THURSDAY
ZOE AGAIN
There was a doctor in the corridor, stethoscope around her neck, clipboard in her hand, all the usual doctor accessories.
No surprise in encountering a doctor in the corridor, it was a hospital after all, but what was surprising was the size of this particular doctor.
She was a very small doctor, a pocket-doc.
She was also, I noticed, a very young doctor.
Given that medicine is a six-year course, she must’ve graduated from high school at the age of seven.
‘Zoe!’ I said, remembering the last time I’d seen her, that tragic look on her face as her brother and I were just about to get on a plane.
A plane that didn’t have tray tables, in-flight entertainment, or even a proper pilot for that matter.
‘Shhh!’ she said, straightening her glasses. ‘Let’s walk.’
‘Is that ludicrous disguise really necessary?’ I said as I followed her down the corridor.
She looked at me as if I’d just asked her if breathing, or having a mobile phone, was necessary. Of course it’s necessary, you imbecile.
Although Zoe had this awkward sort of splayfooted gait, she actually got along at a fair clip and I had to throw in a few skips to keep up.
‘Where we going?’ I said.
‘Somewhere very public.’
That somewhere very public ended up being Casualty.
Okay, I knew that the Gold Coast was a pretty violent sort of place – the newspapers had been calling it the Murder Capital of Australia – but I didn’t realise it was this violent.
Seriously, Casualty looked like the aftermath of a terrorist bomb.
There were broken arms, broken legs, broken noses, broken heads; there were blood-soaked bandages; there were babies screaming; and to top it off, a skeletal man dressed in an overcoat was rocking back and forth, saying over and over again, ‘It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much.’
‘Perfection,’ said Zoe. ‘Purr-fection.’
She pointed to two empty seats in the far corner. ‘Let’s sit there.’
Once we were seated I took a closer look at Zoe.
Her glasses seemed even more lopsided than usual and she had what looked like sand in her hair. The ludicrous disguise, the lopsided glasses: it was difficult to take Zoe seriously, but I knew that it would be a mistake not to.
A woman in a headscarf, a bundled baby in her arms, approached.
‘Please help me, doctor,’ she said. ‘Baby very sick, doctor.’
‘What are the child’s symptoms?’ said Zoe, hand going to stethoscope.
‘She’s not really a doctor,’ I said, removing the stethoscope from around Zoe’s neck. ‘She’s got, you know, serious mental issues.’
The woman still didn’t look convinced, so I nudged Zoe.
‘He’s right,’ she said to the woman. ‘Not quite right in the head.’
Reluctantly, the woman took her sick baby back to her seat.
‘So what is it?’ I said to Zoe, though I pretty much knew what the answer would be.
She didn’t let me down. ‘It’s Otto.’
‘I don’t think he died in that plane crash,’ I said gently, worried that she might think her brother was dead.
‘Of course he didn’t die in that stupid plane crash,’ she said.
The man in the overcoat had ceased his lament, the babies had stopped crying and, suddenly, it was eerily quiet in Casualty.
‘So obviously he’s contacted you?’ I said.
Zoe ignored my question, something she did with frustrating regularity.
‘Did my brother ever give you anything?’ she asked.
‘What sort of thing?’ I said.
Zoe gave me this do-we-have-to-play-these-stupid-games? look before she said, ‘A coin sort of thing.’
‘So he wants it back?’ I said, my hand automatically going into my pocket.
‘You still have it?’ she said, and she seemed genuinely surprised.
‘Well, it’s not as if it’s got any market value,’ I said.
There was a ruckus at the reception desk.
A couple of scruffy street kids were arguing with the triage nurse.
‘I need to see a doctor now!’ a boy screamed.
Even from where I was sitting I could see his spittle flying.
He did look pretty sick, though – very skinny and very pale.
A girl gently pushed the boy away and leant in closer to the nurse. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell that her tone was much more reasonable than her friend’s. A doctor appeared, and the kids disappeared with him behind a door.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure that it doesn’t have any market value,’ said Zoe.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said.
Zoe didn’t answer my question but suddenly seemed very interested in her fingernails instead. As far as fingernails went, especially girl fingernails, they were pretty wrecked: chipped and chewed.
Eventually she looked away from her cuticles and at me and said, ‘Okay, I’m not sure why I trust you, but I do.’
I smiled at her – hey, I’m a pretty trustworthy sort of guy.
She adjusted her glasses and said, enunciating very clearly, ‘Maybe the coin is not what it seems.’
What in the hell did she mean by that? Was it hollow? Did it have something inside?
‘So basically you want it back?’ I said.
Zoe had to think about this for a while.
But then she said, again using that enunciated delivery, ‘Where exactly is the coin?’
She trusted me, or so she said. But did I trust her?
I wasn’t sure.
But my hand obviously did, because it brought out the fake Double Eagle from my pocket.
‘You carry it around with you?’ she said.
‘It’s a fake,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
I didn’t want to tell her that it had become a sort of charm for me, that its weight in my pocket felt oddly comforting.
‘Where’re you going after here?’ she said.
‘Home,’ I said.
‘So you’re, what, catching a bus or something?’
She sure was behaving weirdly, even for somebody whose default behaviour setting was weird.
‘Yes, I’m catching a bus or something,’ I said.
‘I’m out of here,’ said Zoe, getting up.
And then she was gone.
Just like that – there one minute, all weird and Zoe-ish, gone the next.
The skeletal man in the overcoat started up again. ‘It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much.’
I figured it was time for me to get going too.
THURSDAY
HINTERLAND
In the end I decided to walk home. As I reached Chevron Heights, next to the Coast Home Loans office, my phone rang.
Zoe calling … it said, and to tell the truth, I was kind of annoyed.
What was she, some sort of stalker?
But there again, Zoe wasn’t a ring-for-nothing sort of chick. Actually she was more of a ring-to-stick-some-spyware-on-your-phone sort of chick.
So I answered. ‘Hi, Zoe.’
But there was no reply, just a lot of muffled sounds, the sort you get when somebody accidently rings you when their phone is in their pocket or at the bottom of their schoolbag.
And that’s exactly what I’d assumed had happened until I heard Zoe’s muffled voice say, ‘So where are you taking me?’
‘None of your business,’ said a gruff male voice.
I realised then what was happening: Zoe’s paranoia had been justified, after all – she’d been kidnapped, and she’d managed to hit redial on her phone, to alert me.
‘It is my business!’ said Zoe.
‘Gag her,’ said the voice, and then there was a thump! and Zoe screamed.
‘Are you okay, Zoe?’ I yelled, before I realised that wasn’t the smartest move.
If they found out what she’d done, that
she’d alerted somebody, there might be even more thump! sounds.
So I kept my mouth closed.
There was more scuffling, but then Zoe said two things: the first sounded like ‘iCloud’ and the second sounded like ‘yamashita’.
Okay, you don’t get much more random than that. I figured the thump! had already done something really bad to her brain.
The muffled noises continued, but the gagged Zoe was understandably quiet after that.
And I didn’t have a clue what to do.
The cops, I thought. Debt or no Debt, now’s the time to get the cops involved.
I dialled triple zero, and was listening to the phone ring on the other end when I came to my senses: there was no way I could get the cops involved.
Somebody answered just as I hit end.
I had to sort out this mess myself.
But how?
Then it occurred to me: Zoe Zolton-Bander was not a random sort of chick, even a Zoe Zolton-Bander who’d just been thumped.
I knew what iCloud was, but what in the hell did it have to do with Zoe being kidnapped?
I took out my phone, got onto the net.
It didn’t take me long to find it: iCloud had a service called Find My iPhone.
I downloaded the app onto my iPhone and opened it.
It wanted an email.
I logged onto Mozilla, found Zoe’s email and entered that. Now it wanted a password. I entered yamashita, the second thing Zoe had said.
It worked! I was logged onto Zoe’s iCloud account.
And under the heading ‘List Of Configured Devices’ was ‘Zoe’s iPhone’.
I double-clicked on this and a map appeared.
Zoe and her phone were just turning off the Pacific Highway and onto the road to Tallebudgera Valley.
Now all I had to do was follow her.
I put out my hand to catch a cab and then realised that probably wasn’t going to work.
Only in movies do people hop into cabs and say, ‘Follow that car!’
A scooter, with a pizza delivery boy aboard, pulled into the parking bay of Big Pete’s.
I watched as he got off and hurried inside.
You’re not seriously considering …? I asked myself.
Obviously I was, however, because I was already running across the road, dodging the oncoming traffic.
Just as I’d hoped, the pizza delivery boy had left his helmet on the seat and the keys in the ignition.
I’d ridden a motorbike before, last year when we’d gone to Bali for a holiday, but that had only been up and down a bumpy road a couple of times.
What choice did I have, though?
I put on the helmet, got on board and started the ignition.
‘Hey, you!’
It was him, the delivery boy, now laden with pizza boxes.
I twisted the throttle and the scooter wobbled off and into the traffic.
In Bali I’d seen much younger kids than me riding motorbikes. Often with a couple more kids on the back.
This was Australia, not Bali, and I was a fifteen year old riding a scooter on one of the busiest roads on the Coast. This time it felt like everybody, and I mean everybody, was checking me out.
I glanced at my iPhone.
They were still on the road to Tallebudgera Valley, heading into the hinterland, so I figured I had to turn left at the next intersection.
But just as I got there the lights turned red and I had no choice but to stop.
I kept my head low, I tucked my elbows in; I wanted to look as small, and anonymous, as possible.
Nobody said anything to me, and when the lights turned green I was able to keep going.
As I headed east, the traffic thinned out.
Eventually the houses gave way to undulating hills.
Now that it was getting dark, now that the traffic was thinner, I was starting to feel less vulnerable.
Again, I took out my iPhone, checked the app.
Zoe and her captors were heading deeper into the Tallebudgera Valley.
The air suddenly became cooler as the road reared up into the range.
The scooter’s 80 cc of internal combustion engine wasn’t happy with the work it had to do and started making a high-pitched whining sound.
Still, we were getting there.
And when I checked Find My iPhone again and saw that they’d stopped I felt even better – maybe I wouldn’t be chasing them all the way to Alice Springs, after all.
Tallebudgera Valley 7 km said a sign, and then just beyond it there was another one, We’re Building a New Laneway, Expect Significant Delays.
Nobody was working this late, however, and all the heavy machinery was just sitting there.
‘Not far now,’ I told the scooter, and it was right then that I noticed the fuel was on empty.
It’s okay, I assured myself. The big old warning light hasn’t come on yet.
Three seconds later the engine spluttered and we came to a stop: the fuel had run out.
I now had another fact to add to my collection: many scooters do not have big old fuel warning lights.
I pushed the scooter off the road, hid it behind a bulldozer, and considered my options.
This didn’t take long because there weren’t many.
I could walk or I could try to hitch a lift.
If I went by foot it would take me at least two hours to reach Zoe, and by that time …
Hitching a lift would be quicker, of course. But there were very few cars on the road, and people are reluctant enough to give strangers a lift during the day, let alone in the dark.
Again I checked Find My iPhone – they still hadn’t moved.
‘Shiitake mushroom!’ I said, kicking the bulldozer hard in the tyre.
Not that it was its fault, but I had to kick something and it was the most convenient something.
I gave another ‘Shiitake mushroom!’ and the bulldozer another undeserving kick.
Again I had that thought: It’s time to get the cops involved in this.
So I rang triple O.
Before I could say anything the woman on the other end said, ‘You rang triple O earlier?’
‘Not really, I hung up,’ I said. ‘But you really need to listen, my friend has been kidnapped –’ But that was as far as I got, because the woman said, ‘Prank-calling triple O is a very serious offence, young man.’
‘I’m not prank-calling …’ I started, but then I realised I was getting nowhere and I hung up. Again.
The bulldozer copped another hefty kick in the tyre.
Again I checked Find My iPhone.
They were in the same place.
I had to do something.
I had to find a way to get there.
I was just about to walk over to the road, stick my thumb out, when I had a thought.
Okay, it was a pretty outrageous thought, but that was something The Debt had taught me: all thoughts, not matter how outrageous, are worth considering.
I’d seen how the Zolt had hotwired Mr Jazy’s Mercedes, seen how he’d yanked the wires out, seen how he’d stripped the wires, seen how he’d touched the wires together.
Surely a bulldozer couldn’t be that much different.
I clambered up into the unlocked cabin.
Felt under the dashboard where the ignition was.
There was a tangle of wires.
Yeah, right!
Otto Zolton-Bander had been stealing cars since he was a little kid. Of course he was going to be an expert at it.
Okay, I’d just stolen a motorbike but apart from that I’d hardly stolen anything in my whole life, let alone a car, let alone a bulldozer.
Of course I’d be useless at it.
I let go of the wires and collapsed back into the seat.
What a useless childhood I’d had! Privileged but underprivileged.
I took out my iPhone.
Okay, I wasn’t an expert, but I knew somebody who was.
I typed how to hotwire a bul
ldozer into Google.
And got gold.
It turned out that bulldozers are diesel – you don’t hotwire them the same way you hotwire a car. What you have to do is short the two terminals on the solenoid, this thing that’s attached to the starter motor. It even gave a picture of a solenoid so I’d know what to look for.
God bless Google, I thought as I got down from the cabin.
I switched on the iTorch app, played the beam on the motor.
And there it was. It didn’t look exactly like the one in the photo, but it looked enough like it for me to recognise it.
Now all I needed was something metal.
It didn’t take long to find that either. On the side of the bulldozer there was a toolbox, and in there was a tyre lever.
I touched one end of the tyre lever onto one of the terminals and slowly brought the lever down until metal touched the other terminal.
Sparks flew, the starter motor whirred, the engine coughed a couple of times, and then it was away.
I clambered back into the cabin.
There was no steering wheel, just a joystick.
But it hadn’t been that long since I’d seen the Zolt use one like this.
So I pushed it forward in the direction I wanted to go, twisted the throttle, and the bulldozer responded.
After a while, with the bulldozer rollicking along and my confidence growing, I turned the throttle to full and the speedometer needle crept past fifty kilometres per hour.
Weirdly enough, I felt much less conspicuous driving this vehicle, which was about as conspicuous as you could get, than I did on the scooter.
Because I knew that high up in the cabin, on the dark unfinished road, nobody could see me.
And if anybody in the cars that passed thought it was strange to see a bulldozer tooling along at this time of night, they didn’t give any indication of this.
I spent some time familiarising myself with the other controls, especially the lever that lowered the blade.
Turn off the Lights Page 2
