY.’
‘Right. Tell Dad. Tell him …’
‘TELL HIM YOU GOT A MESSAGE.’
Olive doesn’t move.
‘TELL HIM—’
She puts her hand over the screen and says, ‘Clara, you’re sure about this? You’re not making it up? Or – or getting it wrong?’
I push her hand away and write, ‘LISTEN.’
She listens, and hears the crowing. ‘It could be any old rooster,’ she says uncertainly.
‘IT’S A MESSAGE. A TRUCK WITHOUT LIGHTS!!!’
‘You really are sure—’
I have lost patience with her. Sidekicks are supposed to trust their detective, not question them over and over again. I hop off the bed and hurry towards Constable Dad’s bedroom.
Constable Dad is even harder to wake than Olive. He groans and moans and tells me to go away.
Then Olive arrives in her dressing-gown. ‘Dad,’ she says, ‘I think there’s been another stock theft.’
‘What?’ He sits bolt upright, staring at her. ‘Where? I didn’t hear the phone.’
‘Someone – um – sent me a message. They saw a truck driving with its lights off on Wattle Hut Road, near the Carellas’.’
‘Who was the message from?’ asks Constable Dad, climbing out of bed.
‘Um – someone called Matey.’
‘Friend of yours? In your class?’ Constable Dad doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘It might be nothing, but I’d better check. Put the jug on, will you?’
Put the jug on what? The table? The floor? He doesn’t say. But Olive seems to understand what he means. By the time he’s dressed in his uniform and strapping on his handcuffs, she’s standing by the door with a mug of black tea.
‘Thanks, poppet,’ says Constable Dad, grabbing the tea. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be—’
‘We’re coming with you,’ says Olive.
‘No you’re not. Go back to bed.’
‘Three sets of eyes are better than one. We might see something you miss, Dad.’
Olive picks me up. ‘Come on, we haven’t got time to stand around arguing.’
3.25 AM
Night is strange. Night is full of darkness and threat, and little squeaking sounds that Olive and Constable Dad don’t seem to hear.
I don’t like the darkness and the threat. But if I wasn’t in the middle of an investigation, I would hunt down those squeaking sounds to see if they were tasty.
We drive slowly along Wattle Hut Road with the car windows down and Olive shining a torch along fences and gates. Our eyes are peeled for signs of criminal activity.
‘I hope this isn’t a wild goose chase,’ says Constable Dad.
I stare at him. Why would we be chasing wild geese at this time of night? They’d be asleep. And if they weren’t asleep they’d be very dangerous. No one messes with geese, not even Rufus.
Once again, I am astonished at the ignorance of humans. Perhaps I should write a book explaining these things. What would I call it? Don’t Be a Goose, perhaps? Or Mad Duck, Bad Duck? Or How to Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch?
I’m still thinking about book titles when Olive shouts, ‘Dad, stop!’
The police car pulls up just past a gate. Constable Dad grabs the torch from Olive, and we all scramble out of the car.
There’s a chain around the gate, and a padlock. But the chain has been cut, and dangles uselessly.
Constable Dad shines the torch on the ground and makes a hissing noise between his teeth. ‘Fresh tyre marks. At last.’
He takes some photos, walking carefully around the outside of the tyre marks so as not to damage them. (Just like Inspector Garcia, when she found Half-Tongue Harry’s footprints at the scene of the murder!)
Then he ushers us back to the car, saying, ‘I’ll take another look in the morning. But for now, we’d better wake Mel and tell her the bad news.’
I’m about to hop up into the car when I see something glinting in the headlights. It is small and round, like one of the buttons on Constable Dad’s shirt.
I take a good look at it. Then I pick it up and give it to Olive.
‘Dad,’ she says, ‘look what Clara found. Do you think it belongs to the thieves?’
Constable Dad takes a plastic bag out of the glove box and drops the button into it. ‘Maybe. There’s no mud on it, so it hasn’t been here for long. Well done, Clara!’
I fluff out my feathers with pride. Then I squawk, ‘Onwards, Constable. Our work tonight is not yet done.’
While Constable Dad bangs on the back door of the farmhouse, I go looking for Matey. I find him teetering on the fence, half asleep.
He hops down when he sees me. ‘Was it them? Was it the thieves?’
‘It was,’ I tell him, even though we are not yet completely sure.
‘I frightened them off,’ says Matey. And despite his tiredness, he struts and flaps his wings, so that the astronaut badge on his chest bounces. ‘I chased them away.’
‘You did. Now tell me exactly what you saw.’
‘A truck the colour of a pale egg,’ says Matey. ‘No lights. Two humans inside it.’
‘How big was the truck?’
Matey looks around the yard. His eyes fall on a tractor. ‘Bigger than the noisy thing. Not as big as the shed.’
‘Could you see anything in the back of it?’ I ask him.
‘The back was closed up like a chookhouse at night.’
Over by the back door, Constable Dad is explaining about the gate. ‘You’d better come and check on your sheep,’ he says to Mel, who is Digby’s mother. ‘It might be a false alarm, but it doesn’t look good.’
‘Blast!’ says Mel. ‘I wish Tony wasn’t away.’
(I know the meaning of the word ‘blast’ from Episode 6 of Amelia X, in which bank robbers were trying to break into a safe. But why is Digby’s mother talking about explosives at a time like this? Does she want to blow up the stock thieves? Or is she afraid her sheep will explode?)
Olive hurries over to join me. She takes something out of her pocket and puts it on the ground. It’s another badge, a silver bar with HERO written on it in red letters, and a red ribbon attached.
‘This is for Matey,’ whispers Olive. ‘For being such a bold, brave rooster, and helping the police.’
When he sees the badge, the tiredness vanishes from Matey’s eyes. ‘For me?’ he squawks.
‘For you,’ I say. ‘Lower your head, Hero Matey.’ And I slip the ribbon around his neck.
The new badge clinks against the old one. Over by the house, Constable Dad and Digby’s mother climb into the police car and drive away.