Mystery At Riddle Gully

by Jen Banyard

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday 19:30

  ‘Step back!’ said Pollo, hefting the axe onto her shoulder.

  Will’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Stop! We can’t just cut a hole with an axe! My stepfather would suspect something straight away.’

  ‘It’s a lot better than trying to beat the fence unconscious like you were doing!’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to beat the...’ Will huffed. ‘I tried to prise off some pickets by leaning the plank against them and jumping on it, only I wasn’t heavy enough.’ He looked sideways at Pollo. ‘But you’re here now.’

  Pollo looked doubtful. Clutching the axe handle, she jiggled her shoulders around, very much like someone who wanted nothing more than to swing an axe. Eventually she lowered it. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘Convince me.’

  ‘See here?’ said Will, pointing towards the base of the fence, about half a metre above the ground. ‘On each panel the pickets are nailed to this bit of wood going across. So if we wedge the plank against the pickets about here—’ Will jammed one end of the plank into the track and the other against the pickets above the crossbar ‘—and put our weight on the plank here—’ he indicated with his foot ‘—it should make the nails pop out. Simple!’

  He jumped onto the ramp made by the plank and started bobbing up and down.

  ‘Maybe if we hit it with the axe a couple of times to get it started...’ said Pollo.

  ‘No, this will work. You’ll see.’ Will edged along the plank closer to the fence and held out his hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I need your weight on here too.’

  Pollo dropped the axe and cautiously stepped onto the plank alongside Will.

  ‘One, two, three!’ said Will. Will hung onto the fence and Pollo gripped his shoulder as they jumped up and down in unison.

  Cracks began to appear between the pickets and the timber crossbar. Pollo and Will jumped higher and the cracks widened so that with every bounce they caught glimpses of Will’s backyard. But after another minute of bouncing the pickets were still firmly attached. The cracks looked as wide as they were going to get.

  ‘Now can we bash it with the axe?’ puffed Pollo.

  ‘If we could just find a bit more weight...’ said Will, looking around.

  At that moment they heard a loud rustling in the undergrowth beside the track. Shorn Connery appeared, weeds sticking out either side of his mouth, his rope strung from one bush to another. He paused in his chewing.

  Baa-aa-aah!

  Will and Pollo looked at one another.

  Thirty seconds later, Will had the back half and Pollo the front half of a loudly protesting sheep. Will was grabbing the fence for balance, Pollo was grabbing him and Shorn Connery squirmed and bleated between them. They jumped up and down on the plank together, their eyes glued to the base of the pickets. It was working. The cracks were widening with each jolt.

  If they could just hang onto Shorn Connery a few seconds longer...

  Suddenly Will felt the fence beneath his hand shifting away. As his arm stretched out, he looked up to see the entire panel of pickets that he was holding onto toppling slowly towards his backyard. It creaked and squeaked like a falling tree, Will then Shorn Connery then Pollo, in slow motion, tumbling up against it. The panel and its passengers hit the earth with a juddering crash.

  No one moved. The three lay sprawled across the fence panel inside Will’s backyard in a tangle of limbs and woolly legs. A cool evening breeze drifted over them through a two-metre gap in the fence.

  Shorn Connery was the first to rise from the pile. He scrambled onto his hooves and shook himself from head to tail. He glared down at Will— Baaa-aaa-aaah!—then galloped away into the murky dusk.

  Pollo stood up, bending and straightening her arms and legs, testing that everything was in working order. She looked down at Will. ‘I guess you’ve got yourself a hole now.’

  Will remained on his back. This had been a really bad day. A really, really bad day. He lay there, staring at the bats flitting across the sky. If only somehow he could join them.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday 19:45

  Will stood by silently as Pollo brought the axe down, punching out a hole in the panel of pickets big enough for a sheep to have got through.

  She threw the axe aside. ‘I’ll be off then!’ she announced, looking at the first stars glinting in the purple sky. Soon it would be completely dark.

  Will checked his watch. HB and his mum would be back any second. ‘Aren’t you going to stay and help me put the fence back up?’

  ‘Sorry, I’d love to,’ said Pollo. ‘But I’d better find Shorn Connery while there’s still a smidgen of light.’

  Will squatted and tried lifting the fence panel off the ground. It buckled, threatening to snap. He looked at Pollo like a castaway watching a ship about to sail on by.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Pollo. ‘One more minute. Then I’m gone.’

  Will stood in the yard and Pollo on the track. Together they pushed and pulled until the fence panel was back in position. Will secured it with fencing wire from HB’s shed while Pollo held it steady.

  Alone on her side on the fence, Pollo peered up and down the track through the gloom. Where was Shorn Connery this time? She hoped he hadn’t gone back to the cemetery.

  Just then Will’s voice called through the pickets. ‘Err ... Pollo?’ He sounded nervous. ‘We’ve got a slight problem.’

  As he spoke, something tickled Pollo’s knees. She looked down. Shoving its way through the hole in the fence was a springy grey mop between two big twitching ears.

  ‘He’s been in my mum’s flowerbed ... by the looks of it.’ Will’s voice was mournful.

  Shorn Connery looked up at Pollo, his puzzled eyes blinking stiff white lashes.

  Baaa-aaa-aaah!

  Pollo grappled with Shorn Connery’s rope lead. It was stretched taut, twisting around his neck and disappearing through the hole in the fence. ‘He’s caught up!’ she shouted. ‘You need to pull him back out to loosen the rope!’

  Pollo pushed Shorn Connery’s chest and Will pulled on his hind legs until eventually they had his head on the same side of the fence as his body. Will untangled the rope and passed it back to Pollo. They tried to reverse the process, Pollo pulling, Will pushing. But Shorn Connery, meanwhile, had spotted Angela’s flowerbed again. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Will, heaving with his right cheek buried in the greasy wool of the sheep’s rump and his feet spinning in the dirt, stole another glance at his watch. It was a wonder Angela and HB weren’t home already.

  Abruptly, Shorn Connery stopped fighting and stiffened to attention. Will peeked through a narrow gap to see Pollo, in the half-dark, waggling the end of a carrot. Shorn Connery suddenly muscled forward like his life depended on it. Will gave him one last shove and he catapulted through the hole, out of Will’s yard and onto the trail. Will leaned against the fence and slid down into the dirt, turning his back to the sheep, the hole and the entire sorry business.

  Only then did he look up to the back step of the house.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Saturday 20:00

  Angela and HB stood on the step, their racquets and jaws dangling. Will managed a limp wave.

  ‘Who would’ve expected it? The sheep came back to life!’ he called.

  Through the hole in the fence he heard a snort and felt the sharp jab of a finger in his back. Pollo whispered through the fence, ‘Meet me back here at twenty-one hundred hours.’

  Angela descended the steps and began crossing the lawn, HB following slowly.

  Will lowered his face and shielded his mouth with his hand. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nine p.m., dummy!’

  ‘No—I mean why am I meeting you back here?’

  His mum was in front of her flowerbed—not so much a flowerbed anymore as a stalk bed, Shorn Connery having beheaded most of its inhabitants. She was shaking her head and making a series of whimpers as she formally ident
ified the corpse of each flower. HB joined her, gently squeezing her shoulders with his big hands.

  ‘If you don’t meet me I’ll spill the beans about you and your fires and your fence holes and your sheep that come back from the dead!’ whispered Pollo, jabbing Will’s back with each point.

  Will sank lower in the dirt. As soon as he got out of one mess he jumped straight into another. The graffiti that had started everything seemed a lifetime away.

  ‘Nine p.m. sharp—or you’re toast!’ said the voice through the fence.

  Angela and HB walked over to where Will was slumped in the garden bed. They stood looking down at him.

  ‘I gather the sheep wasn’t dead in the first place, then,’ said HB, leaning back to scan up and down the fence, squinting in the near darkness.

  ‘Yes ... yes!’ said Will. ‘That’s what I meant to say. I thought the sheep was dead, but it turned out it wasn’t!’ Through the fence, a finger poked him in the back.

  ‘HB, do you know what he’s talking about?’ said Angela.

  ‘Err, yes, love. But I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Best you tell her, son.’

  Will recounted the story he’d spun earlier, Pollo’s finger stabbing him with each porky.

  ‘Good grief!’ said Angela when he’d finished. ‘You poor thing, trying to make a veggie garden for me and having to chase a sheep around half the afternoon instead!’ She looked at HB. ‘Amazing, eh?’

  ‘Yes-sir-ee,’ said HB. ‘Amazing.’ Scratching his head, he added, half to himself, ‘Though I’m still trying to work out why the devil I didn’t notice this ruddy great hole in the fence when I was talking to Will before.’ He began tugging on his earlobes. ‘And I forgot to take my wallet to tennis. I think I might be losing it.’

  Will was beginning to feel like an insect skewered to a corkboard. The minor detail of the position of the hole had never crossed his mind. It was always the details with Hairy!

  ‘Honestly, HB,’ said Angela, helping Will to his feet. ‘Will’s had a stinker of an afternoon and my flower garden looks like a bed of nails—and you want us to worry about you?’

  HB bowed his head. ‘No. You’re right, love. Sorry.’

  Angela held out a hand to Will. ‘Come on inside now, love, and clean up. We brought home some pizza. Love on the Wing starts at eight-forty-five. We should just make it.’

  Will fell in behind as they trudged up to the house. ‘Did you say Love on the Wing?’

  ‘I know, I know! It’s a chick-flick but I’ve got birthday rights, haven’t I? It was either that or that horrible sci-fi thing. HB’s really looking forward to it.’ She grinned at HB. ‘Aren’t you, love?’

  ‘You bet,’ said HB, his face glum.

  Will had to meet Pollo. She had way too much dirt on him not to. ‘Would it be okay with you guys if I didn’t come?’ he blurted.

  Was that enough? Did he have to invent a reason why he didn’t want to go with them? He hoped not. He was starting to lose track of all his stories.

  His mum and HB looked at one another.

  ‘I mean, we’ll all be eating together beforehand!’ said Will brightly.

  ‘Well, I suppose you don’t have to come,’ said Angela. ‘You’ve had a rough afternoon. We can bring you back a chocolate bomb—as long as you’re okay with being home alone. What do you think, HB?’

  ‘He’ll have The Force to keep him company,’ said HB.

  ‘Yeah, right, The Force! Excellent!’ said Will. ‘I’ll record it for you!’

  ‘Well, if that’s what you’d prefer...’ said Angela. She suddenly chuckled. ‘How about, if you don’t come with us, you have to watch Golden Summers with me on Monday night? It’s the season finale—the big wedding!’

  HB bent down to Will. ‘It’s only a half-hour episode. Take the deal, son. I wish I were in your shoes.’

  As his mum punched HB on the arm, Will sighed. In my shoes? That’s funny. I don’t want to be in them at all. Every step I take, I just fall flat on my face.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Saturday 21:15

  ‘I didn’t mean to bring him. He just followed me!’ protested Pollo over Will’s shoulder. ‘I must have accidentally left the gate open.’

  They shuffled in the darkness along Diamond Jack’s Trail in the direction of the ranger’s hut, Will going first with Pollo directing in his ear. He could feel her short, sharp breaths on the back of his neck and her runners brushed his heels every second step. She wouldn’t let go of her pen-torch, so its beam waved around from behind, making things worse.

  Shorn Connery trotted a little way back, stopping frequently to tug at plants. ‘Couldn’t you have just tied him up to be sure? Everyone for miles around will know we’re coming if he starts bleating.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone for miles around. Why do you think von Albericht’s staying out here?’

  Their footsteps crunched softly on the crumbly limestone track. The only other noises were the faint fluttering of bats overhead, the moaning of owls and frogs and, at their feet, the scurrying of unseen creatures. If they looked straight up they could just make out the shaggy silhouettes of trees against the dark sky. If they looked ahead into the ribbon of light from Pollo’s torch, the rough, twisted limbs of those same trees slid in and out of focus like ghosts.

  ‘I’ll tie him up with my scarf when we get closer,’ said Pollo.

  Will grunted. He had to admit, he was enjoying himself, if he ignored the fact that he’d been blackmailed into coming. It was kind of nice just walking along the bush track in almost total darkness, hearing all the bush sounds.

  ‘This whole area is haunted, you know,’ said Pollo. ‘Dead bushrangers! Diamond Jack was an escaped convict. After raids, his gang used to gallop back here and hide out in the limestone caves. Some people say Riddle Gully got its name because the hills around here are riddled with caves. Others reckon it’s because the troopers could never figure out how the bushrangers disappeared. But most of us think it’s because they riddled Diamond Jack with bullets when they finally cornered him.’

  ‘No way!’ said Will. ‘Did that happen near here?’

  ‘Just up ahead at the end of the track,’ said Pollo, ‘in a clearing near the old abandoned railway bridge. That’s why this trail is named after him. He’s buried in the cemetery though. If you believe Mayor Bullock, he’s one of Diamond Jack’s descendants. He had Diamond Jack’s grave all prettied up with a big plaque making it official.’

  ‘There’s an old railway bridge, is there?’ said Will. ‘I didn’t even know there was a railway!’

  ‘They used it early last century to bring the timber down from the hills,’ said Pollo. ‘Diamond Jack was long before that though—in the eighteen-fifties.’

  She shuddered. ‘Heaps of bushrangers died in the caves. Bullet wounds, gangrene, blood poisoning and stuff like that. They’ve found skeletons. We’re probably walking over some right now.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘They say that if you keep really still you can hear the bushrangers groaning.’

  ‘Let’s keep really still then,’ said Will.

  ‘Hmm ... maybe later,’ said Pollo. They shuffled on a few more steps. ‘So you believe in ghosts then?’

  Will thought a bit. ‘I like the idea of them. Yeah, I guess I believe in them.’

  ‘What about ... you know ... vampires?’

  ‘I’m not so sure about them. But this suspect of yours—it definitely sounds like he could be one. I hope he is!’

  Pollo shivered. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit scared?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I s’pose I am. But that’s half the point, isn’t it? It’s kind of cool.’ It sure beat going to see Love on the Wing.

  ‘Not when you’re scared of the dark, it isn’t!’ blurted Pollo. ‘There—now you know! Go on, rubbish me for it.’

  ‘It’s not exactly a surprise,’ said Will. ‘It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’

  Pollo didn’t answer.

  ‘When I was little, Cl
ive used to tell me that everything’s the same at night as in the day, only it’s like you’ve got your eyes shut. Try it. Close your eyes and pretend it’s daytime. You can put your hand on my shoulder if you have to.’

  Pollo did as he said. ‘Who’s Clive?’ she said, treading on Will’s left heel.

  ‘Ouch! My dad. He reckons when kids call their parents Mum and Dad it confines their relationship—whatever that means.’

  ‘My-oh-my! Adults say the strangest things,’ said Pollo.

  ‘Well, my dad sure does,’ said Will.

  ‘Still, this closing-your-eyes trick works. I might try doing it half and half.’

  They edged along the track, Pollo’s hand on Will’s shoulder, Will trying to look past the thin torch beam that lurched around every time Pollo closed her eyes.

  ‘Where’s Clive now?’

  ‘In the city. With my stepmother Tiff and their rug-rat—my half-brother, I guess.’

  ‘You don’t sound too thrilled about it all.’

  ‘I’m getting used to it.’ It felt good talking to someone other than Angela and HB or schoolteachers for a change. ‘Just like I’ll get used to the good sergeant one day.’

  ‘Your stepdad?’ said Pollo. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d take much getting used to.’

  ‘He can be really annoying, take it from me,’ said Will. ‘When I went to the school this morning I—’

  He stopped, his heart clenched. What was he doing? Blabbing—to her of all people. The editor of the whatever-it-was-called! A blackmailer!

  ‘This morning?’ Pollo rapped the back of his head with her knuckles. ‘You went to the school this morning?’

  ‘I was ... going to ... check out the cricket,’ Will mumbled.

  ‘How come you didn’t mention it earlier? You didn’t see anything suspicious, did you?’

  ‘No way! Like I told you—I don’t know anything about anything!’

  ‘Hmmph ... Pity.’

  Behind him, Pollo had stopped. Will turned to see her holding the torch between her teeth. ‘You’re not getting out that notepad, are you?’ His voice came out higher and squeakier than he’d expected.