Secret of the Indian

Omri’s father gave the boys a look which said, “This is only a short postponement”, and left the room. They heard him running downstairs, and they all trailed after him. Halfway down, he paused.

“Good Lord, did you see this, Jane? I didn’t notice as we came up! One of the banisters has been broken!”

Eager to explain something that could be explained, Omri volunteered the information that one of the burglars had fallen downstairs in his hurry to get out.

His father looked up at him.

“You boys must have thrown a real scare into them.”

“Lionel,” said Omri’s mother suddenly.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t we – hear what the boys have to say, before the police talk to them?”

He hesitated. The bell rang again, commandingly.

“Too late now,” he said, and hurried to open the door to the police.

2 (#ulink_52c7a688-72ed-58e0-81ba-5aacb1d60b39)

Modest Heroes (#ulink_52c7a688-72ed-58e0-81ba-5aacb1d60b39)

As the two uniformed policemen were shown into the living-room, and Omri’s mother hurried down to them, Omri and Patrick had a welcome moment to themselves at the top of the stairs.

“You look like a Sikh in that bandage,” said Patrick. “Well, half a Sikh.”

“Never mind what I look like. What are we going to do?”

Patrick said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Make something up, I suppose. What else can we do?”

“All right. But what? What, that anyone’d believe for two seconds?”

“We might try saying that the skinheads did the damage to the wall. We could say they had – I don’t know – spiked tools, gimlets or chisels or whatever, and just stuck them into everything for a laugh.”

“Or, we could say we don’t know how they did it. We burst in, they ran, that’s it. Leave the cops to figure it out.”

“If they really look, they’ll find minute bullets in the bottoms of the holes.”

“They won’t. Why should they think to?”

“Boys! Come down here, will you?”

It was Omri’s dad calling, peremptorily. They started to walk as slowly as they dared down the stairs.

“And your burn?” whispered Patrick.

“Maybe – we might say we’d had a bonfire in the garden and that you cracked me over the head with a lighted branch.”

“Oh, great! Try saying that and I really will crack you!”

So that was it. They didn’t try to explain the little holes, and the police assumed that the skinheads had been vandals as well as burglars and didn’t examine them too closely. They went over everything else for fingerprints but said that although there were quite a few, the chances were against them catching the thieves who – technically speaking – weren’t thieves after all, because they hadn’t actually got away with anything.

Omri told the bonfire story without bringing Patrick into it. He just said – the inspiration of the moment – that they’d used a whole can of lighter-fluid to get the fire going and that he, Omri, had struck the match while his face was over the wood. His parents, who had been positively bursting with pride at the way the boys had rid the house of intruders, abruptly changed their views about Omri’s brilliance.

“How could you be so unutterably DAFT as to light a fire like that, you little HALF-WIT!” his father expostulated. “How many times have I told you—”

A cough from one of the policemen interrupted him.

“Excuse me, sir. Were these two lads alone in the house?”

“Er—”

“Because as you no doubt know, sir, it is severely frowned on to leave any young person under the age of fourteen alone in a house at night.”

“Of course I know that, Sergeant, and we never, never do it. We always have a baby-sitter. Very punctual and reliable. She was due at seven tonight, and when we went out we assumed she was a couple of minutes late… She’s never let us down before.”

“And where is this person, sir?”

“She never showed up, Sergeant,” said Omri’s father shame-facedly. “Yes, I know what you’re going to say, and you’re perfectly right, we are to blame and I shall never forgive myself.”

“I dare say you will, sir,” said the sergeant levelly, “in time. But it would have been much harder to forgive yourself, if worse had befallen.” Both Omri’s parents hung their heads miserably and Omri moved closer to his mother who looked as if she might burst into tears.

“This is not exactly what you might call a – salubrious neighbourhood, especially after dark,” went on the policeman. “Only this evening, a lady was mugged at the end of your street – pulled right off her bicycle, she was—”

“Her bicycle!”

This from Omri’s mother, whose head had come up sharply.

“Yes, madam…?”

“Who was she – this – lady who was mugged?”

The sergeant glanced at his companion.

“Do you remember the name, George?”

He shrugged. “Some Polish-sounding name…”

Omri’s mother and father exchanged horrified looks. “Not – was it Mrs Brankovsky?”

“Something like that.”

“But that’s her! Our baby-sitter!” cried Omri’s mother. “Oh, heavens – poor Basia—”

“‘Basha’?” inquired the younger policeman. “Is that her name, or what happened to her?” And he suppressed a snigger. But the sergeant gave him a stern look and he subsided.

“There’s nothing humorous about it, George.”