I’ve never liked dogs – especially big ones with hot, smelly breath.
When number 24’s front door flew open and a huge Doberman leapt out in a froth of saliva and growls, I jumped back behind the front gate and slammed it shut. It didn’t stop the savage beast snapping at my legs through the gaps and splattering my trousers with hot strings of slimy spit.
Above the snarls and yelps, I heard a horrible cackling howl – which was Victor Criddle’s sickening laugh. He was just as scary as his pet werewolf. (I’m not sure if this is a metaphor or just hyperbole. Or maybe it’s the actual truth.)
Beyond the slobbering jaws in front of me (both the dog’s and ‘Shahdan’s’), I saw a row of hutches where ferrets were scampering up and down and squealing. The front garden (it was nothing like a proper garden – just a scrap yard) was littered with a rusty fridge, a torn leather sofa, an upside-down motorbike with a wheel missing, various exhaust pipes and three wheelie bins crammed full of junk. All buzzing with flies.
Victor Criddle pulled on the dog’s collar, not to stop it chewing me to pieces, but so he could get past it to lunge at me and grab the book from my fingers.
‘Leave him, Sabre. He’s Weirdo. If you bite him, you’ll catch something geeky and turn into a librarian.
‘This is the book I want. You’re not so stupid as you look, Weirdo. I thought I’d have to come round and do your place in to teach you a lesson for not doing as you were told.’
I tried to be helpful and said, ‘It’s due back in two weeks on the 27th, but I suggest the 25th, which is your library day.’
The next thing I knew was a burning pain round my ear where he smacked the book on my head again. I nearly fell over, and as I was trying to get my balance back I heard a gruff, ‘Oi, Vic – who’s that kid?’
‘He’s a wimpy, weedy, weirdo from school. He’s well odd.’
Standing at the front door was one of Victor Criddle’s older brothers. I could tell he was a brother because he looked just the same, with an identical bent nose and scary eyes. He was just bigger – like a picture in a book in the library about the Yeti.
‘Well tell him to hide these quick. They’re coming to raid us.’
He threw two big boxes onto the ferret hutches.
‘Keep these in yer shed, kid. If yer say a word, you’ll wake up with stitches and bits of yer face missing.’
I could hear a police siren getting louder as the bigger Criddle rushed over to me with the boxes.
‘Put your arms out and hold these.’
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘None of your business. They’re boxes of cartons, that’s all. Just get moving. Fast.’
The boxes weren’t as heavy as they looked, but I was still struggling to hold them both, when suddenly the two Criddles ran indoors, dragging the barking Doberman with them. Their front door slammed shut and I was left to stagger home, struggling to peer over the top of the boxes.
I looked back to see Victor Criddle making obscene gestures at me from his bedroom window, just as a police car came squealing round the corner.
I carried on walking and as I turned into my road I looked over my shoulder to see two police cars screech to a halt outside number
24. Eight policemen ran through the gate, but I knew it wasn’t a good idea to hang around and watch.
I carried on towards home and eventually stumbled my way into our back garden to put the boxes in the shed. I was just about to go indoors when I decided it might be interesting to take a look inside one of the boxes – so I did.
Both boxes held 20 cartons of cigarettes. Each carton held 10 packets. Each packet contained 20 cigarettes. So how many cigarettes in 2 boxes?
That’s a lot of cigarettes to have in your shed. I looked on my laptop to find out how much a packet of cigarettes costs. This brand was £7.60 a packet, so you can work out how much these two boxes were worth.
It was only then that I realised I had just become a criminal. After all, it’s a criminal offence to receive stolen goods and I had no doubt that Big Criddle had just stolen them and passed them on to me for safe-keeping.
So now I had another problem – just what should I do with thousands of stolen cigarettes? What would you have done? (BTW this is not a rhetorical question but one you should be able to answer for yourself.)
I didn’t tell Mum what was hidden in the shed, or about what happened on my worst Friday 13th ever. She would have got really stressed and would have needed to go to the doctor again.
I decided I’d ask Hannah for advice on Monday. Now that I was a criminal I had to think like one – so I couldn’t just phone, text or email her. Police forensic experts might use digital evidence to prove I was the receiver of stolen goods. From now on I would have to be really careful. I wondered what Sherlock Holmes would have done in my situation.
On Saturday morning I was woken by Mum screaming. Her car was parked outside our house and it was covered in red spray paint. Vandals had struck in the night and, of course, I knew exactly who it was. I felt really furious and frightened at the same time.
Mum was in a terrible state and she phoned the police. They told her to leave the car just where it was and an officer would call round to see the damage and fill in a form.
Mum took some tablets and went back to bed with a migraine, while I did Sudoku and watched TV. It wasn’t until 17.27 that the police called. I answered the door to a WPC and I took her into the sitting room. Mum was still in bed.
‘I’m going to tell you about the crime,’ I began. ‘I know exactly what happened and I want you to go round to number 24 Rutland Drive and arrest them. You’ll need a few strong officers, as the Criddles are big and tough and they’ve got dogs and ferrets. I want you to lock up Victor Criddle because he’s a bully and it was him who sprayed my mum’s car.’
She looked at me and smiled in an odd sort of way.
‘Can you prove it was him?’ she asked.
I told her that that was surely her job and the skill of CSI officers to find all trace evidence.
‘There are likely to be fibres on Mum’s car that will match exactly Victor Criddle’s clothes. There is bound to be paint on his clothes, too, and spray cans at his house matching the exact paint at the crime scene. Possibly flakes of blue metallic paint from Mum’s car would be under Criddle’s fingernails, which chemical analysis would match up. There may even be dog hairs on the car that match his Doberman and there are likely to be fingerprints. If you need an enlarged thumbprint of his, I can provide a copy first thing on Monday morning. It’s on our library system.’
She gave me another silly smile.
‘It’s been raining all afternoon, so the vehicle in question will be washed clean of such evidence, I’m afraid. Besides... ’
I have to admit that I shouted at her then. ‘Well why didn’t you come earlier, then? What’s the point of investigating a crime when the crime scene has been contaminated?’
She asked me why I was so certain that it was Victor Criddle who’d vandalised the car. It was time for me to confess that I was an accomplice to theft because I was made to hide the stolen goods.
I asked her to follow me out to the shed, where she would discover all the evidence she needed to be able to make an arrest of the Criddle gang of thieves.
I opened the shed door and pointed to the corner where I’d hidden the boxes of cigarette cartons. She smiled oddly again and just said, ‘Where?’
I couldn’t believe it. They’d gone.
Back in the house the policewoman told me that ‘off the record’ the Criddles were currently under investigation for various incidents but, due to lack of evidence, she was unable to add this case to their enquiries.
I shouted at her again, ‘But Victor Criddle is HORRIBLE.’
She told me it was not a crime to be horrible and if it was, the prisons would be full twenty times over. She said they would give us a crime number for this case of deliberate vandalism of Mum’s car and they would keep an eye on things, but there was nothing more she could do.
‘But you’ve got to stop Victor Criddle!’
I think I must have shouted louder than ever, because Mum came downstairs looking very drowsy, just as the WPC said ‘Unless any particular individual was caught in the act of vandalism or captured on CCTV, there is no hard evidence as to who committed the offence and, even though we may suspect Victor Criddle, there are no further formal proceedings to be taken.’
After the police officer had gone, I went outside to look at Mum’s car more closely. Lines and squiggles of red paint were all over the bonnet, roof and doors. It was only later when I looked at it from my bedroom window that I could make out a few letters.
It said: becos u opend the box.
Just because I’d dared to peep inside one of the boxes, they’d done that to Mum’s car. I knew that it was also a warning to me to keep my mouth shut.
I went back into the shed to see if I could find just one trace of incriminating evidence to get Victor Criddle locked up for good.
Nothing.
When I went to bed that night, I lay thinking for hours. Lots of questions were going through my head.
I always keep a notepad by my bed, so I can jot down special number rules, puzzles and stuff. I thought of Victor running into his house, so I made an anagram from his road name: DEVIL TURD RAN (RUTLAND DRIVE ). Then I thought of the empty shed and wrote: NO TRACE NOT ONE CARTON.
(That’s what I call a comic ironic palindromic chronic shame.)