Bless was innocent. Of breaking into our clubhouse anyway. Of being a horrible, lazy, chicken-playing cat he was definitely not innocent. But he wasn’t the intruder.
I examined the two hair samples under a microscope (that’s right, I’ve got a microscope, just like Sherlock Holmes. If you don’t know who Sherlock Holmes is, check him out. He’s awesome). The two samples didn’t match. The hairs from the clubhouse were shorter and, under the microscope, they looked more tan-coloured than orangey-white.
‘I think,’ I said with my best scientist face, ‘that these hairs are actually canine in origin.’
‘What does that mean?’ said Lex.
‘It means they’re from a dog. And it means I know who the intruder is. And as it’s nearly five o’clock I know exactly where she’ll be.’
Bianca is a few years older than us. She’s in big school (that is, secondary school), so she thinks she’s the bee’s knees. I don’t think Bianca is the bee’s knees, I think she’s the wasp’s bottom.
Part of what makes Bianca think she’s so cool is that she has a job. She’s a dog-walker. Every day, at around five o’clock, she takes a whole bunch of dogs from the street to the park. There’s a big red setter, a medium-sized poodle, one collie, two Jack Russells and a couple of Chihuahuas. It was the Chihuahuas I was interested in. They’re those little dogs that look like large rats with huge, bulgy eyes. They’re also tan-coloured, like the hairs from the clubhouse.
While following Bianca and the dogs to the park I had to give Nicholas loads of instructions. He’d missed out on following Jim Brick so he didn’t have the spying experience that me and Lex had.
‘Duck down,’ I’d say. ‘Keep your feet in. Don’t talk. Keep your eyes on the target at all times. No, not like that, like this. Get behind this tree!’
‘Stop telling me what to do,’ he said.
If he’d just done what I told him to, I wouldn’t have had to tell him what to do.
Bianca stood in the park in a pair of oversized sunglasses, holding her mobile phone to her ear with one hand and all the dog leads in the other.
‘She kind of looks like a movie star,’ whispered Lex as we hunkered down behind a pillar.
‘She looks like an idiot,’ I said. ‘Unless you think movie stars look like idiots, then she looks like a movie star and an idiot.’
‘There’s no way she brought all those dogs to our clubhouse,’ Nicholas said.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘but people who live and work with dogs get dog hairs on their clothes. Then they leave dog hairs wherever they go. I’m telling you, she’s the intruder.’
‘But how are we going to prove it?’
‘I need a hair sample from her jumper.’
‘Great. How are we going to get that?’
‘You and Lex are going to distract her while I sneak up from behind and snag a few hairs.’
Lex looked worried. ‘I’m not good at distracting people with talking.’
‘No, you’re not,’ I agreed. ‘That’s why Nicholas is going with you. He could talk someone to sleep.’
‘You’re hilarious,’ Nicholas groaned.
‘I know. Now go and distract her.’
I stayed hunkered down behind the pillar while the other two approached Bianca.
‘Hey, Bianca,’ said Nicholas, ‘cool sunglasses. They kind of make you look like a movie star.’
Bianca looked at him like he was an eejit. ‘Eh, that’s the idea.’
‘’Course it is. Have you ever thought about acting? I bet you could make it in the movies. I do a bit of acting myself.’
‘Yeah, my little sister was in The Sound of Music. I saw you playing grass.’
Touché, Bianca. Turns out the wasp’s bottom’s got a nasty sting. Poor Nicholas.
While he tried to make his first acting role sound slightly less embarrassing, I crept up behind Bianca like a ninja. I was so close now I could see the dog hairs on her jumper. There was a selection; longish red ones, black and white ones, and there, in the middle of her back, tan-coloured ones. The mission was on.
The dogs were also distracted by Lex and Nicholas; they jumped up on them and barked and wagged their tails. Nobody could see me coming. I was right behind Bianca and, in my eagerness not to miss grabbing a hair, I leaned in too far and pinched too hard.
‘Owwww!’
Bianca howled like a banshee at a yodelling contest. The dogs went nuts.
It was carnage. My sudden appearance had startled some of the smaller dogs and they yipped and pranced around like the park was on fire. That and Bianca’s scream scared the bigger dogs and they started running around in circles. Pretty soon Bianca was wrapped in dog leads, like a leash mummy. She fell over, still yelling, and the dogs jumped all over her. They were wagging their tails and barking happily now – they thought it was a game.
‘Cass Okara, I’m going to tell your mum!’ Bianca screeched.
It was time for us to leave. When we ran out the entrance of the park Bianca was still lying in the grass, covered in dogs.
Bianca was innocent. Bianca is also alive and well, I saw her in the street a few days later (I hid behind a wall). She didn’t tell my mum about the incident in the park – I can only guess she was too embarrassed to explain how she lost control of the dogs. Her job is more important to her than revenge.
The hairs from Bianca’s jumper didn’t match those from the clubhouse.
‘What now?’ said Lex.
‘There’s only one thing left to do,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘We’ll have to stake out our own clubhouse.’
And that’s exactly what we did. Two Saturday afternoons in a row there had been evidence of the intruders, so we figured Saturday morning was the best time to catch them.
We headed out early – ten o’clock – to get there before them, and we figured no one in their right mind would be up and about before ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. We were wrong. As we approached the hedge from the stream side we could hear voices.
‘They’re already in there!’ cried Lex.
‘Perfect,’ I said, ‘then we’ve caught them red-handed.’
We crept to the edge of the stream, but didn’t cross the plank-bridge. There were a lot of voices.
‘How many of them are there?’ whispered Nicholas.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘and I don’t care. They’re in our clubhouse, and they’re going to have to leave or else.’
‘Or else what?’
‘Just or else,’ I said testily.
There really were a lot of voices. The clubhouse must have been full.
‘Who wants to lead the charge?’ I said, hoping to inspire someone else to cross the bridge first.
There was silence. It was going to have to be me. But before I could set foot on the bridge, Nicholas suddenly yelled, ‘Come out of that clubhouse, in the name of the law!’
The door burst open and people came flooding out. We couldn’t get a good look at them through the hedge, but they were escaping through the field on the other side.
‘After them!’ I yelled, punching the air.
Nicholas and Lex followed me over the bridge. I sprinted through the hedge and leapt into Mr McCall’s field. What I saw nearly knocked me off my feet.
Grannies.
There were grannies everywhere.
Not just grannies, grandads too. Eight or nine of them running through the field and hurling themselves over the fences either side.
‘What is going on?’ said Lex.
‘I have no idea,’ I said.
Back in the clubhouse the table and chairs had been overturned in the scramble to escape. We set about straightening the place out.
While clearing up a spilled deck of cards I looked down at the long curtain that covered the window. There was a pair of shoes sticking out from under the material.
I put my finger to my lips and pointed it out to Lex and Nicholas. Then, with my heart pounding in my ears, I tiptoed forward and pulled the curtain back.
‘Ah. Hello, dearies.’
‘Gran!’ cried Lex.