March (4 page)

I vaguely remembered slumping sideways, relieved and exhausted in my chair, but when I woke up I was lying across a little makeshift bed and Repro was sitting at the table with a couple of empty food containers in front of him. I felt weird—spaced out, flat.

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Repro, casually taking his tie off and hanging it on a hook. ‘You’ve been asleep for hours. You hungry?’

I realised that the place smelled like something delicious and spicy. At the thought of food I was ravenous again.

‘I’ve been out this morning to get some food. I’ve kept some for you,’ he said, lifting a container out of a small esky-like box. ‘It’s from the Hari Krishna people—curried vegetables.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, leaping greedily off my bed and over to the table.

I didn’t know much about my new companion when first we met, but now he seemed determined to fill me in. By the time I’d finished eating he’d told me a great deal of his life’s story: how he’d been a great locksmith, a black belt martial arts master—he’d almost won the championship in Singapore some years back—and
had a good business until he made a few bad decisions and went bankrupt.

‘When you’re down on your luck you start mixing with different people,’ he said. ‘People on the edge. And in the end, I lost everything. All I got out of it was a criminal record and some time inside. At least I eventually cleaned up my act, I try to remind myself.’

His thin face saddened, but not for long. ‘See, I have this gift,’ he said, smiling wide and showing his teeth. ‘I can find the right numbers to any combination lock. On the old safes, my fingers can
feel
the right numbers. It’s a bit like playing an instrument. So when people used to forget their combination numbers, they’d call me. I’d keep trying different numbers until my fingers told me which numbers were used. The
used
numbers feel slightly different from the unused ones—like they want to fall into place easier. The unused numbers are stiffer. Simple really.’

As Repro spoke about his gift, his fingers spread wildly over the tabletop, like they themselves were re-enacting their part.

‘And people used to pay me really well,’ he said. ‘And although I’m certainly not the boy I used to be when I almost won the championship in Singapore, I’m still pretty handy in a fight. Pretty handy.’

‘What about this place?’ I asked, looking around his stone room. ‘And how did you know about the old shafts and the pump room in the tunnel?’

‘An old guy told me about these places when I was living on the streets. There are dozens of unused and unfinished tunnels, rooms, pockets, drains and air shafts. Some of them are disused, some were never used—they were just abandoned. So when I needed to hide …’ he looked away for a second and when he turned back his face was clouded with remembered fear. ‘A few years back, a very dangerous criminal was looking for me. That’s when I was forced to move in here and hide. I didn’t want to be found. This crim cuts people’s toes off—he’s not a gent at all.’

‘Toecutter Durham!’ I shouted, shocked that Repro’d been chased by such a big-time bad guy. ‘I’ve heard all about him!’

He tapped a finger to his nose. ‘I recognised another fugitive in you,’ he said. ‘Like I said earlier, you’re the last person who would tell the authorities about me or the collection.’

I nodded, but my attention started jumping away and replaying the unbelievable things that had been happening to me: the two criminal gangs that were after me, the fact that I myself was a wanted criminal as far as the police were
concerned. The fact that I had to survive for another three hundred days or so, while my little sister faded away in a hospital bed.

I felt alone and scared.

Even what was happening now seemed unreal and bizarre. Maybe I
was
losing my mind—maybe what the TV and the newspapers were saying about me was true. Was I some sort of psychopath? Maybe I
had
tried to kill Uncle Rafe and my little sister Gabbi. Maybe I was suffering from amnesia about these terrible things I’d done. I’d seen movies about that sort of thing.

I grabbed my backpack and pulled out my phone. I looked over at Repro as he raved on about his martial arts triumphs and his
locksmith
skills. He’d saved my life by dragging me down into the drains and into his maze of tunnels—no question. But my heart was pounding and my clothes were damp with the sweat my sudden fear had produced.

Was I really here listening to a freaky-looking guy raving on about his life story—a guy who popped in and out of a secret door in a filing cabinet? Or was this whole place some sort of hallucination happening in the mind of the psychopath that everyone thought I was?

I looked down at the Celtic ring on my finger. That was real, wasn’t it? In a hospital not very
far away, my little sister was lying helpless and unconscious. When she woke up, they were going to tell her I did that to her—that I tried to kill her. The thought of that nearly broke my heart. And just when I thought I had someone to trust, Winter had betrayed me. My life was a total mess. My thoughts were spinning out of control. I grabbed the sides of the table again, feeling I might lose consciousness any minute.

I turned my phone on.

cal, u ok? boges.

cal, pls let me know if ur ok. heard about zoo attack on radio.

dude, ur killing me here! pls text me back already!

After I read Boges’s messages, my phone beeped three times and then died. No battery.

Voices very close outside made us both freeze. I dropped my phone in my bag, and Repro stood perfectly still, a metre or so away from me. There was only a thin layer of steel between us and the outside, so we could hear every word they said.

‘That’s odd,’ the first man said. ‘The electricity is running here. Look, you can see the disc in the electricity meter moving. It’s slow, but it’s moving.’

‘So it is. That is odd,’ the second voice agreed. ‘Someone around here is using power. But where? These yards and buildings have been derelict for years.’

Repro hissed, ‘Damn! They’ve noticed the old meter box against the last building—it’s lost its door.’ He swiftly dived to the floor and tugged his patched-in illegal cable out of the old electrical wiring. Even though it was bright daylight outside, we were plunged into total darkness and the whirring of the two big wall fans slowly died. I clung onto the table, scared stiff.

‘Can’t see anyone around here using any-thing,’ said the first voice. ‘No lights or machinery or anything.’

‘We’d better make sure,’ said the other. ‘We’d better do a thorough search. Especially with reports of that fugitive on the tracks.’

In the pitch blackness I could hear my own breathing coming fast. If either of those two guys outside looked closely at the back of the filing cabinet, or pressed it, despite the heavy chest Repro had pushed against it, chances were they’d spot the secret door.

A loud noise from outside made me jump. In the darkness, I sensed Repro’s anxious presence. We waited. Voices from outside came closer.

‘You saw him come this way?’ I heard someone
say. Whoever it was must have been right next to the filing cabinets: the sound was as clear as if the guy had been standing next to me, which in a way he sort of was.

‘Just here,’ said the new voice. ‘There were two of them.’

Two of them! We were goners!

‘But that was last night,’ said the other.

‘So? They’re still here I reckon, hiding somewhere. No-one’s left the area.’

‘Someone’s here for sure,’ said the first voice. ‘Someone’s using power. Take a look at the meter box.’

A pause.

‘It’s not moving.’

‘But it was a second ago! I saw it!’

‘Well, it’s not now. See for yourself. Might have just been a power surge or something.’

‘What about these old filing cabinets?’

‘What about them?’

‘This one here’s in pretty good nick. I might take it home with me.’

Hardly breathing, I sat pressed up against the old table, trying not to move a muscle or make even the slightest sound.

I felt Repro tense with even more fear beside me as we both cringed through the sounds of the filing cabinets being tapped, pushed and banged.

Please don’t let us get sprung, I begged. Not only would it mean doom for me and my chances of solving Dad’s mystery, but it would have meant taking responsibility for ruining Repro’s happy little world.

Suddenly, I heard the clicking sound on the wall above me. Oh no! Not that crazy cuckoo!

I felt Repro spring up in the darkness and give it a whack … but not before it squeaked out half its cuckoo sound.

‘What was that?’ said one of the voices.

‘Not sure,’ said the other. ‘Could’ve been a bird.’

‘In a filing cabinet?’

‘Let’s go,’ said another voice. ‘They’re rubbish. They all seem to be rusted together. Anyway, since when did you become so stingy? You can get a brand new one for fifty bucks.’

Gradually the voices moved off and we were both able to breathe again.

‘That was close,’ said Repro as he groped around in the dark. In a few moments, he’d struck a match and lit two candles. ‘They were right outside my front door. I thought they were going to rip the whole thing out! Lucky for us that last guy spoke up, but people shouldn’t be so dismissive of old stuff.’