Fetch the Treasure Hunter

by Phillip Gwynne

  Tristan brought his foot back as if to kick me again. The crowd started clapping, chanting in unison, ‘Kick him in the knurries, kick him in the knurries!’

  By now Mr Kotzur, the tall, bearded librarian who rode a recumbent bicycle to school and was vice-president of the Gold Coast Stars Wars Society, had appeared.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he said.

  With one last lingering look at my knurries, Tristan uncocked his foot. The crowd dispersed as quickly as it had persed.

  ‘Are you okay, Storm Trooper?’ said Mr Kotzur, helping me to my feet.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  And, despite my throbbing groin, I was fine, because I figured I totally deserved that knee in the knurries.

  Setting fire to the Jazys’ pool had been a low act, the lowest act of my life. I remembered the terrified look on the face of Tristan’s little sister as she stood at the back door, rattan furniture exploding like firecrackers.

  ‘Would you like to make a formal complaint against your assailant?’ asked Mr Kotzur.

  ‘No,’ I said, because I almost wished that Tristan would come back, keep kneeing me in the knurries over and over until my knurries were nothing but plasticine and the shame I felt had all gone away.

  For the rest of the afternoon my aching knurries and I waited; I’d pulled the pin on going to Rome, surely the explosion must follow.

  We expected Coach Sheeds to come storming into the classroom.

  We expected to be called before Mr Cranbrook to explain the email.

  But we were disappointed, because the school day just meandered on as usual.

  And eventually my knurries stopped aching and I was by myself.

  After school, I decided to walk home.

  I hadn’t gone too far, just a little past the bus stop, when a taxi pulled up in front of me.

  Not Luiz Antonio! I wasn’t in the mood for him and his bad head and his sick feet.

  But when the window wound down it wasn’t Luiz Antonio, it was Father of Rashid.

  Remembering the violent looks on the faces of the demonstrators, the nasty shove I’d received in the back, I got ready to make a run for it.

  But when he said, in an accent twice as thick as Rashid’s, ‘What you did was the honourable thing,’ I knew I didn’t need to.

  ‘So you know?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, my son receive a call that say you withdraw from national team.’

  ‘Well, he deserves to go to Rome,’ I said.

  ‘Rome, that does not matter so much,’ he said. ‘What matters is school. Those hotheads almost ruin my son’s education.’

  Those hotheads? It took me a second or two to realise that he was talking about the demonstrators, the Coalition of Islam Youth.

  ‘So they will stop now?’

  He gave a sort of exasperated look. ‘Yes, now they must stop.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said.

  ‘Great!’ he said, and he held out his hand for me to shake.

  MONDAY

  ACROSS THE ABYSS

  That night, at dinner, things between Mom and Toby hadn’t got much better; there was a lot of glaring across the lasagne.

  Apparently Toby had apologised to the police. Apparently he had sorted it with the Ready! Set! Cook! people.

  But he still refused to say sorry to Mom.

  With Toby playing the role of Rotten Son, the pressure was off me for a change; it sort of sucked, though. So I told everybody about my decision to withdraw from Rome, hoping it would break the ice, somehow. Mom said that she was proud of me. Miranda said I’d done absolutely the right thing. Toby said that pasta was just as good in Australia anyway. But Dad really didn’t say much at all.

  After dessert everybody drifted off until it was only Mom and me at the table, drinking tea.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you think I put too much pressure on Toby?’

  Too much pressure? It was only a cooking show, for chrissakes! What was that compared to what I was going through?

  I finished my tea.

  ‘Probably,’ I said.

  Mom’s eyes were on me now, an expectant look on her face; I wasn’t going to get away with just a ‘probably’.

  I continued. ‘Maybe it’s because Toby is so, you know, Toby. We all think he’s totally got it together. All the time. But maybe it’s not as easy as it looks.’

  Mom took a while to digest what I’d said.

  Then she smiled at me. ‘Okay, I did put too much pressure on him. That’s good to know.’

  She reached across the table and took my hands in her hands.

  ‘Toby’s not like you, is he Dom? He’s fragile, and you’re as tough as old boots.’

  I felt both chuffed: she had just hit me with a pretty major compliment; and peeved: why couldn’t I, too, be fragile?

  We talked some more and then I went upstairs.

  As usual the door to Dad’s study was closed, but I could hear his voice from the other side. I could tell from the way the volume kept changing that he was walking and talking, something he did all the time. I went to knock but stopped.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ronny will ensure there’s no enquiry, or if there is, he’ll make certain it’s got no teeth. We’ve all invested too much in this home loans thing,’ I heard him say.

  And then he must’ve moved to another part of his office, because the rest of the conversation wasn’t audible.

  When I was sure he’d finished, I knocked on the door. ‘It’s me, Dad.’

  ‘Come in, Dom,’ he said.

  Dad’s office is pretty spartan: there’s a desk and a bookshelf with a few management books and a couple of computer screens, but that’s about it. It didn’t really say ‘mega-successful businessman’, but I guess it didn’t really need to, as nobody went in there except Dad. And it wasn’t as if he had to prove it to himself.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  I noticed there was something different about him – he didn’t look as relaxed as he usually did. I’m not sure what it was exactly – a certain tightness around his jaw, perhaps – but there was definitely something.

  ‘It’s about Rome,’ I said. ‘I sort of get the sense that you don’t agree with my decision to withdraw from the team.’

  I was surprised as to how formal I sounded. This was my dad! But it wasn’t the same dad I’d had half a year ago, or even a few months ago. That dad didn’t speak Calabrian. That dad didn’t wield white-hot branding irons.

  Dad smiled, but it was a professional smile, one that he’d use over a bargaining table. There was no joy in it, no warmth.

  ‘That’s perceptive of you, Dom,’ he said. ‘And I’d have to say that you’re pretty much spot on.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, even though I had a fair idea.

  Dad gave my question quite a lot of thought before he answered.

  ‘I’m not saying this is the case, but from the outside it might look like you got scared of the mob.’

  ‘The mob?’ I said, thinking of the Mob, the Mafia, and wondering whether he was making some reference to the ’Ndrangheta. ‘That mob of Afghanis, or Iraqis, or whatever they were,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that mob,’ I said.

  ‘And the other thing is, obviously somebody wants you to go to Rome.’

  Immediately, I knew he was talking about The Debt. It had been circling around in the back of my mind, but now that he’d actually said it, it stopped circling and took up residence smack bang in the middle.

  I went to say something, but Dad put his hands up as if to fend off any potential questions fired in his direction. It was The Debt: no discussion allowed!

  ‘Okay, thanks, Dad,’ I said tersely, and went to walk out.

  ‘Wait!’ said Dad, with a force I wasn’t used to.

  I stopped.

  ‘I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again. It was me who dragged this family out of the gutter. And it’s your job
to keep it out,’ he said.

  I said nothing, just got out of there.

  Why had I even bothered talking to him?

  Inside my bedroom, I slammed the door shut and threw myself on my bed. More than anything, I needed to hear Imogen’s voice. I needed to hear her say, like Mom and Miranda and Toby (sort of) had said, that I’d done the right thing.

  I took out my iPhone and scrolled down the contacts until I came to her. I sat there looking at it, at the photo with the two numbers I had for her – mobile and landline.

  I know it was pretty pathetic, like some bad country-and-western song: my baby done left me but I still look at her contact details.

  I knew I wouldn’t call either of the numbers, and after a while my eyes were drawn away from the iPhone and towards my desk where ClamTop was sitting, its seamless surface gleaming.

  Come over here, it seemed to say. Open me up.

  Again, I knew it was wrong.

  Again, I knew it was immoral.

  Again, I knew it was unethical.

  Again, I couldn’t help myself, because I had to see her, even if that ‘her’ was the digital ‘her’. I succumbed to ClamTop, bringing up all the networks in the area.

  Opening HAVILLAND, I cloned SYLVIA, Imogen’s computer. But she wasn’t there; no programs were open, all the icons were lined up in perfect rows and perfect columns.

  I noticed that it was the same wallpaper as last time, the newspaper clipping of her father after his election win.

  Again my eyes fell on that person – who was he?

  I opened her email program. Bang! Bang! Two messages downloaded.

  The first was from somebody called Joy Wheeler, who was the secretary of the Gold Coast Branch, Australian Labor Party.

  ‘Dear Ms Havilland,’ it read. ‘Thank you for your enquiry. Though we understand your predicament, and still remember your father fondly as a foot soldier of our organisation, I’m afraid it’s the Labor Party’s policy not to divulge any information regarding its membership, now or in the past.’

  I scrolled down so I could read Imogen’s original request.

  Dear Ms Wheeler,

  I have attached a photo taken during my father’s election. I wonder if you are able to identify any of the people standing behind him.

  Yours sincerely,

  Imogen Havilland

  I had to give it to Imogen: she didn’t give up very easily.

  But maybe I wouldn’t either if my dad disappeared like that.

  During the last instalment I’d done a contra deal with Hound de Villiers, PI: find out who the people in the photo were and I’d help him with his tech stuff.

  I figured that if I – or Hound – did this, then surely Imogen would start talking to me again. That it would build a bridge over the abyss that separated us.

  Unfortunately, Hound had done nothing.

  And the abyss was still there.

  Maybe even more abysmal than it had been then.

  Forget Hound de Villiers, PI. There was only one way to find out who these people were: I had to do it myself.

  I turned my attention back to the photo. Looking closer there was a man towards the background. Most of his face was obscured by the man holding up Graham Havilland’s hand in victory, however, there was something familiar about what I could see – his ear and curve of his jaw.

  I used Windows ‘snipping tool’ to remove his head, create a JPEG of this, and saved it onto my desktop.

  Just as I’d finished doing this there was a knock on my door.

  ‘Who is it?’ I said, thinking these crazy, spooky thoughts – like there was some decapitated person on the other side wanting to know why I’d snipped off their head.

  It was only Miranda, though, just about the least-decapitated person I know. I mean, she was just about all head, all brain.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Well, you know how you asked me about Cerberus, that time?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And you know there was that thing about why it was never released? How it wasn’t sexy enough, or something?’

  Again I answered ‘sure’, but to tell the truth, once I’d managed to obtain Cerberus, I’d hardly given it another thought.

  ‘Well there’s another theory floating around the place, now,’ she said, pausing, the way an actor pauses before they’re about to deliver a killer line. ‘That it was actually too good.’

  ‘Too good?’ I said. ‘As in lots of sick apps?’

  She gave me a look – we share DNA so, please, don’t be so dumb.

  ‘No, the architecture was so adaptable – “plastic” is the word they kept using in this piece I read – that it could be used for a whole range of applications. Not all of them for the benefit of mankind, if you know what I mean. So the US Government stopped them from producing it.’

  ‘What sort of applications?’ I said.

  ‘Like remote control of weapons,’ she said, ‘Imagine if some mad terrorist got their hands on that?’

  I did imagine, but that didn’t seem like The Debt to me.

  ‘What else do they reckon?’ I said, though I was feeling really, really tired now, and just wanted to go to bed.

  ‘It’s pretty technical stuff,’ she said. ‘I can email you the link if you like?’

  ‘Hey, Sis, that’d be great.’

  Miranda frowned. ‘Did you just refer to me as “Sis”?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ she said. ‘Just.’

  She left then, and a couple of minutes later her email with the link came through. I didn’t open it, however, I was too tired and let’s face it: Cerberus was so last instalment.

  TUESDAY

  LABOR PARTY

  ‘Thank God they got rid of those ludicrous protestors,’ said Mom as we pulled up at the school drop-off zone.

  I was surprised that she hadn’t made the connection: me withdrawing from the team and Rashid being reinstated meant that they no longer had anything to protest against.

  ‘I’ll be home a bit late,’ I said, trying to think of an excuse why. In the end I decided to go with the truth. ‘I’m going to visit the Labor Party offices.’

  ‘What in heavens for?’ said Mom.

  I might as well have said I was going for swim at the sewage farm.

  ‘School project,’ I said.

  ‘This late in the term?’

  ‘Catch-up,’ I said.

  Mom just rolled her eyes – what was Grammar coming to?

  As I walked through the school gates I could see Coach Sheeds standing near the entrance to my classroom, waiting for me. The anger was coming off her, wave after wave of it, like heat off the bitumen on a hot summer day. So I kept my head low and headed in the opposite direction. But she’d already seen me, and she was after me. I increased my pace. She increased hers.

  The mature thing to do was to stop and face the music. She had a right to an explanation, after all.

  But I just couldn’t stop – she was too scary.

  I took a sharp right and made for the sports field. Another glance over my shoulder – she was still behind me. Despite the predicament I was in, I couldn’t help but admire Coach’s turn of speed – she must’ve been some athlete in her day.

  Through the gate and I was on the rugby field. A couple of groundsmen who were moving sprinklers looked up as I flew past them, schoolbag bouncing on my back.

  Surely I’ve lost her by now.

  I sneaked another look behind. Surely not! If anything, she’d gained on me.

  Through another gate and I was on the running track. A couple of galahs flew into the air, screeching.

  Down here, there was nobody around, just Coach Sheeds and me.

  Just stop and face the music, Dom, I kept telling myself. But my legs and arms continued pumping.

  And Coach Sheeds kept coming.

  Another lap and she was still gaining on me – she was now only about ten metres behind me.

&nb
sp; I increased my pace and it was starting to really hurt.

  Just stop!

  Another lap and I hit the wall.

  I could hear her breathing – she was only a few paces behind.

  The finishing line was twenty metres away.

  She was alongside me.

  We lunged for the line together.

  And, then, bent over, I sucked in the big ones.

  Coach Sheeds was doing the same. Her hands were on hips. Her face was an alarming shade of heart-attack red.

  A couple of times she went to say something, but got no further than ‘Uhh’ before her oxygen ran out and she had to suck in some more air.

  Eventually we both had enough haemoglobin in our blood for conversation.

  But before she said anything, I said, ‘I know.’

  ‘What do you know?’ she said.

  ‘I know exactly what you’re going to say.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘You know, lions, gazelles, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Coach Sheeds.

  ‘How you threw away your chance to compete and there’s not a day passes when you don’t think about what could’ve happened?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any water in your bag, would you?’

  ‘I do, actually,’ I said.

  I took off my bag, opened it, took out the bottle and handed it to Coach Sheeds.

  She gulped down half the contents and then handed the bottle back to me.

  I took a hefty swig.

  ‘You ran a really crap race at the nationals,’ said Coach.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘And Rashid Wahidi is getting better,’ she said. ’He will never be the runner that you are, but he is improving.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘But he beat you fair and square. I’m not sure what happened to that photo, but I was right there at the finish and he came in before you.’

  I took another swig of the water. Handed it back to Coach Sheeds.

  ‘So are you saying I did the right thing withdrawing?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ she said. ‘You’ve done your career absolutely no favours, but you did the right thing.’