January (9 page)

After I reheated my dinner, Rafe got up from the paperwork he was looking over with Mum, and followed me to my room.

‘Feeling more yourself?’ he asked. ‘Like your mother says, you’ve been through a lot lately.’ His eyes scanned my room; my desk, my walls, the mess on my floor.

I mumbled something instead of saying, ‘If you’d listened to me at Treachery Bay, I wouldn’t have been through quite so much.’

‘It’s very important, Cal,’ he said, ‘that you remember where you heard about the Ormond Riddle.’

‘Why? What is it with this riddle anyway?’

‘It’s—er, it’s of historical interest. To me. You know how interested I am in the family … and family matters.’

That was news to me. Rafe never had much to do with us, until Dad died. And even on the rare occasions that we did see him, he was always going on about how Dad should get a
proper job—with a newspaper, keeping regular office hours, instead of whizzing all over the world chasing weird stories. Dad would laugh it off, even though Mum, Gabbi and I would be sitting there wanting to tell Rafe to shut up. Dad was the one that was always trying to keep the family together. He was the one interested in our family. No matter what.

‘Try the net,’ I suggested, thinking I’d do the same.

Rafe stood there for a moment, staring at me. I turned away and started eating my dinner, hoping he’d get the point. Finally he walked away, leaving me even more suspicious.

9 JANUARY

357 days to go …

Everything was telling me this wasn’t a good idea. I’d convinced Mum that I was going to see a late movie with Boges. If only he wasn’t working tonight.

‘I wish you’d stay home and have an early night,’ Mum had said. ‘But I guess it’s school holidays—you can sleep in tomorrow.’

I glanced at my watch …

She should be here, I thought. I didn’t like the look of the dimly lit Memorial Park ahead of me. Being there seemed crazy. I was starting to feel edgy. A jet roared overhead and I concentrated hard on the dark mass of the cenotaph.

I didn’t hear the car behind me.

I turned, but it was too late …

‘Hey! What’s—’

My words were muffled by a hand over my mouth. Someone else tackled me down. I lashed out, kicking and cursing but no sound could get past the vicious grip across my face.

Two men hauled me up against the car—it looked like a dark blue Mercedes—and threw a heavy sack over my head. My arms were wrenched behind me and tied up tight, then I was lifted off the ground and tossed like garbage into the boot.

‘Who are you? Where are you taking me?’ I shouted, trying to tear my arms out of the rope.

‘Keep still, and you won’t get hurt,’ one of them hissed at me. He pushed me down and then slammed the boot shut.

I tried working out where we were going, and in what direction, from all of the bumps and turns, but soon I was hopelessly disoriented. I was shaking. I should have listened to Boges. He knew it was a set-up.

I remembered seeing something on TV about a girl who was kidnapped and thrown into a boot—she somehow kicked the back lights out, squeezed her arm through, waved it about
frantically
, and eventually grabbed someone’s attention. I tried desperately to do the same, but I could hardly move in there. I was squashed up against something else—something big and lying behind me. I couldn’t kick my leg out far enough to even bump the lights.

I thrashed about, frustrated, trying to free myself from the sack, when a loud thumping came from inside the car.

‘Keep still in there!’

It felt like we’d been driving around for ages, and when the car finally slowed and pulled up I had no idea where we were. The sack slipped a little as I was dragged out of the car.

‘Come on, Buster,’ said the guy who’d thrown me in the boot, a huge barrel of a man, with a bald head and an earring. I caught a glimpse of a sandstone curb, a large front gate, some tiled steps, and some bushes and trees. But before I could note any more details, the guy pulled the sack back down and I was pushed up the steps ahead of him.

I stumbled into a room, tangled in the sack. All I could see were some red-and-black tiles and people’s shoes.

‘What’s going on?’ I shouted, scrambling to my feet. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘What do we want with you?’ said a woman’s voice. I wasn’t sure if it was the same voice I’d heard on the phone—it could have been.

‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘We want to know about the Ormond Riddle.’

There it was again, those words I’d seen scribbled in Rafe’s office.

‘We want to know everything,’ she said, ‘so you’d better start talking.’

‘Answer me!’ she screamed, kicking the back of my knees. My legs buckled and I fell again to the floor.

‘I don’t know anything about the Ormond Riddle! I don’t know what you’re talking about! Why don’t you ask someone else called Ormond? There are heaps of us.
I
don’t know anything!’

And it was true. I didn’t have a clue. But these guys weren’t buying it.

‘I’ll ask you a different question,’ continued the woman’s voice. ‘What do you know about the
Ormond Singularity?’

‘Look, I don’t know anything about that either!’

‘You must!’ she yelled. ‘Tell us what you know!’

‘I don’t! Just let me go, you’re wasting your time!’ I tried to stop my voice shaking—I didn’t want these people to know that I was scared. What if they killed me and buried me in the backyard? Nobody even knew where I was.
I
didn’t know where I was! Boges only knew about Memorial Park.

My interrogators changed tack.

‘What do you know about the Ormond Angel?’ The voice was now slow and serious.

‘Nothing.’

Boges was right. The angel was important.

‘We’ll start again,’ my interrogator said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘No, we haven’t,’ I heard someone whisper behind me.

‘Shut up, Kelvin,’ said the woman.

Someone seized me by the shoulders and lifted me up. ‘Tell us what you know or things are gonna get real nasty round here.’

I thought things were pretty nasty already.