February Page 8

  I hesitated a moment, then did as she said. I lifted my eyes until I was looking right over the statue’s head and at the stained glass windows high up the wall of the cenotaph. I gasped. There, lit by the light of the moon shining through the coloured glass, glowed the huge figure of the Angel exactly as my father had drawn him! His gas mask slung around his neck and tin helmet on his head. Behind him were his outspread wings.

  I was stunned. I had found the Angel.

  I don’t know how long I stared at him. It wasn’t until I lowered my gaze and found an inscription at the bottom of the figure that I realised why Dad had drawn this Angel twice—first in his letter to me from Ireland, and again from the hospital bed.

  ‘Ormond.’ I finally spoke. ‘That’s my surname.’ I turned to the girl beside me.

  ‘I know that. And yet you didn’t know about this memorial?’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I said, pointing to the stained glass window. ‘Dad told me ages ago that a relative had died in the Great War but that didn’t really mean anything much to me. I think he must’ve found something out about it when he was in Ireland and–’ I stopped myself in my tracks; realising I’d been on the verge of telling her about Dad’s last letter from Ireland where he’d begun explaining the massive discovery he was in the process of uncovering.

  ‘And?’

  She frowned, realising I’d stopped myself for a reason. ‘It’s not a very common name,’ she said. ‘He could be a relative of yours.’

  What did it mean? Why had Dad drawn Piers Ormond? How did Winter know about it? My excitement quickly changed to suspicion. ‘So how do you know about this Angel? Where did you find out about him? Did Sligo tell you?’

  ‘Sligo?’ Winter repeated. ‘Why would you think that? He doesn’t know about this. He’s never been here.’ She gestured towards the Angel. ‘This is where I come to get away from people like Sligo. Stop worrying, Cal. Your angel secret is safe with me.’

  ‘What do you mean, secret? Why are you saying that? Why do you think there’s some secret connected to the Angel?’

  In the moonlight I saw her roll her eyes.

  ‘Oh man. Does being dumb come easy to you or do you really have to work at it? Of course there’s a secret about the Angel! Why else would you be so desperate to find out more? Why else would you be carrying drawings of this very Angel around with you? Why would Sligo be chasing something called the Ormond Singularity? Of course there’s a secret! You must think I’m stupid! Is that it?!’

  She was right. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure that out.

  ‘I think you’re a lot of things,’ I said, finally, thinking that she was beautiful, strange, secretive, mysterious … and downright irritating, ‘but stupid isn’t one of them.’

  She flashed a look at me. Now she was wary, unsure whether my answer was meant as a compliment or an insult. After a pause she spoke again. ‘I’ve known about this angel almost as long as I can remember. I used to come here when I was little. When we were living in Dolphin Point. And then after the accident I came back here a lot.’

  ‘The accident,’ I asked, ‘when you lost your parents?’

  She didn’t answer me. I knew she’d lost them in an accident, but what happened? I knew it was probably still far too soon for her to reveal that to me, if ever. She turned away to look up at the Angel again. ‘Yeah, I used to come here all the time. This was my special spot. It’s cool in here in the hot weather, and during the day it’s mostly deserted. I still like to sit here sometimes, especially when I’m sad.’

  If I hadn’t seen the sadness on her face when she showed me the photographs of her parents in her locket, I would have said that Winter Frey was way too cool for sad.

  Too cool and too tough.

  I started to feel that just maybe I could trust her. Was she telling the truth? I had no way of knowing. I put Boges’s warnings to the back of my mind and tried to enjoy the moment. This Angel finally connected the Ormond name with two of my dad’s drawings, and to the Ormond Riddle. This stained glass window with its information about Piers Ormond was a huge piece of the puzzle Boges and I were trying to put together. I whipped out my mobile, took a picture and sent it to Boges.

  It suddenly darkened. A cloud must have hidden the moon. I turned around to thank Winter for showing me the Angel. But she was nowhere to be seen. While I was photographing the Angel and sending it to Boges, she’d slipped away.

  I could only hope she wasn’t running straight to Sligo.

  Liberty Square was quiet now. There were only a few people still on the streets. I was striding fast, my hood and collar pulled up around my face. I wanted to go back to St Johns Street to check out the derelict house. I couldn’t go back to sleep in the stormwater drain. Not tonight.

  I’d crawled under the house but stopped when I heard voices and someone moving around.

  I crept up to the verandah and snuck around the side of the house so I could peer through a crack in a boarded-up window.

  Three people sat around drinking on the floor, the floor that I had spent so many hard nights on. Two men in shabby clothes and a younger woman with a gaunt face and stringy hair were sitting on my chairs, at my table. It was a hot night, but the woman was wearing long black mittens and had an old woollen shawl draped around her shoulders. They’d been through some of my food—there were empty tins rolling around. I didn’t dare interrupt. I didn’t want to stir up trouble. But I was really hungry and when I checked my pockets for money, I found I had hardly anything left of the money Boges had last given me.

  I would have to find somewhere else to sleep.

  I walked on, head down, and passed a loud group of people eating in one of those cosy twenty-four-hour cafés. I was so hungry and wondered for a moment how they’d react if I just walked on up to their table, sat down and started nodding and laughing along with them while helping myself to a big handful of their hot chips.

  I was sure it wouldn’t go down well.

  And how would the waiter react if I sat by the table next to them and started reading through the menu?

  I knew that wouldn’t go down well either. The problem wasn’t just that I didn’t have enough money. I looked a mess. I badly needed a shower, my clothes were dirty, I knew I must have stunk. I remembered reading about the Vikings and how when somebody did something really bad, their forehead was branded with a wolf’s head and they were declared an outlaw—no longer part of the human community. No-one was allowed to give them food or shelter, or basically have anything to do with them. My grubby clothes, dirty face and hair were my wolf’s mark.

  I huddled in the corner of an open-sided shed in the disused railway yards. I tried to direct my attention away from my dark and defenceless position, and my rumbling stomach, and on to the new lead with the Angel.

  It was raining. I dragged a few sheets of rusting corrugated iron and leaned them against the poles that held up the shed. They stopped some of the driving rain hitting me. I pulled my sleeping-bag up tight and tried to keep dry. The roar of the trains under the wind and rain kept me awake for a long time, until finally I fell asleep, too tired to care.

  I sat up, sore from lying on the hard ground. The recurring nightmare had shaken me from sleep once again. The white toy dog and the screaming child and the crushing weight of desolation … Why was this plaguing me?

  My sleeping-bag was soaked. My right shoulder was still aching and swollen, it just wasn’t healing. I hoped it wasn’t infected.

  I got to my feet and rolled the sleeping-bag up and left it tucked into the corner of the shed. I’d only managed a couple of hours sleep but had to get moving.

  The sky was lightening and a few people were moving around the city streets already. I walked quite a distance from the railway yards and found myself in an alley where a shopkeeper was unloading fruit and vegetables from the back of a ute. He vanished inside the shop wheeling an upright trolley. He deftly pulled the roller down with his foot, leaving a box of grapes sitting ou
tside on the footpath.

  When I was in Year 1 I pinched Tommy Garibaldi’s aeroplane sharpener when he wasn’t looking. He was the kind of kid that always came to school with the coolest, newest things that everyone else wanted. Before I took it I figured he wouldn’t even miss it, but I felt so bad about it afterwards that I snuck back into class during recess to put it back in his pencil case. I hadn’t pinched anything since then. But now I had no hesitation. I scooped up the box of grapes and ran.

  I stopped running when I reached a small park. Lorikeets were squabbling in the trees above me and I sat down near a big gum tree, ripped the lid off the box and pounced on those grapes. I devoured them like a pig at a trough, and before long I lay back on the grass filled to busting point.

  I was in real trouble. Nearly doubled over with cramps in my stomach. Maybe the ute guy’d left the grapes out on the street for a reason.

  Served me right for stealing them, I guessed.

  I cursed the crowd of school kids in the distance hanging around the bus stop making jokes and talking while I rolled around alone under some tree in some park in some place in absolute agony.

  How would my mum feel if she knew her kid was lying in a park, sick as?

  Eventually the cramping eased up and I dragged myself further under some bushes where I couldn’t be seen, and slept.

  I jumped awake. Something rustled in the bushes around me. I kept still and listened carefully before turning to look.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a man in there.’

  ‘Shhh, he’s waking up.’

  ‘I’ll get him with this one. Watch this!’ said another voice.

  A stone flew through a gap in the bushes and hit the back of my head.

  ‘Bullseye! Take that, bum!’

  I could hear the slapping sound of high-fives. Slowly I turned my head and saw three pairs of small, shiny, black school shoes. I didn’t care who saw me, I was furious. How could they think it was OK to treat me, another person, like that? I leapt to my feet, emerging upright out of the bushes like a beast.

  ‘GRRRRRR!’

  They instantly ran like hell, screaming.

  ‘This could be you one day!’ I yelled out to them.

  I stood there in shock, shaking my head, as they quickly disappeared. I thought again of the wolf’s mark. So many people in the city wandered around wearing it.

  My mobile was ringing somewhere back in the bushes and I scrambled to find it. ‘Hello?’ I asked, not recognising the phone number. Bright sunlight streamed down and sweat from the heat of the day and my anger poured off me. I moved into the shade.

  ‘Is that Callum Ormond?’ a woman asked.

  Jennifer Smith? The mystery woman?

  ‘Yes?’ I said, cautiously, looking around me. There was only one little girl on a swing with her mum on the other side of the park.

  ‘What happened last time we were supposed to meet? You said you were going to be there.’

  She sounded genuinely concerned, rather than irritated, and I started to relax a bit—I’d have to stay on guard, but this was definitely not the voice of Oriana de la Force.

  ‘I was on my way there,’ I said, ‘when something unexpected came up.’

  That was true enough. I wasn’t sure how much to say to her. I really didn’t know who this woman was.

  ‘Look,’ I added. ‘I thought you’d set me up. How can I know it’s OK to trust you?’

  I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. I hoped she wasn’t trying to find just the right lie to deliver to me.

  ‘I don’t know what I can tell you, Cal. I just know that your father had such big, warm, honest eyes, even in the midst of his devastating illness. He really wanted me to reach out to you. I sat the photo he had of you in his wallet by the side of his bed—the one of the two of you by the car at the airfield, standing there with matching grins—and I held his hand and promised him I’d do whatever I could to help.’

  I knew exactly what photo she was talking about. It was taken at air cadets, not that long before he left for Ireland.

  ‘So what do you want to see me about?’ I asked. ‘Did you see Dad’s drawings from his time at the hospice?’

  ‘I did,’ she said, and I believed her. ‘But we can talk about that when we meet.’

  ‘Did he ever say anything about something called the Ormond Singularity?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He was so sick by the time he came to the hospice. He was very difficult to understand sometimes.’

  ‘You said you had something for me?’ I said, recalling our earlier discussion. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’

  I could hear the fear in her voice.

  ‘I’ll explain when I meet you, Cal. I know this is a dangerous situation. I know it is not easy for you, but it’s not easy for me either.’

  ‘So where are you thinking?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m working at the zoo at the moment and I think it will probably be safe for both of us if we meet there. I can answer all your questions then.’

  ‘OK. When?’

  ‘Sunday, the 28th?’

  It would have to do. I’d have to wait.

  ‘What time?’ I asked, impatient to meet her.

  ‘4:30? I’ll be finished up by then.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Do you know the sundial?’

  I did. It was a famous meeting point at the zoo. ‘I’ll be there,’ I said.

  She hung up and I put my mobile away. This woman had known Dad—had seen the drawings. I could feel hope returning. Maybe she’d helped Dr Edmundson clear out Dad’s stuff. What did she have for me? My pulse was racing with excitement.

  With every new piece of information, my dad’s secret was coming just that little bit closer … Despite the weak feeling my stomach cramps had left me, and the fury I’d felt earlier from the stone-throwing brats, in that moment I felt like I could deal with anything.

  My mobile rang again and I snatched it up.

  ‘I’ve just seen your pic of that angel! The Ormond Angel! Now we have a real link to your family name,’ said Boges. ‘You have to get into the country as soon as you can and talk to that old great-uncle of yours before he takes off for the great landing strip in the sky!’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. Although he might have flown there already.’

  ‘Not so, my man. He is still very much with us. Your mum mentioned him last time I saw her. She’d tried to contact him, hoping you’d turned up there.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well I didn’t.’

  ‘This Ormond Angel breakthrough is really something. However …’

  I knew he was thinking of saying something about not trusting Winter. I didn’t want to hear it. Yeah, she’d done another disappearing act after the big reveal, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  ‘So did you already know about this Piers dude?’ Boges asked.

  ‘Dad mentioned some relative of his, ages ago—a great, great-uncle or a distant cousin or something—who’d died in World War I. This must be him. You mightn’t be able to see the inscription along the bottom of the window in the photo I sent you, but it says he was killed in 1918.’

  Boges whistled down the line. ‘Your dad must have found out about the stained glass window when he was in Ireland. But by the time he came back, he was too sick to follow it up. Or explain what it means for the DMO.’

  ‘So he drew the Angel,’ I said, almost thinking aloud, ‘and enclosed the drawing with that letter he wrote me. He did say he’d explain what it was about when he got home. He probably couldn’t wait to get back and check the memorial out, but he never got that chance. He drew it a second time—’ I said.

  ‘Because it’s really important,’ Boges interrupted. ‘I told you that already.’

  I could hear the excitement in his voice ‘I’ll go and research this Piers Ormond guy. If he was important enough to have the stained glass window dedicated to him, he
must be important enough to have earned a mention somewhere else.’

  ‘Boges,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘I’m meeting the mystery woman on the 28th. The nurse who knew Dad.’

  ‘Jennifer Smith; I know who you’re talking about. How can you trust her after last time? You were pretty sure she’d set you up. She promised to deliver and then you were grabbed.’

  ‘I know she’s not Oriana de la Force, if that’s what you’re thinking. She talked about Dad in a way only an honest person could. And besides, I did all right last night—Winter Frey delivered the goods, and now we both know about Piers Ormond.’

  ‘I’m sorry, buddy, but I still don’t like the sound of her. You be careful. How do we know she hasn’t gone running straight back to Sligo?’

  ‘She’s known about that angel since she was a little kid. And as far as we know, she hasn’t told him about it. Otherwise he’d have recognised the Angel when he saw the drawing. Besides,’ I said, ‘she doesn’t even like Sligo. I don’t think she’s interested in helping him.’

  ‘That’s what she says.’

  I pictured Winter and her intense, dark eyes and the way she looked at me so confidently, as if she had nothing to fear from me.

  But Boges was right. I couldn’t know for sure.

  ‘So when can I see that Angel?’ Boges asked. ‘I can’t wait to get a decent look at it.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Around 12:30?’

  ‘Cool.’

  The little girl who’d been on the swing at the other end of the park leapt off the seat and ran to her mum in a way that reminded me of Gabbi.

  ‘Boges, how’s Gabbi?’

  ‘Sorry, my man, there’s no news, but she’s still hanging on like a real fighter.’

  My jaw tightened—I had to be strong for Gabbi’s sake. I couldn’t help but think of all the times I’d made her cry when she’d annoyed me. I used to run away from her and hide and she wouldn’t know where I was, and she’d fall in a heap on the floor and wail, thinking she’d been left all alone. I wished like anything that I’d been a better brother to her.