by Sally Gould
Published by Era Publications
220 Grange Road, Flinders Park, SA 5025 AUSTRALIA
Text © Sally Gould, 2009
Illustration © Gregory Myers, 2009
eBook Editor, Rodney Martin
eBook Designer, Nathan Kolic
All rights reserved by the publisher
eISBN 9781740495059
Educational consultants:
The publishers wish to acknowledge and thank the following academics and teachers who coordinated school trials and feedback on this series:
Lisa Speed and her literacy team (Victoria), Jennifer Cox (New South Wales), Sophia Kerkvliet (South Australia) and Dr Kathy A Mills (Queensland).
CHAPTER 1
“We’ll win the cross-country,” I said, as though a crystal ball had shown me. I shoved my maths books into my locker and tried not to stare at her.
Jess, the captain of Barton House, stood before me with a hand on her hip, her tousled hair over one shoulder and her eyes challenging me to take her on. How I wished we were on the same side. “David B, you can dream on,” she said with a smile. “Flinders House can come first, second and third and still you won’t catch up to us.”
“Barton House hasn’t won a single sporting event,” said Cal, butting in as usual. “How lame is that?”
Jess didn’t have a chance to argue because Marcus, the other captain of Barton House, called out to her to hurry up. They were going to the art room, probably to make a try-hard banner for some house event. Still, I wished it was me making the banner with her.
Cal, Masaru and I made our way to the bike rack. “She’s right,” I said, “we’ll never catch up if we only win the sporting events.”
“Being negative won’t earn us points, DB.” Cal yanked his bike out of the rack. “We’ve got to come up with a plan to earn points.”
“Yeah, tell us when you come up with the brilliant plan.” Cal always thought every problem had a solution. All we needed was to be positive and have a plan. But I knew there was absolutely nothing we could do to beat Barton. Nothing anyone in Flinders could do. We wouldn’t win the house cup this year unless we were blessed with a miracle.
We walked our bikes out the school gate before we got on and took our usual route home. Cal rode past a bunch of girls with his hands on his hips like he was Mr Cool. They giggled and he grinned. One day he’d fall off and it’d be me and Masaru who’d be laughing.
“So,” said Cal as we rode side by side, “how are we going to put Barton House back in their place? What’s our plan?”
Cal always left it up to me and Masaru to think up the plan. I winked at Masaru and said to Cal, “You could try out for the lead role in the next play and do such a great job they award you 60 points. Or you could join the band and do a solo at the school concert and do such a spectacular job they award you 80 points. Or you could organise an event for the whole school to raise money for starving kids in Africa or ––.’
“Why me?”
Masaru stopped pedalling. “Why not?”
“It isn’t fair that music, drama and community service get the same points as sport. House competition is meant to be about sport. I don’t think our principal has read Harry Potter. Maybe we should take the series out of the library for him as a hint.” Cal put on a posh voice, “You know, Mr Ferguson, Gryffindor won the house cup because it won the quidditch final. It didn’t win because one house captain could play Beethoven on the piano and the other could act so well everyone thought he really was an orphan.”
Masaru and I laughed as we turned off the road and onto the bike path. Cal might’ve seen every Harry Potter movie but he hadn’t read one book. If he had read the books, he might’ve remembered that Snape was always taking points off Gryffindor because he didn’t like Harry. “I think our competition is fairer than the one at Hogwarts.” Then I changed the subject before Cal could whinge about it anymore. “When did that warehouse get built?” I pointed to the place where our bike track used to be.
“Far out.” Cal got off his bike and leaned against the security fence. “What do you think it’s going to be?”
Masaru replied, “It’s big enough for an indoor sports centre.”
I leaned against the fence too. An indoor sports centre would be brilliant. We could play soccer all year. There must be an indoor soccer competition. I scanned the site. “I wonder why there isn’t a sign to let people know what it’s going to be.”
Masaru nodded. “Yeah, weird.”
“Who cares,” said Cal. “Let’s take a look.” He got back on his bike and headed round the side of the site.
Masaru and I followed. The enormous gates facing the road were padlocked. Trucks must’ve gone through there. But way down towards the back, I could see a small side gate. “Look, down there,” I called out to Cal. “I can’t see a padlock.”
He reached the gate, opened it and rode in before Masaru and I had the chance to discuss the pros and cons of trespassing. Sure, we used to ride our bikes there a lot, but it was different now there was a building on it.
“Wow,” yelled Cal. “Look at this.” He rode his bike really fast and went flying over a dirt jump. It was like the guys who’d built the warehouse had made a dirt jump especially for us. It was unreal. We took really long run-ups and went flying through the air as if we were stuntmen.
We’d had about ten goes each. Masaru and I were catching our breath when he said to me, “If Dad doesn’t have to work on Saturday I’ll ask him to take us dirt-bike riding.”
“Yeah, cool.” I squeezed the grip of my handlebars and quietly asked, “Mas, what does ‘retrench’ mean?”
“Mum got retrenched once. The company she worked for got rid of about 50 people because they couldn’t afford to pay them. It didn’t matter, because she got another job real quick.”
“Oh,” I managed to utter. I hadn’t told anyone about the conversation I’d overheard between my mum and dad. All I knew was that a lot of people from Dad’s work were going to be retrenched. The employees had to just wait and see if they would lose their job. My legs felt heavy, but I put Dad out of my mind and pedalled as fast as I could towards the jump.
I saw a man wearing a fluoro vest coming towards me. His walk was stiff and mechanical, like a soldier’s. I was flying through the air when I heard his booming voice – a booming voice that sounded pretty cranky: “What do you boys think you’re doing?”
CHAPTER 2
Oh no, I thought, as my bike wobbled. Then I fell – hard on the hard ground. I lay there unable to breathe. It was like all the air had been pushed out of me. I was aware of three heads peering down at me. I heard talking. The man said, “I didn’t mean to scare him. I hope he hasn’t broken anything.”
At least he didn’t sound angry any more. Then I realised what he’d said: “broken anything”. Suddenly I needed to know if I had broken anything. My breath returned and I eased up on one elbow. Then I sat up and moved my arms and legs. “Nah, I’m OK.”
The man in the fluoro vest helped me up. “Sorry, young man,” he said. “I’m the security guard for the site. Do you know you’re trespassing?”
I shrugged and then Cal and Masaru shrugged. It was obvious we knew exactly what we were doing. “So,” I asked the guard, “are we in trouble?”
“You should be. But…when I was your age…” He rubbed his chin and grinned. “Yeah, actually, I got up to quite a bit of mischief when I was your age.” He looked at our school uniforms. “Have you come straight from school? You haven’t got anything to eat have you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve got an apple.” I went over to my school bag, retrieved the apple and offered it to him.
“Thanks.” He munched half of it down before he sai
d, “It’s my first day on the job and I forgot my lunch. I’m starving.”
I wondered if the apple was good enough for a bribe. I didn’t want my parents finding out I’d been caught trespassing; they had enough to worry about.
Cal found a health-food bar in his school bag and gave it to him. He answered our questions after that. He told us he didn’t know what the warehouse was for. He’d been out of work for months and he needed this job as a security guard, so he couldn’t let us ride our bikes on the site. “Sorry, boys,” he added.
“That’s OK,” I said. “We couldn’t have a quick look inside the warehouse could we? We’re hoping it’ll be an indoor sports centre.”
He shook his head. “Not today, because some concreting was done last night and it mightn’t be dry. But I’ll try to find out for you if it’ll be a sports centre.”
We thanked him for not getting us into trouble and left.
As soon as we were out of earshot, we all began to talk at once while we rode down the street. “That’s sus,” I said at the same time as Masaru said, “Very strange,” while Cal rolled his eyes and said, “Totally weird.”
Loads of questions bombarded my mind at once. Aloud I said, “I wonder why there isn’t a sign on the security fence announcing which business will be opening there. Why would a building site like that need a security guard? Why would anyone concrete during the night? Do you think the site might be owned by thieves who want a warehouse to store stolen stuff? And maybe the thieves had a few dead bodies that they buried and then concreted over.”
“Yeah,” agreed Cal. “Why else would you concrete at night-time?”
Masaru, who always had to be logical, said, “What if the concreting truck was only available at night-time?”
“Nah,” Cal and I replied simultaneously. We had reached Cal’s street, so we stopped on the corner of the footpath.
I declared, “The warehouse is probably owned by a master thief. He’ll have his own gang of professional thieves. He’s so rich he’s decided to build his own warehouse. After a robbery, the thieves will bring the van back here and store the stolen stuff. It might be months before they can ship it overseas, so they will need somewhere really safe to keep it.”
Masaru frowned. “What sort of stolen stuff would be sent overseas?”
“Famous paintings.” Cal got excited. “When a famous painting goes missing, everyone in the world who knows about art will know that it’s been stolen. And even if the painting isn’t really famous it doesn’t matter, because there’s an official website listing stolen paintings and stuff. That makes it hard for the thief to sell the painting. He’s got to wait for some billionaire who lives in a castle in Romania to buy it.”
Cal’s mum worked in an art gallery. She knew about that sort of stuff. I nodded and then I remembered. “Yeah, that’s it. I saw something about it on TV. A heap of valuable paintings have been stolen lately. The police think the thefts might be connected. The last one was stolen in the city. In the middle of the day, when the gallery was open, someone just went up and took the painting out of its frame, rolled it up and walked out with it.”
Cal’s eyes widened. “Far out. Imagine if we uncovered a gang of art thieves. There might be a reward.”
“How much do you reckon?” I glanced down at my rusty handlebars and imagined a brand-new bike – a red one.
“I’ll ask Mum about the art thieves and you guys can come up with a plan to get 60 points for Flinders House.” He got back on his bike and rode off.
“He always takes the easy job,” Masaru said to me as we rode in the other direction.
“Maybe we could steal one of the paintings and give it to the principal to hang in his office. He might give Flinders House 100 points before we’re found out and arrested.” Mas and I laughed at the thought. Why did we care so much about the house competition? I guessed it was because Flinders House hadn’t won for so long. It was like our football team was in the grand final for the first time in ten years. We had to win.
CHAPTER 3
Over the next few weeks, we rode past the warehouse every day and talked about professional art thieves, rewards, new bikes and how we were going to turn the uncovering of a gang of thieves into enough house points to win the house cup. Sometimes the security guard was on the site. He wouldn’t let us inside, but he told us the warehouse wasn’t going to be an indoor sports centre. He mentioned that the building was going to be used for storage. Rows and rows of shelves had been put in. Could shelves be evidence the warehouse was going to be used for stolen stuff?
Twice we saw delivery trucks parked alongside the warehouse. The trucks were plain white – very sus.
The warehouse was owned by a gang of professional thieves – I could feel it in my gut. It was just like when Pop knew it was going to rain – his gut told him. And what other reason could there be for all the secrecy? Between Cal’s mum and the internet, we found out all we could about the recent art thefts across the country. We knew:
1.The thieves had excellent and expensive taste according to a couple of art experts. Sometimes they’d leave less valuable works by famous artists and only take those artists’ paintings that were regarded by art connoisseurs as superior.
2.One theory was that there was a single person directing the thefts who had a list of paintings that were wanted.
3.Every robbery was committed during the day without violence. Twice, in small galleries, distraction was used. In those cases a heart attack was feigned, and the gallery staff were called on to help while accomplices cut the canvases out of their frames and put them in a bag before walking out the front door.
4.All the thefts took place in private homes or in small galleries where the security wasn’t great. One home (a mansion really) had a state-of-the-art security system but it hadn’t been turned on. In another mansion a painting was in a safe, but the owner had left the combination to the safe in the top drawer of his desk.
Newspapers and current affairs shows were discussing whether the thefts were linked. Of course the police were saying predictable things like “We’re examining all possibilities.” A reward had been offered for the return of some of the more valuable paintings. No dollar amount was mentioned. It didn’t matter; Cal, Masaru and I had agreed to split the reward equally. Mas was quite happy to get a reward even though he kept saying (logically as always) that we didn’t really have any evidence that the warehouse would be used to store stolen stuff, let alone famous stolen paintings.
He was right, of course. But right was boring. And annoying. That was why we kept watching the warehouse whenever we could, just in case we could get hold of some solid evidence.
Cal had already chosen the new bike he was going to buy with his share of the reward. I said I didn’t know what I’d do with my share. I hadn’t told them that three days ago Dad had lost his job. It felt weird having him home so much. I didn’t care if my share of the reward went to paying bills and buying food. I liked my old bike. Masaru said he wasn’t going to count his chickens before they’d hatched; naturally.
Late one afternoon we saw three men drive into the site in a white van – exactly the same kind of white van used by thieves when they rob a bank, at least in the movies. The men definitely looked liked bad guys; they were dressed in blue jeans and dark jackets. One guy wore sunglasses – real sus.
I turned to Cal and Masaru, “I’m taking a photo.” I got out my mobile phone, but the men had gone into the warehouse before I could take the photo. “I’ll wait until they come out.”
“You mightn’t be able to capture their faces,” said Masaru. “Why don’t you take a photo of the van’s number plate?”
“Good idea,” Cal and I said at the same time. Masaru’s logic sometimes came in handy.
I could just make out the registration. “That reminds me, once there was a robbery of a famous Leonardo da Vinci painting from a castle in Scotland,” I said, “the thieves pretended to be tourists doing a tour of the castle. They g
rabbed the painting and ran to their getaway car. They said to a couple of tourists, ‘Don’t worry, we’re the police. This is just a practice.’ But the tourists took a photo of the thieves and the rego of the car.”
Cal asked, “So, did the police catch the thieves?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think ––.”
Masaru tugged my arm and pointed.
The men were coming out already. My heart thumped. I could see the newspaper headlines: ‘Schoolboys uncover gang of professional art thieves’. I lined up the picture with my mobile and took the photo but then heard a voice behind me, “What are you doing?”
I turned round to see a big man with humungous shoulders. And he was dressed like the men from the van. I thought, he must be the bodyguard of the person directing the thefts.
“What are you taking photos of?” he demanded to know.
Don’t act guilty, I told myself. “The warehouse…we want an indoor sports centre…we like soccer…we were going to show the photo to my dad…he might know… he might know if it looks like an indoor sports centre.” I took a deep breath. “Do you know?”
He stared at me like he knew I was lying. He didn’t say anything. Was he thinking about whether he should kill us or just how he’d dispose of our bodies after he’d killed us?
CHAPTER 4
The man with the humungous shoulders exhaled loudly. “Kids.” Then he reached over and grabbed my mobile.
My hands began to shake. I shoved them in my pockets. I’d turned my mobile off, but he mightn’t be as clueless as my dad, who wouldn’t know how to turn it back on or how to find a photo.
