* * *
In the Boogerville yard, Beau had heard the soft thump of the medal and quickly nosed it out. He was disappointed the gun wasn’t with it, but not really surprised. Probably, he reasoned, neither chicken-poop Cookie nor mouth-breathing Robert had the nerve to touch it. Back behind the bus he huffed a happy breath onto the disk, shined it against his stomach and pinned it on his shirt. A Helping Out medal! All for him! At least it would be, once he put the finishing touches to the plan which had begun taking a vague, not readily explainable, not really clear enough to be shared shape in his head.
Something to do with the Duchy and the Less’s mongrel and Hayley being out walking somewhere and the parents still being away and, above all . . . the cover of darkness. Yes. There was certainly something there. But what? What exactly was it?
His mind was bouncing like a may-fly over a ball of mud when suddenly . . . another sound! It should’ve been a sound that no one in the world could recognise, but Beau the Bum, having spent so many hours imagining it, knew it immediately. It was the thump of a classic Beretta Model 1934 semi-automatic pistol striking the ground! He was on his feet and moving before the grass beneath the pistol had fully yielded to its weight. Imagine then his stunned confusion when he got to it and found it already back in the unyielding hands of Afsoon Rahimi.