It occurred to me that not only had I got myself a pretty good set of wheels, I also had a pretty handy weapon. If anybody gave me a hard time, I could just lower the blade and bulldoze the living daylights out of them.
According to my iPhone they were only one kilometre away now, but they were to my left, not on this road.
I kept expecting there to be a crossroads, somewhere I could turn left, but there wasn’t.
The road continued, its straightness a credit to its makers.
So despite the lack of road, I swung left anyway.
It was thin scrub and the bulldozer had no trouble ploughing through it.
And when I reached a fence, I kept going. There was no time to find a gate.
The wire stretched tighter and tighter, making an eerie twanging sound before it snapped.
Half a kay to go, and up ahead I could make out the shape of a house, an old Queenslander up on stilts with an inside light on.
And next to it, a car.
I killed the ignition.
And felt a cold, prickly chill run through my body.
These weren’t your everyday crims I was dealing with.
This was, in all possibility, The Debt.
If they cut off your leg when you were working for them, as they had done to my grandfather, what would they do if they found you working against them?
Okay, the answer to that was pretty easy: they would kill you.
Kill you slowly.
Kill you horribly.
Kill you piece by painful piece.
I climbed down from the cabin and made my way towards the house.
Without my bulldozer, without my weapon, I felt conspicuous again. And vulnerable. Boy, did I feel vulnerable.
As I got closer I could hear voices.
And, now, as well as a sense of dread, I felt an enormous sense of anticipation: at last I would know what they, The Debt, looked like.
I would know who they were.
Closer, and I could make out what the voices were saying.
‘Just tell us where your brother’s at, that’s all we want to know,’ said a voice I immediately recognised.
I felt both tremendous relief and tremendous disappointment. It wasn’t The Debt. Zoe had been kidnapped by her own uncle!
‘Let me just slap the brat,’ said another voice.
‘No!’ said Zoe’s uncle.
‘Just a little tap and she’ll be singing like Kylie.’
I’d heard enough.
I hurried back to the bulldozer. Starting it up, I pushed the joystick forward, giving it plenty of throttle.
And I pointed it towards the house.
As I came closer, more lights came on.
People were outside.
People were yelling.
But by that time I’d reached the parked car.
It was Zoe’s uncle’s beloved – by him, anyway – Monaro.
The last time I’d see it, it had looked more like something you’d use to strain spaghetti, but he’d obviously spent time, effort and lots of polyfilla on it since, because it was looking whole and shiny again.
‘Let her go or I’ll flatten your car,’ I yelled from up in the cabin.
‘If I do, you promise not to touch me wheels?’ said Zoe’s uncle.
‘I promise,’ I said.
And it didn’t take much more than that, because suddenly Zoe was climbing up to join me in the cabin.
I pulled the joystick back and the bulldozer started reversing away from the car.
But suddenly Zoe leant over and, with two hands, rammed the joystick forward.
‘I promised to leave his car alone!’ I said.
‘I didn’t,’ said Zoe. ‘Stupid amateurs could’ve spoiled everything!’
Spoiled what? I thought, but then there were horrible scraping sounds, and then horrible crunching sounds, but mixed up with that were also less horrible sounds, like the quite tuneful tinkling of glass shattering.
‘Okay, I reckon that’s enough,’ I said and pulled the joystick the other way.
I knew there would be damage, but I hadn’t realised how much damage. Because Zoe’s uncle’s car really didn’t look like a car any more.
Once three-dimensional, it now appeared to have only two.
As we drove off, all I could hear was Zoe’s uncle saying, in a voice not unlike the it-hurts man at the hospital, ‘Me car, what have they done to me car?’
As we made our way back, Zoe told me what had happened.
How she’d been kidnapped by her uncle and the Mattners.
‘The Mattners!’ I said, remembering that it was one of these Mattners who had turned the Monaro into a colander. ‘I thought they were your uncle’s enemies.’
‘Nothing like the thought of money to bring enemies together,’ said Zoe.
‘What money?’ I said, but Zoe didn’t answer and by this time we’d arrived back at the place where I’d taken the bulldozer.
I killed the motor.
‘That how you got here?’ said Zoe, pointing to the Big Pete’s scooter. ‘Tasty.’
‘It ran out of fuel,’ I said.
‘Then why didn’t you put some more in?’
‘Very funny,’ I said, but then I saw exactly what she was seeing: a forty-four-gallon drum clearly labelled Petrol.
‘Okay, but how do you get it out?’ I said.
‘Leave that to me,’ said Zoe. ‘On Reverie, we’re always using OP petrol.’
‘OP?’
‘Other people’s.’
I watched as she found a piece of hose, as she opened the drum, as she used the hose to expertly siphon petrol into the scooter’s tank.
Thanks to OP petrol, we were soon back on the road, me driving, Zoe on the back, heading down the range towards the Coast.
When we pulled up at the first set of red lights I noticed a black BMW just behind us.
At the next set of red lights it was still there.
‘Do you reckon that BMW’s tailing us?’ I said to Zoe.
‘What BMW?’ she said.
Is she blind or something?
When we came to the next set of lights, the BMW was still on our tail. I braked suddenly and turned sharp left.
‘Are they’re still behind us?’ I asked Zoe.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
A quick look behind revealed that, indeed, they were still behind us.
Think, Dom!
Okay, they were faster than us, more powerful than us.
But they were also much bigger than us.
‘Hold on!’ I said.
There was a KFC up ahead.
I veered off the road, bounced over the gutter and onto the footpath.
The BMW slowed down so that it was travelling at the same speed as us.
I braked, turned into the drive-through. There was a car ahead of me, the driver leaning out of the window, talking into the speaker.
A screech behind: the BMW had also pulled into the drive-through.
I beeped my horn, and the driver of the car in front had just enough time to pull his head back in as we came flying through on the inside.
Another car in front, the girl at the counter was handing the driver her bag of chicken, her super-sized container of drink.
Again I beeped, but this time the driver wasn’t so quick.
We flew through on the inside, collecting the chicken and the drink.
Lemonade poured into my helmet and the chicken disintegrated into a mess of secret herbs and spices.
We’d made it, though, and when I turned down a dark suburban street and then another one and then another one and pulled into a unlit park, I was pretty sure I’d lost them.
‘Nice work,’ said Zoe, but there was a strange tone to her voice, almost as if she was disappointed.
‘So where are you staying?’ I asked.
‘With friends,’ said Zoe.
‘Which friends?’ I said.
‘Just friends, okay?’ she said.
&
nbsp; I remembered the sand in her hair.
‘You slept on the beach last night, didn’t you?’ I said.
Zoe said nothing and I knew I was right.
Lots of people slept on the beach on the Gold Coast, and you never really heard of anything bad happening to them, but somehow I felt responsible for Zoe. I had to find her somewhere safer, somewhere less sandy, to sleep. My place? Not an option. But where? And then it came to me.
‘You can stay at my grandfather’s house,’ I said. ‘He’ll be totally cool with that.’
Zoe agreed, so I followed another series of backstreets until we reached a park close to Halcyon Grove. I cut the engine and wheeled the scooter behind some bushes. As we walked quickly to the main gate, I began to feel vulnerable again. What if they, whoever they were in the BMW, knew where I lived?
They could just wait for us, pick us off.
So it was a huge relief to see the stocky figure of Samsoni, to see those high walls, to see all that CCTV.
‘She’s with me,’ I said to Samsoni, attempting to usher Zoe straight through.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but we still need to get her to sign in.’
The last thing I wanted was for Zoe to sign in anywhere, and I thought about pulling rank on Samsoni.
‘Do you know who my father is?’ That sort of rank.
But I couldn’t do that to him.
‘Okay, you better sign in,’ I said to Zoe.
So Zoe signed in.
Samsoni looked at what she’d written and said, ‘And could I possibly see some ID, Ms Huntington-Smyth?’
Ms Huntington-Smyth! What was Zoe thinking?
She looked about as unHuntington as a Smyth could get.
Now I really would have to do the snotty-nosed-rich-kid thing and pull rank.
But before I could say anything, Samsoni had checked Zoe’s ID and was saying, ‘Very good, Ms Huntington-Smyth. Hope you enjoy your time in Halcyon Grove.’
Zoe smiled at me as we continued walking.
Why had I been worried? Of course somebody as paranoid as Zoe would have phony ID. She probably had a whole polo team of phony IDs.
‘Wow,’ said Zoe, looking around. ‘Is that, like, just one person’s house?’
The house she had indicated actually was one person’s house – cranky old Mr Forehan’s – but I wasn’t going to let her know this.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘A whole family lives in that one. You know, a whole extended family – grandparents, everything. Even got chooks out the back.’
We continued past Imogen’s house where all the lights were off. Past our house.
Zoe, please don’t say anything. Please don’t.
And she didn’t, but I thought how crazy my response was. Zoe lived in something with wheels, and here I was embarrassed about my place.
‘That’s where I live,’ I said, pointing.
‘Wow!’ said Zoe. ‘It’s like something out of a movie.’
‘And this is where my grandfather lives,’ I said.
We continued up the drive.
‘Gus, you there?’ I called, pushing open the door.
There was no answer.
That was weird. Gus was always home at this time.
‘Gus?’ I called again.
Still no answer.
‘Come on,’ I said to Zoe.
I didn’t want her standing outside where anybody could see her.
‘Gus?’ I called for the third time, and this time there were footsteps.
‘Where you been?’ I said.
But it wasn’t Gus who appeared in the corridor.
It was a man with a balaclava covering his face. A man with a baseball bat in his hands. And then another man. Also with a balaclava. Also with a baseball bat.
‘Hand it over!’ the man said to me.
‘Hand what over?’ I said.
‘Hand it over now or your girlfriend gets her head knocked off,’ said the man.
‘She’s not my girlfriend …’ I started, before Zoe cut me off, saying, ‘Just give him the Double Eagle.’
I handed him the Double Eagle.
‘Now on the floor, both of you,’ said the man.
I didn’t need any further prompting – I hit the floor.
I waited until I heard them leave and a car start before I got up.
‘You okay?’ I asked Zoe.
But she was smiling this strange satisfied smile.
‘I’m great,’ she said.
I didn’t get it, and I must’ve had a I don’t-get-it look on my face, because Zoe said, ‘It’s you, Dom. I don’t know why, but stuff always happens when you’re around. It’s like you’re bugged or something.’
I still didn’t get it.
‘Mate,’ she said. ‘Somebody owns the hell out of you.’
Not long ago, it was Miranda telling me how ‘owned’ I was. Now Zoe was doing the same. It was really starting to rankle.
Nobody owns me!
‘So you totally set me up?’ I said, thinking of all the risks I’d taken to save Zoe from her uncle and the Mattners. ‘After all I did for you.’
Zoe shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t factor in those cretins.’
There was a banging from the toilet and then Gus’s voice saying, ‘Get me the hell out of here!’
By the time I got him out, by the time I’d heard his story of how two men in balaclavas had bundled him in there, Zoe had somehow disappeared.
I ran up to the main gate.
‘Did my friend leave?’ I asked Samsoni.
‘Ms Huntington-Smyth?’ he asked.
Despite everything, I couldn’t help smiling.
‘That’s right.’
Samsoni checked the book. ‘About five minutes ago, on foot.’
I was about to go back home when something else occurred to me.
‘Did a car leave not long before that?’
Again Samsoni checked the book.
‘A white van, actually,’ he said.
‘So you’ve got a numberplate?’
‘That’s right,’ said Samsoni.
Reading from the book he said, ‘OMT437.’
I guess I could’ve asked him to write it down for me, but that was looking too try-hard; he’d start thinking there was something going on.
And there was something going on, but I didn’t want Samsoni to know that.
OMT437. OMT437, I said to myself, over and over again, trying to get the rego number to lodge in my brain.
‘Is everything okay? There was nothing stolen, was there?’ said Samsoni.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, but as I walked back to Gus’s house I soon realised how phoney that statement was.
I guess I’d always believed Halcyon Grove when it claimed it was the safest place in the world. All that CCTV. Those high walls. Security guards like Samsoni.
But The Debt had just waltzed in and done what they liked.
No, it wasn’t safe.
Nowhere was.
Not any more.
FRIDAY
IT’S A RAMBUTAN, YOU CRETIN
The next day, we had training after school, but my mind was elsewhere.
It was on a scooter flying through a KFC, a bemused Colonel looking on.
It was inside a bulldozer tooling down a half-finished road.
It was with men wearing balaclavas.
It must’ve showed, too, because Coach Sheeds took me aside and said, ‘Is there anything wrong, Dom?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘School’s fine?’ she said.
‘Fine.’
‘Home’s fine?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ I said.
Fine. Fine. Fine.
I don’t think Coach Sheeds was totally convinced, though, because she said, ‘Maybe you’re a bit stale. Why don’t you take an early shower today?’
It felt strange having a shower by myself, with none of the usual stuff going on. No towel flicking. No your-momma jokes.
And I said, ‘Geez, Silvagni, your momma’s so fat she got herself baptised at SeaLand.’
I caught the bus home. And as I walked past Imogen’s house, my eyes, as always, were drawn towards her window.
The curtains were closed, but there was a light on. I thought of Imogen in there doing Imogen things and my heart did a cartwheel.
I took out my iPhone and composed a text: im, i am thinking of you.
My finger hovered over the send button.
‘Do it!’ I ordered, but my finger wasn’t taking orders from anybody.
It moved down to the delete button and, letter by letter, obliterated the text.
I kept walking. When I saw Dad’s Porsche 911 parked in our drive I knew something was up. Because Dad, like most business-tycoon types, usually didn’t get home until at least nine.
My immediate thought was that I’d been found out and the house was crawling with cops of all sizes, shapes and jurisdictions. Ready to accuse me of taking a bulldozer for a joyride. Of being in the plane with the Zolt. To match my DNA to that found in Mr Jazy’s Mercedes. To interrogate the truth out of my poor old granddad. To rip my alibi to shreds.
But as soon as I walked through the door I knew, thank goodness, that my pessimism was unfounded. Excited chatter, the chink of champagne glasses; there was an air of celebration. My parents, my grandfather Gus, my big sister Miranda and my little brother Toby were gathered in the kitchen. There were other people, too. Fiona, Mom’s PA, and the DeClerks from down the street.
‘What’s up?’ I asked Mom.
‘Oh, sweetheart, you haven’t heard?’ she said.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied, wondering what it could possibly be.
There was nothing Mom liked more than being the bearer of good news. Which is probably why she did the job she did, running the Angel Foundation, distributing some of the money Dad made to various charities.
‘Toby’s going to appear on Junior Ready! Set! Cook!’ said Mom.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘You know he’s been going to the auditions?’
I did?
Yes, I probably did. It’s just that my life had been a bit hectic lately. You know, trying to avoid having my leg forcibly amputated and that.
But I totally got why he’d been chosen. Toby was a pretty amazing cook. And obsessed with food. There was this thing on Ready! Set! Cook! where they had to identify all these weird ingredients and Toby knew them all, every time.
Turn off the Lights Page 3
