The Boy Who Cried Fish by A. F. Harrold Page A

there.’
    She pointed to the corner of the corridor, where up on the wall a camera was pointing at them. A little red light blinked, but the lens of the camera had been blocked up with something. All she’d see in her little room was blackness.
    Fizzlebert’s brain was ticking over. He’d solved mysteries before. Hadn’t he saved the circus from Wystan’s wicked stepmother? (Yes.) Hadn’t he escaped from Mrs Stinkthrottle’s house? (Yes.) Well, surely he could solve this mystery now. All he needed was a dead good clue and this might be it.
    ‘Wystan,’ he said, ‘can you reach the camera? Get whatever it is that’s blocking the picture?’
    ‘Sure,’ said Wystan.
    In one bound and a bounce (using his acrobatic elasticity) he jumped up and snatched the bit of paper that was wedged into the front of the camera.
    Fizzlebert unfolded it, half hoping the thief would have used an old envelope with his name and address on. He smoothed it out on the concrete floor and looked at what it was.
    ‘It’s just some rubbish, just a bit of random litter,’ Mrs Darling said. ‘That’s no good. It doesn’t tell us anything.’
    Fizzlebert’s brain sparkled inside his head (had the lights been turned out it’s possible you might have seen a glow from inside his ear). ‘No, no, it does,’ he said. ‘It tells us a lot. Look at it. It’s the wrapper to a packet of flour.’
    ‘So, what does that tell us?’ the Admiral said. ‘That the sea-sickening villain is a baker?’
    ‘No,’ Fizz said. ‘Not that. Not quite.’
    Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep.
    As the sound echoed between fish tanks they stood in silence and watched the great swaggering brute of a crocodile lurch round the corner, glance at the four of them with its flashing amber eyes, lumber over to the Admiral and flop with a scaly crash down at his feet.
    Admiral Spratt-Haddock sighed, and rolled his eyes in embarrassment.
    The crocodile yawned hugely, revealing long rows of large yellow teeth and a vast pink tongue.
     

     
    ‘Wow,’ Wystan said. ‘Imagine sticking your head in there, Fizz.’
    Fizz tried not to, though now it had been mentioned it was hard to shake the idea.
    ‘Ignore her,’ Admiral Spratt-Haddock said as the crocodile rubbed its head on his boot and lay down to snore gently. ‘She’s harmless. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Take the leg off an antelope, mind you, but the flies’d be fine.’ He scratched his chin. ‘You were saying, me lad, something about that bit of paper. A clue, d’ya reckon?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Fizz, stepping away from the crocodile. ‘I think . . . I think I’ve got it all worked out. We need to get back to the circus.’
    ‘The circus,’ said the Admiral, excitedly. ‘I knew this was the squid-juggling circus’s fault!’
    ‘Not all of us,’ Fizz replied, ‘but I think I know who.’
     
    On their way to the front doors they went past a tank at the end of the pink corridor. Wystan stopped and looked into it.
    ‘I think this is the one I fell in,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, sorry about that,’ the Admiral said. ‘It’s supposed to have a lid on, that one.’
    As Fizz looked into the water a dark pink shape (a shark-shaped dark pink shape, mind you) loomed up from between some weeds. He jumped at the sight, but Wystan leant in even closer.
    ‘She’s not so big,’ he said.
    ‘She’s a he,’ the Admiral corrected, ‘and he’s only young.’
    ‘Was Wystan in danger?’
    ‘Oh no, this is an Austrian Blushing Shark. Very shy. Mostly vegetarians.’
    The shark still had a few strands of scraggly black hair caught between his teeth.
    ‘It’s a hair-bevore,’ Fizz said, slapping his bearded pal on the back. (Unnecessary Sid would’ve been very proud of that joke.)
    Wystan felt the hole in his beard and grumbled, ‘I did have hair before, so you can say that again.’
    But Fizz didn’t say it again. He thought, quite rightly, that for some jokes, once is more than enough.
     
    Mrs Darling locked