Also by Phillip Gwynne
The Debt
Instalment One: Catch the Zolt
Instalment Two: Turn off the Lights
Instalment Three: Bring Back Cerberus
First published in 2013
Copyright © Phillip Gwynne 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74237 860 2
eISBN 978 1 74343 456 7
p. ♥, ♠: quotation from ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley
Cover and text design by Natalie Winter
Cover photography: (boy) by Alan Richardson Photography,
model: Nicolai Laptev; (Colosseum and scooter) by Getty Images
Set in Charter ITC by BT 10.5/16.5pt by Peter Guo/LetterSpaced
For Colleen and Megan, and kids
Contents
SUNDAY: TOBY, TOBY, TOBY
SUNDAY: PALAZZO VERSACE
SUNDAY: BARBIE TIME
MONDAY: ANOTHER DAMN PROTEST
MONDAY: ACROSS THE ABYSS
TUESDAY: LABOR PARTY
THURSDAY: SCHOOL BREAK-UP
THURSDAY: A GRATE WAY TO DIE
FRIDAY: RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY
FRIDAY: TO THE AIRPORT
FRIDAY: FASTEN SEATBELTS
FRIDAY: NOTHING TO DECLARE
FRIDAY: ROMA
SATURDAY: DEATH IN THE HYPOGEUM
SUNDAY: SAN LUCA
SUNDAY: GODFORSAKEN
SUNDAY: LA DISPUTA
SUNDAY: BACK TO SAN LUCA
SUNDAY: THE TEETH OF THE ’NDRANGHETA
SUNDAY: SKATE+HITCH=SKITCH
MONDAY: THE HEAT IS ON ...
MONDAY: PIMP MY RIDE
MONDAY: E LEE MARX
TUESDAY: FOREIGN CUSTOMS
TUESDAY: IKBAL2
TUESDAY: THE ROLLING STONES ROCK THE COLOSSEUM
TUESDAY: BACKSTAGE
WEDNESDAY: BACK TO LAKE NEUCHTEL
WEDNESDAY: BOARDING PASS
THURSDAY: THE FINAL
THURSDAY: BACK TO SAN LUCA – AGAIN
SUNDAY: THE LEANING TOWERS OF PISA
SUNDAY
TOBY, TOBY, TOBY
By the time we got back to Halcyon Grove from the national titles it was almost five and Toby had been missing for nine hours.
Dad and I rushed into the house, Gus hobbling after us, to find Mom in the kitchen with Roberto, the head gardener. Although if you saw the two of them sitting there at the table I doubt you would pegged them as employer and employee. More like friends. Maybe even relatives, because I noticed something I’d never really noticed before: my mum and Roberto the gardener actually looked a bit alike. I’m not sure what it was: the same-shaped nose, the colour of their eyes, something.
Mom must’ve noticed that I was scoping them because she snapped, ‘Roberto’s been a great help with you all away in Sydney.’
‘Thanks, Roberto,’ said Dad. ‘We’re here now.’
Roberto didn’t move.
Dad said, ‘We can look after this now, Roberto.’
Still no movement from Roberto and I could see the anger rising in Dad’s face.
‘Roberto!’ he said.
Throwing Mom a sort of half-smile, Roberto walked slowly away, disappearing out the door.
Okay, there’s always stuff going on between adults that us kids don’t know about. But it occurred to me then that the stuff going on between these three was big stuff, important stuff. So I had yet another entry on my Things To Do list: investigate stuff between Roberto and Mom and Dad.
Miranda came hurtling down the stairs and said, ‘I’ve totally plastered the net with his photo and everybody’s tweeting like crazy.’
‘The police have looked everywhere,’ said Mom. ‘They can’t find any trace of him.’
Hound’s clever, I thought. Of course, he’s not going to leave any clues.
‘Do you think …’ started Mom, her voice trailing off, as if what was in her mind was too horrible to put into words.
Dad moved in for a reassuring hug, but I’m not sure how reassured Mom was because she seemed to squirm out of his grip.
‘Did Toby say anything to you?’ she said, her eyes searching mine.
‘No, Mom,’ I said as I recalled Hound’s words: I reckon it would be really, really difficult to make ice-cream if you had ten broken fingers. You know, with all that whisking they do.
‘You sure?’ said Mom, studying my face.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ I said.
My little brother and I weren’t exactly close, especially not since The Debt had taken over my life. But it was my fault he’d been taken. And I had to get him back, I had to rescue him, not stand around wasting time talking like this.
‘I think we should go for a drive,’ I said to Gus. ‘Have a look for him.’
‘And what good is that going to do?’ said Mom. ‘Like I said, the police couldn’t find him.’
‘Really can’t do any harm,’ said Dad. ‘Miranda and I can go in one car, Gus and Dom in another, and you can stay here and hold the fort in case the police ring.’
Reluctantly, Mom agreed.
As we hurried towards his ute Gus said, ‘You’ve got some idea where he is, don’t you?’
‘Some idea,’ I said. ‘There’s this man, Hound, and he –’
Gus didn’t let me finish the sentence.
‘You know if it’s The Debt I really can’t help you.’
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘It’s not to do with The Debt, not directly. Besides, all I’m asking you to do is drive.’
Gus considered this for a second and said, ‘Where to?’
‘The Block,’ I said as we got into his ute.
Gus frowned. ‘No place for a kid.’
‘That’s for sure,’ I said, thinking that it was especially no place for a kid like Toby.
Despite his no-place-for-a-kid misgivings, Gus drove much quicker than usual, took all the right shortcuts, and we reached the Block in no time at all.
It looked even shabbier, more ominous, than last time I was there and my mind was taking me to places I didn’t want to go. We pulled up right outside Cash Converters.
‘If I don’t come back in half an hour,’ I said as I got out of the ute, ‘you better come looking for me.’
Gus said something in reply, but I didn’t hear it as I was already running towards the entrance. Cash Converters was strangely quiet, none of the usual loiterers loitering. Which suited me fine, because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I ran into Red Bandana again, especially after our recent encounter at the Electric Bazaar.
Behind the counter the rat-faced man with the ponytail was engrossed in an iPad and he gave me only a cursory glance as I passed. I took the stairs three at a time to find that Hound’s office was closed. Really, I don’t know why I was so surpri
sed: if I’d kidnapped somebody, would I take him to my place of work?
Of course not!
I’d take him to an isolated farmhouse or an abandoned warehouse, somewhere I could break a kid’s fingers, one by one, without his agonised screams disturbing the neighbours.
Don’t Even Think About Breaking In, said a sign on the door.
I’m not sure whether it was for my benefit or it was more a general warning, but it seemed like pretty sound advice – I hurried back down the stairs.
When I got back into the ute Gus said, ‘No luck?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nobody there.’
‘Where to now?’ said Gus.
It was the obvious question, one that had already occurred to me, but I didn’t have an answer for it. Because I didn’t have a clue where that isolated farmhouse or abandoned warehouse was.
One step at a time, I thought.
‘Hound’s house,’ I said.
‘And where would that be?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That makes it a bit difficult.’
‘Give me a minute,’ I said, and as soon as I did I realised that a minute was probably all the time it would take to – snap! – break a kid’s finger.
I did a quick Google search on my iPhone, checked the online White Pages. Just as I’d expected, there was nothing – what private investigator is going to put his private address up for public consumption?
So then I did a memory trawl, casting the net wide and deep, starting from my first encounter with Hound when I’d visited his office, to our time together on Reverie Island, to the quest for the Cerberus. All that time I’d spent with him and I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning where he lived.
I was so angry with myself – why hadn’t I found out before?
Gus was humming that song again, the Brazilian one about sick feet and a bad head.
‘So where we at?’ he said eventually.
‘Dead end.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Gus. ‘Dead ends aren’t good.’
I shook my head – no, dead ends aren’t good.
Five more minutes had passed – five more broken fingers.
‘Look, for what it’s worth, there’s a technique I sometimes use,’ said Gus, scratching at some flaky skin on his scalp. ‘It’s a bit hard to explain, but maybe you’re trying too much. Just relax, don’t give yourself such a hard time.’
It sounded like so much Zen crap, but what did I have to lose?
I did – or tried to do – as Gus suggested. Instead of trawling the past, I tried just floating through it. Like a scuba diver, like a snorkeller. Again, past my first meeting with Hound. Our time on Reverie. When he got me out of school that time.
‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘He said once that where he lives he’s got the ocean at his front door and the river at his back step.’
Gus thought for a while and said, ‘If he’s talking about the Gold Coast, then really that’s only two places: Millionaire’s Row or the Spit.’
‘I’m pretty sure he’s no millionaire,’ I said.
‘The Spit, then?’ said Gus, ramming the gear into first.
‘The Spit!’
Once we got to the Spit, I could see that it matched Hound’s description perfectly: a single row of houses, facing the ocean, ran along the edge of a canal. Ocean at my front door, river at my back step.
Gus parked the ute outside the first house and I got out. Moving quickly from one house to the next I looked around for a parked Hummer, anything that might indicate that this was where Hound de Villiers lived.
I raced from one end of the Spit and back again and there was nothing.
Getting desperate now, I yelled ‘Hound!’ at the very top of my voice. ‘You there, Hound?’
Unfortunately even the very top of my voice was no match for high walls and double glazing – not one person came out.
‘No luck?’ said Gus when I returned to the car.
I shook my head.
‘I need something big, something noisy, something to make him come out and take a look.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ said Gus, pressing on the accelerator.
The engine kept revving, higher and higher, until it was screaming and the old ute was shaking like a maraca. And just when it seemed as if the engine was going to combust, Gus dropped the clutch. The tyres spun, rubber burned. Already people were appearing from their houses. The tyres kept spinning. Rubber kept burning. And the ute snaked up the road. More people appeared. Quite a few of them were on their phones. One man, clad in only his Homer Simpson boxers, was carrying a rifle. But not one of them was Hound.
‘Okay, that’s enough,’ I screamed at Gus.
He took his foot off the accelerator and immediately I could hear the wail of a police siren.
‘Better get out of here,’ said Gus.
He hurtled down one side street, then another one, then another. Finally he pulled up in a service station.
Wow, I thought, the old fellow’s got some moves I didn’t know about.
‘What now?’ I said, because I’d pretty much run out of ideas.
Gus thought about this for a while before he said, ‘Maybe you could just call this Hound character.’
‘Call Hound?’
‘Call Hound.’
Yeah, right. Call the person who had kidnapped my brother and was currently snapping his fingers like shortbread biscuits.
‘What have we got to lose?’ said my grandfather.
Of course Hound wouldn’t pick up, but so what?
I rang his number.
Hound picked up.
He said, ‘Hello!’ in a big beery voice.
In the background there was noise, music blaring, people talking.
‘Hound, it’s Dom,’ I said.
‘Youngblood, my boy!’ he said, and he seemed genuinely excited to hear from me.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘Vegas!’
‘Las Vegas?’
‘No, Port Vegas, you pussy. Of course, Las Vegas. Me and the boys go every year for some R ’n’ R,’ he said.
I could hear somebody in the background say, ‘Show us what you’ve got, Big Dog!’
‘So you didn’t kidnap my little brother?’
Hound laughed raucously, and there were all sorts of other noises, hard to identify, before he said, ‘I’ve got to go.’ The line went dead.
My first thought was: Hound obviously didn’t kidnap Toby.
But something I’d learned from The Debt was that all thoughts, especially first ones, needed to be interrogated. So had Hound kidnapped Toby and the Las Vegas thing was a big ruse? But that didn’t make sense – why go to all that trouble when all he had to do was not answer my call? Hound hadn’t kidnapped Toby.
But then who had?
I tormented myself for about five minutes trying to come up with a likely culprit when – total light-bulb moment – I got it. What if nobody had kidnapped Toby?
What if Toby had kidnapped himself?
I remembered that time when Mom had all these people around to watch Ready! Set! Cook! and Toby had let his usual mask slip, just for a second, and I’d seen a look of terror on his face.
But if Toby had lost his bottle, if he’d kidnapped himself, where would he be hiding? I rang Mom.
‘You found him?’ she said ‘Not yet, Mom,’ I said.
‘Do you know how much money Toby had on him when he went into the Ready! Set! Cook! house?’
‘Not much,’ she said. ‘I think I gave him twenty. Because everything was supplied, he didn’t need money.’
‘Did the police say they checked his bank account?’
‘No, they didn’t mention it,’ she said.
So much for the exhaustive police search. But kids went missing on the Gold Coast all the time. I didn’t really blame them for not taking it seriously for a few days at least.
I opened my CommBank app on my iPhone.
I knew Toby’s client number was one mor
e than mine, because Dad had opened the accounts for us at the same time.
As for his password, it always used to be ‘nigella’.
I tried that – no luck.
I tried ‘jamie’.
Again, no luck.
I rang Mom again.
‘Who’s Toby’s favourite chef at the moment?’ I said.
Mom sighed.
‘I’m getting close,’ I said.
‘That mad Spanish fellow,’ she said. ‘Ferran Adria.’
‘How do you spell that?’ I said.
She spelt it out and I entered it into the password field.
Bingo!
‘I’ll get back to you soon,’ I said to Mom before I hung up.
At 12.45 today Toby had made a withdrawal of two hundred dollars at an ATM located at the Palazzo Versace hotel.
‘Palazzo Versace,’ I said to Gus. ‘Let’s go.’
SUNDAY
PALAZZO VERSACE
Palazzo Versace is the glitziest, tackiest, most over-the-top hotel on the whole coast and it is Toby’s favourite place in the whole world, maybe even the universe. If he had his way we would go there every holidays and he would lie by the pool and listen to Lady Gaga on his iPod and read food magazines and order double Swiss chocolate milkshakes.
Gus parked outside and I ran inside and there was Toby, by the pool, on a pool lounge. Despite the fact that it was now night-time, his face was hidden by an enormous pair of sunglasses. His fingers, unbroken, were flicking through a Gourmet Traveller. On the table beside him was what looked like a half-finished double Swiss chocolate milkshake.
Relief, several truckloads of it. I almost felt obliged to get to my knees and thank the god I didn’t really believe in.
I immediately texted Mom – found him and he’s okay – and then made for the poolside.
If Toby was surprised to see me, neither he nor his sunglasses showed it.
‘You look all sweaty,’ is all they said.
‘Can I have some of that?’ I said, indicating the milkshake.
Fetch the Treasure Hunter Page 1
