Novel - Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer

of blood.
    I had no idea what time it was. Night. It was dark in the room but I could see a slit of light under the door, and hear the slap of nurses’ rubber-soled shoes in the hall.
    I sat up in bed. Too quickly. I felt as though my head was balanced like a ball in a cup, and would plop off if I jiggled too much. I was back in my own hospital room now, and the nurse was gone. Nobody to lean on.
    Take it slow, then. I swung my legs onto the cold floor, testing my strength. Weak but steady. The walls seemed to be flexing slightly, like fun house mirrors. That was the anesthetic. In all probability, the room was not spinning.
    I stumbled into the bathroom, grabbing on to anything I could to support me. One of these things was the radiator. It could have been hot. I wasn’t sure. My fingers were still buzzing from the anesthetic.
    The bathroom was cramped, which suited my lack of balance. I could lean against a wall and still face myself in the mirror. But did I really want to face myself? Did I want to see what had become of my head? Would I recognize the battered remains of once-normal features?
    With a swollen head, it might be hard to see how severe my injuries actually were. Dr. Brendan had assured me that I was fine, apart from the nose. But my eyes felt like two marbles in a ball of jelly. A ball that could split its skin at any moment. Maybe I should just go back to bed.
    Before this idea could take hold, I grabbed the light cord and yanked. After a moment’s wincing, I focused. It was not a pretty sight. Dr. Brendan had been right, ugly was going to be my first, middle, and last name for quite some time. In fact, the best looking thing on my face was the nasal splint, a small aluminium V clamped onto my nose. The rest of my features looked as though someone had dropped a pound of rare steak onto my face, and it had stuck.
    “Focus,” I told myself. I had to act now, or the evidence could be lost.
    My left arm was bound from elbow to knuckle in a soft cast. I tugged on the Velcro straps with my teeth, all the time arguing with my sensible side. The pressure eased, and my arm seemed to expand like an inflated rubber glove. I expected some pain but none came. However, beyond the anesthetic, I sensed that my body was screaming at me just how stupid this idea was.
    I slipped off the cast with my good hand. My left arm was even uglier than my face, which was saying something. The single blow had managed to connect with every inch of skin facing the weapon. I forced myself to study the bruising. There were several colors, from sickly yellow to angry red. And running from my wrist to my hand, a deep purple trio of distinct marks. My evidence.
    I held my arm to the light. And there in the mirror was my proof. Three letters. R.E.D. The round-headed tacks on Red Sharkey’s hurl had etched their signature into my arm.
    My detective’s brain accessed my file on bruising. Bruises fade quickly. Sometimes in hours. This purple bruising would quickly soften and spread. I needed to preserve the evidence before it blended with the rest of the tissue damage. There must be a way.
    Of course, in a perfect world, I would simply press the call button and tell the nurse that I needed a digital camera immediately. But I knew from experience that adults did not react well to boy detectives. The nurse would more than likely look at me as though I had two heads and one of them was purple. I would be bundled into bed and possibly sedated until the bruising had faded. On top of that, I would be lucky to wake up without a child psychologist in the room.
    I would have to do this on my own. I found my sneakers and a hospital gown in the closet. It took a minute to get the sneakers on, because my feet felt like they belonged to someone else. I scolded my toes as though they were misbehaving infants.
    “Now, now, boys. Keep still. Good little piggies.”
    A part of my brain realized that the anesthetic still had a grip on my good sense, but the