27

Charlie Anderson has a massive belly button and it gets us all into trouble

The Big T taxi had pulled up right where Ben and Charlie had been waiting with their parents. Dad and I started making our way toward them. The bald driver from before had a mate with him now. They got out of the front of the car and slammed the doors. Both the men were big. The driver was wearing dark glasses and had an extremely shiny bald head. The other wore a leather jacket with a Hawaiian shirt underneath. His sleeves were rolled up, I suspect to show off his muscular forearms.

Shiny-head driver guy lit a cigarette and Dad and I were close enough to hear him say, “Our Gaffer wants a word with your kids.”

I stared at the smoke billowing from his mouth and thought that if there ever was a time for one of the 5,000 toxins in cigarette smoke to do their worst, this was it. Unfortunately, he remained very much alive.

“Your boss will have to go through me first,” Dad said, starting toward them on his crutches.

The two men looked at each other and smirked. I wished I really was a superhero, so I could punch them both right in the face.

The Hawaiian-shirt man turned to the car and shouted, “Boss, hop-along here says you have to talk to him.”

The back door of the taxi swung open.

The Gaffer stepped out. He was wearing cowboy boots.

Big Trev.

Charlie, Ben, and I looked at each other. The Gaffer was Big Trev?

Big Trev strode toward my dad. “Just so you know, I’m not after any trouble. I’m just after what’s mine. You get your kids to give me back my rings and I’ll leave you alone.”

“We don’t have your rings,” Ben said.

“Well, see, I know that isn’t true. I haven’t been trailing your parents for nothing. Now give me my rings.”

Charlie’s mom stepped forward, her whole face curled into a snarl. “If our boys say they don’t know anything about any rings, they don’t know anything about any rings—so beat it.”

Big Trev smiled. “Thing is, missus, I’ve got proof that these horrible kids stole two rings from me and I’d very much like them back.” He pulled open his jacket and flashed what looked like a gun at us.

“You can flash that thing at me all you like,” Charlie’s mom continued. “But that isn’t going to turn my Charlie into a thief. We’ve told you they didn’t take your rings.”

“Actually . . .”

Everyone turned to look at Ben.

“I did have one of your rings, but we gave it to a man who was trying to rob a corner shop.”

All the parents turned to Ben and shouted, “What?”

Big Trev didn’t look surprised. He pulled a ring out of his pocket to show us. “I know. I’ve already had to buy that one back from him. What I’m after is the other swan ring. They’re no good unless they’re a pair.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “That ring should have been on your scarecrow. We left it there.”

Dad looked at me with this expression that said, You did what?

“We did think you might hand it in and collect the reward money.”

“It took months of planning to steal them from the Antiques Roadshow. Why would I hand it in after I went to all that trouble?”

“We didn’t know you were the one who’d stolen them.” I had to stop myself from adding a Duh! at the end.

Big Trev folded his arms. “Nice story, kid, but try again. I’ve searched the whole of Barry and there is no swan ring there. Nobody’s handed it in and it certainly wasn’t left on our scarecrow, which means you boys must still have it.”

“We honestly don’t and that’s a fact,” I said.

Big Trev flashed what was most certainly a scary-looking gun. “Look, people better start telling the truth or people are going to start getting hurt.”

“We are telling you the truth,” Ben said.

Becky put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Our Ben isn’t a liar.”

His dad said, “That’s right, he’s a good kid.”

Becky said, “Yeah, he’s the best.”

And Ben sort of looked confused and happy and scared all at once.

“This is all very heartwarming, but you kids have already stolen my onion-eating trophy, you’re not going to cheat me out of my ring.”

I said, “Look, you have to believe us, we don’t have your stupid ring. Do we, Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t say anything. He peered out from behind his mom with one of the guiltiest expressions I had ever seen.

“Charlie!” I said.

Even his ears blushed.

“Where is it?”

He whispered to me, “I hid it in my belly button.”

That kind of took me aback and I accidentally shouted, “Your belly button?”

(If you are wondering why it didn’t fall out, you should take a look at Charlie’s belly button. If you shout into it, I swear it echoes.)

“But why?” I asked.

“Dunno—guess for the same reason as Ben—because it was pretty,”

“What?!” Ben shouted. “That’s not why I took mine. I took mine for collateral.”

Charlie looked even more uncomfortable. “Yeah, that’s what I meant—for collateral.”

Big Trev slapped his hand on his forehead. “Enough of this nonsense.” He nodded at the shiny bald guy, then nodded at Charlie and said, “Search him.”

Bald guy didn’t seem keen on this idea. He shifted from foot to foot and looked at Charlie uncertainly. “I don’t know, boss. He’s just a kid.”

Big Trev wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Don’t argue with me. Do it. Or you’ll be down at the job center faster than you can say P45.”

I don’t know why, it must have been the stress of the situation, but I said, “What’s a P45?”

Big Trev said, “It’s a certificate you’re given when you quit or get fired from a job.”

“You get a certificate for that?” Seemed as mad as Grams’s one for dying.

“Look, stop distracting me.” Big Trev turned back to baldy. “Search the fat kid already!”

Charlie’s mom took a big step forward and said, “Now you listen to me. My Charlie is not fat—he is perfect in absolutely every way. You lay a finger on him and I’ll snap it off.”

Hawaiian-shirt man pushed Mrs. Anderson out of the way. Actually pushed her. Then he grabbed Charlie by the collar and pulled him up onto his toes. All Charlie could do was whimper.

Big Trev said, “Strip him like he stripped my scarecrows.”

Charlie started flailing around, trying to break free. Mrs. Anderson got really angry and began shrieking and throwing punches at the Hawaiian-shirt man. Baldy-driver man grabbed her arm and pulled her away. Then Becky and Ben’s dad grabbed ahold of baldy. He didn’t like that and tried to wrestle them off. Dad plunged in, swinging his crutches around his head like he was some sort of ninja warrior. It was quite a sight.

Big Trev was not happy with how things were going. His face looked the same color as the red onion I’d eaten by mistake. He shouted, “Stop messing around and get my ring off that kid.”

Hawaiian-shirt man prodded his finger on Charlie’s chest and said, “Come on, fat boy—hand it over.”

Well, when he said that, something inside me snapped. There was no way I was going to let another person bad-mouth Charlie. Before I knew what I was doing, I flew at the Hawaiian-shirt man and jumped onto his back, while shouting at Trev, “He’s not fat—he’s sturdy!”

Ben hurled himself into the fight to free Charlie too, shouting, “Or solid!” And then we ended up in this three-boy-one-man tussle on the ground. We rolled around and around on the sand, elbows and knees banging into each other. All the parents piled in too. I think Mrs. Anderson accidently hit me a couple of times and Ben definitely got hit by one of my dad’s crutches. It was total carnage and it was only stopped by the sound of an ear-shattering explosion.

I pulled myself out from Hawaiian-shirt man’s armpit and saw that Big Trev was pointing his gun in the air.

“Enough of this nonsense. Give me my ring before someone ends up looking like Swiss cheese.”

He shot the gun skyward again.

Everyone stood still. Big Trev took a step toward Charlie.

And then my second miracle happened.

A dead seagull with a single gunshot wound fell from the sky, landed on Big Trev’s head, and knocked him out cold.

It wasn’t a lightning bolt, but Big Trev had definitely been smited. He’d been smited bad.

Because it’s not every day you see a man knocked out by a seagull, we all—and that includes Big Trev’s henchmen—stood there looking up at the sky, then down at Big Trev, who was lying with his face in the sand.

I don’t know how long we would have carried on nodding like that if it wasn’t for the police turning up. Two police cars screeched to a halt on the road by the beach, their sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. The third police car didn’t stop but flew straight off the bank onto the sand. I could see Phyllis behind the steering wheel, a look of determination on her face. PC Mike was holding onto his helmet with his eyes closed and Albert was hanging out the back window, making a noise that sounded like a war cry. When the car came to a stop, Albert leaped out, shovel in hand, and said, “Now, which one of you lot has my family heirlooms?”

We all looked at him blankly.

“The rings!” he cried. “The swan rings! The ones stolen from the Antiques Roadshow because my silly sister couldn’t resist showing them off.” We all pointed at Big Trev, who was still lying unconscious on the sand.

When Big Trev came around, he said it felt like he’d been hit by a ton of bricks, but even the biggest seagull, the great black-backed, only weighs 4 pounds, not a ton. Now if a walrus had fallen from the sky, that would have felt like a ton.

PC Mike and the other police officers made quick work of arresting him and his henchmen. (We later found out that Big Trev was PC Mike’s first and only arrest to date and because technically he was the one who retrieved the rings and returned them to their rightful owners, Phyllis and Albert, he got the £1000 reward money. Phyllis is making him use it to pay for driving lessons.) When we asked Mike how he knew where to find us and that we even had the rings, he told us he had super powers of his own. Charlie even believed him for a while, but Phyllis told us later that he’d picked up Big T’s taxi channel on his police radio.

While all the parents talked to the police about what had happened on the beach, Ben, Charlie, and I went down to the edge of the sea to skim stones across the water.

Ben said, “I’m sorry you didn’t find your dad, mate.”

“It’s okay. The one I’ve got is pretty awesome.”

Charlie said, “He’s not as awesome as Becky.”

I was expecting Ben to have a say about that, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “She’s alright, I suppose.”

Charlie launched another stone across the water. “Can you believe everything that’s happened these past few days?”

I smiled. “I don’t know, but I do know it has sure been some journey.”