Authors: Gabrielle Lord
January (4 page)
‘When I called the police,’ Rafe announced to us in the kitchen, ‘they said to make an inventory of everything that was taken. There’s a chance that something stolen from here might turn up in a pawn shop somewhere later.’
‘Nothing’s been stolen from my room,’ I said. As I had suspected, nothing of mine seemed to be missing. Everything looked trashed and thrown about, but my laptop, DVDs and CD player were still there on my desk.
‘Nothing’s gone from my room, either,’ said Gabbi, climbing onto one of the kitchen stools.
Rafe closed the sliding door behind him and Mum poured him a cup of tea. We’d eaten almost a whole packet of chocolate biscuits, left untouched by the thieves.
‘That’s very strange,’ said Rafe. ‘Everything seems to be in order outside, too. Apart from the
laundry door—which is where they got in.’
‘Rafe,’ said Mum, ‘there’s an empty jewellery box in Tom’s suitcase from Ireland. I don’t know what was in it, or if anything ever
was
in it.’
‘What suitcase? What jewellery?’ asked Rafe, anxiously.
I stared at my uncle, wondering why he was suddenly so interested.
‘What is it, Rafe?’ said Mum, putting her tea down. ‘You look upset.’
‘How am I supposed to handle my brother’s estate efficiently, Win, when I don’t even know about the arrival of a suitcase from Ireland?’
‘I would have mentioned the box to you if I had known about it,’ said Mum. ‘But after
everything
that had happened, I didn’t even want to touch that bag when it arrived. It’s not
important
, anyway. There’s nothing in it that would have any bearing on the estate, Rafe. Just Tom’s clothes and some personal items.’ Mum’s voice caught on the last few words.
‘But you mentioned a jewellery box!’ Rafe insisted. ‘Any jewellery should be inventoried!’
‘Well it can’t be,’ I said. ‘Because whatever
was
in there is gone.’
Rafe shook his head and muttered something, then limped out of the kitchen, abandoning his
cup of tea. Gabbi nudged me. ‘What’s his problem?’ she whispered.
‘He’s always been strange,’ I whispered back. ‘I guess all of this has made him even stranger.’
I phoned Boges. I couldn’t wait to tell him what had happened. I knew he’d be blown away.
Boges is my best friend, from school. We’ve been tight ever since he walked into my
kindergarten
class, ten years ago, with his weird hand-painted wooden lunch box and
so-what
?
attitude. He’s Ukrainian and heaps bigger than me—heavier and more muscular—and everything about him is sort of round. We get pretty
competitive
with each other, but it always seems to even out. I’m lighter and faster on my feet, but he’s a total brain. He tops all of our classes, and even though he mucks up all the time, he gets away with it because the teachers think of him as some sort of eccentric genius.
‘Our house was broken-into,’ I told him. ‘The whole place has been trashed, but I don’t know if they even took anything. Nothing seems to be
missing, and the one thing that we think is
missing
, might not have even been there in the first place.’
I heard something crash on the other end of the line. Boges fumbled with the phone.
‘Just a sec,’ he called out.
Boges cruises the council throw-outs, collecting things he can fix and recondition. He rebuilds laptops, computers, cameras, phones, and gets all sorts of small motors running again. Then he sells them all on eBay and makes a fortune. He must have been in the middle of working on something complicated.
‘Dude,’ said Boges, jumping back on the phone, ‘you’re not making much sense. Slow it down, hey?’
I told him about the break-in and the empty jewellery box in the suitcase. ‘And Rafe completely freaked out about it,’ I said. ‘Like he knows something we don’t.’
‘Your uncle has always been a freak-out kind of guy,’ said Boges. ‘At least that’s what you’ve always told me. He’s not exactly calm when you need him to be.’
He was right. Rafe was pretty edgy, and a loner, too—the opposite of Dad. Gabbi and I never had much to do with him until Dad came back sick from Ireland last year. Rafe had been on a
holiday down south somewhere, but came back when he found out about Dad. I was starting to feel a bit guilty about my attitude again. I knew he was trying to help Mum, but I just couldn’t lose that bad feeling.
I was about to tell Boges what happened after I last saw him, New Year’s Eve—the crazy guy, and the Treachery Bay disaster, but I was
interrupted
by the arrival of our neighbours.
‘Sorry, gotta go, Boges. Talk to you tomorrow.’
Marjorie and Graham from next door came over and spent the afternoon with us, helping with the clean-up and getting our house back to normal. They ordered us in pizzas for dinner, and by night-time, the house looked pretty much the way it had when we’d locked it up last week. Mum couldn’t thank them enough.
‘That’s what neighbours are for, Win,’ said Marjorie, as Mum said goodbye to her and Graham at the front door.
Rafe left to go home, too. I was watching him get into his car when I heard Mum calling me from the kitchen. ‘Cal, I want to talk to you.’
Gabbi had fallen asleep in front of the TV, and I threw a blanket over her before sliding onto one of the stools next to Mum.
‘Not too many people your age have had to experience what you went through in the sea the other night,’ Mum said as we sat around the kitchen bench. ‘Not knowing whether you’ll live or die.’ Her eyes filled with tears and I let her tuck my hair behind my ears. Normally we fight over my hair, and during the holidays it had grown pretty long. She paused. ‘With the robbery and everything, we haven’t even had a chance to talk about what happened. I want to know that you’re OK, Cal. Especially after everything else … losing your dad.’ She sighed. Her face looked so sad and defeated. ‘I want you to talk to me if anything’s bothering you. Anything at all, OK? Now, let me have a look at that hand.’
Mum undid my bandage and carefully lifted the antibiotic mesh off the wound. The swelling was going down already. She pulled a clean bandage out of her pocket, and looked at me, waiting for me to say something.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ I shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
Boges was at the door. Today he had his wavy hair—which he hates—all pushed back.
‘Hey,’ he said, his smile quickly fading from his face as he saw mine, battered and bruised. He swore. ‘What happened to you? Were you in a fight?’
Here we go, I thought.
‘There was a boating accident on the lake,’ I said, ‘and I nearly drowned.’
Boges stared at me blankly.
‘I had to be winched out of the sea by helicopter. Oh, and there were sharks, too.’
Boges stared at me blankly.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said, after a moment of silence. ‘My gran won 50 million in the lottery. And NASA’s picked me for the next moon landing.’
He stood there laughing, awkwardly, waiting for me to join in.
But it wasn’t funny. I unwrapped the bandage on my hand and showed him my bloody gash.
Boges swore again. ‘How come you didn’t tell me about this when you called yesterday?’ he asked.
‘I was going to—but then … anyway, you know now.’
‘So it was you!’ Boges said, eyes suddenly wide. ‘No way! I saw it on the news—some kid having to be rescued off the coast!’ He grinned at me. ‘Man, you’re famous!’
‘Do I want to be famous for that?’
Boges looked up at my house and the
mounting
pile of broken stuff near the bins. ‘How about a gangland robbery?’ he suggested with a grin. ‘Maybe there was gold bullion in your dad’s
suitcase.
And that’s been taken, too. How would you ever know?’
‘Gold bullion. Right.’
We laughed. It was the first laugh I’d had in ages. I forgot my sadness over Dad, for a second, before it all came rushing back at me like the sharks.
The phone in the living room rang. I ran to get it, and Boges followed.
‘Hey Theo,’ I said. It was Dad’s friend calling
from the coast. ‘Do you want to speak to Mum?’
‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘I think she’s got enough on her plate. I’d rather tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’ I asked. Already, my stomach was tensing.
‘Cal,’ said Theo, ‘I’ve just been talking to the local constable at Treachery Bay. Your dad’s boat washed up a couple of kilometres north, early this morning. Near Swans Nest.’ There was a pause. ‘He said the boat had been sabotaged.’
‘Sabotaged?’
I remembered the sluggish way the tinny had flopped around in the waves, and how quickly it had started to fill up, lying too low in the water.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so, Cal. According to the constable, someone made some very deliberate incisions in the metal. The buoyancy tanks would have slowly started filling up almost from the moment you two headed out.’
‘I wondered why the tanks weren’t keeping us afloat. But who would do that? We could have died out there,’ I whispered—I didn’t want Mum to overhear.
‘Anyone could have done it. It’s easy enough to get into the shed. Probably some drunken lout’s idea of a joke. There’s not much the police can do. I guess you can consider yourselves lucky.’
After answering Theo’s questions about how
we all were, and saying I’d pass the information on to my uncle, I put the phone down. I didn’t even bother telling him about the break-in.
‘What’s going on? Who was that?’ Boges asked.
‘Something’s really wrong,’ I said. ‘Something seriously messed up is happening to my family. Ever since Dad went to Ireland last year, everything’s turned bad.’
I showed him Dad’s letter, and the angel drawing. He sat and took it all in slowly and silently. Then I filled him in on the sabotaged boat, my waterlogged life jacket, and the crazy guy and his warning about the Ormond Singularity.
‘The what?’ Boges asked.
‘The Ormond Singularity. Something connected to my family.’
‘It sounds dangerous, dude. Your uncle won’t be happy when he hears about the foul play,’ said Boges. ‘I hate to say it, but I don’t know about Theo’s “it was probably just a couple of drunks” theory …’
‘Theo? What did Theo want?’ Mum asked as she stepped into the kitchen. She started packing the dishwasher.
Boges sat down uncomfortably.
I didn’t want to worry her with the latest news. Not yet.
‘He’d been talking to the cops,’ I said. ‘The tinny washed up near Swans Nest and he thought we should know.’
Boges had gone home and I was lying on my bed, trying to get some sleep. It was such a hot night. All my bruises were aching and my hands were stinging. I stared at the drawing of the angel, remembering the last days I spent with Dad in the hospice. His body was limp and rotting, but his eyes had followed me intently.
‘What is it, Dad?’ I’d asked.
I’d felt he was desperate to tell me something.
But by then, he couldn’t speak.