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and it’s bin night, remember?’
    ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it when I’ve finished talking to Jenni.’
    ‘Okay. Well, I’m going to bed now, so don’t forget.’
    The thing is, I never forget. In my family, chores are very important. (At least, they are when they’re my chores.) But there he was, practically accusing me of forgetting!
    ‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Jenni. ‘Just my dad being annoying.’
    ‘I heard that!’ Dad called. ‘Do the bins!’

CHAPTER 7
    I woke up to a loud meeping sound, right outside my window. For a moment I couldn’t figure out what it was. A car alarm, perhaps, or a really annoying bird? Maybe something in a dream? But then I heard the growl of a truck’s engine, and in an instant I was completely awake.
    ‘Oh, no! The bins!’
    I didn’t even stop to grab my dressing gown – I just ran. I went down the steps three at a time, bounded through the kitchen without even stopping to see if the inside bin needed emptying, burst through the back door, ran around the end of the house and grabbed the big green bin, making sure I didn’t trip over the worm farm that we keep out there. (In case you don’t know what a worm farm is, you should just look it up on the internet. It’s not really what it sounds like.) The growling sound was coming over the fence, taunting me as I wrestled with the latch on the gate. Then I was through, charging down the driveway with the bin getting the speed-wobbles behind me. I reached the bottom of the driveway, parked the bin in position, and looked up, panting like I’d just run a cross-country race.
    The garbage truck was two doors along. The only problem was, it had already been down to the end of our cul-de-sac, turned around, passed our place and was now driving away. And since there are only display houses at that end of the street, it wasn’t even slowing down.
    ‘Argh!’ I said, panting hard. I might have said a few other words too, but mainly it was ‘Argh!’
    For a couple of seconds I thought about running after the truck, but then I got sensible and did the only other thing I could do – I stamped my feet and said a few more of those other words.
    ‘That’s annoying.’ Miss Huntley was standing by her letterbox, checking inside. She had a basket looped over her arm. ‘I really hate forgetting that it’s bin night.’
    ‘It’s one of my only jobs and I missed it,’ I said. ‘Dad’s going to kill me.’
    ‘Oh, I seriously doubt that. We haven’t had a murder in this street for at least three or four years now.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh yes, there’s been none at all. Well, none that I know of.’
    ‘No, I mean, was there a murder in this street three years ago?’
    ‘Three or four years ago.’
    ‘Was there, though?’
    She shrugged, closed the lid of the letterbox, and crossed the street (after checking both ways, of course). ‘Was there a murder? Who knows? All these houses, unoccupied for so long, or so it seemed, all those windows, all those garages, so many houses . . . So many houses . . .’
    I swallowed hard. The cold morning breeze drifted around the neck of my pyjamas. ‘Are you kidding about the murders?’ I asked.
    She leaned close. ‘ Totally kidding,’ she whispered, before straightening up. ‘Now, we need to make sure that the first Henry Court murder doesn’t take place later this morning, when your father discovers that you were derelict in your duty as the bin-putter-outer. So I have a proposal. Would you like to hear it?’
    I nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
    She jutted her chin in the direction of her bin. ‘That’s empty, as of about five minutes ago. Yours, however, is still full. How do you feel about a swapsy?’
    ‘A swapsy? You mean the bins?’
    ‘Why not? Neither of them has any distinctive identifying marks, and I’m glad to see that your parents aren’t those obsessive, possessive types who feel the need to mark their council-supplied bins with their name and street