November Read online

  ‘Man, it’s quite a story. How about I meet you on the beach later—behind the old Seagull Café—and tell you all about it then?’

  The rows of breakers, dim white moving lines rolling towards the sand, were lit by the tall lamp posts along the beachfront.

  Boges and I were hidden in the shadows behind the closed and deserted café. Only a few people were strolling along the beach as Boges proceeded to describe to me how he and Winter had evaded the massive police search.

  ‘We were totally snookered. There was no way either of us was going to follow your lead and leap across buildings, but the cops were swarming up the stairs. We rushed back into the flat and started gathering up the drawings, notes—anything potentially incriminating—then Winter grabbed onto my hand and wrenched me back outside. I was like, “What are you doing? You’re leading us to them!” and she was like, “Stop talking and follow me!”. Then she dragged me out the back to this metal box thing, kicked the lid off with her boots, then began lowering herself into it.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It was an old laundry chute! She stopped for a second to tell me that I’d better jump in after her if I wanted to get away, then she let go of the sides and disappeared. She was gone in a flash! I heard a kind of whooshing noise and then a bit of an echoing thud a few seconds later!’

  I tried imagining the scene.

  ‘Did you do it? Did you follow her? How far was the drop?’

  ‘It must have been over six floors! I didn’t want to do it, but by this time,’ Boges continued, ‘those big mean guys with helmets and riot sticks were pounding onto the roof. I didn’t have any choice. I heaved myself up, sucked in my stomach, and jumped in just like Winter had.’

  Boges paused, shaking his head in disbelief. He put his hand gingerly on the left side of his forehead where I could see a bruise.

  ‘Dude, what a ride! I was free-falling for ages. I banged my head, I scraped my sides and tumbled out onto this pile of dusty, filthy old rags that might have been clothes when Captain Cook was a kid. Then when I looked up, I could see Winter a couple of metres away. She was sprawled on the floor, picking leaves and spider webs out of her hair, grinning at me like a hyena.’

  ‘One of history’s great escapes,’ I said.

  ‘That was only the beginning. We weren’t out of trouble yet,’ he said, eyes as wide as saucers, making me glad I already knew the story had a happy ending. ‘So there we were in this black hole in the basement of the building, where no foot has stepped for about half a century, only to find that the door’s locked. It wouldn’t budge.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried the cops were going to storm in and find you?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘What about Winter? If the cops found her, while searching for me, and decided to question her, Sligo would find out she’d been helping me. He’d want to kill her.’

  ‘I know, but Winter reckoned the entrance to the basement was completely overgrown with weeds. The door was outside the building, on the ground near the bins. It’s one of those trapdoor types. You know that spot?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, picturing the grassy area he was talking about. ‘I think so.’

  ‘She was sure they wouldn’t know the basement existed. We waited about an hour or so for the heat to die down outside before we started kicking up at the basement door, trying to dislodge it from its hinges. It wouldn’t move. I almost started shouting for help, before Winter pounced on me and covered my mouth to stop me. So she wanders off into the darkness and I’m standing there thinking it’s gonna be death by starvation, when I realise Winter’s climbing up on an upturned rubbish bin, and pulling herself back into the laundry chute!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She calls out to me, “Don’t just stand there staring, come and give me a boost!”.’

  ‘That girl thinks she can do anything,’ I said, shaking my head, thinking of Winter and her determination to do even the most impossible things. ‘How long did she last up there?’

  ‘Dude,’ said Boges, before pausing. ‘It took her a while, but she made it.’

  ‘She made it? But you said the drop was about six floors! How could she have climbed back up? It was a laundry chute—she wouldn’t have had anything to grab onto!’

  ‘I don’t know, but that chick is amazing. Seriously. I helped her up and she just kinda dug her boots and her back into the walls of the chute, and pushed herself up, centimetre by centimetre. A few times she slipped a bit and lost some ground, but before I knew it the tunnel was clear and she was standing at the top and shouting down to me, telling me to wait for her by the door.’

  ‘Unreal,’ I said, in awe again of Winter. She’d helped us out too many times to count. Risked her safety and her life. I owed her. Big time.

  ‘So did she get the door open?’

  ‘Yep, that took a while too, but she cleared the grass and cut the lock off with bolt cutters she found in the gardener’s shed. It felt good to be back on ground level.’

  The air was still warm and smelled of salt and the sea, reminding me of the night I’d spent struggling on the upturned tinny, fighting off the sharks way back in January. In spite of everything that had happened, all our efforts, the way we’d solved most of the drawings, we were still pretty clueless.

  ‘It’s November,’ I said to Boges. ‘The Ormond Singularity runs out next month. We don’t even have the Riddle or the Jewel.’ I sat down on the stone steps leading onto the beach. ‘We have to get to Ireland somehow, and talk to the Keeper of Rare Books. Copies and photos will have to do.’

  ‘He told you he had to see the original Ormond Riddle manuscript.’

  ‘Boges, we don’t even know who has it. Even Rathbone doesn’t know.’ I leaned against the railing. ‘The days are running out. We just have to plan our trip to Ireland and hope we luck onto the Jewel and the Riddle before it’s time to leave. I still have a gold stash, remember. Somehow I’ll use it to get a passport.’

  We sat together in gloomy silence until Boges whacked me on the knee, getting to his feet. ‘I have things to do at home. Come on, let’s get going. The home of your ancestors awaits you.’

  ‘My ancestors?’

  Boges jumped around like a gorilla, grunting and beating his chest.

  ‘You’re talking about the treehouse, right?’

  ‘Correct. I made a few adjustments to it this morning, in preparation for your visit. Follow me.’

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Boges asked, making himself comfortable on the treehouse bench. We’d climbed up the new rope he’d attached to the rear of the tree, and snuck in through the window in the back. Here, hidden among the dense foliage, far away from Luke Lovett’s house, the treehouse snuggled secretly, like a forgotten toy that had been left on the lawn so long that the grass had grown right over it. I cautiously flashed my torch around.

  Five years ago, I’d been able to stand up. Now, I had to bend down slightly to fit inside.

  ‘Look,’ said Boges, ‘even the carpet squares are still here. And the curtains. Not too shabby, either.’ He straightened some of the carpet on the uneven timber floor with his foot as he spoke. ‘And I added these,’ he said, pulling a couple of red cushions out from behind him on the bench. ‘There’s some food in that box, too.’

  I opened the lid on the old wooden toy box in the corner. Inside were some cans of tuna, baked beans, nuts, chips and a loaf of bread.

  ‘You should be pretty comfortable here for a while, at least until something better becomes available. There’s plenty of bushy cover and there’s a tap just a few metres away that looks pretty unused. The only major downside is that there’s no power source for charging your phone in here, but I checked out the shed—it’s up closer to the house—and found a power point. You could probably sneak up there and use it at night, when you really need to.’

  ‘Yeah, this is cool,’ I said, pushing my backpack into the toy box with the food. ‘It doesn’t have a home theatre, but it’ll do. Thanks Boges.�
��

  My friend laughed before getting up to leave. ‘I’d better get going—big day at school tomorrow. Maybe you should give Nelson Sharkey a call. See if he can help you out with a passport.’

  56 days to go …

  I met the ex-detective at the gym. I noticed how his watchful eyes constantly scanned the street outside as he listened to what I had to say.

  ‘Cal, of course it’s do-able,’ Sharkey said, ‘but do you have any idea how much a false passport costs?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re not cheap,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you could tell me and help me arrange one.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Ireland,’ I said.

  ‘Ireland? You’re going to Ireland?’ Sharkey looked surprised.

  ‘Where else would I want to go?’ I asked. ‘Disneyland?’

  ‘No, it’s just a coincidence,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’m about to head off there myself, to a family reunion. My family’s Irish, and all the Sharkeys who originated from this place called Roscommon, in Ireland, are meeting up there over Christmas for a twenty-five-year reunion. We’re expecting nearly a thousand people to descend on the place, from all over the world—America, England, Australia.’ His face became serious. ‘I guess you want to go to Ireland to find out more about your dad’s final activities?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘Probably a good idea,’ he said. ‘It will be a heck of a struggle to get you out of the country, but there’s not much else you can do here right now. The answers you’ve been looking for—if they exist—will most likely be found there. In my opinion.’

  Slowly I took in what Sharkey was saying. I was lucky to have someone like him to give me advice.

  ‘So you’ll go to Ireland, you’ll track down this mysterious Ormond Singularity thing, you’ll claim the reward—or whatever it is—and then you can come back and clear your name. Is that your plan?’

  ‘That’s the plan. I bet you were a great detective in your day,’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever want to get back into it?’

  Nelson grunted and brushed the idea away with a flick of his hands. ‘Too corrupt,’ he said, bitterly.

  For a moment I wished things were different for him. The way he’d contacted me, offering me his help, made it obvious he still wanted to be working for justice. Even if it was in an unofficial way. I could tell he really missed the job, but he refused to admit it. I recalled how he’d told me about his former boss betraying him and setting him up, which led to the loss of his badge. He’d also mentioned losing touch with his kids because of it. Maybe he reached out to me because he had a kid of his own that was my age. A kid he couldn’t talk to.

  I was too afraid to ask him about his family. ‘Will you help me get a fake passport?’ I asked him, instead.

  ‘Where do you think we’re going to get the money from?’ He leaned towards me. ‘I told you, I don’t have a lot of money. Definitely not that kind of money. And I can’t imagine you have hundreds of dollars in your pockets.’

  I didn’t have hundreds of dollars in my pockets, but I had something just as good. ‘If money wasn’t a problem, would you be able to arrange the passport for me?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I could. Anything’s possible in this city. All you need is the right connections and the right amount of money.’ He leaned back in his seat and fiddled with the lid of his drink bottle.

  ‘If I get the money—’ I started to say.

  ‘How are you going to do that, Cal?’ he said sternly, in a way that my dad would’ve spoken to me if I’d just suggested something he thought was going to put me in danger. ‘I think a trip to Ireland would be good, but not if you have to do something crazy to get the money for it.’

  ‘I’m not about to go and hold up a bank,’ I said with a half-smirk. ‘There’s no need, when I already have this,’ I said, reaching into my pocket for the pouch of remaining gold nuggets.

  Nelson Sharkey whistled when he took the pouch from me and peered inside at the gleaming gold. ‘Where the heck did you get this?’

  ‘Remember how I told you about the two old Dingo Bones Valley prospectors? One of them tried to tie me up—wanted to hand me over to the cops for the reward money—and in the struggle I pocketed some of his bounty … kinda like a souvenir.’

  ‘Right, a souvenir,’ said Sharkey, tipping some of the gold into his palm.

  ‘Do you think you could trade it in for me?’ I pictured the suspicious gold trader who’d given me cash for the first half of my stash. I couldn’t risk trying to cash it in with him again. ‘That should be enough to cover the passport, right?’

  ‘I don’t know a great deal about gold value, but I’m pretty certain you have it covered.’

  ‘Cool. By the way, do the names Deep Water, Double Trouble and the Little Prince mean anything to you?’ I asked, hoping that the ex-detective might recognise the criminal nicknames.

  Nelson Sharkey frowned, then shook his head. ‘No. Where’d you hear them?’

  ‘I saw them listed with the names of some other crims,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you’d have heard of them.’

  ‘No, not familiar, I’m afraid.’

  53 days to go …

  Three days up a tree later, I was relieved when Sharkey called me with some news.

  ‘I scored one thousand for the gold,’ he said. ‘I tried to get more but that was the best I could do.’

  ‘Thanks Sharkey. That’s heaps better than what I got for the other half.’

  ‘Happy to help. Now listen, I’m tracking down a very good forger I know, who owes me a favour or two. But you’ll need at least another four grand. He doesn’t work for anything under five.’

  ‘Four grand!’ I nearly choked as the impossible words came out of my mouth. ‘He wants another four grand? I need to have enough cash for flights, too. How am I supposed to make all this happen?’

  ‘Cal, I don’t have all the solutions. Think about it and get back to me,’ he said before hanging up.

  After the Lesley Street raid that almost trapped me, there was no way I was going to use Winter’s flat as a meeting place. I called my friends and asked them to meet me at the top of the clock tower instead. I liked this place as a rendezvous point, with its unbeatable aerial view of the city, although I knew I’d be in big trouble if I found a SWAT team ascending the stairs—there weren’t any rooftops this high I could jump to as an escape.

  ‘Boges,’ I said, as soon as he arrived, breathless from running up the stairs. ‘I have a big problem. Sharkey knows a really good forger—’ I began.

  ‘That’s not a problem, that’s a good thing,’ he said.

  ‘Wait until you hear his price,’ I continued. ‘Five grand.’

  Boges’s hands flew to his head. The nervous scratching began.

  ‘Sharkey scored one thousand for the leftover gold I had, and I have one hundred and thirty-seven dollars, fifty-five cents in my pocket.’

  ‘That leaves you three thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two bucks short,’ said Boges. ‘And forty-five cents. Here, I think I can chip in the forty-five cents,’ he said, digging into his pocket. He handed me a fifty cent piece. ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘Boges,’ I said, ‘this is serious.’

  We looked up as Winter approached us from the stairs. The wind was whipping her dark hair across her face, and big sunglasses hid her eyes. Lately she always seemed to be wearing jeans and T-shirts, instead of the crazy skirts and shawls I first saw her in. Today she wore dark jeans, white sneakers and a red and white striped shirt, reminding me of a peppermint candy cane.

  ‘My passport’s sorted,’ she said, with a smile.

  ‘Mine, too,’ said Boges.

  ‘I’m excited,’ she said, nudging Boges and I with her shoulders. ‘So when are we going to Ireland?’

  Then she saw my face.

  ‘Problem?’ she asked.

  ‘No passport. No Ireland.’

  ‘You have to get one. You can�
��t give up like that.’

  ‘Who said I’m giving up? I can get a passport, but it’s going to cost me. Somehow, I need to find almost four thousand dollars.’

  ‘Plus you need money for flights, and it’ll cost money once you get to Ireland,’ Boges said.

  ‘I know, thanks for the reminder,’ I groaned. I slumped against the wall, hot and exhausted with everything.

  ‘Airfares, accommodation expenses,’ Boges continued. ‘Even if we live in youth hostels we’ll still need to find more money. I’ll talk to my uncle. He might have some ideas about cheap travel.’

  That idea didn’t help lift my gloomy mood.

  Suddenly, I brightened up. ‘Rathbone’s vegie garden! We can dig up his money chest!’

  ‘Whoa, dude,’ said Boges. ‘As if he would have left that stash there.’

  ‘Yeah, whoa, dude,’ repeated Winter. ‘He definitely would have moved that and hidden it somewhere else by now.’

  They were both right. Unlucky for me.

  ‘You won’t find money buried in Rathbone’s garden any more,’ said Winter hesitantly, ‘but I do know another place where you’ll find a lot of money.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘I know where there’s money, too,’ said Boges, pointing down to Zürich Bank in the distance. ‘There’s all we need and more, just over there.’

  Winter rolled her eyes. ‘I’m talking serious money I can actually get my hands on. Straight away, if necessary.’

  ‘Tell us,’ I urged.

  Winter pulled her hair back and twisted it around, then let it fall again before answering us. ‘Sligo—’

  ‘Oh, no, not him,’ Boges interrupted. ‘I don’t like any sentence that starts with that name.’

  Hands on hips, Winter snapped back. ‘Do you guys want to know, or not?’

  ‘You know we do,’ I said, elbowing Boges. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Sligo keeps a packed suitcase in the back of his wardrobe. I overheard him call it his “scram bag”. I’m not supposed to know about it, of course, but as you guys know, I make it my business to find out everything that goes on in Vulkan Sligo’s place.’