October (17 page)

The lift doors started to close. Hurry,
hurry
! I begged them.

Rathbone stuck one foot in the door and the lift doors parted again. He pulled them open with his hands, leaped into the lift and grabbed me round the throat. ‘What did you take?’

‘Nothing!’ I said struggling to free myself as the lift doors closed and we started descending. ‘Get your hands off me!’

‘We’ll see about that!’ he said, tightening his grip on me. ‘I’m marching you straight down to the police. You’ve blackmailed me once, but that
won’t scare me again. This is the end of you. You’ll be locked up and they’ll throw away the key. You’ll be an old man by the time you get out! And do you know what? I’ll be enjoying all the wonderful things that the Ormond Singularity brings me while you’re rotting away in some maximum security prison. In fact, once I have my hands on it, I’ll send you a postcard.’

Rathbone was surprisingly strong and although I struggled vigorously, he was able to keep a tight hold on me as the lift doors opened onto the ground floor. What happened next seemed like something filmed in slow motion. Winter, wearing a blonde bob wig, and Boges materialised on each side of the doors as they opened. They exploded into the confined lift space, hurling themselves on Rathbone, hoisting him up in the air.

‘Get out of here, dude!’ Boges yelled.

‘Disappear!’ shouted Winter. ‘We can handle this!’

I gave one last violent, twisting squirm, wrenching myself right out of my hoodie.
Meanwhile
, Rathbone struggled and swore, pinned in the corner of the lift by my two friends.

I ducked past two people who were waiting for the lift—they jumped backwards in shocked surprise.

‘Stop him! Stop that boy!’ Rathbone yelled,
kicking and struggling. ‘It’s Callum Ormond! Psycho Kid!’

‘Go, dude!’ Boges shouted. ‘Just go!’

I hated to leave them like that, but I had no alternative. I did as Boges ordered and ran like the wind.

I didn’t know what to do but head back to Winter’s house and nervously wait for my friends.

I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper that I’d taken from the rubbish bin near Rathbone’s desk and smoothed it out.

It was a list of words—names of some sort—with the first three crossed out.

‘We’re back!’ shouted out Winter, as she and Boges appeared at the door. ‘Poor Rathbone had no hope against this,’ she said, as the two of them posed, flexing their biceps. ‘But seriously, how could you leave me with Dorothy for that long? She was sweet, but that lady can talk your ears off. I hope it was worth it. Did you find anything?’

‘You bet I did! The guy has a file on my family as thick as two telephone books! He’s been
gathering
information for decades—he has a genealogy of the Ormond family starting way back! He
probably
knows everything about it.’

‘Did you find anything to do with the Riddle or the Jewel?’

‘Nothing like that. But there was a letter from Ireland, from Graignamanagh—like that name on the transparency. Plus I found a weird list of names, screwed up in the rubbish.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Winter.

‘Yeah, something else.’

‘Well, what is it? What did you find?’

‘I found a file with your dad’s name on it. His real name.’

‘What?’ she said, her face turning pale. She slowly sat on the couch, her skirt billowing like a cloud. ‘Did you see what was inside?’

‘I thought I’d leave that to you,’ I said, reaching for the file that was squashed into my backpack.
Her eyes lit up with excitement and reluctance. I handed it to her. She held it gently and cautiously, as though any sharp movement would set it off like a grenade.

Boges and I silently watched as Winter read through the paperwork in the file.

‘Is it the will?’ I asked finally.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. She raised her eyes, and there were tears in them. ‘It says exactly what Sligo told me it would say. He gets everything, including me. He has to provide me with
guardianship
, take care of my expenses and provide me with an allowance. It’s all there.’

‘It’s all there?’ I asked, confused, staring at my friends in disbelief. ‘But what do you mean? It’s all legit? Sligo was telling the truth?’

‘Not exactly. There’s one thing that’s very clearly
not
legit.’ Winter held up the final page for us to see.

Boges and I both leaned in.

Staring back at us was a signature: Charles G. Frey. Some of the lines were shaky and
lacking
confidence. It perfectly matched the repeated signatures Winter had found on the notepad in Sligo’s office.

‘Forgery?’ asked Boges.

Winter and I both nodded. I noticed now that she was smiling. The biggest, broadest, shiniest
smile I’d ever seen on her face was beaming back at me. I could practically feel the surge of renewed energy rush through her. Her pale cheeks were now flushed with colour.

‘I always knew something was wrong,’ she said. ‘They loved me. They didn’t disinherit me. Sligo did that. They loved me, and I loved them. As soon as the DMO is sorted, I’ll be taking all of this—the will and the signatures notepad—to the police.’

Using my phone to jump online, I searched for the meaning of ‘Gordian knot’ while Winter went through the falsified will again in the kitchen, and Boges talked to someone on the phone outside. I read that there was a legend about Alexander the Great who instead of wasting time trying to untangle a famously complex knot, simply cut through it with his sword.

Rathbone had accessed all this information about the Ormond family because he was the
family
’s solicitor. But his interest went much further than that. He too was trying to track down the truth of the Ormond Singularity and if we weren’t careful, with his contacts and money, Rathbone could get to Ireland before us. He’d cut through the double-key code of the Riddle and the Jewel using
the Gordian knot technique—he wouldn’t waste time trying to decipher the secrets, he would just jump right in and take what was mine.

Time was running out. We were just three kids. But then I thought about how Boges and Winter had broken me out of Leechwood Lodge
Asylum
, how they’d tricked the biometric scanner at Zürich Bank, and how they’d hurled themselves at Rathbone, enabling me to escape. I realised we made a great team. We were much more than just three kids.

Winter handed Rathbone’s list of names to me. ‘It looks like nicknames,’ she said. ‘Coded names. And I think I know who the first three are.’

‘Toecutter, She-Devil and Ballet Boy?’ I asked.

‘Everyone knows who Toecutter is. Sligo has started up an interest in the ballet,’ she reminded us. ‘He’s going in for art—with a capital A,’ she added, in her mocking tone. ‘And there’s one woman who instantly springs to my mind,’ she said, ‘when I hear the words “She-Devil”!’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Boges, who had been pretty quiet since coming back inside. He was stirring a pot of noodles on the stove. ‘That’s Oriana de la Force, all right.’

‘OK,’ I said, thinking hard. ‘And they’ve all been crossed off. That doesn’t look good—for them, I mean. Is Rathbone planning to have them
rubbed out? Or do you think it means he’s
ruled
them out.’

‘Ruled them out—from what?’ asked Winter.

‘What everyone’s after,’ I said.

‘The Ormond Singularity,’ said Winter. ‘And possession of the two objects that lead to it.’

‘So he believes one of these three people,’ I said, ‘Deep Water, Double Trouble and The Little Prince, has them.’ I thought a little more. ‘But there’s another person we can rule out from
having
the Jewel and the Riddle—Rathbone himself. If he had it he wouldn’t still be searching for it. What do you think, Boges?’

Boges nodded, gloomily. ‘That makes sense.’

‘Boges, you OK? What’s eating you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Winter, tossing her hair back. ‘No offence, but you’ve been in a bit of a bad mood ever since we met up today.’

‘Stop hassling me, both of you,’ snapped Boges. The two lines on his forehead deepened,
furrowing
his face.

‘Hassling you?’ said Winter. ‘I’m concerned, that’s all!’

But he turned away, not wanting to take it any further. Maybe he was getting down about this endless quest for the truth.

Boges turned back. ‘I can’t take it,’ he said. ‘Cal, there’s something I need to tell you—there’s
something bad happening. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to tell you.’

‘What?’ I asked, a sick feeling forming in the pit of my stomach.

‘Dr Leporello contacted you.’ An image of the freaky fungus expert, with his deadly toadstools and sickly skin, filled my mind. ‘There was a message on your blog,’ Boges continued, ‘with a number to call. I’ve been wondering when might be the right time to bring it to your attention. But with something like this, there
is
no right time. I took the liberty of calling him.’

‘When? Boges, you’re scaring me. Has
something
happened to Gabbi? To Mum?’

Slowly Boges pulled a scrap of newsprint attached to a printout from his pocket. ‘I’m sorry I’m only telling you now,’ he said, passing the papers to me.

My heart was pounding as I took them from him, focusing on the torn-out piece of newsprint first. It was a wedding announcement.