There was quick tapping on the computer keys from Ernst. He certainly has focus.
People started talking—slowly, at first, but then accelerating.
‘Her accent changes a lot,’ someone said.
‘And remember in the first FAD session? She didn’t remember anyone’s name except Bindy’s?’
‘Still,’ Sergio said, ‘Bindy’s memorable.’
‘She’s got that big empty house in Castle Hill. What’s up with a teacher with a big empty house? Plus another house in the mountains?’
‘And she could have given the nail polish to Bindy. She’s in the FAD group.’
‘And she’s the one who introduced FAD to the school!’
Sergio’s hand was on the office door.
‘Maybe I’ll go check on Bindy,’ he said.
And he was gone.
The rest of us looked at one another.
Suddenly, it seemed acceptable to look through Try’s things. Even if only to clear her name. We opened drawers, tipped out papers, took folders from shelves, flipped through her calendar and diary book.
And then Toby looked at the printer.
He held up a single piece of paper. It was a print-out of a photograph.
The photograph was of Finnegan.
And underneath, printed in capitals, the name: MARKUS PULIE.
In fine print across the top of the page, the words: ‘Maureen’s Magic’. And at the bottom of the page?
‘Maureen, take immediate action’.
3
Astrid
I’m taking over now as Emily is getting too upset.
She’s crying, tho you can’t tell that from the way she’s been typing.
What happened next?
Okay, we run down to the carpark kind of falling downstairs together, and even Ernst is running with us?
We’re all, like: Finnegan’s in danger! We’ve gotta warn him!
Liz says she knows where that bookshop is, so she’ll go warn him. Next thing, she sprints away, yelling, ‘The quickest way to get there is to run through the reserve!’
We’re all going, ‘WHAT?! Come back!’ And some people are like, ‘Doesn’t she know about cars?’ But she’s an athlete, I guess, so maybe it was like, instinct?
Now, at this point, Sergio turns up.
‘How’s Bindy?’ we all go.
Sergio says, oh, he just climbed the side of the school building and wrote a message in the window of Mr B’s office for Bindy, so she’ll be right.
So now we’re all yelling again, like, what? You climbed the building? Also, we’re going: why didn’t you just knock on the office door?
And he goes, take it easy, he didn’t want Try to know we’re kind of suspicious of her, so he climbed up the building. And he saw Bindy in there facing the window, and Try talking to her. So he thought he’d better write a message to her in the window steam, but he couldn’t write anything obvious like ‘GET OUT NOW’ in case Try turned around and saw it, and right away just picked up a gun and killed Bindy. But if he wrote a cryptic message, he says, Bindy will see it and just be cool and make an excuse, like, say she has to go to the bathroom, but actually get out of there.
So, he says, he wrote a mathematical formula.
We were all, like, excuse me? And he goes, ‘Here’s the genius. I put a mistake in it! She won’t be able to sit there in Mr B.’s office with a mistake being made in maths formulae. Trust me, she’ll be heading out of there now.’
Before we had time to go off at him about that, he goes, ‘Where’s Liz?’ And we tell him about the Finnegan situation, and he’s like furious at us for not stopping Liz, and next thing he’s in his car, and he must have f/n flattened his foot because he was screeching out the school gate before we even, like, breathe out.
The rest of us go: we’d better get Bindy.
And we all run up to the top balcony.
4
Briony
And what we found on the top balcony was nobody.
We knocked on Mr Botherit’s door, and no answer. For a moment, we wondered if Try and Bindy had just slipped away, but Emily was hysterical, insisting we get in.
She ran to the administration office, found a key for Mr Botherit’s door, and we got in.
Bindy was on the floor.
The window had been smashed, and cold wind was blasting in.
Her skin was yellow. She wasn’t breathing.
We phoned an ambulance.
Now we are at the hospital.
Bindy has been poisoned with arsine gas.
It looks like she collapsed, then regained consciousness for long enough to smash the window, but then she collapsed again.
Smashing the window may have helped reduce the severity of the poisoning.
But now she’s gone into heart and kidney failure.
In severe cases like this, a doctor just said, survival is not expected.
It is difficult typing this. I can see Bindy’s parents across from us.
5
Elizabeth
It’s the next day, and the others have asked me to type an entry so we have the complete story.
I’m in the hospital waiting room now. Bindy lived through the night, but she’ll need blood transfusions and she might need dialysis. She’s still critical and we’re basically just waiting for her to die.
I wasn’t here last night because I ran through the reserve to get to the Maureen’s Magic bookshop.
When I got there, it was dark and locked up, but I thought I could see a light near the back of the store.
Sergio’s car pulled up about a minute later so I guess I’m not as fast a runner as I thought I was.
We knocked, and there was no answer, and Sergio breaks the window and gets us in.
Maureen was talking to Finnegan in the storage room at the back. I guess his name is actually Markus.
Anyway, they looked up at us in surprise. They were sitting opposite each other at a table.
Between them was a plate of apple-and-cinnamon muffins, and Finnegan had just reached out to take one . . .
We both kind of shouted, ‘Hey, Fin, we just need to talk to you, okay?’
So, he got up, confused, and we kind of rushed him out of the shop—and showed him the paper we’d found in Try’s printer. We told him the whole story on the way to the police station. We tried to tell the whole story there, too. They didn’t seem as quick to catch on as Finnegan. But it was around then that Emily called from the hospital, to tell us what was happening with Bindy.
Then the police took it seriously.
At about 3.00 am, they found Try. She was speeding out of Sydney.
They’ve already found out that Try Montaine is not her real name. She’s not American either. She’s from Adelaide.
6
Toby
Now it’s the next day, and Mackenzie lives on. I’m not giving up the way the girls are. Same goes for her family, I guess, who sit there every day, and we’ve all kind of become friends.
The police have been working fast. They’ve found a trapdoor in the software, like Ernst said they would. The programmers had it configured so they could get back in once it was up and running, go through the Board of Studies and into the State government payroll, where they were already starting to make up false identities of teachers and public officials. The plan was to collect the salaries of thousands of imaginary people.
Anyway, that’s how they got Try’s identity as a school teacher into the system, along with fake teaching records, and got her the job at Ashbury.
She was there to do damage control, make sure nobody at Ashbury suspected anything, and co-ordinate the elimination of Bindy.
Try has confessed to everything. She’s told the police she had two local women giving arsenic to Bindy: Maureen, the bookshop lady (muffins), and someone named Eleanora (ginger biscuits). There’s also arsenic in the pages of some old books on etiquette that Maureen gave to Bindy. Plus, in the nail polish which, of course, Try gave to
Bindy, pretending it was from one of us.
It was supposed to be brilliantly masterminded so it was just the right quantities of arsenic that it would weaken and disorient her, so they could set up an accident that appeared innocent. Nobody would ever bother checking her for arsenic, because who gets poisoned by arsenic? And if they ever had to move fast they could increase the poison without throwing suspicion on themselves.
Apparently, Try has told the police she’d grown really fond of Bindy and all the FAD group, and had been fighting to let Bindy live. She came up with the idea of getting a fake lawyer to question Bindy, and eventually got the murder called off when it seemed like Bindy knew nothing. But then, Bindy phoned the guy, and told him she had the transcript. And on the same night, her aunt and uncle told Try that the doctors had found arsenic—so, I guess Try got the orders to take action straightaway. She’d treated a tray of zinc dust with acid (which causes arsine gas to be released) and hidden it in a vent in Mr Botherit’s office.
Her plan was to leave Bindy to die in the office, come back to get the laptop, and disappear. She says she was really upset about it.
Doesn’t she break your heart?
7
Sergio
And now it’s the next day and everyone sounds so f/n morbid. She’s still breathing. Why are we even listening to what they’re telling us about her chances?
Meanwhile, at school, we’ve got reporters hanging around the gates trying to talk to us.
Toby goes, ‘Go home to your families! There’s nothing to see here!’ in that speaker-voice thing he does. The journos ignore him.
This is the weirdest time that I, for one, have ever experienced. It’s weird being here in the waiting room, kind of getting to know Bindy’s family. It’s weirder being at school.
We all want to hang around the police talking to them but they say they’ve talked to us enough. Meanwhile, they keep uncovering stuff, such as that Finnegan, I guess his name is Markus—anyhow the criminal types who set up the software scam, they’d been keeping an eye on Markus because he’d been asking questions about his cousin. So, then they realised he’d disappeared from Queensland, and they were kind of wondering where he was. And it was just last week they realised that he was actually Finnegan. The bookshop lady set up the meeting so she could feed him a muffin full of strychnine. That would have killed him pretty fast, if Liz and I hadn’t shown up and got him out of there.
He’s going back home to Queensland. He’s kind of wrecked that he didn’t save Bindy’s life, even though that was why he was here. Which makes us all feel wrecked for thinking he was here to finish her off, but, listen, he’s from Queensland. You never know with Queenslanders, right?
Well, we are supposedly waiting for Bindy to die, and as I said, that is f/n morbid.
Okay, but Emily and Astrid are going on about how this is the time to stop, while she’s still alive, so this is how we should end this. They wanted to put the story together, kind of a tribute to Bindy, so that’s why we’ve been typing this. So, they think we’ve said it all now, and I am supposed to end it.
So, goodbye, Bindy Mackenzie.
We love you.
The End.
PART NINE
1
Well!
Imagine allowing somebody else to close, nay, to end my life! I am fond of Sergio, nay, I adore him, but Sergio! You have greatly mistook if you thought I would permit you the honour of the closing words!
I, Bindy Mackenzie, have awakened from my slumber.
I understand that I was unconscious for a week!
I suppose I needed the rest.
They are going to send me home in a few days. The doctors are full of remarks upon my feistiness, and I am pleased to report that my organs are functioning well.
When I first awakened from my slumber, various events took place. Not necessarily in this order, the events included the following: the discovery of bounteous flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, cards and correspondence; discussions with police about what they have discovered; and a meeting with my mother. The next three chapters briefly outline these events.
2
Below are some samples of the Correspondence I received while Unconscious, and which was waiting for me when I woke up
NOTE FOR BINDY MACKENZIE FROM MRS LILYDALE
My Dear Bindy!
How dreadful all this is! I haven’t slept a wink! Do get better soon, and don’t give a thought to the Tearsdale. We’ve got the final postponed a couple of weeks, in view of the exceptional . . . Do you think you’ll be right by then?
Anyway, the roses are from the Principal, the tulips are from Mr Botherit, and the Violet Healing Crystals with Apple Peel Infusion are from yours truly. I asked an orderly to hang them in various key places around Intensive Care. I do hope he complied.
Here’s something else to cheer you up! I have an announcement to make! Ms Lawrence and I have been secretly setting up a business—The Lily of Arabia—specialising in energy therapies, chakra and aura healing, bubble baths for the soul, and so on. Remember Ms Lawrence’s ‘surfing’ trip to Thailand earlier this year? It was actually a fact-finding mission! She was so inspired she decided to stop teaching altogether, and she’s been working on the business full time. I’m still at Ashbury, of course—do not fear—I just slip away from the grounds whenever I can . . .
I think you might have happened to see our loan application on my desk last year! I was in a flap about that as we wanted to keep it a secret until the Grand Launch next month. I also think you might have seen me talking to Ms Lawrence in the school grounds, very early one morning— we were talking about the automated palm reader we’re building.
You may be honoured to know that you’ve already tried one of our products: the carob-coated energy drop. I hope it’s helped to make your year divine.
Now, Bindy, in the future, if you are being poisoned, please do come and see me.
So long,
Mrs Lilydale
A Memo from Ernst von Schmerz
To: Bindy Mackenzie
From: Ernst von Schmerz
Subject: Stationery Order
Time: Saturday
Yo Bind,
Wake up, dude, I’m in needs of you, and plus in needs of your stationery.
Herewith, my FINAL slice of personalised memo from Ernst von Schmerz.
According to which, can you wake up, outta the hospital gown, into civ. threads, and cut me some new stationery in the name of Kee Dow Liang?
Thatta girl.
Whassup, Ashbury? The real me? And if Ashbury cannot accept this me? I’ll be back for an order of stationery in the name of Bubble Van Burp.
Nevertheless, have no fear,
Whoever I am,
I will still be:
Your Home Boy,
Ernst von Schmerz
Dear Bindy,
This is a quick note as my flight to Cairns leaves in less than an hour. I’ll write again when I get there.
I just want to wish you good health and happy times, and I cannot tell you how sorry I am for letting you down. I was supposed to be there at Ashbury to save your life. And I went and missed it all.
I’m grateful to you because the truth has come out about my cousin, and I knew something was wrong about that all along. It makes me mad that someone hurt her, and now they’ve hurt you too, but the truth is always better than a lie.
And thanks to you, I now know that the password my cousin chose when she was installing the software at Ashbury was my imaginary childhood name, in reverse. That she chose that password is like a gift from her to me. It means she was always thinking of me. And that’s something I want to thank you for also.
I want you to come to visit me in Cairns, and I’ll take you to the beach and to see some live music. I know just which bands I’ll take you to, and you’ll love them.
You’re a special girl, Bindy, and I hope you will always be my buddy.
Love,
Finnegan A. Blonde
(or you can call me Markus Pulie if you like—whichever you prefer)
Office of the Board of Studies, NSW
Ms Bindy Mackenzie
24 Clipping Drive
Kellyville NSW 2155
Dear Ms Mackenzie,
Thank you for your letter.
We are happy to confirm that Friendship and Development (FAD) is a course currently offered at Ashbury High. The course is to be taken by senior students for one lesson each week. It covers personal development issues such as self-esteem, stress management, career planning and study management.
We understand that Ms Try Montaine introduced FAD to your school, and is conducting your classes in FAD. We can confirm from our files that Ms Montaine has several years of experience, and an excellent teaching record.
We trust that this has been helpful.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries.
Yours sincerely,
George Sutcliffe
Student Liaison Officer
Office of the Board of Studies
3
The police have had many questions for me, and have given me much to think about.
I think the following exemplifies what their detective work has uncovered.
It is a copy of some encrypted notes which were discovered on Try’s computer. The notes had been sent by Try to her ‘superior’ in the relevant ‘criminal gang’. They update him on Try’s efforts. His response could not be retrieved.
Note that ‘M’ is Maureen (of Maureen’s Magic), ‘E’ is Eleanora, ‘MP’ is Markus Pulie (that is, Finnegan), and BM is, of course, me.
• Installed at Ashbury—all well so far—making contact with teachers/students—working on FAD course (my two years of psychology useful at last!)—have ensured BM is in my FAD group.
• Communication lines set up with M and E—as agreed, M has installed BM as babysitter/E has installed BM as ‘pasta companion’ (!)—both M & E in serious need of $$$—both will deliver quantities of product too small to have any serious effect alone, so believe their role is to disorient B so we can question her. Note: in combination, product will eventually have serious effect.
The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie Page 30