items of value from Mud People’s houses and sold them on the black market. In the past few years his destiny had become intertwined with those of Artemis Fowl and Holly Short, and he had played a key part in their adventures.
Inevitably, this rollercoaster lifestyle had come crashing down around him as the long arm of the LEP closed in.
Before he had been led away to serve the remainder of his sentence, Mulch
Diggums was permitted to say goodbye to his human friend. Artemis had given him two things. One was a note advising him to check the dates on the original search warrant for his cave. The other was a gold medallion, to be returned to Artemis in two years.
Apparently Artemis had wished to resurrect their partnership at that time. Mulch had studied the medallion a thousand times, searching for its secrets, until his constant rubbing wore down the gold plating, to reveal a computer disk beneath. Obviously,
Artemis had recorded a message to himself. A way to return the memories that the LEP had taken from him.
As soon as he had been transported to the Deeps maximum-security prison outside Atlantis, Mulch had put in a request for a counsel call. When his state-appointed attorney had grudgingly turned up, Mulch advised him to check the dates on the search warrant leading to his original arrest. Somehow, amazingly, the dates were wrong.
According to the LEP computer, Julius Root had searched his cave before obtaining a search warrant. This nullified both this and all later arrests. All that remained was a lengthy processing period and one last interview with the arresting officer, and Mulch would be a free dwarf.
Finally, the day had come. Mulch was being shuttled to Police Plaza for his meeting with Julius Root. Fairy law allowed Root one thirty-minute interview to squeeze some kind of confession from Mulch. All the dwarf had to do was stay quiet, and he would be eating vole curry in his favourite dwarf chop house by dinnertime.
Mulch closed his fist round the medallion. He had no doubt who was pulling the strings here. Somehow Artemis had hacked into the LEP computer and changed his records. The Mud Boy was setting him free.
One of the marshals, a slight elf with Atlantean gills, sucked a slobbery breath in through his neck, letting it out through his mouth.
‘Hey, Mulch,’ he wheezed. ‘What are you going to do when your appeal is turned down? Are you gonna crack up like a little girl? Or are you gonna take it real stoic, like a dwarf should?’
Mulch smiled, exposing his unfeasibly large number of teeth. ‘Don’t worry about me, fishboy. I’ll be eating one of your cousins by tonight.’
Generally the sight of Mulch’s tombstone teeth was enough to freeze any smart alec comments, but the marshal was not used to backchat from an inmate.
‘Keep at it with the big mouth, dwarf. I have plenty of rocks for you to chew, back in the Deeps.’
‘In your dreams, fishboy,’ retorted Mulch, enjoying the banter after months of kowtowing.
The officer rose to his feet. ‘It’s Vishby, the name is Vishby.’
‘Yes, fishboy, that’s what I said.’
The second officer, a water sprite with batlike wings folded behind his back, chuckled. ‘Leave him alone, Vishby. Don’t you know who you’re talking to? This here is Mulch Diggums. The most famous thief under the world.’
Mulch smiled, though fame is not a good thing when you’re a thief.
‘This guy has a whole list of genius moves to his credit.’
Mulch’s smile faded as he realized that he was about to be the butt of more jokes.
‘Yeah, so first he steals the Jules Rimet trophy from the humans and tries to sell it to an undercover LEP fairy.’
Vishby sat, rubbing his hands in glee. ‘You don’t say? What a brain! How does it fit inside that itty-bitty head?’
The sprite strutted along the shuttle’s aisle, delivering his lines like an actor. ‘So then he lifts some of the Artemis Fowl gold, and he lies low in Los Angeles. And do you want to know how he lies low?’
Mulch groaned.
‘Tell me,’ wheezed Vishby, his gills unable to suck in air fast enough.
‘He buys hisself a penthouse apartment, and starts building a collection of stolen Academy Awards.’
Vishby laughed until his gills flapped.
Mulch could take it no longer. He shouldn’t have to put up with this, he was virtually a free fairy, for goodness’ sake. ‘Hisself? Hisself? I think you’ve spent a bit too long underwater. The pressure is squashing your brain.’
‘My brain is squashed?’ said the sprite. ‘I’m not the one who spent a couple of centuries in prison. I’m not the one wearing manacles and a mouth ring.’
It was true. Mulch’s criminal career had not exactly been an unqualified success.
He had been caught more often than he’d escaped. The LEP were just too technologically advanced to evade. Maybe it was time to go straight, while he still had his looks.
Mulch shook the manacles that shackled him to a rail in the holding area. ‘I won’t be wearing these for long.’
Vishby opened his mouth to respond, then he paused. A plasma screen was flashing red on a wall panel. Red was urgent. There was an important message coming through. Vishby hooked an earphone over his ear, turning the screen away from Mulch.
As the message was delivered, his face lost every trace of levity.
Several moments later he tossed the headphones on to the console. ‘It looks like you’ll be wearing those chains for a bit longer than you thought.’
Mulch’s jaw strained against the steel mouth ring. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
Vishby scratched a strip of gill-rot on his neck. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, convict, but Commander Root has been murdered.’
Mulch couldn’t have been more shocked if they had connected him to the underworld grid.
‘Murdered? How?’
‘Explosion,’ said Vishby. ‘Another LEP officer is the prime suspect. Captain Holly Short. She’s missing, presumed dead, on the surface, but that hasn’t been confirmed.’
‘I’m not a bit surprised,’ said the water sprite. ‘Females are too temperamental for police work. They couldn’t even handle a simple transport job like this.’
Mulch was in shock. He felt as though his brain had snapped its moorings and was spinning inside his head. Holly murdered Julius? How could that be possible? It wasn’t possible, simple as that. There must be a mistake. And now Holly was missing, presumed dead. How could this be happening?
‘Anyways,’ continued Vishby, ‘we gotta turn this crate round and head back to Atlantis. Obviously your little hearing is being postponed indefinitely, until this entire mess gets sorted out.’
The water sprite slapped Mulch playfully on the cheek. ‘Tough break, dwarf. Maybe they’ll get the red tape untangled in a couple of years.’
Mulch barely felt the slap, though the words penetrated. A couple of years. Could he take a couple of years in the Deeps? Already his soul was crying out for the tunnels.
He needed to feel soft earth between his fingers. His insides needed real roughage to clear them out. And, of course, there was a chance that Holly was still alive and needed help. A friend. He had no option but to escape.
Julius dead. It couldn’t be true.
Mulch mentally leafed through his dwarf abilities to select the best tool for this escape. He had long since forfeited his magic by breaking most of the fairy Book’s commandments, but dwarfs had extraordinary gifts granted them by evolution. Some of these were common knowledge among the People, but dwarfs were a notoriously secretive race who believed that their survival depended on concealing these talents. It was well known that dwarfs excavated tunnels by ingesting the earth through their unhinged jaws, then ejecting the recycled dirt and air through the other end. Most fairies were aware that dwarfs could drink through their pores, and if they stopped drinking for a while then these pores were transformed into mini suction cups. Fewer People knew that
