Top-Secret Grandad and Me Page 6

  The next shop was a greengrocers, with lots of fruit and vegetables in display boxes. I kicked over a tray of watermelons, which splattered the ground in front of his feet. He shimmied through them. I picked up some yellow melons and tossed them at his head. They missed, although they did hit the old lady with the shopping, who yelped and fell backwards into a steel dustbin. Her legs splayed up into the air.

  The greengrocer herself came running out, a woman wearing a hijab. She was screaming and carrying a baseball bat. “My fruit! My fruit!” She swung at Ginger, a pretty lethal swing as well. If it had been a baseball she was hitting she’d be on a home run. But he ducked under the bat and kept running. Would nothing stop this man?

  I thought all was lost, but then Grandad reappeared at my side.

  “Here is a florist!” he said, as we reached the next shop. The front was festooned with flowers. “Let us try another experiment!” He ducked his spectral head right into the middle of them, then pulled it out again.

  He clutched his face. It looked ready to explode, and so it did, just as he turned towards my pursuer.

  AHHHHH-CHOOOOO!

  Grandad’s colossal sneeze kicked up a load of litter and dust and shot it into Ginger’s face. He threw up his arms to protect himself. But even a sneeze from a ghost wasn’t enough! He still kept coming.

  I was seriously worried now. He was just metres away, and on the verge of grabbing me. Then a man staggered out of the pub. A large man with a bulgy crimson nose. I span him round and pushed him into Ginger. The two of them collapsed on the pavement, the large man spread out on top of him.

  As I darted across the road, I glanced back again, to see the man from the pub hauling Ginger to his feet.

  “Are you wantin’ a fight, mate?” The man swung, Ginger ducked. Then the man grabbed him round the middle and they started wrestling on the pavement.

  Grandad was standing nearby, laughing. He gave me the thumbs up and waved me on. I was free!

  I turned up a path into a graveyard. Not an ideal place to go if you are trying to avert death, but it was a good place to hide. There was lots of cover. And they couldn’t follow me in the van. Besides, I knew this graveyard. It had lots of exits at different ends, and one of them led onto the main road where I could catch the bus home.

  I found a spot in the bushes near the exit next to my bus stop, where I took a rest. As luck would have it, no sooner had I settled into my hiding spot than a bus appeared. I made it on to the bus and collapsed into the back seat, gazing fearfully out the rear window. It didn’t matter how far away I got from Duke’s Laundry, from Fred and Ginger and their white van of death, I was still scared.

  They knew me now. They knew my face. I was no longer inconspicuous. The bad guys were on to me.

  Chapter 17

  The Small-time Detective

  Back home, there was no sign of Grandad. Not that I was worried. He knew the way home. Besides, he was dead already, so what was the worst that could happen?

  Mum was in the kitchen cooking tea.

  “Hullo, dearie!” she yelled, and wrapped her arms around me. “Where have you been? Your dinner’s nearly ready.”

  Mum turned to the stove and whipped the lid off the pot. “Ta-daaa! Himalayan aubergine curry.”

  Yeti vomit.

  I tried to look pleased. “Yum.” To be honest, I could have murdered a chicken burger.

  Mum picked up a small mallet and whacked a gong. Yes, an actual gong. One of Mum’s favourite pieces of décor was a small gong, which she’d brought back from a yoga retreat in Goa. She said she liked the sound it made, and besides, Granny was hard of hearing so it helped get her attention.

  Even so, Granny still hadn’t heard it, as she was busy re-tiling the bathroom. “Granny! Dinner’s ready!”

  The bathroom floor was littered with tiles and tools, and covered in dust. Granny poked her head out of the shower cubicle. She was wearing flip-flops, a bathing costume, swimming goggles and a shower cap.

  “WHIT?!” She was cradling a tile in one hand and a trowel in the other.

  “Why?” I asked, nodding down at her outfit.

  “Ah’m gonnie have a shower afterwards,” she croaked.

  ***

  It was only after dinner that Grandad got back.

  “Jayesh!” I heard a muffled call from the hall.

  I ran out to find one of his legs poking through the front door. Then an arm, then the other arm and a head. “Urgh!” He took a deep breath and hauled himself inside, then shivered. “Yuck! I HATE doing that!”

  “What happened to you?” I whispered.

  “I decided to stick around, so I could see where those two went.”

  “Good,” I said. “And?”

  “Oh-ho, you put the wind up them, that is for sure. They wondered if you knew something about the body, but they were not sure. One of them kept saying, ‘Oh, he’s just a boy, he’s just a boy, what does he know?’ They were talking about setting the van on fire. And then one of them said they should dump it in the Clyde. Then they got hungry, so they went for a McDonalds instead.”

  It was annoying that they had caught me when they did, because it put the evidence at risk. If they did set fire to the van, or dump it in the water, then lots of vital clues might be lost. I reckoned they would at least wash it now, they might even clean the inside out. They’d certainly ditch the shovels and the dead man’s wallet and keys. But even if they did, a good forensics team might still be able to find evidence.

  Grandad flopped down on the sofa. “And it took me ages to get home. Have you ever tried flagging down a bus when you’re invisible?

  I rummaged in my pocket, not really listening. I remembered dropping the driving licence and wallet as I escaped the van, but there was one thing I had the presence of mind to keep – the dead man’s business card.

  “Aha!” said Grandad as I held the card up in my fingers and twiddled it around. “So, are we going to do it?”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Tip off the police?”

  “Yes.” We had more than enough information to pass to the cops now. Then, maybe, I could step out of this thing. It was getting too dangerous for a small-time detective like me.

  And we had to be fast. I could tell them where I thought the body was buried, but for all I knew Fred and Ginger could be on their way to the country park right now to move it somewhere else. If I was in their shoes, and I knew someone might be on to me, that’s exactly what I would do, just in case.

  I checked Mum’s room. She was sitting on her bed in the lotus position. Sitar music was playing, incense and candles burning, and the lights were down low. Her eyes were closed, her hands were raised, her forefingers and thumbs pinched together, and she was chanting “OMMMMM!” over and over again.

  How she managed to meditate with Granny around was a mystery, as Granny had just fired up an angle grinder. She was attacking tiles with a high-pitched screech, and, just to be clear, the screeching was her.

  “AIEEEEEE!!!”

  A massive white cloud of dust engulfed her, billowing into the hall.

  “A handy woman, your granny,” said Grandad. “She always was.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, and we nipped out the front door.

  Half a mile up the road there was a phonebox. There was one closer, but I decided to use one further away, just in case they tried to trace me.

  I picked up the handset. “Well, here goes.”

  Grandad nodded. “Go on boy, phone it in.”

  A voice came over the line: “Hello, Directory Enquiries.”

  “Pollockshields Police Station, please.”

  Chapter 18

  The Wandering Accent

  I waited, dry-mouthed, as the phone rang. I wanted to give them enough info to find the body, but not so much that they could connect it in any way to me.

  “Hello, police?” came a tough, no-nonsense sort of a voice, the voice of a front-line copper.

  Only now did it
occur to me that I should disguise my accent somehow. I only had a split-second to think about it. I’m not sure why, but the accent I went with was upper-class English.

  “Ah, good h-eeevening, my maahn!” I said. “I e-have some information.”

  Grandad stared at me in open-mouthed disbelief. I went on, “There is a bod-eh buried in the country p-hark. Try the wh-oodl-end at H-eggs P-hocket.”

  “What’s this?” replied the voice. “A body? Who is this?”

  “N-hever y-hoo moynd.” I bit my tongue. That last word made me sound like a cider farmer from Somerset. “Moynd,” I repeated. It still came out the same way. I decided to go with it. “Deh registrashiin numbur…” I cringed. Now I just sounded Irish. It seemed I couldn’t do a Somerset accent either. I cursed myself, realising I should have practised this first. “The registration is X… L…9, 4… B… W.” For some reason the ‘W’ came out in a kind of Texan drawl: “double-yea-oouu.”

  “Are you American?” said the voice.

  Again, I decided just to go with it. It was still better than them thinking I was from Pollockshields.

  “Uh, y-ay-as, pardner. Now, why don’t y’all jus’ head on down there an’ round ’em up.”

  I hung up and breathed a long sigh of relief. “Phew!”

  Grandad’s head was sunk into his hands. “That was pathetic, boy!” he said. “You did a world tour there. Do they not teach drama in that school?”

  I shook my head. I was too tired to argue. “C’mon, let’s go home.” I’d told the police where the body was, and I’d given them the registration of Fred and Ginger’s van. Surely they could work out the rest themselves.

  I was tired. It was all catching up on me now. It had been a LONG day.

  Maybe now, I thought, I could sit back and let the police do their job.

  Chapter 19

  The Haunted Mask

  The following morning, I bolted down breakfast and grabbed my schoolbag. “Bye Mum! Bye Granny!”

  Mum didn’t hear. She was up to her elbows in flour, making dough for some kind of weird cake from her Eco Mum Cookbook. It had beetroot in it. I have no idea why. Maybe she thought I needed more fibre in my diet.

  Granny strutted past wielding a giant roll of loft insulation. We don’t even have a loft, so I’m not sure what she was planning to do with it. “Cheerie-bye!” she croaked.

  Grandad was already outside on the landing, talking to someone who wasn’t there. He blinked his eyes at me, and a tubby old lady carrying a net shopping bag appeared. Cheery and smiley though she was, she was very blotchy and wonky-looking. Grandad didn’t seem to notice, or it didn’t appear to bother him. “Look, it’s Isa McClutcheon, as I live and breathe.” He caught himself on. “Well, you know.”

  “Och, I’m like that myself, Sanjeev,” laughed the old lady. “I keep forgetting that I’m deid.”

  Just look in the mirror, I thought. That’ll remind you.

  Grandad winked. “You know, me and Isa, we used to be sweethearts, a long time ago.”

  Isa gave a flirty, high-pitched laugh, and her head fell back – no, literally, it was hanging off. She had to reach behind her and flip it back over. “Och, ye naughty man, look what you’ve done.”

  “Well, we’d better be off, Isa,” said Grandad, following me down the stairs. “See you around.”

  I was in a hurry to get to school and see if my tip-off last night had come to anything. I hadn’t mentioned the school in my call, but surely if they did act on it, and they did find the body, then someone at the police station would put two and two together and connect it to the body that went missing from the school library.

  “Hold on! I am coming with you!” said Grandad, rushing to keep up as I bounded down the stairs.

  When I got to school, I saw something that gave me a flicker of confidence in Pollockshields police. By that I mean, they were actually there. They’d worked it out. There were at least three squad cars and a big van marked ‘Forensic Investigations’. A crowd of kids were hanging round, watching and wondering what was going on.

  “Aha! So, it worked,” said Grandad.

  “Looks like it.”

  I expected that Mum would get pulled in at some point, either to the school or to the police station. She was the one who reported the body, so she was their chief witness, and they would want to interview her. What I wasn’t expecting was for them to come for me.

  ***

  It was Mr Kessock who appeared at the door of the class and spoke my name.

  “Jayesh Patel, my office – now!”

  He was practically hyperventilating and I knew by the super-sour-lime-sucking look on his face that it was to do with the cops. My heart sank. I must have made a mistake somewhere, I thought, but where?

  “I knew it! It’s Patel they’re after,” whispered Anton, as I made my way down through the row of desks. “Probably for his bad dress sense.”

  Nobody laughed at his joke, which gave me a small sense of satisfaction. Except for Pyotr, and that was only because he was watching a video on his phone.

  Mwah-hah-hah-heeeeee!

  “Maybe your mother told them something,” said Grandad, as I walked behind Mr Kessock towards the office, but what? She didn’t know anything.

  Or maybe it’s because DI Graves caught me outside Duke’s Laundry. If they had tracked the registration number to that place, then I guess it would put me in an awkward position. As it turned out I wasn’t even half right.

  “I’m up for Head Teacher of the Year, you know,” said Mr Kessock through gritted teeth just before he pushed open the office door.

  “Yes, we know,” me and Grandad replied at the same time.

  “He doesn’t shut up about that, does he?” said Grandad.

  Kessock pointed his finger right into my face. “You better not ruin things for me, that’s all.”

  Mrs Cravat glared at me as I came into the office. DI Graves was sitting behind the desk. Boy, her face was grim. The kind of grim you only get in Glasgow; that comes from bad weather and too many fish suppers.

  Constable McBurnie was there too, propped up against the wall, his thumbs hooked into his utility belt, and his hat pushed down over his forehead, looking like a gunslinger hanging about outside a saloon in the Wild West.

  A large African tribal mask hung on the wall, with two empty hooks underneath. It was a fearsome thing, a gift from our twin school in Africa. I felt its open-mouthed stare drilling into me. Grandad felt it too; in fact it really freaked him out. He shivered when he saw it.

  “Wo-ho! That mask is seriously haunted.”

  Constable McBurnie saw me glance at the mask. He eyed it up too, and poked it with his finger.

  “Don’t touch that!” snapped Mrs Cravat. “That’s a priceless piece of art, from the Mumbari people.”

  McBurnie grinned like a maniac and poked it again. Mrs Cravat stared back at him, her lips pursed and her eye twitching.

  “I mean it,” said Grandad. “That thing is ogling me, and it is very annoyed about something. Spirit energy is flowing out of it. This woman who guards it does not even know.”

  Graves waved a hand at McBurnie, and he stepped away from the mask. Then she nodded Mrs Cravat towards the door. “Thank you, Madam, that will be all for now.”

  Mrs Cravat stiffened and walked out. Graves stretched out her leg and kicked a chair out for me. “Sit.”

  “Uh-oh, she means business,” said Grandad, as I perched on the chair.

  And she did.

  Chapter 20

  The Chicken’s Neck

  DI Graves gazed at me from under her heavy eyelids, much as a vulture might eye up a smaller bird who happened to be pecking around nearby.

  “We found a body,” she said eventually.

  If she was expecting a reaction from me then she was wrong. I wasn’t exactly calm inside, more terrified really, but I was determined my face wouldn’t betray me.

  “A body?” I asked, faking a shocked look.

 
; “In the country park. Same description as the one your mum reported in the library.” She nodded through the wall. The library was just next door.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “Who was it?” She thought she was interviewing me, but that wasn’t altogether true. I was probing her to find out how much information she had.

  “We don’t know yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Hmm… but how would it have got from the library to the country park?” I wanted to know if they had tracked down the van? She stared at me intensely for a few seconds, as if she was trying to force me to blink.

  Meanwhile, Grandad let out a wail so loud I jumped.

  “Aaaaahhh!!”

  Graves’ eyebrows screwed up. And McBurnie’s entire face. I glanced over at Grandad, to see him pointing at the mask in terror. “Jayesh! Jayesh! There are ghosts coming out of that mask.”

  Whoever these ghosts were, he forgot that I couldn’t see them. Which was just as well, as I was too busy being interrogated.

  Graves eyed me for a moment, then went on. “We got a tip-off last night. The registration number of a white van. Trouble is, that registration was for a Nissan Micra belonging to a vicar in Basingstoke, which was reported stolen last month. So, not much use.”

  I could have kicked myself. I should have known Maw Cleggan would be using a stolen licence plate. So, the cops hadn’t been able to trace the body to Duke’s Laundry.

  Grandad’s wailing was getting louder.

  “Aaaaaarrghhh!”

  I glanced round to see him edging back towards the door, holding his palms up defensively and looking about him, as if he was being pushed.

  “Now, look here, gentlemen, I can see that you are angry, but it has nothing to do with me. I am dead too…”