Moone Boy 2: The Fish Detective Read online

  MOONE BOY

  The Fish Detective

  To all the glorious migrants of the world - enjoy this book. But please don’t use it as an example of good English. And to my son, Art, who emigrated from the womb around Chapter 6 and is already making a name for himself.

  Chris

  To my son, Jules, who showed up around Chapter 12. I hope this book is pleasant to chew on, is absorbent of your puke and will some day make you giggle as much as having a raspberry blown on your armpits.

  Nick

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE: FIFTY SLEEPS TO CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER TWO: MARTIN’S JOB HUNT

  CHAPTER THREE: CROSS COUNTRY MEATS

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE BUTCHER BOY

  CHAPTER FIVE: FRANCIE ‘TOUCHY’ FEELEY

  CHAPTER SIX: MEAT SURPRISE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FISH-MOLE

  CHAPTER EIGHT: SEVEN BELLS

  CHAPTER NINE: FISH DETECTIVE FIELD REPORT NUMBER 1

  CHAPTER TEN: THE GRILLING

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: A BOY CALLED FISH-GUTS

  CHAPTER TWELVE: A MAN’S WORLD

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: PRINCESS MARTINA

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE WALL

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: FABIO

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: EAST V WEST

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: OPERATION BUDGET CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE SPY WITH TWO FACES. MAYBE MORE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: FACE BOOK

  CHAPTER TWENTY: THE WOOLLY WRECKING BALL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: FESTIVAL OF THE WHALES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE SEVEN BELLS FALL SILENT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE GREAT BARRIER GRIEF

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: DEAD FISHES SOCIETY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE MERRY MEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: ESCAPE TO FISHY VICTORY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: RETURN OF THE KING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: ’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: ZERO SLEEPS TO CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER THIRTY: PLENTY OF ROOM AT THE INN

  ABOUT CHRIS O’DOWD

  ABOUT NICK V. MURPHY

  Hello!

  Sean ‘Caution’ Murphy here. Professional Imaginary Friend and Local Man of Mystery! (Apart from my name and occupation, which I just told you.)

  Before we begin, please just check to make sure you’re in the right book.

  This is Moone Boy: The Fish Detective. If you’ve come for Moo Joy: The Cow’s Objective, then you’re in the wrong place - try the Nature section. Likewise, if you’re looking for Mean Boys: A Bully’s Perspective, Food Toys: The Fun Congestive or Flu Boy: The Snotty Infective, then please move along and ask for assistance.

  But if you’re in the right place, then welcome to this book! I’ll be your book host! So come on in and make yourself at home. Put your feet up. Not on the book though. Unless you don’t mind reading through your toes.

  Help yourself to some snacks - if you’ve brought some snacks. Snacks are not included with this book. Although you’re very welcome to chew on the cover. All the red bits taste like strawberries.

  OK, you ready? Then let’s get this party started! Buckle up, slouch down and put your eyes to work, because these pages aren’t going to read themselves! Unless you’ve bought the expensive Self-Reading Edition. In which case, press ‘Auto-Read’ now and enjoy a nice nap.

  But the rest of you cheapskates - commence Manual Reading!

  Signed,

  Sean Murphy

  PS I’ve just been informed that the red bits don’t taste like strawberries. This is due to a malfunction by the printing machine. It seems that your new phonebook will taste like strawberries instead, and this book just tastes like a phonebook. But if you happen to like the finger-lickin’ flavour of names and numbers, then lap it up, my friends, because you’re in for a tasty treat!

  CHAPTER ONE

  FIFTY SLEEPS TO CHRISTMAS

  A year is a very long time when you’re an idiot.

  When you think about it, there are very few things you could do for a whole year. You couldn’t spend a year growing your toenails, for example, or you’d require some kind of hacksaw to trim them. You couldn’t eat nothing but honey for an entire year, or bees would start growing in your belly. That’s a fact - I looked it up. And you should avoid whistling the same song every day for a year or your classmates will eventually turn on you and staple your shoes to the ceiling - possibly while you’re still wearing them, depending on the song.

  To cope with the curse of the calendar, Martin Moone had developed the habit of dividing each year into smaller sections of roughly fifty days. Give or take a week here and there. These year sections, or ‘yections’ as he liked to call them, helped Martin cope with the vastness of time before him. He even named these yections, as a way of remembering them.

  Boxing for Love: St Stephen’s Day to Valentine’s Day

  Lovefool: Valentine’s to April Fool’s Day

  Fool’s Gold: April Fool’s to 20th May (my birthday, when I always ask for gold gifts)

  Golden Days: 20th May to end of term!

  Days of Wonder: summer holidays!

  Wonder what happened to the New School Year: start of term to 5th November

  Why won’t it end?: 5th November to Christmas Day

  The yection which always seemed to take the longest to pass was from 5th November to Christmas Day. The evenings were long, the rain was extra chilly and there were no birthdays to distract Martin. (It was actually his sister Sinead’s birthday on 18th November, but every year one of the things she asked for was that Martin got none of her birthday cake - that was one of her actual presents, that Martin got no cake! - so he did his best to ignore her celebrations altogether.)

  It was Sunday 5th November in the Moone home, and Martin and I decided to check his yection schedule to see what was in store for the fifty days ahead.

  ‘Hmmm. Not much to get us excited there, buddy,’ I grumbled.

  But the one upside to entering the saddest yection in his made-up calendar was that it was now only FIFTY SLEEPS TO CHRISTMAS. You probably already knew that because you’re a maths genius. And, also, this chapter is called ‘Fifty Sleeps to Christmas’. But that had only just occurred to Martin, so he leaped to his feet and rushed into the kitchen to inform his mother. He knew it was unlikely she was aware of the significance of the day because her maths was pretty terrible and she probably hadn’t yet read this book.

  ‘Great news, Mam!’ the boy blurted. ‘It’s only fifty sleeps till Christmas!’

  ‘Did we not just have Christmas?’

  ‘What?! No, silly,’ he chuckled.

  ‘That was over six yections ago!’ I told her. Not that Martin’s family could actually see me or hear me, but I liked shouting stuff at them anyway. ‘Keep up, Moones!’ I yelled.

  ‘Anyway, not to put the pressure on,’ Martin continued, ‘but I was wondering how your Christmas-present-buying was going?’

  Debra paused, which was a bit worrying, and glanced at Martin’s dad, who was buttering some toast.

  ‘Ahm, good, yeah,’ Liam lied. ‘We’re torn between getting you new school trousers or fixing the sink in the bathroom. You love that sink, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re funny, Dad!’

  Liam and Debra shared a look that suggested they hadn’t been joking at all.

  Over the years, Martin had learned to keep expectations low around Christmas. He’d learned this by initially having extraordinarily high expectations (motorboat, diamond- encrusted tennis shoes, volcano holiday, etc.) and always ending up slightly disappointed (boat motor, new slippers, lava lamp, etc.).

  ‘Give
’em the pitch, buddy,’ I urged.

  Martin nodded and laid out his demands to his parents. ‘I’ve put a lot of thought into this, folks, and after weeks of having my mind set on some kind of flying carpet for Christmas, my mind is now set on a Game Boy!’

  ‘Your mind seems to set quite quickly,’ Debra noted.

  ‘Well, before it was only set like jelly, but now it’s set like cement.’

  ‘Who or what is a Game Boy?’ Liam asked.

  ‘It’s a magical thing, Dad! It’s like having a whole games arcade* in the palm of your hand!’

  ‘Are these Game Boyos given out for free somewhere, by any chance?’

  ‘Very funny, Dad. I can’t imagine they cost less than a small fortune, but they’re so worth it. Trevor at school has one and sometimes he lets me watch him playing it. It’s really exciting. I can’t even imagine how exciting it would be to actually play it.’

  MOONE DICTIONARY

  *GAMES ARCADE - a massive room containing games, toys and shady characters. This room was later replaced by the internet.

  ‘The thing is, Martin, money’s a bit tight at the moment,’ Liam said.

  ‘Is it because Mam spends so much on vegetables? Because I’ve already offered a solution to that.’

  ‘We can’t just send all the vegetables to hell, Martin,’ Debra sighed, as if this was a regular argument.

  I checked out the dinner Debra was preparing and it actually looked like most of it had come from hell already, so her point was valid.

  ‘Martin,’ I said tentatively, ‘I have some bad news about dinner.’

  Martin peeked into the oven hoping to see his favourite Friday meal - pork shoulder, sausages and meat waffles. What he saw was disappointing.

  ‘Are we having flippin’ fish again?’ he complained. ‘We’re not sharks, ya know!’

  ‘Imagine if we were sharks though, buddy - living with a creature from the deep with razor- sharp teeth, the personality of a dead-eyed demon and jaws that could rip you apart!

  Just then Martin’s sister Sinead entered the kitchen and we realized we already knew what that was like.

  ‘If that bathroom sink leaks on me again, I’m gonna destroy it with my bare hands!’ she said, scowling.

  ‘Or your flippers!’ I quipped.

  Martin’s shark sister leaned down to look through the oven window, dead-eyed.

  ‘Are we having flippin’ fish again?!’ she grunted through her gills.

  ‘C’mon now, Sinead,’ Liam sighed. ‘We all agreed at the family meeting* that we need to tighten our money belts for a while. So that means more cheap fish dinners, and no - I repeat, NO! - casual destruction of bathroom hardware.’

  *FAMILY MEETING - a weekly get-together arranged to shout at fellow family members.

  As this debate looked set to get violent, Martin and I skulked* away towards the safety of the living-room couch.

  ‘Ya know what, buddy,’ I started, ‘I think if we really want that Game Boy, we might have to buy it ourselves.’

  ‘Well, Sean, I could see how the back-of- the-couch account is looking. We haven’t withdrawn from it since I bought those magic beans from Declan Mannion.’

  ‘What a waste of money that was.’

  ‘How were we to know they were just peas?’

  ‘Bottom line is, buddy, if we want a Game Boy, we can’t just sit around relying on the kindness of strangers.’

  ‘Or my family, for that matter,’ Martin added glumly.

  ‘No, there’s only one person you can really depend on, Martin.’

  * SKULK - to quietly move out of sight. Originated from when the Incredible Hulk, renowned for his smelly bottom, would drop a fart and amble away, ashamed.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘No, definitely not me. I meant you!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes - who loves you more than you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You?’

  ‘No, definitely not me.’

  ‘So I need to rely on my own kindness to myself?’

  ‘Exactly! What we need is a regular wage,’ I said, as I perched on the back of the couch in prime thinking pose. ‘Then we can buy all the Game Boys we want! We need to get you a job!’

  ‘Yes! I’m twelve years old for crying out loud! It’s high time I got a proper job.’

  ‘A real job. For a real man. Making real money. And if we’ve got enough left over, we can get Christmas presents for the rest of the family too!’

  ‘Let’s not go bananas, Sean.’

  ‘You’re right, let’s buy you a Game Boy and let the family watch you play it.’

  ‘Perfecto!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARTIN’S JOB HUNT

  ‘But why can’t I be a bin man?’ demanded Martin. ‘I was born to be a bin man!’

  A burly, bearded bin man lifted a sloppy sack from the kerb and flung it into the garbage truck. ‘Well, for starters, you’re not exactly a “man”, are ya?’

  Martin looked insulted. ‘What are you - some kind of boy-bigot? You can’t reject me just cos I’m not a man!’

  ‘Well, it’s in the job title,’ grunted beardy with a shrug, as he climbed on to the back of the trash truck. ‘Bin man,’ he stated, pointing at himself. ‘No one needs a bin boy,’ he scoffed.

  The truck moved off and Martin chased after it. ‘Aw, come on, mister! No one knows rubbish better than me! I love rubbish! Our house is full of rubbish! I basically live in a rubbish dump!’

  But the truck soon turned a corner and disappeared from view.

  ‘Aw, balls,’ sighed Martin in frustration. ‘Another rejection! I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Sean!’

  ‘Don’t worry, pal,’ I reassured him, ‘we’ll find something. But maybe that bin-man boy-bigot is right. Maybe we should stop going for jobs that have “man” in the title.’

  Martin nodded glumly, ‘Well, since I’ve been rejected as a barman, a bin man and a stuntman, we’re running out of man-jobs all right.’ He furrowed his brow, thinking. ‘So, what jobs have “boy” in the title?’

  We pondered this as we ambled back down Main Street towards the heart of the town.

  ‘Stable boy?’ I suggested.

  ‘Aren’t I allergic to horses?’

  ‘Good point. How about cowboy?’

  ‘Same problem really.’

  ‘Schoolboy?’

  ‘I think I’m already a schoolboy.’

  ‘Does it pay well?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Game Boy!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a job.’

  ‘No, but it’s what we’re after. Just trying to keep us focused here, Martin.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ he said with a nod. Then suddenly he had a thought. ‘Hey, remember that weird song that Trevor was rapping at us the other day?’

  Martin’s classmate Trevor had developed a fondness for rapping ever since he’d acquired his rap-loving imaginary friend, Loopy Lou. The awfulness of their ‘rap attacks’ was difficult to forget.

  ‘You mean, about being “a homeboy”?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the one! Maybe I could be a homeboy!’

  ‘A homeboy! Brilliant!’ I cried. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Someone . . . who likes being at home?’ he guessed.

  ‘That’s perfect!’ I exclaimed. ‘You were born to be a homeboy!’

  We high-fived each other happily, then stood there for a moment, thinking.

  ‘Although. . .’ I ventured, ‘are we absolutely sure that’s a real job? Trevor’s rapping has led us astray before. Remember that time he told you to “Pump Up the Volume” and you stuck that bicycle pump into the radio and nearly electrocuted yourself?’

  Martin shook his head ruefully. ‘That was a really confusing thing to say.’

  ‘Really confusing,’ I agreed. ‘No one should rap in riddles when electrics are involved.’

  Just then, Martin noticed something across the street. ‘What’s that?’ he squ
eaked excitedly, peering through my stomach. He could do this sometimes if he squinted his eyes just right and remembered that I wasn’t actually there.

  ‘What’s what?’

  But he was already scampering across the road. He raced over to a sign that hung in the window of ‘News for Youse*’, a little newsagent shop on the corner.

  Martin read the sign with growing excitement. ‘Wanted. Paperboy!’ he exclaimed.

  *YOUSE - the plural of ‘you’, pronounced ‘yooze’. Irish pronouns are organized like this: Us, them, you, yer man, yer wan, ye, youse, you lot, them lot, the lot of them, what’s-his-name, what’s-her-face, the fella over there, that shower of chancers behind the gate.

  ‘Wow,’ I marvelled. ‘A Wanted poster - like in the Wild West. Is there a reward for this paperboy?’

  ‘What? No, I think it’s a job.’

  ‘A job! Even better! And it’s got “boy” in the title!’

  Martin grinned and straightened his woolly hat. ‘Looks like everything’s finally coming up Moone.’

  He thrust open the door and marched into the shop.

  ‘Hello, good shopkeep! I’m here for the plum post of paperboy.’

  A short, round man was slouched behind the counter, slowly restocking a lollipop display. He regarded Martin with mild suspicion.

  ‘Any experience?’ he asked in a dull drone.

  ‘No. But I think I’m more than qualified.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, er. . . do I need any qualifications?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m more than qualified! Here’s my CV*!’ announced Martin, and slapped it down proudly on the counter.

  *CV - a list of stuff you’ve done. Stands for ‘Curriculum Vitae’ in Latin, or ‘Creative Vomit’ m English, as it’s usually an inventive mess of lies and half-chewed-truths.

  The shopkeeper looked up from the CV, weirdly unimpressed.

  ‘Tell ya what,’ he said at last, and handed a newspaper to Martin, ‘Take this paper and let’s see if you can push it through that letter box.’

  Martin saluted. ‘I’m on it, sir!’