Extraordinary Losers 2 (6 page)

We knew what we had to do. We were elated that we had “won” the basketball match but now our minds were burning with another kind of excitement and purpose. The severity of the situation was something we couldn't let go of. On top of that, Clandestino was now a suspect.

First graffiti, then fire, what next?

To make sure we were less conspicious, we decided to leave the crowd one by one. Mundi dislodged himself calmly from the crowded bus-stop. A few minutes later, it was Janice's turn. She tiptoed stealthily up to Clandestino behind the advertisement board and whispered into his ear. The both of them started towards the HDB apartments across the street.

Then it was my turn. I inched my way out from the crowd of school children, making sure no one saw me.

We all made our way to Mundi's home, which was a stone's throw away from our school. When I arrived, Janice and Clandestino were already waiting for me downstairs. We were all fired up. This mission was more interesting than finding cheat suspects in school. Furthermore, we had never been to Mundi's house before!

Knock. Knock. Knock! Clandestino banged on a green door that was poorly finished. He left black palm prints on the door. The paint had been scraped off and the gate was rusty. There were stickers of numbers pasted freely on the door, possibly by Mundi. He had once mentioned that his parents had grabbed the first flat they had found as they wanted a home near Brightstar Primary, even though it was quite crummy.

Finally, the door creaked open and we could see two large black pupils staring at us through the gap in the door. It covered his white irises completely.

“Mundi, it's us!!” Impatience tugged at Janice.

“Password?” Mundi asked. “Anyone following you?”

“Password?” I said. “How are we supposed to know?”

“Wait, wait… I know. Silhouette.” Clandestino rattled off the biggest word he knew.

“Clever, that's right.” Mundi was pleased. He opened the door a little wider and scanned the corridor with vigilant eyes. “Make sure no one is following you, no?”

Janice couldn't wait any longer and she barged into the house, almost throwing Mundi off balance. It was a small three-room flat. The walls were stained with handprints and colour pencil marks that were mostly advanced algebraic equations.

“Whoa, Mundi, you know these equations?” Janice gasped.

“Well, maybe,” he shrugged. There was a distinct smell of fish curry that wafted from the kitchen. A lady with her hair up in a bun and wearing a bright blue sari emerged from the kitchen. She looked pristine, beautifully adorned. Every single hair was in place. She looked like a Miss India to me! Her beauty did not match the poorly-furnished house.

She looked at us, smiled and then said, “No nonsense ah, Mundi. You know better.”

“Yes, Mama,” came the reply. She was Mundi's mother! Then she pointed to a room where we could hold our secret meeting. Mundi pulled Clandestino and me by the wrist and signalled to Janice to follow.

When Mundi shut the door, Clandestino knelt down and took something from his bag gingerly.

“You see this?” he asked, unwrapping the object in his hand.

“Yup, it's a tin can,” Janice responded.

“Not just ANY tin can,” Clandestino said. “A Coke can! Our piece of evidence.”

“This was found at the scene of the fire,” he added, holding the can up with a handkerchief like a prize. “Remember, when I told you guys to wait? I had to go in and retrieve this because I knew that was something odd. Why would a can of Coke be in a classroom, in the middle of the floor. It must have something to do with the culprit.”

He tilted the can towards us. “Here, smell this.”

I sniffed, then Janice and finally Mundi. I sniffed again just to be sure. We all looked up in horror.

“Kerosene?” Janice gasped. “This is getting quite addictive.” She wanted to smell it again.

“Don't be silly, Janice,” I said. “It will kill you.”

So that was what I had heard during the match. The “splish splash” must have come from THIS can and others. Someone must have poured kerosene into this can or cans like this to splash all around the classroom.

At that moment, I was sure he had done the wrong thing. “Clan, you have just been suspected of being one of the arsonists, and now you dare to be found with the evidence? A can from the site? Oh my goodness.”

Janice thought it was so funny, she began to laugh. “Clan! Clan!”

Clandestino shook his head in protest. “I have brains too, you know. I know how NOT to leave my fingerprints everywhere. Hence the handkerchief, hello?”

“Yes, that's smart, no?” Mundi agreed. “If there are any fingerprints, it wouldn't be Clan's. It would be the arsonist's!” He led us to a brown cupboard and opened it swiftly.

Whoof! A big cloud of powder overwhelmed us.

“Ah choo!” went Clandestino. The powder had irritated his nose so much that it opened the mucus floodgate.

“Mundi, you know my nose is so sensitive.” He sniffled.

His nose was indeed getting red and mucus trickled down freely.

“Ah choo!” He swiped his red and wet nose again.

“I like it,” Janice added. “I can smell strawberry, lavender, mint and plain old talcum powder… so fresh and… light and…”

“Okay… okay, Janice. Guys, you know how to dust for fingerprints, no?” Mundi pushed back his glasses in place.

“No, sadly we don't,” I said.

Janice stood with one hand on her waist. “Wait, do I know? Let me think.”

Mundi scanned the different bottles of powder with his fingers. He was a Powder King. No one knew more about powders than Mundi. He had all kinds of powder. Fruit-scented powder, scentless powder, prickly heat powder and even his mom's compact powder!

“Why do you have a collection of powder, Mundi?” Janice asked.

“For different occasions. The fruit-scented one is for school. That's expensive, no? So I can smell nice.” He smiled sheepishly. “The compact powder is when I have a pimple or two, which doesn't happen often, no? The prickly heat one is when I feel itchy, and the scentless one is when I visit my relatives. When I don't smell good, they won't squeeze me and hug me. No?”

“Clever,” Janice remarked.

Remembering something very important, Janice suddenly bolted up from the floor and toddled to her bag.

“Here everyone, take one.” She took out an oily paper bag filled with an assortment of donuts. Because they had all been squashed and melted from the heat of the day, the flavours couldn't really be identified. But I was so hungry from the physical exertion of the match and the excitement of the fire that I couldn't resist.

“Heh, thanks, Janice,” I said sheepishly.

“Yeah, go ahead!” She stretched over to pass the bag of donuts to me. I stuck my hand into the “lucky dip”, felt around for a while before emerging with a deflated donut dipped in all kinds of colours – brown, pink and even a hint of green and purple! Oh well! I thought. The colours in the cream must have mixed to get green and purple!

“See, they are great, right?” Janice sputtered, half munching on her own colourful donut.

“Yeah, they are! Thanks!” I chomped. They were really great! I couldn't believe I was enjoying a melted, squishy and sticky greenish-purple donut!

When Clandestino and Mundi noticed my delight, they too rushed to the bag. Clandestino, with his quick fingers, managed to grab two donuts with one hand.

“Hope you don't mind, Janice, I did so much running today,” he explained.

Janice was more than happy to share her donuts and said with a beam, “Sure!”

Mundi was a little more careful. He looked into the bag, analysed its contents before carefully extracting a well-shaped donut. It was still round and in good shape. (A mathematician knows a round shape when he sees one.)

Each with a donut in one hand, all of us studied the can on the table.

“There are definitely prints on there!” Mundi said. “All we need is my mom's make-up brush. Hold on!” Mundi scampered into his mother's room and came out with a brush in his hand. He studied Clandestino carefully. With one finger, he carefully swiped off black residue from Clandestino's shirt and brought the specimen close to his nose. He sniffed it a few times, thought for a while and then cleared his throat in satisfaction.

“Definitely soot,” he concluded. “Perfect!”

We all looked at each other with incredulous looks on our faces. Mad mathematician and scientist at work.

“What we have to do is this,” he said. He grabbed muruku on them. He flicked them onto the floor. Then he ran to his powder collection and grabbed the bottle of scentless powder. He sprinkled some white scentless powder into the dish.

“Okay, watch this.” He scanned Clandestino from head to toe. Then he scraped some soot off Clandestino's shirt with his finger and sprinkled it over the white powder. He did this a few times till Clandestino was almost clean and the amount of soot collected was as much as the plain white powder on the dish!