January

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘Nothing,’ said Boges as we quickly rolled up the drawings. I shoved them deep into the back pocket of my bag.

  ‘So go and do nothing somewhere else,’ the ugliest security guard ordered. Then he looked past Boges at some graffiti on the wall. ‘Have you been vandalising the walls?’ he demanded. ‘What have you just put in that backpack? Come on, give it to me!’

  That did it. Boges and I fled, racing down the ramps, so fast that I thought we’d both hurtle straight out onto the road with such force that we’d be unable to stop, and get run over by a bus.

  That didn’t happen—we just yelled a hasty goodbye and split, Boges disappearing around the corner homewards, me heading back for my last night in the derelict house—I hoped. This city was getting too hot for me. Time I got out.

  When I thought I’d thrown the security guards off the track, I slowed down, catching my breath. Boges was the best friend a guy could have, but he couldn’t be with me on the run. He was still part of the normal world, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  I knew a couple of the bouncers outside the clubs by now, from my late night wanderings, and they sometimes had a joke with me. So I sat hunched over a bag of chips that the guy in the takeaway place gave me—in exchange for crushing all his cartons flat and stacking them in his rubbish bins in the back lane. He asked a few questions but stopped when he saw me getting uneasy about the whereabouts of my family.

  I decided to move on.

  It wasn’t far off midnight now. Tomorrow would be the beginning of February. That meant I’d been on the run for almost a month …

  It also meant I’d survived the first month.

  With my head down, I hurried back towards the derelict house, crossing the shopping centre where only a few people were scattered, heading homewards. I saw a group of guys at the far end who seemed to be involved in an argument outside the casino, and I was crossing the road to avoid them when I realised that there were three men getting stuck into one guy, who lay curled up helpless on the paving.

  Instinctively, I started yelling, ‘Hey! Stop!’

  They ignored me.

  ‘Police!’ I yelled out, louder.

  This time the three attackers stopped what they were doing, looked around, then started running, leaving their victim slowly crawling away. I hurried over to him, trying to help him to his feet but ended up propping him up against a wall instead. As I did, he made a feeble attempt to escape, pushing me away, muttering, ‘Police, I gotta get away!’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any police coming. I just said that to get those guys away from you.’

  Now that the danger had passed, I took a closer look at the guy I’d helped. He was about twenty, I guessed, and had a black shirt, a silver chain around his neck, and a purple teardrop tattoo under his left eye. He pulled his legs close up to his body and was moaning. Blood dripped from his nose.

  ‘Do you want a doctor?’ I asked. I’d seen a medical centre not far from the backpacker hostel. ‘Do you think you’re hurt bad?’

  ‘You mean there are no cops? You were just saying that? Why?’ he spoke slowly, revealing bloody teeth. For some reason, I felt he was familiar but I quickly put the thought out of my mind.

  ‘Just to get those guys off you,’ I explained.

  But now, in the distance, I could hear a siren wailing. Maybe someone else had called the police. And now that sound meant trouble for me. It was time to go back to my lair.

  Slowly, the man came up real close to my face. ‘You mean, you just wanted to stop me getting beaten up?’

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ I asked. In the silence that followed, I started to feel uneasy.

  The sound of the siren was coming closer. It was time to get out.

  The man with the teardrop tattoo offered me his grazed hand.

  ‘They think I’m working on the sly with the casino, to cheat them in poker. You’ve saved me from getting bashed to death.’

  Hesitatingly, I shook his hand.

  ‘The name’s Kelvin.’

  I’d heard that name just a while back. Now here was another one. I grabbed a name out of the air. ‘Tom,’ I said, thinking of my dad’s name. ‘Hope you’re all right, but I gotta go.’

  As Kelvin scrambled to his feet, I heard the sound of glass smashing behind me. Instinctively, I turned. One of Kelvin’s attackers had returned and although he was already running away again, jumping into a waiting car, it was obvious he’d thrown something through the now gaping front window of the casino.

  As the car took off, I was rocked by a deafening explosion, followed by the roar of flames. In seconds, the front of the building was engulfed in fire. The casino had been firebombed! What if there were people inside? I couldn’t just run away and leave them. I ran towards the fire, thinking I might be able to help put it out. But I soon stopped. The flames roared impossibly high into the night sky, sending up angry sparks.

  I stumbled backwards a few steps, driven away by the heat. Another explosion and the entire building was blazing.

  Transfixed, I stood watching. Then I heard the sirens again.

  Time for me to disappear.

  I made a fatal error.

  I stopped being vigilant.

  I was so fixed on the fire that I failed to notice the car that had pulled up behind me, until it was too late.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing?’ I yelled as the black Subaru skidded right up to me. The back door swung open and I was dragged inside. ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Shut up and stop struggling and you won’t get hurt!’

  This was becoming a habit and I didn’t like it. I struggled as hard as I could but my kicking legs were pinned down and my arms were wrenched behind me.

  ‘We can do this the hard way or the easy way,’ said my captor, a solid guy wearing a red singlet with a black Chinese symbol on it. ‘Keep still and I’ll let go of your arms.’

  ‘OK, OK!’ I said. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘You look real different from your picture in the papers,’ said Red Singlet. ‘But we know who you are.’

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled again. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He’d grabbed my backpack and was pulling my gear out, looking through it.

  Was he after the drawings too?

  That’s when I saw the driver of the car. He was the same heavily built guy who’d followed Boges. He hadn’t been a cop after all.

  ‘Who are you?’ I repeated. ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘The boss wants a little chat with you, sonny.’

  Who were these people? Did they work for the woman who’d interrogated me earlier? Was she the woman who’d rung me? If that woman got me again, I was in big trouble. I felt a chill spread from the base of my spine.

  I tried to see where the car was going but I was held down on the back seat. Finally, we stopped and I managed to sit up a bit. It looked like we’d reached some sort of industrial area with a car yard. The driver was waiting for the big gates to open. Once they were wide enough, the car drove through and parked.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  I was pulled out of the car and hauled up some steps into a room—what looked like an office with a large desk and a couple of chairs.

  I could feel fear spreading through my body. Last time I’d been dragged off the street, I’d ended up listening to people suggesting I should be thrown off a cliff. I was terrified about what might happen this time.

  I looked around the office and through the door came a very rotund guy in a dark suit, wearing a red spotted cravat pinned with a huge diamond. His thin hair was brushed back from a blotchy, sweaty forehead and his lower features were crowded together as if they were all trying to push out of his pouchy face.

  ‘Who are you?’ I yelled, attempting to sound brave. ‘And why have you dragged me here?’

  Behind him a girl walked into the office and even though I was shaking with fear and dread, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had wild dark
hair with strips of ribbon and glittering threads tangled in it like webs, and the strangest eye make-up I have ever seen—green and gold stripes, like the rising sun fanned out from her eyelids. Her green and gold skirt swirled around her when she moved, and her cool, grey eyes held mine. There was something mesmerising about her …

  I was shoved roughly into a chair and two wide strips of strong packing tape were strapped down on my wrists, tying me down. There was no point in struggling, but my heart was thumping in terror.

  ‘I’ve already told you everything I know,’ I said, ‘when you had me last time. When that woman was questioning me.’

  ‘Woman? What woman? What did she look like?’ asked the man with the pouchy face.

  ‘Red hair. Purple sunglasses,’ I answered automatically. But what was I saying? I’d never even seen her!

  To my shock, the man with the pouchy face turned to Red Singlet. ‘She must have got to him already! I told you we had to act fast! She was at the conference. They might be further ahead than we are!’

  They knew her?! It was very clear now that two criminal groups were after the information about the Ormond Singularity.

  Pouchy Face swung round at me again. ‘So, Callum Ormond, what did you tell her?’

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘What did you tell her?’ he repeated slowly and angrily. ‘And how do you know her?’

  ‘I don’t know her! I thought you did!’

  Pouchy Face turned a deep purple-red. Without warning, he spat on the floor, then ground his heel into the wet spot. ‘Know her! That’s what I think of her! You want to know who I am? Who wants to tell him?’ he bellowed, challenging the others.

  ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t wanna know! Just let me go! I won’t tell anyone what’s happened!’

  ‘He won’t tell anyone,’ sneered Red Singlet to Pouchy Face. Then he turned to me. ‘You’re not thinking of going to the cops, are you?’

  ‘The man’s name is Vulkan Sligo,’ said another voice from behind me, ‘and he is the man.’

  Vulkan Sligo? His name was familiar. I’d seen it in the press and on the news from time to time. Vulkan Sligo, nicknamed ‘the Slug’, was a criminal whose name was sometimes mentioned in connection with a really famous crime boss, Murray ‘Toecutter’ Durham. My dad had done a documentary on him a couple of years back. You never forget a name like Sligo’s.

  I swung my head round to see who was speaking and saw another heavily-built bodyguard in a suit jacket and black skivvy coming up behind me.

  The warnings in my father’s letters filled my mind. I knew now that I was in massive danger. Not only was I on the run from the authorities, but I’d got myself into a position between two separate criminal groups—I was the meat in the sandwich.

  Two! And both groups were onto my dad’s secret, and both were trying to extract the same information from me. First the woman and her gang, and now Vulkan Sligo’s mob.

  ‘We know your father wrote to you from Ireland. So don’t bother denying it. What did he tell you about the angel?’

  The angel, I thought. Everybody wants to know about the angel. Including me! But I was determined not to give these people anything. I gave him a defiant look, even though my voice was shaky when I spoke.

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything about any angel.’ That at least was partly true.

  ‘We heard from the hospice that your father did some drawings that were sent to you.’

  How did they know that? Then I thought of the woman who’d rung me—Jennifer Smith. I ignored him.

  ‘OK, let’s try something else. Do you know anything about a jewel? What about the Ormond Riddle?’

  ‘Nothing! The only reason I’ve even heard about these things is because people I don’t know—first that woman—and now you—keep grabbing me and asking me about them! Just let me go!’

  I was angry now. My arms were getting cut-up from the packing tape. ‘If I knew anything about some freaking angel, jewel or riddle I’d be happy to tell you. But I don’t know anything. Just let me go!’ Somehow, I’d kept my voice strong and steady.

  It was no use. The questions went on and on, always the same, and my answers went on and on, always the same.

  Red Singlet slapped me hard across the face. ‘You’d better tell us what we want to know.’

  Or else what? I thought.

  ‘Go and take the cover off the tank!’ said Sligo, gesturing outside with his head. At that moment Red Singlet kicked me and my chair towards the window. He grabbed my head roughly and shoved it around so that I was looking down into the car yard. Then he left the office area and went outside. An automatic light came on below. Red Singlet walked into view, bent over and removed what looked like a manhole cover. The hole, like a pitch black circle in the ground, revealed an opening to an underground area.

  ‘That’s our sump oil storage tank,’ explained Sligo, with a very unpleasant smile on his face. ‘See that tanker over there? It’s due to be pumped out, any minute now.’

  Just beyond the lit area, but parked close enough for me to see it, was a huge long-haul tanker. I didn’t want to know why Sligo was telling me all this.

  Meanwhile, Red Singlet had returned. He spun me around again on the chair so that Sligo could push his face right into mine. ‘Listen, kid,’ Sligo snarled, ‘you tell me everything right this minute.’

  I was truly terrified now.

  ‘You tell me what I want to know or I am going to throw you down into that empty storage tank and screw the manhole cover down real tight. Then we’ll pump in the tanker’s load, and fill it right up to the top. No-one will ever find you down there. But don’t worry, you’ll die quickly.’

  ‘But you’ve got to believe me!’ I said, my voice shaking, my whole body trembling. ‘If I knew anything, I’d tell you! I swear!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Sligo. ‘I’m done with this boy. Take him down.’ Red Singlet wrenched off the tape that was strapping my arms to the chair.

  ‘No! Please! I don’t want to die! I don’t know anything. I’d tell you if I did!’

  I could feel the sweat dripping off me. I looked around for the girl with the strange eyes—surely she couldn’t stand by and let this happen to me. But she was nowhere to be seen.

  Red Singlet tore the final strip of tape off and hauled me out of the chair, with a bruising grip. Sligo started to walk out the door, throwing my backpack in the bin.

  ‘Please!’ I begged, ‘I swear I know nothing about the angel—all I know is that there are drawings!’

  Sligo paused by the door, then turned.

  ‘Get rid of him.’

  Kicking and screaming furiously, I was dragged out of the office and down the stairs.

  Red Singlet hauled me over to the gaping black hole of the underground storage tank.

  ‘No!’ I yelled. But he was too strong for me. Despite my desperate struggles, he pushed me down and I half fell into the circular opening, bashing my shins painfully on the rungs of a steel ladder. I tried scrambling back up out of the hole, but Red Singlet kicked me hard then forced me back down the ladder, pulling the manhole cover into position, almost taking my fingers off as he did.

  It was pitch black down there and I clung to the steel ladder, frantically trying to think of a way to escape. Once they’d gone, maybe I’d be able to open the lid and get out. I pushed it but it was firmly locked into place.

  Blindly, I felt my way around the walls. It stank of oil. My feet were slipping on the ground, and I kept struggling to get back up again. The tank was about the size of a small bathroom, and if I stood on my toes I could touch the roof.

  There was no way out.

  The sudden scraping of metal made me hope for a minute that my kidnappers had changed their minds and were letting me out. But what I saw filled me with unimaginable horror.

  A small cover had been removed and now a steel pipe dangled through it. Within a few seconds, the pipe started spurting thick sump oil. They were filling the ta
nk! With me inside! If I didn’t get out fast, I would drown.

  Already, the oil was covering my shoes. I felt my way back to the steel ladder, clawing my way up. I banged my head on the manhole cover. I bashed on it, yelling, ‘Let me out! Let me out! You can’t do this!’

  The stinking oil kept spurting in, gurgling into the tank. I crouched on the highest level of the ladder that I could fit on, pushing the manhole lid as hard as I could with my back and shoulders. It wouldn’t budge.

  Squashed up on the topmost level, I begged for the oil to stop pouring in. But it didn’t. I could feel the stinking, viscous mess covering my feet, then my shins and my knees.

  I lashed out against the cover, with the full force of my whole body, but there was nothing I could do.

  Now the oil had climbed my legs and was at my waist. I had to raise my hands to avoid its thick, suffocating clamminess.

  The oil relentlessly poured in. I could feel it slowly creeping up my chest. I could hardly move my legs or arms through its thickness. The stench was stifling.

  This was it. I would never see my family again.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Gabbi, lifeless in the hospital. I prayed that she’d make it. I thought of my poor mum, so alone and so completely confused. I thought of my dad. He’d saved me from drowning before, but I knew he couldn’t help me now. He’d had such faith in me, and I’d failed him … Lastly, I thought of Boges, my friend, and hoped he’d keep his promise to me.

  I took a deep breath and closed my mouth as the oil reached my chin. It quickly climbed my face. I spat the stinking oil from my lips and strained desperately to move higher. My head was already hard against the ceiling of the tank, there was nowhere else to go. Any minute now, the oil would completely cover my mouth, then my nose … and then I’d be gone.

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