Dead Men Don't Order Flake (26 page)

Knee him in the groin, Ernie
: I tried sending it as a mind message.

No go. Ernie just lay there, whimpering. He cradled his left arm as Bamfield straightened up and came towards me, slow stealthy movements up the stairs. I grabbed the door handle, turned it hard, so hard I hoped I'd yank it off. Blood dripped from my arm onto my feet.

‘It's locked, you little fool. Now, do as I say and hold out your wrists.' His voice was calm, as if he was speaking to a slightly naughty child.

I kicked out at Bamfield's groin but he stepped back against the wall. I wobbled a moment; lost my footing. Hurtled downwards—jagged breath-stopping jolts down the stairs.

A whack to my head.

45

Some time later, presumably, I opened my eyes: everything was black.

Jesus, had I gone blind? I was lying on my side, squashed up against something warm. I tried to wriggle away from it, but there was something hard and unyielding behind me.

Arms behind my back. I tried moving them but my wrists seemed to be glued together. My head hurt. My sliced arm hurt. My shoulders—in fact, everywhere—hurt. A hissing sound, or was that just the blood in my head?

And…that panting noise, what was that? Was there some kind of animal in here? If there was, it didn't smell too good.

‘Ernie?' I whispered.

A grunt. ‘Cass. You're alive.'

‘What's that panting? Is there…an animal in here?'

‘It's you. You OK?'

Not exactly. I don't like small spaces. Especially dark small spaces. My chest was tight. My head didn't feel right. Oh shit, I wasn't going to vomit?

‘Where are we?' Had Bamfield already buried us?

‘Wardrobe.'

I tried standing. Couldn't get my balance. My ankles seemed to be stuck together too.

‘What do you mean, wardrobe?'

‘Bloke taped us up and chucked us in here. It's a wardrobe, behind one of those mirrors.'

‘Well, come on, we have to get out.' My breathing wasn't right. Short jagged breaths.

‘He's taped the door closed. And…'

My arms were tingling. My face was sweaty. ‘I think I'm gunna vomit, Ernie.'

‘Jesus. Do the focused breathing, Cass. Like Claire always says to do around Dean.'

I counted my breaths. One two. One two. Pull yourself together, Cass.

‘And flaming hurry up about it.'

‘Why're you fooling around with that stupid voice?' Ernie sounded like Mickey Mouse.

Actually, my own voice sounded strangely Disney-fied too.

‘It's the helium. There's a tube coming in the side of the door. Connected to that gas bottle.'

‘What?'

‘Helium isn't poisonous but in a confined space, it crowds out the oxygen. He wants us to asphyxiate.'

‘Christ! How long have we got?'

‘Dunno. Depends how good he sealed it.'

‘Right. So let's block the tube.'

‘What with?'

I wriggled around, trying to work out which way the door was. Tried feeling around for the tube with my fingers. Lots of smooth wall. Then, something that might have been the crack between the door and wall. I felt up and down the crack.

Bingo. A round, pipe-shaped opening. After a lot of squirming around and grunting, I managed to stick my thumb in it.

‘I've blocked it.' I whispered, a cartoon whisper.

Euphoria! For a second. But we still needed to get out of here, before Bamfield came back to bury us. Shit, shit. Right, what we needed was something other than my thumb in the pipe.

Wait. ‘Ernie, I think I've got a stick of chewing gum Taylah gave me. It's in my pocket. Can you get it out?'

‘Hands are tied together.'

‘See if you can use your fingertips.'

Ernie grunted and struggled around, whimpering when he hit his bad arm. He felt around in my pocket, which would normally have tickled, if I hadn't been so worried I was about to be sick on him. Or die.

‘Got it,' he growled.

‘OK, you need to unwrap it and chew it up into a ball.'

‘My hands are behind my back, Cass. No way I can put some flaming chewy in my mouth.'

‘Right. Well, unwrap it and roll it into a ball with your fingers, then.'

It took approximately forever for Ernie to get those simple sounding activities done.

I took my thumb out of the pipe a tick, turned my back to Ernie, and we fumbled around with our fingertips
while Ernie tried to pass me the rolled-up ball of gum.

‘Shit, I've dropped it.'

I felt around the floor, the helium flow-hissing in via that unblocked pipe. My face was slick with sweat.

I felt all around the dusty floor. Around Ernie's feet. My feet. Finally my fingers found the sticky little ball. I picked it up carefully between my thumb and forefinger. My hands were trembling. I took in a breath. Felt around for the pipe and stuck my finger in the end. Used that finger to guide my gum-wielding hand. The sweat dripped from my forehead. Finally, I managed to stick the gum into the pipe.

I leaned back against the wall a moment, panting.

‘OK, let's get this door open, Ernie.' I tried pushing it with my taped-up hands but the door didn't budge.

Next, we wriggled around and took turns pushing our shoulders against the door. No go.

‘Bastard taped it closed. Amazingly strong stuff, duct tape,' said Ernie.

We braced ourselves against the back of the wardrobe and kicked as hard as we could against the door. Over and over. Fifty-three kicks and four sore heels later, the hinges finally gave way.

The mirrored door fell onto the tiled floor with a deafening crash. Glass shattered.

I sucked in a deep lungful of pure, sweet air.

‘Seven years' bad luck, Cass.'

As long as it didn't start until we got out of here.

46

We shuffled as silently as possible out of the wardrobe, although, frankly, you had to question why. You could have heard the crash of the breaking mirror in bloody Darwin.

Had its uses, though. I grabbed up a piece of broken glass and started sawing through the duct tape on Ernie's wrists. Small, careful movements so I didn't cut him. It was a slow process, with my back to him, my own hands taped together. While I worked, I listened out for Bamfield, my face sweaty. Finally, after a lot of grunting and sawing, Ernie's hands were free.

He grabbed the piece of glass and started on my duct-taped hands.

‘Jesus, Ernie!' A scalding pain in my left wrist.

‘Shit, I've cut you. Sorry. Hold on.' He carried on sawing at the tape, my wrist throbbing, the fingers on my left hand wet and dripping.

Finally, my hands were free. I brought my arms forward. A huge cut on my left wrist, dripping blood. I turned around and saw the pool of blood on the floor. Don't throw up, Cass.

‘You need a bandage. Lost a bit of blood there,' said Ernie.

‘No time, we have to get out of here.' I pressed my good hand against the cut wrist. Felt woozy for a moment. Now's not the time to faint either, Cass.

‘Quick, let's get the tape off our ankles.'

Once our feet were free, I headed for the stairs.

‘We'll have to creep out through the house,' I said. ‘Can you manage?' I hoped I could manage it myself.

I didn't like the look of Ernie's arm—he was holding it on a strange angle. Also, he was fiddling about, wasting time. Opening all the mirrored doors with his good arm.

‘Ernie, come on. We have to go. Bamfield will be back any second.'

He ignored me. Opened the last mirrored door. ‘This is the one,' he said. ‘Thought so,' he looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Follow me. There's another way out.'

‘Ernie, Narnia isn't an actual place, OK? Come on, let's go.'

But it wasn't Narnia he'd found at the back of the wardrobe. It was a tunnel, just wide enough to walk down single file. I scurried along behind Ernie, fingers outspread, feeling my way along the rough, hewn-out walls. I felt dizzier by the moment.

‘Yep, nothing wrong with me memory. In fact, this is where I lost the watch.'

Jesus. ‘We are
not
looking for your watch now. We'll come back. Assuming we manage to get out of here alive.'

We limped and shuffled for what seemed forever in that dusty tunnel, jumping at any tiny sound. Finally we came out into a cave on a hillside. The sun was setting, the lower part of the sky a shade of apricot, blending into dark blue above.

The view around was astounding: you could see for miles. A never-ending carpet of rocky, bush-pocked hills. One long grey-smudge cloud near the horizon. I sagged onto a rock as a wave of nausea hit me.
Focus
, Cass.

I pulled out my phone. Yes, a signal!

‘Good spot to hide your horses up here in these caves, once upon a time,' said Ernie.

I didn't have time to attend to Ernie's reminiscences. I needed to call someone before I passed out. I tried Madison: she wasn't answering.

‘Not me own horses, I'm talking about bushrangers. Popular little spot for them, way back.'

I tried Brad. No answer. Where the hell was everyone?

‘These days the thieving bastards don't hold you up at gunpoint. They just throw flaming parties for politicians.'

My phone buzzed. Dean! I picked up, my hands shaking.

‘Mum, where are you?'

‘Dean, thank God. Need your help. Bamfield locked us up in a wardrobe full of helium. Tried to kill us. Killed Natalie too. And Morris. Probably Will Galang as well. And. He left a dead dog head on my doorstep. Currently defrosting in my car. Anyway, we're at these caves. Come quickly, son.'

A silence.

‘Dean?'

‘Right, that's it. I've tried, Mum, no one could say I
haven't tried. I've been more than generous. Gave you days to get yourself organised. Gave you all day today to get here. Five o'clock, I said. No extensions. But no, you wouldn't even do that, would you? I knew you'd come up with some pathetic excuse. Well, you can deal with Paula Vandenberg yourself.'

‘Dean, listen. You have to come. You'll regret it if you don't. Honest.'

‘Oh, and now you think you can threaten me? Fuck off, Mum.' He hung up.

I sat there a moment, feeling sick and dizzy. If I'd had more energy, I'd have raged at Dean. But all I had was an overwhelming urge to lie down on a rock and go to sleep. Not now, Cass, I willed myself. I looked at my phone, wondering what the hell to do.

Then I remembered Leo's message.
If you're ever in trouble, call me
.

I took a deep breath and dialled.

47

The rocks were making long shadows in the setting sun, when Leo strode up the hill, in his jeans and white T-shirt.

He asked no questions, he just lifted me, a gentle kind of lifting, and held me close to his warm chest. He brushed a strand of hair from my face, then kissed my forehead. He put me down and peeled off his white T-shirt. Ripped it up into long strips. He used those strips to wrap a tight bandage around my wrist, then put my arm into a sling. Made another sling for Ernie's arm.

I'm not sure if it was the blood loss or the sight of Leo without his T-shirt, but it's possible I may have passed out for a second.

After that, Leo carried me down the hill, a bit out of it, I must admit. I half-woke to find myself in the passenger seat of his Land Rover; Ernie was in the back. Leo was driving us top-speed to the hospital. The windscreen wipers were going full-bore, a reassuring rhythmic
swoosh across the glass. Strangely enough, even though I was in the vehicle of a philandering arms smuggler I felt warm and safe.

While he drove, Leo got on his phone to the police station in Ouyen, thus managing to neatly bypass the whole Dean shemozzle. I wished briefly I'd thought of doing that myself. But there was no way Dean would have ever forgiven me, of course. Leo explained the situation to the officer on duty, a pleasant-sounding bloke called Patto, a cop who was able to grasp the facts in record time, with no requirement for emergency sausage rolls.

Good old Patto, he got out there and arrested Bamfield with top-speed efficiency. The kind of efficiency I hope Dean might consider adopting in the not-too-distant future. Bamfield was charged with multiple counts of murder (and two of attempted murder: me and Ernie).

I wasn't there to see it, unfortunately, but apparently Bamfield caved in surprisingly quickly under police pressure. Confessed he'd run Natalie off the road—maybe I should say ‘allegedly' run her off the road, until the formality of his trial is over—and also heavily implicated himself in the death of Will Galang. Allegedly heavily implicated. And in the death of Morris Temple, who was chasing after Natalie's story, as I'd suspected. His charred remains were found on Bamfield's property, so I think I can drop the ‘allegedly' for poor bloody Morris.

Natalie's bag was eventually located: it was in Morris's house, stuffed into the laundry cupboard. The people from homicide soon got her laptop working—and established that ‘Ignition Group' was a code name for that subcommittee of the IOI—a group comprising Bamfield and three other charming men who'd invested heavily in fossil fuels.

Turned out Bamfield wasn't quite as prosperous as everyone thought. He'd borrowed heavily for those coal investments—over-geared is the term: Brad kindly filled me in—so Bamfield was pretty keen to undermine his competition: renewable power. Of course, he was also quite nuts.

Anyway, he'd just limited himself to fraud, at first—paying Showbag to go on about his goat-headache-solar-sickness scaremongering. For a while, Showbag and Bamfield had been quite happy with their little arrangement, especially when the government enquiry into solar power started up. But then Natalie started nosing around asking questions. And Will Galang, in her wake.

It was then that Bamfield decided to run both Natalie and Will Galang off Jensen Corner. I guess the location of that corner might have tipped us off—after all, it's only two k's up the road from Rhapsody Downs.