April Read online

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Hey, you were going to tell me about something called “Disappearing Dust”?’

  ‘Aha,’ he grinned widely, ‘it’s a work in progress. I think it’ll come in handy to a guy on the run. I won’t say any more. My first test was quite successful but Mum’s forbidden me to test it in the house again after the incident with the Fire Brigade.’

  ‘What the hell is it?’ I asked, intensely curious now.

  Boges shook his head, mischievously. ‘Now let’s have another look at the Riddle.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ I hissed to Boges, as a noise outside approached. Creeping to the window, flat against the wall, I took a peek.

  Winter Frey stood there on the riverbank, frowning up at the boathouse, her eyes dark, as always, and something red and black sparkled in her hair. Silver bracelets jangled as she unslung her shoulder bag from one side and flung it over the other, and put a hand on her hip.

  She softly stepped up to the window and knocked.

  I ignored Boges’s groaning and opened the door for her. She swept inside with the breeze.

  Boges started furiously grabbing up the drawings and the Riddle. ‘You asking for trouble?’ he muttered.

  ‘I have very important information to tell you,’ Winter said to me, but when she saw what Boges was doing, packing away the drawings and the parchment with the Riddle text on it, she stepped over to him.

  ‘What are you doing? Don’t take that away! That’s new! Let me see!’ she said, unslinging her shoulder bag beside the workbench.

  Boges hesitated and Winter went straight for the Riddle, picking it up delicately, mesmerised by it.

  ‘Oh, wow! What is this gorgeous thing?’ she asked.

  Boges looked at me, then at Winter. He was watchful and frowning, the frustration in his eyes obvious, his mouth a narrow, disapproving line, the two deepening lines on his forehead indicating deep concern.

  ‘I’ve never seen this stuff,’ she said, touching the soft, strange fabric on which the Riddle was written, ‘I’ve only read about it. This soft stuff it’s written on,’ she said, gently patting it, ‘is called “vellum”.’

  ‘Vellum?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s calf or lamb skin,’ Boges added shortly after. ‘Used for very important documents in the old days.’ Winter made a face at him as he was turned to me, before starting to read the Riddle.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ she breathed, looking up at us both. I could see she was dead impressed. ‘It’s got your name on it. Like the Ormond Angel.’ She flashed me an excited look. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘None of your business,’ snapped Boges.

  ‘Charming, as always,’ Winter snapped back at Boges, with a flick of her hair.

  ‘Um … I sort of borrowed it,’ I said vaguely, ‘from the person who had it before me.’

  ‘Where from and from whom?’

  This was getting awkward. I didn’t want to lie to her straight out. ‘From a legal person who’s—who’s very interested in our family,’ I added, thinking that was at least partly true of Oriana de la Force.

  ‘You are being secretive,’ she said. ‘Never mind. I’ll find out in good time. Secrets are my specialty.’

  ‘And that’s no secret,’ Boges muttered.

  Winter gave him a withering look and put the Riddle down very gently, as if it was something very precious—and I suppose it was, except it didn’t make any damn sense. Then she dug through her bag and brought out some chocolate biscuits. She smiled and said, ‘Isn’t anyone going to offer me a drink?’

  I could see that Boges was not at all happy about her presence. He hadn’t said anything in a while—and usually he had plenty to say. He kept giving me dirty looks, every look demanding What’s she doing here?

  Winter sipped room temperature water out of a jar—all I had to offer her. ‘I don’t understand why you want to keep your secret from me,’ she said. She looked at Boges, as if in an effort to convince him. ‘He wouldn’t have even found that Angel without me. I could help him even more, you know.’

  Boges poked a stick in the dirt next to where he was sitting on the ledge over the water.

  ‘I love riddles,’ Winter said from where she now stood near the doorway, ‘and I’m great at working secrets out—and knowing when people are telling lies.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you just great at everything,’ mumbled Boges. ‘And you’re full of lies yourself.’

  ‘I heard that!’

  ‘You were supposed to,’ he said. ‘Does your boss know where you are today?’

  ‘No-one’s the boss of me, nerd boy.’

  The way she said ‘nerd boy’ would have stripped paint from the walls—if there’d been any in this old boathouse.

  ‘That’s not what I heard.’

  ‘Then your big ears heard wrong, right?’

  ‘Wrong. My big ears heard right. You think Vulkan Sligo’s just lovely company? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hey Boges,’ I said uneasily, ‘maybe Winter has her reasons for that.’

  ‘I’m sure she has,’ he said. ‘Sligo’s probably on his way here right now. Or at least his goons are.’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ said Winter. ‘Cal can trust me. I don’t care what you think.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, desperately changing the subject. ‘I was telling Boges earlier about seeing that guy again, the one that looks like my double—’

  ‘—You saw someone who looked like your double?’ Winter interrupted. Her expression had changed; she was frowning, worried.

  I nodded. ‘This time I saw him coming out of the high school down the road.’

  I was puzzled at the way Winter’s face had turned so pale and by the way she was staring at me. She seemed to know something I didn’t.

  ‘You OK? Why should you be so worried?’ I continued. ‘I’m the crazy one seeing double!’

  ‘Crazy is right!’ Boges said as he suddenly grabbed his school backpack. ‘Only someone who’s totally crazy would share so much information with someone who has friends like Sligo.’ He swung round to face Winter Frey. ‘And as for you, you should back off and leave Cal alone!’

  ‘I’m only trying to help him!’ she said. ‘Don’t be so quick to judge; you don’t know the first thing about me!’

  The two of them stared fiercely at each other.

  ‘OK, calm down everyone,’ I said. ‘Boges, I can look after myself. I’m a big boy. We need all the help we can get with this.’ I pointed to the Riddle on the table. ‘That’s why we’re all here—to solve this.’

  Boges made a snorting sound, while Winter nodded her head, agreeing with me.

  ‘Cool. So let’s have a look at the Riddle.’ I paused. ‘The words just don’t make any sense to me. What do you think?’ I asked, turning to Winter.

  Winter reached over Boges to take the Riddle. As she did so, I saw the tiny bird tattoo, once more, on the inside of her wrist. It made me think of her locket and the ‘Little Bird’ inscription on the back. Sure enough, the heart-shaped necklace dangled from her neck.

  ‘Can’t you see what she’s trying to do?’ said Boges. ‘She’s going to take this information right back to Sligo and then he’ll know we have it. He’s already coming after you—he’ll come after you a hundred times harder if he knows you have the Riddle!’

  ‘I’ve already explained how things are with me and Mr Sligo. I’m not interested in helping him and I don’t agree with the way he lives his life,’ she sighed as she looked at me and put the Riddle back down. ‘I’m not going to go over this again—your friend is determined to dislike me.’

  ‘Distrust is the word I’d use,’ Boges snapped.

  ‘You guys better make up your minds. Do you want my help or not?’

  Boges shrugged as if he suddenly didn’t care. I reached down and picked up the Riddle text again, and passed it to her.

  Winter smiled sweetly then studied the Riddle for a few moments in silence.

  ‘Somebody’s cut it.’ She pointed
to the clean-cut edge at the bottom of the piece of vellum and then looked up at me, wanting an explanation.

  ‘Yeah, the last two lines are missing,’ I said.

  ‘That’s going to make it extra hard—a lot of riddles are written with their solution in the final lines.’ She studied the words of the Riddle a little longer.

  ‘This looks like a number riddle to me,’ she said, finally. ‘Look at all the numbers in it—eight, thirteen, one—and down here it even says “adde One in”.’

  I looked down at the flowery words. ‘Why are all the words spelt so strangely?’ I asked.

  ‘Spelling didn’t have standard rules in the days this was written,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ added Boges. ‘People could spell words however they liked.’

  ‘So do you think we’re supposed to add all the numbers together or something?’ I asked, doing the quick calculation. ‘Because if we are, the total is twenty-two.’

  ‘So we have twenty-two,’ said Boges. ‘What help is that?’ I could tell he still didn’t really want to find anything Winter Frey said or did helpful.

  ‘Boges,’ I said, ‘we have to try everything. You said so yourself.’

  ‘That monkey drawing,’ said Winter, pointing at the picture in the floor. ‘He looks kind of familiar. I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll take Cal to look at some memorial in a park now,’ said Boges. ‘A memorial for fallen monkeys.’

  I groaned, wishing this stupid bickering between them would stop, but to my surprise Winter actually started laughing.

  I looked over at Boges and could have sworn he was stifling a smile.

  ‘These awesome drawings,’ she said, pointing to each one in turn, ‘you need to put some words in front of them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, very interested to hear what she was about to say.

  ‘Think,’ she replied. ‘Remember the Angel drawing? And how I took you to the cenotaph and there he was? It was like the drawing of the Angel was telling you something, telling you to look for …’

  ‘… for an angel,’ I continued. Then I picked up the monkey drawing. ‘So I should be looking for a monkey? I should be looking for this kid with the flower?’

  ‘This old Roman guy?’ I added.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘And you should be looking for a sphinx …’ she paused, frowning, ‘or maybe that one was telling you about the Riddle.’

  I flashed a smug glance at Boges. Even he had to be impressed with that, I thought. She was picking up the connections fast.

  ‘You know about the riddle of the Sphinx?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s no secret,’ she said, ‘if you’ve studied ancient history or Greek drama. You should also be looking for a butler with a blackjack.’

  ‘A butler?’ I said. ‘I’ve always thought of him as a waiter.’

  She shrugged. ‘He looks like a butler to me. Butler, waiter, whatever. You should be looking for all of those things.’

  ‘So why do you think the monkey’s familiar?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think it might be the collar, or the ball or something …’

  Winter’s phone started ringing.

  ‘Back in a sec,’ she said, stepping away from us.

  ‘Don’t you see what she’s doing?’ Boges’s voice was serious. ‘She’s using us. Pretending to be friends with us, and all the time she’s running off and telling everything to her criminal mates! That’s what she’s doing and you’re too blind to see it!’

  ‘But Boges,’ I started to say until Winter’s angry voice cut me short. She was off the phone and had heard everything Boges had said.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this! I’m not standing around here listening to this crap! I can’t keep justifying myself, trying to make you trust me. It’s been hard ignoring your snide comments, but you’ve gone too far!’ I heard a catch in her voice. She sounded really hurt.

  She snatched up her bag and flung it over her shoulder, her sparkling hair flying everywhere. ‘You’re on your own, Cal Ormond! Obviously you have enough help here already. I even told you earlier that I had something really important to tell you, but it looks like you don’t even care, so why should I? If you want to speak to me, Cal, you’ll know where to find me.’

  ‘Wait! What did you have to tell me?’

  She slipped through the door and hurried away, scrambling up the riverbank.

  I ran outside after her but she was too fast for me. She’d already vanished.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done, Boges!’ I said, exasperated, when I hurried back to the boathouse. ‘She was making progress, getting things really fast, and you’ve gone and driven her away!’

  ‘Any fool could see that the Riddle had numbers in it! That’s no big deal! She wasn’t telling us anything new.’

  ‘Plus she made the connection between the Sphinx and the Riddle!’

  We glared at each other. Boges and I rarely argued, and it didn’t feel good at all. ‘We need all the help we can get,’ I said.

  ‘You seriously want to bring her in on this investigation? Just because she’s sucked you in by showing you the stained glass Angel at the cenotaph? And pretending she has more information? Look at the facts, man! She’s a member of a criminal gang who has already tried to wipe you out!’

  There followed an angry silence, which Boges finally broke, shoving his face close to mine. ‘I don’t care how cute she is, her friends have tried to kill you! What is it about attempted murder you don’t understand?’

  Both of us were really angry now. I was about to gather up the drawings and pack them away together with the Riddle when I heard the sound of a car skidding to a halt up on the road.

  ‘I’m going to go and find her,’ I said.

  ‘You are crazy!’ he said. ‘And you will be sorry! It sounds like her thugs are here already! I’m outta here,’ he said before running out the door and disappearing.

  Car doors slammed. My sixth sense warned me that they weren’t picnickers.

  Instead of going outside the door to look, where I could easily be seen, I braced myself and slipped into the water.

  Trying not to splash too much, I waded through the boathouse doors and around the corner to check who it was that had skidded to a halt up there on the road.

  When I saw the car parked at the top of the nature reserve I freaked out!

  It was the black Subaru! Vulkan’s car!

  My backpack! I wanted to swim around to get back in the boathouse, but realised I didn’t have time—I needed to get away! Instead I swam to the shore, then scrambled along the riverbank and ran, stumbling past small, muddy beaches and other boatsheds, ducking under the piers of small jetties, leaving the black Subaru and its occupants on the hill behind me.

  Boges’s words were ringing in my ears. Why did I trust Winter? Last time I’d made my desperate dash—down into the railway tunnels—I’d just spoken to Winter Frey. Boges was smart. Maybe he was right about this. She seemed to bring the black Subaru hard on her heels.

  My confusion grew. I wanted to find her and get to the bottom of this, once and for all. Had she given my location away, or had they tailed her?

  She’d said I’d know where to find her. And I did.

  She was sitting underneath the Ormond Angel on one of the benches that ran around the perimeter.

  I knew that’s where she would go—where I would find her.

  She didn’t look up when I approached, like she was waiting for me. She sat with her arms around her knees and her head resting on them, her wild hair hanging down, her shoulder bag on the ground beside her. I came up to her and stood near her, wondering what to say.

  Slowly, she lifted her head and I could see she’d been crying.

  ‘Seems like whenever you’re around, Sligo isn’t far behind,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I just ran from them. The black Subaru turned up at the river just after yo
u left.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, I promise! It could have been Boges they followed! They’ve been watching his every movement, you know! I’m so careful, Cal. I don’t want to put you in danger!’

  My mind was telling me that it was definitely her that had dobbed me in, but my heart wouldn’t believe it.

  She lifted her head again, and wiped her smudged eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what I overheard, and maybe you’ll understand how Sligo seems to find out where you are. Then maybe you’ll finally trust me.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Yesterday when I was at Sligo’s place, Zombrovski had a meeting with this other guy. I’d just had a quick swim and had gone upstairs to change in the bathroom, when I heard them arguing outside by the back gate. I peeked through the blinds and saw that the other guy with the teardrop tattoo on his face—’

  ‘Kelvin!’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘We’ve had a few run-ins! He works for Oriana de la Force.’

  ‘That’s who they were talking about! But I’d better start at the beginning. This Kelvin guy owes Zombrovski money apparently. Some big gambling debt.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I already know they’re both crooks. And that Kelvin’s a gambler.’

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ she said. ‘Kelvin’s been struggling to repay it, so to avoid ending up dead in the bottom of the ocean, he told Zombrovski that Oriana de la Force has some way of—’ she paused, and looked around, making sure we were completely alone before repeating, ‘Oriana de la Force has some way of always knowing where you are.’

  A shiver of fear ran through me. ‘How could she possibly always know where I am? Half the time I don’t even know where I am!’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I heard. Kelvin was offering information as payment, instead of money. To settle his gambling debt.’

  I shook my head, thinking of all the times I’d been shocked that he and Sumo had been able to locate me.

  ‘But how does she know where I am?’ I repeated, recalling the first time I’d met Kelvin, during a beating outside the casino. ‘Is someone always spying on me? Tailing me?’