by Jen Banyard
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
JEN BANYARD
ALSO BY JEN BANYARD
for Sal and Bec
CHAPTER ONE
Friday 18:45
Pollo di Nozi crouched behind a tombstone, watching the stranger swish through the grass. She reached out, twisted off a stalk of wild lupin and held it to the snout of the stout grey sheep clamped under her arm. She prayed it would keep him happy. Now wasn’t the time for Shorn Connery to start bleating. Pollo—supersleuth and editor of the Riddle Gully Gazette—was onto something.
Around her, twilight was settling in, the shadows draped between the graves beginning to dissolve, the forest beyond the meadow already still. While Shorn Connery crunched, Pollo wound his rope lead round her waist to keep him close. She tied it with a tug, then fished out the small pad and pencil that hung from her neck. She scribbled a few notes.
Moving only her eyes, her pencil twitching expectantly, she tracked the man in the grey light. He walked in slow, wide circles, hands clasped against his chin, long fingers flexing and straightening like insect wings. Nearby, from a large silver case propped open against a headstone, a blue light blinked.
Pollo jiggled her shoulder. It was still tender where this same man had banged into her barely an hour before, bursting into the second-hand shop right on closing, just as she was leaving. So what was he up to now? Here in the Riddle Gully graveyard? When all the other adults in town were watering their rose-bushes or grilling their chops?
She had an excuse. Shorn Connery needed his daily walk and fresh lupins, and dusk was the only time they could come without Father Perry wringing his hands and tut-tutting. But what about him, this stranger?
He’s no mourner, thought Pollo, eyes narrowing. He wasn’t muttering deep-and-meaningfuls or dabbing his eyes or tenderly plucking out weeds. She tapped her pencil on her chin. No, he looked much more like ... like someone waiting for something.
But what? It was her job to find out. They didn’t call her a supersleuth for nothing. The second he made a move she’d be right behind him. She owed it to the readers of the Riddle Gully Gazette.
The readers ... A thought snuck up and tapped her on the shoulder. The Youth Reporter cadetship—the part-time post at the Coast news network! The deadline for applications was four days away. She’d only just hit high school so, as things stood, her chances weren’t great. But what if she could dig up the story on this shady character and get out a scintillating special edition of the Gazette in time? That could change everything. She’d be irresistible! She could be a bona fide investigative reporter before she knew it!
The light in the stranger’s silver case started blinking wildly. Pollo peered as the tall man strode across to it and studied it intently. Suddenly, he scooped up the case and, cradling it to his chest, began loping from the graveyard, towards the forest.
The supersleuth sprang. But the rope still tied around her middle snapped taut. Her feet flipped out from under her and she hit the dirt face first, centimetres from Shorn Connery’s snuffling nose. Spitting soil, she squinted through the lupins. The man had nearly reached the trees! Her story was getting away!
She scrabbled to her feet, plucking at the rope, cursing her bitten fingernails. Shorn Connery, meanwhile, threw everything he had into reaching a fresh patch of lupins.
‘Keep still, boy!’ she pleaded.
In the distance, the man cleared the falling-down fence between the meadow and the forest in one bound. A moment later he’d melted into the dark undergrowth.
Pollo had to get after him! She gave the knot a last, useless yank and set off, dragging Shorn Connery behind her. She’d steer for Diamond Jack’s Trail—the hiking track began close to where the stranger had vanished. It was haunted by the old bushranger but it wasn’t nighttime yet. And digging into her waist under the rope was her trusty pen-torch. She and Shorn Connery could sneak along the trail and cut the man off! He hadn’t got rid of her that easily!
Pollo half-crouched at the head of the trail, her hands on her knees, gasping for air. The rope around her waist was now so tight that she could barely breathe, let alone chase anyone.
Shorn Connery glared up at her and curled back his top lip, flashing teeth the colour of old apple cores. Baa-aa-aah! He lunged towards the young autumn weeds on the edge of the limestone path and Pollo winced.
‘Can you stop thinking about food for one second?’ she wheezed, shuffling after him, picking furiously at the knot. ‘Aaarghhh!’ She tossed her head back in frustration.
As she did, she noticed, not far above her, small dark shapes darting back and forth between the trees.
Just what she needed! Bats! With summer on the way out, the bats were on their way back to Riddle Gully. It was all the more reason not to be out after sunset. Her scalp prickled just thinking about their squashed, grumpy faces, their tiny pointed teeth, their curly see-through ears. They belonged in her vampire books, not in the real world. And certainly not here with her now, alone on Diamond Jack’s Trail with night closing in and a selfish, greedy sheep weighing her down.
All at once, the knot came loose. Pollo unwound herself in a flurry and inhaled long and deep. Shorn Connery galloped full speed back to the lupins in the cemetery, the rope lead bouncing behind.
Pollo slowed her breathing as much as she could. Very faintly, off in the distance, she could hear something two-legged pushing through the undergrowth. It had to be him—the stranger, her key to the cadetship—slipping away.
She peered down the track at the avenue of ghostly tree silhouettes. Somehow it wasn’t twilight in there any longer. Not even a little bit.
She shuffled forward. She couldn’t see ten paces ahead. She stopped and unclipped her pen-torch from her belt. Fingers trembling, she twisted it on. The thin beam shone shyly for a moment, faded, flickered ... and died.
CHAPTER TWO
Friday 22:00
Pollo snapped shut her book, Last Slayer IV: The Dark Count, and shoved it under her blankets, breathing fast. This was the best book of the series yet! She couldn’t read it quickly enough, though at the same time she could hardly bear it. Something about the villain in this one—Count von Alberecht, the Slayer’s evil uncle—really got to her.
She put the book on the bedside table. It was shameful to admit, but she was still a bit twitchy from before. Luckily, once she was out in the open again, everything ha
dn’t been totally black like it was on Diamond Jack’s Trail. And it wasn’t far home from the cemetery along the track that ran behind the back fences of the houses. She reached across to her pen jar, found her carrot and took a big bite. They said carrots helped you see at night. She might still be out there if she hadn’t always eaten her three a day.
At the knock on her door, Pollo jumped. Her father poked his head into the room. ‘Not too late, mate. Two cats and a piglet are relying on you tomorrow. They’ll want Pollo di Nozi, not Pollo di Dozy!’
Pollo smiled. ‘Just wrapping it up, Dad.’ Curses! Of all the mornings to be needed at her dad’s clinic—when the story that could change her life was out there on the loose.
‘Atta girl.’ Her father crossed the room and scratched the top of her head, as he would a friendly dog’s. ‘See you at brekkie then ... Nighty-night.’
As soon as he’d gone, Pollo pulled her laptop from under the bed. As if she could sleep! The front page of her new special edition was laid out on-screen. All it was missing was its story. She brought up her surveillance log and studied it. What clue had she overlooked?
17:35 Suspect barges into Sherri’s shop.
Long, heavy coat—SMUGGLER???
18:45 Suspect arrives at cemetery.
Walks in circles—RITUAL???
Metal case; silver; Approx. 45x60cm; blinking light.
WHAT IS IN CASE??? Weapons? Drugs?
Extraterrestrial communication device?
19:25 Suspect runs off, carrying case.
19:26 Investigator hampered by selfish assistant!!!
Lost visual when suspect entered forest.
19:32 Audio recognition of suspect at head of
Diamond Jack’s Trail.
Torch USELESS—Abandoned tail.
Note to self: GET NEW TORCH BATTERIES!
Foiled by dead batteries! She could hardly blame Shorn Connery for that. And to be fair, she’d never have seen the suspect at the cemetery tonight if it hadn’t been for him.
She could kick herself! She didn’t have nearly enough on the man for an amazing special early edition of the Riddle Gully Gazette before applications for the cadetship closed. And her best back-up story was Sergeant Butt’s stepson—the boring new kid in her year at school. He barely spoke a word and doodled, head-down, in a sketchpad all lunchtime. She hardly knew what he looked like. A raw egg was more newsworthy.
No, without doubt, practically her entire future as an investigative reporter hinged on the man who’d got away tonight.
It was funny that Sherri didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with him. Pollo had been on her way out of Sherri’s second-hand shop after delivering a bundle of the latest gazettes when he had charged through the door and nearly knocked her into the china display. Sherri had already turned off the lights and was ready to close. But instead of booting him out on the spot, all Sherri had done was fluff up her hair and check that her earrings hung straight. True, the stranger had apologised, but it was Pollo, not him, who’d found herself alone on the footpath, Sherri’s heavy glass door clunking shut behind her.
Whatever happened to telling people to come back in the morning?
Sherri was halfway between a friend and a mother, which was nice for someone without a mum and whose dad was halfway between a friend and a father. She was Aunty Giulia’s best friend too. But Pollo wondered about her sometimes. In every photo on the wall of Sherri’s shop from her twenty years as a cruise-ship singer there was a different tuxedoed arm around Sherri’s waist. Could her judgement be trusted when it came to men?
Pollo took another bite of her carrot and came to a decision. Unfortunately, no. Sherri might have come back to Riddle Gully to settle down and become ‘a boring grown-up’ as she put it, but her instincts were clearly all at sea.
Besides, in Sherri’s defence, she hadn’t seen the stranger in the cemetery—walking around in circles and galloping off like something was after him. The man was definitely dodgy—maybe even dangerous. Sherri just didn’t know it yet.
And although Pollo had let him get away tonight, that didn’t mean she’d given up on him. She was a supersleuth, after all! She had her mum’s blood in her!
When Pollo was little—before her mum got sick, when they still lived in the city—her mum had saved lives, everyone said, with a big investigation into baby toys that were dangerous. Her Journalists’ Association award hung on the lounge room wall. She hadn’t won it by letting a little thing like dead batteries get the better of her.
Pollo grinned. It would be worth winning the cadetship to see the look on Mayor Bullock’s face when she flashed her Youth Reporter press card under his nose. At the beginning, he called her newspaper ‘an insult to the town council’s photocopy machine’, and grumbled at her being allowed to print each week’s edition on it. Then he grizzled over the council admitting her to its monthly meetings, saying the scratching of her pencil gave him a migraine. Not long after, at the Riddle Gully fete, he bullied the judges into awarding him first prize in the chutney division, hovering and glaring while they tasted. But there was no way she could prove it. She took photos of him grinning in his winner’s ribbon, but what she printed on her next front page was a close-up of him stuffing a hot dog into his mouth, sauce squelching down his chin. It was war from then on.
Pollo closed the laptop and tucked it back under the bed. She’d grill Sherri tomorrow and find out what she had on the stranger. By then, people would be picking up the Riddle Gully Gazette and reading her latest scoop on Mayor Bullock. That should make for some fun!
Right now she was ready for one last chapter of the Slayer and Count von Alberecht ... as long as she kept all the lights on.
CHAPTER THREE
Saturday 06:45
A bright green bug meandered down Will Hopkins’ arm in the chilly autumn dawn. Will waited for it to crawl onto his finger, then eased it onto the scrub at his feet. He shifted his position on the old fallen tree trunk and sniffed the air. Around him, the forest was waking up, the tree trunks filling with colour. The small bats that had been flitting around when he first arrived were long gone.
The damp bark had wet through the bum of his shorts but it felt good to be there. Alone. Even if it had meant getting up as early as the rowing team back at boarding school and sneaking out like a burglar who’d got the wrong house. In fact, this was the best he’d felt in the whole week since moving to Riddle Gully.
Not that he hated his new stepfather or anything. But the guy asked so many questions. Dinnertimes were a nightmare—his stepfather sitting across the table, chewing everything thirty-two times, rubbing his big nose and wanting to know all the details about every little thing—details Will never knew existed! How far was it from his locker to his Home Room? Did the cricket captain bat left- or right-handed? Did the canteen use butter or margarine? Had he chatted with anyone at lunchtime yet? It would drive a statue insane.
Will shook his head slowly. Of all the people his mum could have picked—like his old footy coach, for instance—why did she have to go and fall for HB, a.k.a. Harry Butt? When things were grim, Will liked to think of him as Hairy—Hairy Butt. It lifted his spirits. But to someone at the counter of the Riddle Gully police station he was Sergeant Butt or sir. Sticking his nose into other people’s business was what his stepfather did for a living.
He wished he hadn’t stormed off from the table last night though. Will poked at the crumbly bark with a twig. As Hairy’s questions piled up, everything had somehow boiled up inside. In the end, he’d only made things hard for his mum by slouching in his room all night. Plus, now if he saw Hairy—and, seeing as it was Hairy’s house they were living in, chances were he would—he was going to feel like an idiot.
Aah, well, thought Will. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The log was starting to get uncomfortable, and a tribe of red ants seemed to think he was on their property.
He should get going. It wouldn’t be the same if when he got back Hairy was awake to grill him about where he’d been. This place—Diamond Jack’s Trail or Track or whatever it was called—was a good hideaway. He’d keep it to himself as long as he could.
Besides, he had some cooking to do—a Birthday Special breakfast, no less. He’d bought all the stuff for it after school yesterday. Sure, his mum had married a nosy cop with a stupid name and dragged him out of boarding school to a town in the middle of nowhere, but it was her big day today—and that called for one of his famous breakfasts, no matter what. A lot might have changed in their lives, but some things never would. He’d get one thing right.
Will nipped three blue daisies from the neighbour’s bush near the end of the driveway and padded quietly up the steps and into the house. Snoring like a jet ski doing wheelies drifted down the passage. Excellent. His mum, at least, was still asleep.
Softly opening and closing doors, he fished out the supplies he’d hidden the afternoon before. He arranged the daisies in a milk jug, opened the pots of fancy jam and put everything onto a serving tray. He measured out flour and milk, cracked two eggs into a large bowl and began beating the pancake mix with a wooden spoon, passing on the electric mixer so as to keep quiet.
The frying pan was warming on the gas jet. Will scraped a dob of butter onto the rim, watched it melt and slide, then returned to beating the mixture, hugging the bowl to his bare chest. He smiled as he worked, thinking of Birthday Specials in the past. His mum had no idea one was coming this year. She was going to love it.
‘Well, well, well! What’s all this then?’ Hairy’s voice boomed over his shoulder.
Will jerked backwards, slopping pancake mixture down his chest and onto his shorts. He jumped and landed with a yelp on what felt like a small animal, sloshing the rest of the mixture onto the floor. He looked down to see Hairy’s great big knobbly bare foot under his own and leapt again, landing on the slimy goop. His feet slid out from under him and Will thumped onto his backside on the kitchen floor. The whole show had taken about three seconds.
