December (4 page)

Boges and I squatted in the darkness across the road from Winter’s building. We checked out every parked car to make sure they were empty. Once we’d confirmed there was no-one watching the building from the outside, and that there was no sign of Sligo, Bruno or Zombie Two, we snuck over to the fire-escape stairs and silently made our way up.

The key to Winter’s door wasn’t working.

‘Let me have a go,’ said Boges. But he couldn’t turn it either.

‘Sligo’s changed the locks already,’ I hissed, glancing around us nervously. ‘We’ll have to break in.’

Above us, the stars, dull because of the pollution from the city, twinkled faint and distant. An aeroplane coming in to land over the sea soared overhead.

‘Watch out,’ I said to Boges as I picked up one of the pot plants Winter had growing at the front of her tiny apartment. Taking advantage of the roaring of the aeroplane, I smashed the pot plant through the window.

The shattering glass still sounded deafening and we froze, nervous someone had heard it and would come to investigate the noise on the roof.

Nothing happened. No-one came.

I carefully knocked out the remaining glass fragments and climbed inside, then unlocked the door for Boges.

Using torches, we found our way to the sofa, digging our arms in under the cushions,
searching
for the hole Winter had told us was there. I pushed my hands around, grazing my fingers on rough, iron springs.

‘Anything?’ Boges asked anxiously.

I shook my head.

My grasping fingertips finally felt something–wads of folded notes, held by rubber bands.

‘Got it!’ I said, pulling them out, one by one.

‘Hurry, dude,’ said Boges, who was now up and standing guard at the smashed window, looking out into the night. ‘I don’t want us to be here one second longer than we need to be.’

I didn’t need any urging. I shoved the wads of money into my backpack, on top of my fake passport, and then started looking for the things Winter had asked us to collect. I grabbed her mobile charger and scooped up some clothes from her drawer, while Boges grabbed her
sleeping-bag
and things from her bathroom.

Boges pointed his torch to a spot on the ground. Lit up were the two photos of Winter’s parents, both lying crookedly in their frames under shattered glass.

‘Sligo must have trampled them in a rage,’ said Boges.

I saw a copy of
The Little Prince
lying nearby and impulsively picked it up and shoved it in my backpack.

‘I can’t find her notes,’ whispered Boges, shining the light over the desk where Winter had said she had left them. ‘Where could they be?’

Our eyes met over the empty table.

‘Sligo,’ we said, our voices overlapping.

‘So Sligo has all our information on the Ormond Singularity?’ Winter cried.

I nodded. It was just the two of us in the
treehouse
. Boges had gone home after the Lesley Street raid, leaving me to make the trek to the treehouse alone.

‘But Cal,’ she argued, ‘Sligo could join Rathbone in Ireland and the two of them could go straight for it! Forget about the Jewel and the Riddle! They can do everything
we
planned on doing–using the photos and other clues to find the location!’

‘We can’t give up now. Nobody has the last two lines of the Riddle.’

‘
Yet
,’ said Winter. ‘And we don’t have them either.’ She unrolled her sleeping-bag and laid it out. It took up almost a third of the floor space.

A wave of anxiety unsettled my guts. ‘At least we have the money, right?’

‘We do have that. Thanks for getting my other stuff too,’ she said, reaching into the box in the corner for a couple of muesli bars Boges had left behind. ‘Did you see the photos of my mum and dad?’

I pictured them, trampled on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot to grab them,’ I lied. ‘I’m going back
to the PLS,’ I said, changing the subject and tearing the wrapper off the bar she’d tossed me.

‘The point last seen of your original backpack? The bag containing the Jewel and the Riddle?’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘Which means a second visit to Rathbone’s? The undertakers’?’

‘Right again. I’ve been thinking about what Sharkey said about memory being state
dependent
. If I re-enact my last visit there, I just might remember what that familiar smell was. Plus we need to search the place. Crims often hide stuff with their families. Maybe Sheldrake Rathbone has stored something there that will give us a clue as to where my bag went, or something that might help us uncover the identities of Deep Water, Double Trouble and the Little Prince,’ I added, as she leafed through the white book I’d brought back for her. ‘Until Sharkey books our flights, there’s not much else we can do.’

Winter curled up and went to sleep, while I worried about Sligo and Rathbone getting together in Ireland and beating us to the truth. We
couldn’t
let that happen. Things Rafe had revealed to me in our phone conversation last month repeated in my head, too.

‘I’ve got it!’ yelled Winter, abruptly kicking her sleeping-bag off and sitting up. ‘Cal,’ she whispered now, remembering to keep her voice down. ‘How could we have been so
stupid
?
’

I jumped up and almost banged my head on the low ceiling. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I know who the Little Prince is! I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to work it out!’

‘Who is it? Tell me!’

‘Just think about it,’ she said, reaching for the nearby book. ‘It has a boy all alone, a crashed aeroplane, drawings, a rose, adults who can’t be trusted … The boy is a prince from a faraway place. A prince is someone who inherits a title, riches, someone who is an heir. Who does that remind you of?’

‘Me,’ I whispered. ‘I’m the Little Prince on Rathbone’s list.’ I looked at her, dumbfounded. ‘Rathbone must think it’s possible I have the Riddle and the Jewel.’

‘And
we
know you don’t,’ Winter continued. ‘So that only leaves Deep Water and Double Trouble.’

3 DECEMBER

29 days to go
…

We were across the road from Rathbone, Greaves and Diggory–the funeral parlour. Inside the shop a soft light was glowing, suggesting someone was still in there. The rest of the street was dark and empty apart from a few parked cars. Nothing stirred, not even a cat.

‘By the way,’ said Boges, quietly, ‘I visited Gabbi today and she convinced me to give her your phone number. She’s promised not to give it to anyone else and promised me she wouldn’t use it unless it’s an emergency. I hope that’s OK.’

‘Sure,’ I said, hoping it wouldn’t get either of us into any trouble.

We shrank down as the lights in the shopfront went out, then scrambled around the back of the premises, through the gate and huddled behind a dumpster, carefully waiting to see who was leaving.

Eventually, the back door opened and a thin, weedy guy stepped outside, turned back and locked up.

I’d never seen him before. He walked away from us, in the direction of a car. Within minutes, he’d driven off.

‘Come on,’ said Winter, creeping out of the shadows and running over to the door. She waved her hands, gesturing to us to follow her. ‘Hmm, this lock is not going to be easy.’

‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ said Boges, looking over his shoulder to the street. ‘I don’t like the thought of all those stiffs lying in there. Plus I don’t want to
become
one of them, if we’re caught!’

Winter pulled a metal nail file out from under her sleeve and started poking it around the lock.

‘Hurry, please,’ urged Boges. ‘Let’s get this over and done with.’

‘Must be a
dead
lock,’ joked Winter, as she struggled to get the door open.

Boges’s face was serious.

‘Not funny,’ he said.

‘Whatever it is, I can’t do it,’ she said, finally. ‘This is a serious lock. My nail file can’t compete with it.’

The sound of a car made us bolt from the door and across to the cover of the bin again. It was the weedy guy. He must have forgotten
something. We watched him get out of his car, approach the back door, unlock it and disappear inside once more.

‘He’s left the door open a crack,’ I whispered. ‘Now’s our chance. He probably won’t be in there for long. Come on, Boges. The three of us could take on that little guy if we had to.’

Winter tugged Boges’s arm as we snuck over to the door. I peered in and could see a light on in the office area.

‘Quick, follow me,’ I hissed to my friends, before stealthily leading them inside the dark, short hallway and towards the showroom. I remembered the layout from my last visit,
shivering
from the memory.

We crept into the main showroom, walking directly past the office where the weedy guy was. I could hear him shuffling papers in there. The light from the office discreetly touched on the rows of coffins and caskets on display.

The three of us ducked down in the furthest corner, behind a long counter draped with lacy fabric, presenting an open coffin on its surface.

‘What’s that funny smell?’ Winter asked.

‘Probably embalming fluid,’ shuddered Boges.

‘Gross,’ Winter whispered beside me.

‘Shh,’ I hissed at them as the light in the office went out and footsteps clicked across the floor.

We waited until the door was locked from the outside and the car drove away before we emerged from our hiding place.

‘I’m going to search the office,’ I said.

‘I’ll help,’ said Boges. ‘I’ll start on the
cupboards
.’

‘I’ll do the desk,’ Winter offered.

‘Nothing,’ said Boges, after he’d finished with the cupboards.

‘Nothing here, either,’ said Winter,
straightening
up from the desk. ‘Just catalogues of coffins, caskets and artificial wreaths. What’s that?’ she asked, alerted by a sound from the back of the building. ‘Don’t tell me that scrawny guy’s forgotten something else!’

‘It’s nothing, just someone getting into their car,’ I said. ‘Boges, what if this place has a back-to-base alarm?’

‘Then we’re in big trouble,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a move on. Let’s see if that painted coffin is still here–that was about the last thing you saw before you blacked out, right?’

‘That’s where my bag was thrown.’

‘Wait–what if someone’s,’ Boges paused to clear his throat, ‘living in there?’

‘
Living
’s not the right verb,’ Winter corrected
him. ‘Besides, these are just display coffins,’ she said. ‘Just samples. People look at them and then order the one they like. They’re empty.’ She began giggling and flapping her arms like a chicken, until Boges gave her a shove.

We moved back into the display area and I waved the beam of light from my torch around the showroom until it landed on the familiar white coffin with its Sistine Chapel skies and angels inside it.

‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘I walked up to what I thought was a counter, here, like this,’ I explained, re-enacting the steps I had taken on that July night. ‘The envelope I had come for was sitting on top of it, so I picked it up and then bam!’

I jumped back, illustrating the force of the impact that had knocked me off my feet.

‘The counter was actually a coffin. Somebody flew out of it, and before I could do anything I was overpowered and jabbed in the neck with some sort of drug. I started trying to get up, but was too groggy. All I saw was my backpack being chucked into that coffin over there.’

I stood still, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then something amazing happened.

I spun around to my friends. ‘The smell! I almost had it! Sharkey was right! By retracing my steps and standing here just like I did last time, and
feeling
the way I did last time, it almost came back to me. Damn!’ I said. ‘It’s like a sneeze that won’t burst out! It’s so frustrating! It’s on the tip of my–’

‘Nose?’ Winter suggested.

Boges looked like he wanted to shake the answer out of me.

‘I almost had it, I swear.’

I walked away from the coffin and then turned, retracing my footsteps once more. Maybe one more approach would trigger the deep
unconscious
memory that lurked somewhere in the back of my mind.

It was no use. That initial powerful surge towards remembering didn’t happen again. Instead, it faded on me.

A howling shriek from Boges instantly snapped my attention his way. Winter and I shone our torches on him–he was flat up against the wall, as white as a ghost.

‘I thought you said there weren’t any bodies in here!’

‘There shouldn’t be,’ Winter said, peering into the open coffin Boges was backing away from. I looked over her shoulder.
A bloodied corpse
?

The sound of a vehicle being driven up and parked out the back made us freeze again. We ran to the rear door and flattened ourselves on either side of it.

I peered out the window and spotted a van.

Boges’s eyes were even wider with fear.

‘I think someone’s about to come inside,’ I hissed, hearing the van door open and close just metres away. I pressed against the wall,
shaking
with tension. ‘Stay quiet, wait till they’ve stepped all the way through the door, then the three of us bolt out and turn left down Temperance Lane. OK?’

My friends nervously nodded.

The sound of something being unloaded outside was quickly followed by the approach of footsteps, the jangle of keys and the twisting of the rear-door handle. We watched the handle turn, then the door opened slowly.

In the soft glow of the streetlight I spotted the gleam of the front end of a chrome-plated collapsible trolley. It was wheeled awkwardly through the doorway, followed by a stooped figure pushing it.

As soon as the guy and the trolley were in, I gave the signal to my friends.

He let out a terrified scream as the three of us sprang out of the darkness, shoved past him and ran out the door.

We pelted down the laneway and down the street.

‘Poor guy,’ said Winter as we raced away,
‘must have thought some of the deceased had escaped! I hope he doesn’t die of heart failure!’

‘What was that bloody body doing in there?’ asked Boges, as we all caught our breath in a deserted churchyard. ‘Were they bullet wounds?’

Before I could answer, I felt my phone
vibrating
in my pocket.

My friends nodded to me, urging me to answer it.

‘Yes?’ I said, firmly.

‘Cal!’

‘Gabbi?’ I said, instantly alarmed. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘You’ve got to come!’

‘Calm down and tell me what’s going on.’

‘The voices woke me up!’

‘Whose voices?’

‘Mum and Uncle Rafe–they were yelling at each other. Mum was going nuts and screaming about something and Rafe was trying to calm her down. Cal, I think she’s really lost it. Uncle Rafe must have come home late–he wasn’t home when I went to bed. I don’t know how it all started, but when I got up I saw Mum all red in the face, angry and upset. She was chucking things around!’

‘It’s OK, Gab, everyone has fights. Really big
ones sometimes. They’ll calm down and forget all about it.’