by Damian Davis
It sounded like someone was trying to get out.
I was so scared I yelled out, ‘Oy!’ The scraping sound stopped.
I froze for a millisecond. Then I bolted, out of the house, through the bushes, up View Street, along Yarran Street, down the hill of George Street, left into Phillip Avenue and straight into my house and into bed.
I closed my eyes tightly. I hoped I had been asleep and that I’d wake up and find it had all been a dream.
CHAPTER 22
DAY 20: Thursday (later)
My skims: 15
Wriggler’s skims: 0
Tearley’s skims: 8
Mr Black’s skims: 8 (!)
Money made for tinnie or Tearley: $0
Am going to have to ring Uncle Scott and see if he’ll wait a bit longer.
When I woke up everyone was out. I lay there, half awake, half asleep, wondering what had made that scratching noise under the floor in the deserted house.
Every time I closed my eyes I could hear it again … scrape, scrape, scrape. I thought I was dreaming. Then I realised I was actually hearing scraping. One of Dad’s chickens was scratching the dirt outside my window.
Someone knocked on the front door. It was Tearley.
‘We’re not going back to that house,’ I said.
I told her about the noise coming from under the trapdoor.
‘Maybe it was Mr-Black-the-ghost getting dressed to go out,’ she said.
She wasn’t taking me seriously at all.
‘Shut up, Tearley,’ I said. ‘There is someone trapped in that cellar and they’re trying to get out. And I’m not going back there.’
‘Then how will we ever know if the camera worked? You’ll have scared yourself for nothing,’ she said. ‘You need to harden up, Dribbler. Let’s get Wrigs and go down there.’
I really hate it when she calls me Dribbler.
We walked around the corner to Wrigs’ place. Wrigs was in the front yard.
When I told him about the scraping noise I’d heard, he went inside for a minute or two. When he came back out, he was wearing a bright red bandana around his forehead.
He went to his Mum’s rose bed and rubbed his good hand in the dirt. Then he smeared the dirt over his face like some kind of commando soldier.
He looked ridiculous. Like a ranga Rambo.
‘What’s that for?’ I said.
‘It’s what the SAS do. It’s camouflage, and it’ll scare anyone off because they’ll think I’m armed and dangerous.’
‘You mean, it’ll give us a chance to run away while they laugh at you?’ said Tearley.
When we got to the river, Wrigs set himself up in the bushes as the lookout. He would have been camouflaged except for the bright red hair popping out over the bright red bandana.
Tearley and I crept down the path through the bushes towards the house. I grabbed the milk crate from its hiding place. My heart was racing.
When we got to the old doorway Tearley called out, ‘Hello,’ but no one answered.
When we got to the kitchen, I climbed up on top of the milk crate and took the memory card out of the camera.
We went back outside into the vacant lot. We sat down on the retaining wall facing the river and Tearley fired up her laptop. She put the memory card in. A page popped up on the screen saying ‘Ready to download images?’ Tearley clicked ‘Yes’.
The first photo was of me standing looking at the camera. The time said: 04.35.38. The next couple of photos showed me doing star jumps. The next showed me staring at the floor, looking shocked. In the one after that, I was running out of the room. The pictures were good. But luckily not so good you could see how scared I was.
Just then, there was a noise. I looked behind us and spotted Mr Black striding out of the bushes towards us. Tearley snapped her laptop shut.
‘Hey kid, you’ve got something to hide, yeah?’ Mr Black said to her. He was dressed in his usual black suit and carrying his black briefcase, but he was also holding a small hessian bag.
Tearley went bright red.
‘Just a school project,’ she said.
‘No worries, kid. I’m not your parents, yeah,’ he smiled.
You could see he had a gold tooth. He didn’t look like the kind of person who smiled often. It was the kind of smile that looked like he was going to vivisect you, and enjoy it.
‘You like it down here, yeah?’ he said to me. ‘I see you throwing pebbles sometimes.’
‘Yeah,’ I croaked, ‘we’re trying to break the world record for rock skimming.’
Mr Black’s eyes were so dark I couldn’t tell what part was the pupil and what part was the coloured bit surrounding it.
‘Cool,’ Mr Black said, but he didn’t look like the kind of person who said ‘cool’ often, unless he was holding you down in freezing water waiting for you to pass out.
‘I like it down here, too,’ Mr Black said. He ran his hand up his forehead and through his hair. There wasn’t much of it left.
‘I come here to think, yeah. To get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.’ He didn’t look like the kind of person who had a lot to think about, unless it was to work out which type of crowbar is best for smashing kneecaps.
‘It’s a nice place, yeah. Can I have a go?’ He picked up one of our rocks, and pegged it out across the water. It bounced eight times.
‘Not bad for a first timer, yeah?’ He smiled again. ‘Good luck with your world record. I’ll see you soon, yeah.’
At that moment Wrigs came tumbling down the pathway.
‘Hey, w’sup, Digger?’ he said. ‘You guys were only meant to be a couple of min——’ He trailed off when he saw Mr Black standing next to us.
Mr Black said to him, ‘Hey, kid, you’ve been to a fancy dress party, yeah? Nice outfit.’
Then he turned and walked off, back up the path.
‘How weird was that?’ I said when he was gone.
‘He didn’t seem too bad,’ said Tearley.
‘He’s a gangster,’ said Wrigs.
‘A gangster? Did you see his shoes?’ said Tearley. ‘He was wearing an old pair of black sandshoes. Gangsters don’t wear twenty-dollar sandshoes. He just looks like he wants to be a gangster.’
‘Did you see the hessian bag he was carrying?’ Wrigs said. ‘It was moving.’
‘No way,’ said Tearley.
‘Shut up, Wrigs. You’re imagining things again,’ I said. ‘And by the way, you were meant to be the lookout. Why didn’t you warn us Mr Black was coming?’
‘I … I … I …’ stammered Wrigs.
He looked at his wrist. ‘Is that the time? I gotta go.’
He ran off.
We knew he was lying because he didn’t have a watch on.
That night, about eight o’clock, Tearley knocked on my front door.
She marched into the lounge room with her laptop under her arm.
‘Hi, Mrs Field, Mr Field, is Dribbler home?’
Mum didn’t look surprised that:
(a) Tearley had come around to talk to me, or
(b) she called me Dribbler.
We went outside to the front verandah and Tearley turned on her computer.
‘We didn’t see the rest of the photos,’ she said.
‘There’s more?’ I said.
Tearley opened up the file with the photos taken by the camera. There were no more pictures of me, but there were some with Mr Black in them. The first photo showed him walking into the kitchen of the deserted house, with a torch in one hand and the hessian bag in the other. The bottom corner of the photo showed the time it was taken: 04.42.14.
‘That’s like three minutes after I left,’ I said. ‘If I hadn’t bolted up View Street so fast, I would have run into him.’
The next photo showed Mr Black opening the manhole. He pulled up the trapdoor and, at 04.42.45, lowered himself in. Then there was a break when he was in the hole and the camera mustn’t have been able to see any movement. Then, at 05.06.55, he came o
ut again, still holding the bag. Now it looked floppy. The last photo showed him leaving the kitchen.
‘What’s he got down there?’ Tearley said. ‘See the bag … it’s full when he goes down the manhole but empty when he comes out.’
‘Maybe he’s a kidnapper and he’s got people down there and he’s delivering food to them.’
Tearley thought for a moment. Then she said, ‘You heard a scraping sound, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah. Someone was trying to get out.’
‘People wouldn’t scrape, they’d shout out or knock on the manhole or move around.’
‘Maybe they’re tied up,’ I said.
‘Then how would they scrape?’ Tearley said. ‘Besides, Mr Black would have to be taking them water and fresh food all the time to keep them alive. We put the camera in on Monday, and it didn’t take a picture of him until this morning. So we know he hasn’t been to the house for three days, at least. And he couldn’t have had much water or food in that bag.’
I hate the way Tearley can be so logical.
‘So what’s he taking down? It’s not like he could fit much stolen stuff in the bag either.’
‘There’s lots of small things that can be worth a lot of money, Digger. Jewellery. Guns. Drugs.’
‘Drugs?’ I said. ‘Do you really think he’s a drug dealer?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Tearley. ‘But I don’t know how a load of drugs would make a scratching noise on the trapdoor.’
Just then Mum came out and said, ‘Hey, Cindy, you probably should go home. Your mum’ll be getting worried about you, and it’s time Dribbler went to bed.’
Dribbler?
When I got to my room, Dean was lounging on his bed, reading a surfing magazine.
‘Got a girlfriend, have you?’
Dean is such a dumbnut. He’s got no idea how much pressure I’m under, trying to catch a criminal, buy a tinnie and break a world record. Why would I waste time with a girlfriend?
CHAPTER 23
DAY 21: Friday
My skims: 25
Wriggler’s skims: 0
Tearley’s skims: 9
25 skims! Bring on the record.
Money made for tinnie or Tearley: $0 ($825 to go. As if.)
Tearley and Wrigs came over to my place really early.
I was still angry with Wrigs.
‘Why didn’t you warn us Mr Black was coming down to the house?’ I asked him.
‘I didn’t see him,’ said Wrigs.
‘You have one simple job and you stuff it up,’ Tearley said.
‘I was, kind of, indiposted.’
‘Indiposted?’ said Tearley. ‘Do you mean “indisposed”, idiot?’
‘Don’t call me an idiot,’ said Wrigs. ‘I wasn’t there. Well I was there … but I wasn’t looking.’
‘What were you doing then?’ I said.
Wrigs’ face went bright red. ‘It’s just that I was busting, so I went into the bushes. He must have walked past me then.’
‘Wrigs, you’re an idiot,’ said Tearley. ‘Lookouts can’t leave their posts because they want to pee.’
‘I’m not an idiot,’ said Wrigs. He was glaring at Tearley. He looked like he was heading for a Wrig-out. If there is one thing Wrigs hates, it’s being called an idiot.
I changed the subject. ‘We’ve got to show the photos of Mr Black to the police.’
‘But they don’t prove anything,’ said Tearley. ‘What do we say to the police? “Officer, we don’t know who this man is but we think he is up to something bad. And he’s got a hessian sack.”’
‘I’ll go to the police on my own then,’ I said.
‘I’ll come, too,’ said Wrigs. He was trying to make up for being such a bad lookout.
‘Well, okay then. So will I,’ said Tearley. ‘But I bet they don’t believe anything we say.’
As we walked through town to the police station Tearley said, ‘Why do you reckon Mr Black came and talked to us yesterday? That was freaky.’
Wrigs said, ‘I thought you said he seemed all right.’
‘Well, he did when he spoke to us,’ said Tearley. ‘But now I reckon he was trying to find something out from us.’
‘Maybe he wanted to know why we’re always hanging around down by the river,’ I said.
‘Or maybe he wanted to find out if we were suspicious of him,’ said Tearley.
‘Do you still think he’s a ghost?’ I asked Wrigs.
‘Well, I don’t know how he got past me.’
‘’Cause you’re an idiot,’ said Tearley.
We arrived at the police station just before 9.00 am. We had to wait for an hour before a cop even turned up.
Then he made us sit on a bench near the counter for another twenty minutes while he made himself coffee, checked his emails and had a long conversation on the phone with someone about how much it had cost to get his car serviced.
Finally the policeman called us into his office. He said his name was Sergeant Tranh. He looked like the kind of policeman that they put on TV ads. He was tall and looked like he could run a hundred metres in under twelve seconds. You could imagine him jumping fences and chasing down bad guys. His uniform was perfect. When he sat down he pulled the bottom of his jacket down so that it wouldn’t crumple up.
We showed Sergeant Tranh the photos of Mr Black in the deserted house.
‘Whose camera is it?’ he asked.
‘Ours,’ I said.
‘What were you doing putting a camera in someone’s house? That’s an invasion of privacy.’
‘Nobody owns that house. It’s the deserted one down by the river,’ Tearley said.
We could hear the front door of the police station swinging open.
‘Stevens?’ Tranh yelled out.
A female constable came in looking out of breath and carrying an enormous handbag.
‘Sorry I’m late, sir,’ she said and gave Tranh a crooked smile.
Stevens was short and freckly and a bit nervy. She looked like she was just out of police school.
Tranh whispered something to her and she disappeared into the back of the station.
‘So what were you doing at this house in the first place?’ Tranh asked us.
‘We skim,’ I said.
‘What, credit cards?’
‘No, rocks,’ I said.
‘And why did you set up a camera?’
‘Because this guy was hanging around that house and acting all weird,’ I said. ‘We thought he was up to something, so we set up the camera.’
‘And do you always set up cameras to watch people?’
Stevens walked back in and gave Tranh a piece of paper.
‘Told you,’ Tearley whispered to me. ‘They don’t believe us.’
‘Constable Stevens just looked up the Land Titles Office records for the derelict house in question,’ said Tranh. ‘It says the land is owned by a Mr Bayoumi.’
‘Then why is the house falling down?’ asked Wrigs.
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr Bayoumi,’ said Sergeant Tranh, holding up the piece of paper. ‘Constable Stevens is an expert on the Google-web and she has found this proof of land ownership. So, kids, I’m afraid to say, it’s you who are trespassing.’
‘What about the guy in the photos?’ said Wrigs, pointing at Tearley’s laptop.
‘How do you know he’s not Mr Bayoumi?’ said Tranh.
‘Why would he slink around the place like a gangster if he owned it?’ I said.
‘People are complicated, kid,’ said Sergeant Tranh. ‘Maybe that man doesn’t want anyone to know he owns the house.’
Then he looked at Constable Stevens and said, ‘Or maybe he’s just getting away from his kids.’
Stevens laughed.
I looked at Tearley and she flicked her eyeballs towards me without turning her head, which was her way of saying she was very, very annoyed.
Tranh turned to us again. ‘Look, we’re busy. We have important stuff to do.’
‘Yeah, there’s a lot happening in Pensdale,’ said Tearley. ‘Like speeding tickets, lost cats. You must be run off your feet.’
Constable Stevens let out a sharp giggle. Tranh shot a glance at her and she blushed.
Tranh turned to Tearley. ‘Well, young lady,’ he said, ‘we’re not too busy to investigate reports of some minors trespassing near the river.’
He sat back in his chair and didn’t say anything more. The silence said, ‘This-conversation-is-over-now-it’s-time-to-go-away.’
So we did.
As we left, I took some more rocks from the garden at the front of the cop station.
When we were back on Queen Street I said, ‘Hey, Tearley, I thought you were about to have a Wrig-out in there.’
‘I hate it that they don’t take us seriously just’ cause we’re kids,’ she said.
‘Do you reckon we’ll really get in trouble for trespassing at the house?’ said Wrigs.
‘No, they just wanted us to stop hassling them,’ I said.
‘Or maybe they’re involved,’ said Wrigs. ‘Maybe Mr Black is paying them off so they don’t arrest him.’
‘Yeah, as if,’ said Tearley. ‘Maybe the cops are right and we should just forget about Mr Black.’
‘What, and waste a hundred bucks?’ I said. ‘No way. We have to go down to the house and put the memory card back in the camera.’
‘Why bother?’ said Tearley. ‘Even if we can prove something, it’s not like the cops will listen to us.’
‘But if we don’t do anything, there’s no way we’ll be able to get any reward money,’ I told her. ‘And then there’s no way we’ll be able to pay you back the seventy-five dollars we owe you.’
It was true. The only chance we had of getting our money back for the camera, or to buy the tinnie, was to find out what Mr Black was up to, and hope for a reward.
Tearley thought about it for a moment then said, ‘Okay, let’s go.’
We went back to the river and put the card back in the camera. Wrigs acted as lookout like usual. But now he was looking out for the police as well as for Mr Black. We made him swear not to go for a pee, even if he had to wet himself.
I thought we should at least try one of the rocks from the police station. I got the most skims ever … twenty-five. The first bounce wasn’t that big but then it bounced again, and again, and again—twenty-four more times to be exact. At least something good came out of the day.