May Read online

  To Alice, Charlie and Lily

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  PREVIOUSLY …

  1 MAY

  5 MAY

  9 MAY

  14 MAY

  15 MAY

  19 MAY

  20 MAY

  21 MAY

  22 MAY

  30 MAY

  31 MAY

  Copyright

  A cop, who doesn’t realise who I am, comes running down to our high-speed crash site. He takes over holding Lachlan’s head out of the water, while I disappear into the bush. Sumo and Kelvin track me down, but their chase is interrupted by gunshots—the three of us are caught in the crossfire of an army drill!

  Sumo’s taken down by a bullet, but I make it out of there and finally call Boges. He tells me Gabbi’s life support is being switched off—I have one week to get back to the city and do whatever I can to save her life. A quick decision to try and steal a ride from an old lady called Melba Snipe—by jumping into the boot of her car—leads to a surprising encounter.

  Runaway Griff Kirby and I meet and decide to make our way to the city together.

  I find out from Boges that Gabbi’s life support is being turned off early! I rush to the hospital and sneak through to the Intensive Care Unit, just in time to see her. She looks fragile and helpless lying there in a coma, but when I start talking her eyelids begin to flutter—it’s enough of a sign of improvement for the doctors to keep her alive! Rafe tries to stop Mum from hitting the emergency buzzer when she sees me … I’m shattered to witness the fear in my mum’s face. She still thinks I’m a monster.

  I discover a little boathouse on the riverbank at Greenaway Park—a perfect new hideout.

  I’m desperate to see Boges, but he’s paranoid about being followed. I talk him through the Ormond Riddle over the phone.

  I see my double coming out of the local high school.

  Rafe and I run into each other at the cenotaph. He quickly pulls out his phone, so I take off. He shouts after me, bringing unwanted attention—people begin recognising me! Fearing I’ll be caught, I seek refuge at Repro’s.

  Boges and Winter finally come to see me at the boathouse. I show them the Riddle, but before long an argument breaks out and Winter leaves. Sligo’s thugs turn up, forcing us both to flee. I go after Winter and find her at the cenotaph. She tells me Kelvin has tipped off Sligo on my location. Where’s he getting that information from? When I return to the boathouse, I find it’s been trashed and the stuff from my backpack’s missing. Someone grabs me from behind and I feel a piercing pain in my neck. Everything blacks out.

  I wake up in Leechwood Lodge Asylum! Someone’s locked me up in the nuthouse, and stripped me of my identity! I’ve lost everything. How am I going to get out?!

  245 days to go …

  The sound of screaming woke me up with a violent jolt. My hazy nightmare with the white toy dog and the crying baby had blended in with the very real, desperate cries of the people in this place. My dazed confusion lasted only a second before I accepted the equally horrible reality: that I’d been kidnapped and locked up in Leechwood Lodge, a psychiatric institution, inhabited by homicidal maniacs, the mentally insane—and now me.

  Just days ago I was hiding out in the quiet little boathouse on the water, slowly making progress and actually getting somewhere, and now I was in this high-security psych ward, under a false identity, and everything was lost.

  There was no point in pounding on the door or joining in with the screaming out for help—the orderlies had made that very clear.

  I flopped back on the yellowing pillow. Leechwood was the perfect name for this place: it seemed to suck the life out of you. My mood was as heavy as lead as I thought about what had happened to me in the last few days.

  Vulkan Sligo had stolen my dad’s drawings and the copy of the Ormond Riddle—thanks to the treacherous Winter Frey, who must have tipped him off about my Greenaway Park boathouse hideout. Or had she? I’d been so angry with her earlier, but I was no longer sure why. She had seemed pretty determined to protect me from the black Subaru when it showed up at Memorial Park, to stop whoever was in it from coming for me. She put herself on the line to distract them and get them off my trail … but then someone trashed the boathouse and grabbed me anyway.

  A sick taste filled my mouth as I thought of all the things I’d worked so hard to discover and decipher that were now gone. The past four months of hell had all been for nothing! Everything I’d uncovered, while having to live on the streets and be constantly on the run, had been served on a silver platter to Vulkan Sligo or Oriana de la Force, or whoever was responsible for trapping me in this place. Dad’s drawings and the Ormond Riddle were gone. I had done all that work only to help those thieves!

  Locked in here I was useless—I couldn’t do anything about it. I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. Everything hurt. My neck ached from the tranquilliser dart, which seemed to have also done something to flare up the dull pain in my right shoulder again. At least I wasn’t in the straitjacket anymore—one of the orderlies removed it during the night when I had to go to the bathroom, warning me that if I wasn’t on my best behaviour, it would go right back on again.

  I didn’t want to be here—I didn’t want to be who I was—it was all too hard. I wished I could just go home and be with Mum and Gabbi, so we could learn to be a family again. We needed a chance to get used to the idea of Dad being gone. Why did it have to be like this?

  The screams were suddenly taken over by an ominous silence. I sat up, my feet hanging down, skimming the cold floor. I was miserable and it wasn’t just being locked up in this place that was doing it. I’d had a fight with Boges, my best friend, and I couldn’t blame him if he just gave up on me. I had no idea about Winter. I felt I didn’t have a friend in the world. Mum thought I was nuts and Uncle Rafe was too caught up worrying about the estate and the practical side of things. The only glimmer of hope right now was Gabbi. I knew she’d be behind me. Instinctively, my fingers went to twist the Celtic ring she’d given me, but of course it was no longer there. I’d slipped it on her finger at the hospital. The thought of her eyelids flickering and her gradual recovery was the only good thing that had come out of the last four months.

  And now this.

  How was I going to get out?

  The screaming started up again, closer than before.

  ‘I’ll kill him!’ a man’s voice shrieked. ‘He’s an impostor! A replacement! I’ll kill him! Where is he? Where is the real Dr Snudgeglasser?’

  Footsteps pounded down the corridor. Heavy doors opened and closed with urgency. I had the sense that the staff at the asylum were racing around the place trying to control someone.

  The voice of whoever wanted to kill Dr Snudgeglasser was muffled, then fell silent once more.

  Dr Snudgeglasser’s name was on my chart as being my psychiatrist. Who was he? I wondered, and what was all that about his replacement? What kind of madman was it out there who wanted to kill him?

  In the stillness that followed the outburst, a scratch at the window made me turn around. A tiny, brown bird was sitting on the window sill and, as I watched, it flew up into the eaves and disappeared from view. Immediately, I thought of Winter’s small bird tattoo on her wrist, and the ‘Little Bird’ inscription on the back of her locket. Frustration rose up my spine. I’d been so close to finally making some sense out of everything and now I was a prisoner in this place, with no prospect of escape. I was trapped. Hopeless. Useless.

  I turned my attention to the notes on the chart at the bottom of my bed. According to these, I was extremely dangerous. I didn’t know what ‘Level 5 Restraints’ were, but I didn’t like the sound of them.

  An overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia c
ame over me and I ran to the door. Shivering in the hospital pyjamas, I grabbed the handle and twisted it with both hands—but of course it was locked and wouldn’t budge. I shuffled away to the other side of the dingy, high-ceilinged room, near the window, and kicked the wall in frustration.

  I stared back at the door. Anger surged through my body and I took a running jump at it, throwing my body against it. I hit it hard and fell back onto the floor like a rag doll. After a few seconds I crawled back up to my feet and started banging.

  But no-one came. Just like that orderly had said: you can scream all you like—nobody cares. After I’d exhausted myself, I stopped. Straitjacket, I remembered.

  Tired and cold, I pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around me. I needed to clear my head, and shake off the building anger. This sort of mindless fury was not helpful. I remembered Repro’s warning about irrational people making fatal errors. I thought of him in his secret lair behind the filing cabinets—he’d made a secure little home for himself and I envied him.

  I shuffled to the window once more and peered up through the glass beyond the bars. That’s when I noticed a tiny mud nest attached to the eaves. I could just make out the shapes of baby birds with their beaks wide open as the mother bird arrived and perched on the edge of the nest.

  Crazy as it sounds, I even resented those little birds. They had a home—they were safe.

  I looked down into the dim garden, deserted now at this early hour, desolate and forbidding in the grey light. Standing by the window, I felt the full force of my loss. I’d even been deprived of stuff like my phone, my clothes, the guardian angel pin that Repro had given me. I didn’t have the little Celtic ring anymore, but at least that was with Gab.

  On top of all that, my identity had been stripped from me. The chart said I was supposed to be ‘Ben Galloway’.

  The muffled chirping of the little birds took my attention again. Diamond-shaped beaks greedily gaped wide, as each one tried to push the others away in an effort to get to their mother’s food first.

  The sight of the littlest one barging in from the back of the nest, shoving past his much bigger brothers suddenly changed my mood and I switched my way of thinking. He was the smallest, but his determination took him to the front.

  Right now I didn’t have a plan—I didn’t have a clue how I was going to get out—but I owed it to my family not to crash into despair. I was going to fight. I sure wasn’t going to make it easy for my enemies by giving up. From now on, I promised myself, I’d be always on the lookout for a gap in security.

  I threw myself back on the bed. The lump on the back of my shoulder seemed to be getting bigger and was quite painful. But I had other things to worry about.

  Think, Cal, think.

  I desperately needed a plan.

  I jumped at the sound of the door being opened. Someone in hospital greens shoved a tray through the door.

  I went over to inspect breakfast—a blob of yellow and white that was supposed to be scrambled eggs, two leathery slices of toast and a cup of something like coffee. It all looked worse than army rations, but it was food, and I was starving. I grabbed the plastic spoon and tucked in.

  The door to my room flew open and Musclehead, the big psych nurse—shaven head, a silver-lined hole in his earlobe—strode into my room.

  ‘OK, son,’ he said, ‘put your clothes on. Dr Snudgeglasser will see you now.’

  The nurse threw my clothes at me and waited while I pulled them on.

  It felt really good to be wearing my own clothes again, and I was relieved they hadn’t thrown them in an incinerator. Putting on my jeans, T-shirt, hoodie and sneakers—even without the shoe laces—made me feel more human, more myself.

  So, I thought, I’m going to find out who Dr Snudgeglasser is. Maybe this doctor would be able to help me—if I could just convince him that I wasn’t Ben Galloway.

  Musclehead kept a firm grip on my arm while he led me downstairs and along a corridor of doors that were the same as the one on my room—heavy and bolted. All the time my eyes were scanning, looking for a chance to escape. At the end of the corridor were glass double doors, with people coming in and out. I knew if I got a chance I’d bust through those doors and be on my way to freedom.

  We stopped in front of a door that stood out from the others. It was wooden and unnumbered, and didn’t have the thick you’re-never-getting-out-of-here bolt locking it. Musclehead knocked and then pushed me through, closing the door once more behind me.

  I looked around. I was in a cosy, sun-filled office with cream-coloured walls, tall with bulging bookshelves, and a big desk near a wide window. Framed qualifications hung in the spaces that were not covered by shelving. I noticed that there were papers on the desk weighed down by a small brass moulding of a brain.

  On my side of the desk was a small, straight-backed chair, while behind it, and turned away from me on an elaborate leather armchair, was a broad-shouldered figure.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  The figure swung round—a man in a tweed sports jacket, with bushy eyebrows, black-rimmed spectacles and a stern expression in his dark eyes.

  So this was the doctor that one of the other patients had been threatening this morning. I stood in front of him, feeling as if I’d been called to the principal’s office.

  ‘I’m Dr Snudgeglasser,’ he said. ‘Please sit down.’

  He gestured to the chair in front of me, before picking up the brain paperweight and leaning back in his armchair. I sat down and checked out the row of funny little spiky cactus plants on his desk.

  There was a silence until Dr Snudgeglasser put down the brain he’d been toying with and looked over the tops of his glasses at me.

  ‘You know why we’re here.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t,’ I said.

  He picked the brain up once more and rolled it around in his hand.

  ‘I’ve been kidnapped,’ I said. ‘Someone stuck a tranquillising dart in my neck and the next thing I know I’m here. Locked in a cell.’

  Dr Snudgeglasser wrote something down before looking up again. ‘The patients’ quarters are certainly not cells,’ he said. ‘That’s a very dramatic narrative, Benjamin.’

  Benjamin. This stranger’s name made me feel really uneasy, but I ignored it. ‘Dramatic or not, it’s what happened.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, in a way that sounded like he didn’t see at all.

  I watched him twist the brain in his fingers. I gripped the arms of the chair that I sat on, trying to stay cool. It didn’t seem like there was any hope of escaping Dr Snudgeglasser’s room. His window wasn’t covered by bars, but it was sealed the whole way around. He had a button on his desk, too, which I’m sure meant he could call for help or assistance when faced with a particularly difficult patient.

  Dr Snudgeglasser sighed.

  ‘Ben,’ he started.

  ‘My name is not Ben.’

  He ignored my interruption.

  ‘Ben, I’m a psychiatrist. You have already been assessed. I have all your details, and I’m here to help you. We both need to be honest with each other. I can’t do my job, and help you, unless you admit to me who you really are. Mr Sligo wants you to be helped, but I can’t work with someone in denial.’

  Sligo. I gritted my teeth, trying to hide my fury.

  ‘I need to relate to the real you,’ Snudgeglasser continued, ‘otherwise I’m just joining you in your delusion. Do you understand?’

  I didn’t, but I thought it better not to say so.

  ‘Maybe you should read Mr Sligo’s letter. It was given to me when you were admitted here two days ago. It might help you come to terms with your position.’

  The doctor tilted his head like he was trying to read me. He handed over the letter.

  I passed the letter back to him. My mind was going into overdrive. Why would Sligo go to all the trouble and expense of hijacking me and locking me up here to undergo expensive psychiatric treatment? Someone like Sligo doesn’t do anyt
hing without a reason—a reason that brings big benefit to him. If he already had Dad’s drawings, the text of the Ormond Riddle, the transparency with the two names and all my other papers, there’d be no reason to put this sort of pressure on me. Why not just get rid of me? It made no sense … It only made sense if …

  If Sligo didn’t have the drawings or the Riddle!

  He was clearly behind my abduction, but he didn’t have any of my stuff!

  My feeling of elation was short lived. If he didn’t, then who did? Maybe Oriana de la Force’s thugs had swooped on the boathouse and taken my things. Sligo, not knowing that the other gang already had the goods, must have sent his gorillas after me and was holding me here at Leechwood until I handed the drawings and the Riddle over to him, or revealed where they were.

  ‘What do you have to say about the matters raised in Mr Sligo’s letter, Ben?’ Dr Snudgeglasser’s voice interrupted.

  I wasn’t sure what I should say. I hesitated. If I told the truth about not knowing where the documents were, he probably wouldn’t believe me. And if he did believe me, I would become useless … and what would Sligo do with me then?

  Dr Snudgeglasser held the metal brain in his fist and tapped it on the desk, impatiently.

  ‘Sligo has made this whole thing up because he wants to get hold of something that my father gave me. Something that doesn’t belong to him and is none of his business. He has never been in partnership with my father,’ I snapped.

  I was going to add that Sligo had already tried to kill me, but I decided to be quiet about this for the time being. Dr Snudgeglasser might just see that accusation as another ‘dramatic narrative’ and another display of my craziness.