The Spider Truces by Tim Connolly Read Free Book Online Page B

assured him.
    Gary weighed this up. Fifty pence was worth a bollocking, even though Ellis was now proceeding to pay him in 2p pieces, which were going to be annoyingly bulky in his pocket.
    When Gary had finished, he found Ellis upstairs.
    “Done it.”
    “Was there much activity?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing. Is it completely empty?”
    “Yes, except for the shed. The shed’s still in the shed. Why do you want it empty?”
    “I’m going to paint it.”
    “So, why didn’t you empty it yourself?”
    “I’m saving my energy for the painting. See you later.”
    “I’ll help you paint.”
    “No, I’d better do it on my own. You go to Bridget’s and start spending that money.”
    Gary Bird knew when he was being got rid of. He waved goodbye to Ellis, walked down the rutted driveway, as if returning to his house across the lane, and then double-backed up the alleyway alongside the cottage and watched from there. Ellis appeared from Mafi’s garage with a cardboard box full of newspaper. He dropped a yellow can of cigarette-lighter fuel into the cardboard box, set fire to the newspaper and threw the box into the shed. At this point, Gary ran, as fast as the twenty-five coins in his front pocket allowed him.
     
     
    The simplest ideas are sometimes the best. But sometimes they’re just the simplest.
    “What do you mean you just found it on fire?” Denny stood with the contents of his shed at his feet and a smoking black scar, where the shed had been, nearby.
    “Someone must have, you know …” Ellis said, shrugging his shoulders.
    “So, what we have here is a vandal who burns down people’s sheds but he likes to empty them first so as not to damage the contents.”
    “Or a she …” Ellis said, “it could be a woman.”
    Ellis smiled, satisfied that he had distanced Gary from the crime scene by raising the spectre of a female arsonist. He was blissfully unaware that Gary was not in the frame and that there was one suspect and one suspect only. Denny smiled and discovered that he could not feel angry about this. Ellis motioned towards the cottage, a little unnerved by the peaceful expression on his dad’s face, and said, “Well, I’ve got a busy day so I’ll be in my room if you want me.”
    Denny and Mafi watched Ellis wander inside.
    “Denny,” the old lady said. “Might I suggest you embarrass yourself with that truce idea before Ellis burns down the cottage.”
     
     
    Ellis was confused. Any ten year old would be. He’d been told to sit up for Sunday lunch but there was no food on the table.
    “Is lunch ready?” he asked tentatively.
    “In a moment or two,” Mafi said.
    Denny laid a sheet of paper down in front of him, shifted in his seat and cleared his throat.
    “Right then …” he murmured, laughing nervously under his breath and blushing. “Ellis, I’ve been in discussions with the spiders, on your behalf.”
    This didn’t shock Ellis. He had, after all, been talking to them for over a year.
    “They’re as upset as you that you don’t get along.”
    “Did they say that?”
    Denny nodded. “They’ve proposed an agreement and I think it’s a sensible one. Do you want to hear it?”
    Ellis nodded.
    “During the winter, when you tend to spend more time indoors, they’ve agreed to mostly withdraw from the cottage and leave you alone. What they said was that because there aren’t many insects about in winter anyway to be caught in their webs …”
    Ellis swallowed sickly at the thought.
    “… they will pretty well stop spinning their webs in the cottage in winter, and if any did accidentally appear then, during the winter, it’s permitted for us to take them down.”
    “Where are they going to live?”
    “They will be allowed run of the downstairs toilet, which you never use anyway. But, mostly, they’ve agreed to hibernate outdoors, in the soil or under the leaves.”
    “Ace!” Ellis said.
    His dad continued, “But, Ellis, this is a two-way street. One of