October (4 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
I nearly choked on my own spit.
‘Really?’
‘At least,’ he repeated, beaming. He wrote down the name and address for me on a piece of paper from his leather notebook and handed it
to me. ‘That reminds me,’ he said, walking over to his bag and pulling out a folded piece of pink paper. ‘This is for you. She said you’d know what it meant.’
Nelson Sharkey was wearing a sweaty grey
tracksuit
and a towel around his neck as we sat in the shade out the back of his gym. I’d done my best to get him up to speed on what had been going on with me. He offered me a sip of his blue sports drink.
‘No, thanks,’ I declined. ‘There’s something I need from Sheldrake Rathbone—the solicitor—and I know there’s no way he’ll give it to me willingly. Any suggestions?’
‘You’re not asking me to find someone to threaten him, are you?’
‘No, I was thinking I’d need something over him. I guess I’m talking blackmail.’
Nelson considered what I’d said, and before long he was nodding.
‘That might be possible. Rumours about him have run rampant for years. There have been
allegations about funds going missing from elderly widows’ trust funds, involvement in shady
property
dealings… But, of course, nothing’s been proven.’
‘But he
is
a criminal,’ I said. ‘I know that from my own dealings with him. He was part of a
set-up
that almost had me killed.’
‘Was he?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘
Was he
part of the
set-up
? Look, I’m sure there’s some truth to those rumours, but do you know that for sure? Sheldrake Rathbone may have been an unknowing pawn in someone else’s game.’
I wasn’t sure at all, but I found myself saying, ‘He was definitely part of the set-up.’
‘If someone’s acting outside the law,’ he said, ‘and has been for a long time, then it’s a part of their life.’ Sharkey paused and skilfully pitched his empty bottle five or six metres into an open recycling bin. ‘It’s just a matter of catching them at it. That’s the hard part.’
‘Then I will watch him—like I’ve watched other people. See what he does, where he goes, who he meets up with—that sort of thing.’
‘Exactly. You need to run a surveillance
operation
on him. If he’s up to something, you’ll catch him sooner or later.’
In a corner building, I found the sign I was
looking
for. I pressed the buzzer outside the glass door. The guy behind the counter looked me up and down before letting me in.
‘How can I help you?’ he asked. He had three gold teeth, a dark suit and a shoestring tie.
‘I have some gold to sell.’
He leaned his head back, looking down at me with a superior sneer.
‘Let’s see it then,’ he said.
I up-ended the velvet pouch, dropping the gold noisily onto the tray on the counter. I’d taken about half of it out and put it aside—I didn’t want to cash all of it in right now.
I saw a flash of the gold teeth as the dealer smiled.
‘You’ve been a lucky boy,’ he said, hunched over my findings. ‘Where have you been digging?’
‘Dingo Bones Valley,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Maybe I’ve hit on Lasseter’s Reef.’
His eyebrows shot up on hearing me mention ‘Lasseter’s Reef’. His eyes searched mine,
examining
me, while he rubbed some of the gold with a thin cloth. The nuggets gleamed brilliantly under the spotlights in the ceiling—some of them
were rounded and smooth, others more jagged, pockmarked and uneven.
He snorted before pulling out his jeweller’s loupe and squinting down through it at the
collection
of nuggets. He lifted the tray and poured them onto a small set of scales to weigh them, then straightened up and stared at me suspiciously.
‘Well?’ I prompted him, feeling uneasy under his intense gaze.
‘I’ll give you five hundred bucks for the lot.’
‘
What?
Five hundred bucks? Are you kidding? That’s robbery! This is worth over two thousand dollars,’ I said, halving Boges’s earlier estimation. ‘I’m not stupid, I won’t let you rip me off!’
The gold teeth flashed at me again. ‘I don’t believe you came across this gold honestly,’ he said. He looked at me through his jeweller’s loupe, wearing a crooked smile. ‘You’ll take what I give you, and count yourself lucky, kid.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talk—’
‘You’re not fooling me,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘I can spot the difference between someone who’s telling the truth and someone who’s lying, like I can tell the difference between a cubic zirconium and a diamond.
You
didn’t dig this gold out. Look at your hands—they haven’t been swinging a pick or digging a mine. My bet is you knocked this off from someone. Take my offer or leave it.’
‘I’ll take it elsewhere,’ I said.
‘Suit yourself,’ he said, dismissively. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘But there’s easily two thousand dollars’ worth of gold here,’ I pleaded. ‘You’re not even offering
half
!’
‘
Six
hundred bucks or I call the cops. There’s something about you that makes me think you wouldn’t like that very much.’
There was nothing I could do. He knew he had me. I couldn’t risk this gold trader turning into another bounty hunter.
He folded up his loupe and tipped the gold from the scales back onto the tray. Next he reached for my velvet pouch.
‘Deal,’ I said, stopping him.
He counted cash from a red silk purse that had suddenly appeared in his hand. As he did that, I caught a whiff of that tantalising odour that I’d sniffed just before being knocked out at Rathbone’s undertaking business. It seemed to be coming from behind a closed door, some way down from the counter.
‘That smell,’ I said, trying to source it, trying to work out what it was. ‘What is it?’
With a deft movement, he swiped all the gold nuggets into a container under the counter, and flicked twelve fifty-dollar notes at me. ‘Scram before I call the cops.’
After lunch, Winter and I had been throwing around ideas on how to catch Sheldrake
Rathbone
out on something scandalous—something worthy of blackmail.
A herd of zebras silently galloped across the tiny TV screen in the corner of the room. Winter was distracted by her textbooks. I knew school was tough enough on its own—it must have been really hard splitting her attention between the DMO and her study. I watched as she yawned loudly and let her head fall to rest on a pile of books on her desk.
I looked closely at the names of the books on their spines and saw that the one on top was a history of Queen Elizabeth the First.
Winter lifted her head and must have seen me squinting to read the cover.
‘I’m wondering,’ she mused, thoughtfully, ‘whether Oriana is so desperate to understand the Ormond Singularity because she feels some weird, kindred connection to Queen Elizabeth. You know, they both share that “Off with his head!” sort of power. And it turns out “Oriana” was one of the names that Elizabethan poets and courtiers used to give Queen Elizabeth. Maybe Oriana thinks she’s some kind of reincarnation.’
‘She has the red hair, I guess.’
Winter turned away from her desk to face me, and folded her legs up on the chair. ‘It’s funny what motivates people, what drives them. Sligo wants to be respected and accepted by society, and Oriana—well, she already has both of those things. They both have money. They both have power. Some people are just never satisfied. They always want more.’
‘Speaking of
more
, is there any more of that pumpkin soup from lunch?’
‘In the fridge.’
I jumped up and headed over to the fridge,
pulling
a plastic container with orangey contents out.
‘Want some?’ I asked her.
‘Sure,’ she said, standing up and reaching for two small bowls from the sink. ‘So, back to
Rathbone
. We all
know
he is a criminal, so maybe Sharkey is right. If we just run a surveillance
operation on him we should catch him out doing something he shouldn’t. Between the three of us—you, me and Boges—we should be able to cover a lot of his activities.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we get evidence and the blackmail begins.’‘Then we get evidence and the blackmail begins.’
enhancement on target’s fingerprint
proceeding
. 1st attempt a failure. starting from scratch.
‘I hope he can do it,’ said Winter, after
reading
Boges’s message. ‘At least he’s found another place to use as a lab.’ She leaned back in her chair to look at the clock on the wall. ‘Miss Sparks will be back again tonight, don’t forget.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll clear out in a couple of hours and find a new hideout.’
A temporary wire fence had been built around the property and on it hung a developer’s notice. The doors and windows were boarded up and the overgrown yard was even thicker and wilder than before, creeping up the sides of the house like it was trying to swallow it whole.
I was up and over the fence pretty quickly, forging my way through the bushes and grass in the front yard. I listened carefully and looked for any signs of movement.
It was clear. I dropped to my knees and squeezed through the weeds under the front verandah, crawling beneath the house just like Boges and I had done months ago. The hole in the floorboards was still there although someone had nailed a couple of planks across it. I lay back on the ground, with my legs up, and kicked at the boards until they dislodged and came off. I hauled myself up into the familiar room.
Slivers of streetlight peeked through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. Someone had cleaned inside, swept the floors and ceilings clear of cobwebs, and removed all the rubbish and rotting furniture. The crumbling staircase had vanished entirely and in its place was a
narrow
ladder. I tested its sturdiness and carefully climbed up.
When my head was at the second-floor level, I peered around. The floorboards up there looked shaky, but the space was clear. There used to be a gaping hole in the roof where some tiles had broken and fallen away, but now it was covered with a blue-green plastic tarpaulin.
Back down the ladder, I checked the bathroom.
The broken sink was gone although the tap
fittings
and toilet were still there. Someone had gone to quite a bit of effort to clean up the place as best they could, yet it looked like no-one had been inside for quite a while. What had happened to the developers? Maybe they’d gone broke.
I decided to stay, for now, and remain on guard.