But Imogen cornered me as I made for the stairs.
‘What really happened?’ she demanded, a very un-Imogen-like tone to her voice.
‘Like I told –’
‘You’re a terrible liar, Dom,’ she said. ‘Did you do something else to him?’
‘To him?’ I said, and now I was starting to get angry.
Me do something else to him?
What about his pile-drive to the guts? What about him trying to run me over in the boat?
‘Yeah, I tried to kill him. Because then I’d have you all to myself.’
As soon as these crazy words left my mouth, I wanted them back. They were way too close to the truth.
‘Very funny, Dom,’ Imogen said. Then she stormed off.
FLOWERS TOO OTTO’S DEAD
I took the notebook out of the pocket of my shorts. Sodden, its pages were stuck together. I thought of all the clues we’d had, how smug I’d been – Clue Central, I’d called it – and now all I had was this mess. I used the Moroccan hairdryer in the Moroccan bathroom to carefully dry it out. Then I tried to separate the pages but with frustratingly little success. After two hours of effort all I got was a scrap of writing. Though the ink had run, it was still legible.
flowers too otto’s dead
Legible, but it didn’t make much sense. Still, something about it was naggingly familiar. I brought up Facebook on my iPhone.
The Zolt’s fan page.
He now had 1,466,253 fans.
I start scanning the posts, screen after screen of them. Over and over and over again until my eyes began to hurt.
Ten more screens, I told myself. Ten more screens and I’ll go back downstairs. On the eighth screen I found that exact line, in a posting by somebody called Tailspin.
not the easiest friend
must go real love
flowers too otto’s dead
This posting had been ‘liked’ by one person with the Facebook name ‘Hera’. Obviously, it was some sort of love poem to the Zolt.
And the line, so weird on that scrap of paper, didn’t look so weird any more. Poetry, love or otherwise, was not exactly my area of expertise and I didn’t really have a clue what the poem was about.
But then it occurred to me: how could it be a love poem to the Zolt when he was the one who had written it – the last line, anyway?
So Tailspin had to be the Zolt, I reasoned.
And Hera must be the person he was communicating with. The ‘like’ was their way of acknowledging the post. By why use Facebook to communicate?
It took me a while to work out the answer to that, but when I did it made perfect sense: because all the other usual means of communication – mail, phone, email – were being monitored by the police.
But who was Hera?
A quick Google and I had one answer: Hera was the mother of the gods. From that answer I deduced another answer: Hera was the Zolt’s mother, it had to be.
Now I could see how brilliant their method was: even if the police were monitoring her computer, there was nothing suspicious about viewing her son’s Facebook fan page, hitting the occasional ‘like’ button.
But what exactly was the Zolt saying to his mother?
I kept reading the poem, over and over again, trying to work this out.
After a while, my brain started to faze, my eyes started to unfocus and the poem lost what little meaning it had and became just a soup of letters.
And this was the best thing that could’ve happened to me, because I realised that I’d been concentrating on the really obvious way to arrange letters, on the words.
But what if there was another, less obvious, arrangement? Some sort of hidden code?
I decided to concentrate on the phrase in the notebook: flowers too otto’s dead
I got a pencil and wrote f, the first letter of flowers, on a piece of paper. Then I focused on too, the second word.
ft didn’t make sense, so I wrote o next to f; I now had fo.
Moving on to otto’s, I had three choices foo, fot or fos.
Now dead, the last word.
Using foo I tried all the letters – food, fooe, fooa, and again, food. Using fot I got fotd, fote, fota. Using fos I got fosd, fose, fosa.
Given the Zolt’s predicament, holed away like that, food seemed very promising.
Now when I took the phrase and underlined those letters – flowers too otto’s dead – I could see a definite pattern: first letter in word, last letter in next word, first letter, last letter, and so on.
Could it really be that simple? Excitement mounting, I put my theory to the test, underlining the appropriate letters in the rest of the poem.
not the easiest friend
must go real love
It wasn’t a love poem, after all. It was a pretty simple message: need more food.
To say I was excited by this relevation was an understatement – this was the first big break I’d had.
And what’s more, I’d worked it out by myself.
Suddenly, catching the Zolt by the end of the month didn’t seem so impossible after all. I’d already decided that tomorrow I would go and pay Hera, the Zolt’s mother, a social call.
CONFIDENT HAIR
Again, I woke early. Again, I put on my running gear. Despite having congratulated myself several times on not taking my phone yesterday – it would’ve got very very wet – I decided to take it along today. This morning there was nobody downstairs, no crouching predator, and I managed to escape the house. As I punched the security code into the front gates, a truck pulled in, with Reverie Caterers written on the side. Today was the Jazys’ charity barbecue.
Gus had not been happy that I’d come to Reverie and last night he’d sent me a text: don’t forget your training!
So I set the timer on my watch to forty minutes and took off along the side of the road towards town. It was such a beautiful place to run that for a while there I actually managed to forget about all my troubles. But then the timer on my watch buzzed, the forty-minute run was over and it was time to get back to work.
I wasn’t what you would call an expert hitchhiker but there were no buses, no Lexuses, so I didn’t have any choice. I stuck out my thumb and the first car that came along stopped. It was some car too. A Ferrari.
‘Where you off to?’ the driver asked.
He was about my dad’s age. Wore the same sort of designer shades. Rolex on his wrist. Same confident hair.
‘Into the town,’ I said.
‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Get in.’
I went to get in, but there was a pile of books on the front passenger seat.
The man, noticing my hesitation, said, ‘Just put them on the floor.’
I did as he said, got in, buckled up, and he took off. Immediately, I could tell he was a very good driver. That the Ferrari wasn’t wasted on him.
‘This is a really nice car,’ I said.
He looked across at me. And smiled.
His face wasn’t smooth like my dad’s face, not straight like my dad’s face.
This was a face that had been booked into the panelbeaters a few times.
‘So you’re staying with the Jazys,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I said, though I didn’t think he was actually asking a question. ‘Do you know them?’
‘We all know each other this side of the island,’ he said.
It was then that I noticed the title of the book sitting on the top of the pile: Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold.
I pointed at the book. ‘An old bloke in the shop yesterday was telling me about Yamashita’s Gold. Is that a good book?’
‘It’s rubbish,’ he said, and the way he said ‘rubbish’, it was like the book itself was a pile of festering putridness.
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because it is,’ he said.
Obviously this wasn’t his favourite topic of conversation, because he changed the subject. ‘That you in the spee
dboat with young Tristan yesterday?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
Was he what’s-his-name? I asked myself. Number 87 on the BRW List?
‘You kids out shooting, were you? I heard a few shots.’
‘No, there were these rednecks,’ I said.
‘Rednecks?’ He paused, and for a second I thought he was going to come out with something insightful about rednecks, but he left it at that.
A Mazda was dawdling in front of us. Because the road wound this way and that, we couldn’t pass.
‘I should’ve taken the chopper,’ he said.
‘You’ve got a chopper?’
Even my dad didn’t have a chopper.
‘Sure, used to have a nice little plane, too, until Mr Zolton-Bander decided to bang it up.’
The mention of the Zolt so casually like this was like an electric shock running up my spine. I wasn’t sure why. Reverie Island had a small population. The Zolt was an industrious criminal. Sooner or later I was bound to meet one of his victims.
‘So where do you think he is?’ I asked. ‘Still on the island?’
The road ahead straightened out. He put his foot down, the Ferrari growled, and we ripped past the Mazda.
‘No, I don’t think that’s possible,’ said BRW Number 87. ‘What takes you to town, anyway?’
‘Umm. A latte,’ I said, thinking of all the cafés I’d seen in town earlier. ‘The Jazys’ machine is just not pulling good shots. And I’m, like, this latte freak.’
‘I’m hearing you,’ he said, and he gave me a long explanation as to where to get the best latte in town.
When we got there, he insisted on taking me to the café in question and buying me one, and an apple danish to go with it. I noticed that they had a Zoltocino on the menu – a double shot with a hit of guarana, guaranteed to keep you on the run.
As we sat there, people kept coming up to our table to say hello to him.
‘You sure know a lot of people,’ I said.
‘I was born and bred on the island,’ he said.
After we’d finished our lattes, BRW Number 87 said, ‘Tell you what, I’ve only got a few bits and pieces to pick up in town, why don’t I give you a ride back?’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’m really keen to have a look at … at the architecture in the village.’
‘You’re interested in architecture?’
‘Can’t get enough of it.’
‘Look, if you do decide you want a lift, here’s my card. I’ll be around town for the next hour or so.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the card. ‘And thanks for the latte.’
Cameron Jamison, it said.
Just as I’d thought: it was him. BRW Number 87.
I walked back through town, past a shop window full of the Zolt merchandise. The place was crowded with shoppers, all keen to get themselves a little piece of the Zolt.
As I walked inside I heard one woman say, ‘I’ll have five T-shirts. My relatives in the States are desperate for them.’
I picked up a Run Zolt Run coffee mug and turned it over. Made by RBY Enterprises. I checked the label in a T-shirt. Made by RBY Enterprises.
‘Can I help you?’ asked the assistant.
‘These mugs are cool,’ I said.
‘We also have a new model that has just come in,’ she said, handing me a mug with The Zolt Is No Mug! written on the side.
I checked underneath. RBY Enterprises again.
‘Wonder what will happen if he gets caught?’ I said.
‘I guess all this stuff goes back to the warehouse,’ said the assistant. ‘And my boss stops walking around with that great big smile on his face.
I was pretty sure that her boss wasn’t a member of the CCORI then.
‘So you want that?’ she asked.
‘No –’ I started, but I changed my mind. ‘Sure, and can you gift-wrap it for me?’
‘Certainly,’ said the assistant.
Present in hand, I walked quickly through town and out onto the road. When I heard a car approaching I turned around to check it out. It was a black Hummer, not the Ferrari, so I put my thumb out.
The Hummer stopped.
The window slid down.
‘Get in,’ said the driver.
‘Perhaps not,’ I said.
But Hound’s telescopic arm reached out and Hound’s enormous hand grabbed a handful of my shirt and Hound yanked me through the window and inside the Hummer.
‘Buckle up, punk,’ he said. ‘You and me are going for a drive.’
When, a couple of minutes later, we turned off the main road, onto a rutted dirt track, and into what looked like the town’s unofficial dump, my anxiety levels started to soar even further. There were rusted car bodies and old mattresses and piles of festering garbage. It was the sort of place where a little extra garbage, like an adolescent’s body, wouldn’t be noticed. Hound turned off the engine. Looked at me with his mercenary’s eyes.
Then said, ‘Where’s my sat nav?’
‘What sat nav?’ I said, feigning innocence.
Except you don’t get to feign innocence with somebody like Hound.
He stared at me harder, his eyes unflinching, and said ‘You broke into my office, you little prick.’
‘But I didn’t take your sat nav,’ I said.
And then I got it, the chain of cause and effect: the vampire had hocked the sat nav to Red Bandana, Red Bandana had worked out it was Hound’s sat nav, had found the photo of the Zolt, had formed himself a posse in order to bring the Zolt in and claim the reward money.
‘The man with the red bandana’s got it,’ I said.
Hound chewed on this piece of information for a while, then he said, ‘Look, I reckon you and me, we’re after the same thing. Not sure what your motivation is – rich kid like you doesn’t need the money. Don’t really care. But what I’m proposing is that instead of treading all over each other’s toes, we pool our resources.’
‘But you want to kill him,’ I said.
‘Of course I don’t want to kill him. That was just to scare you. Hey, I’ve got three ex-wives and seven kids to support; I need that reward money.’
I didn’t know whether or not to believe him. To somebody like my dad: thirty grand wasn’t that much money. But to somebody like Hound, maybe it was.
‘So tell me what you know,’ he said.
I had to give Hound something, I knew that. Otherwise I was in danger of becoming rubbish. ‘I know that he communicates with somebody using Facebook,’ I said. ‘His username is Tailspin.’
Hound smiled at me.
‘You’re a smart operator. Tell you what, you ever get sick of being a snotty-nosed rich kid, I’ll give you a job.’
I suddenly found myself thinking of that line from Shakespeare that my English teacher, Mr McFarlane, was always trotting out: He flatters to deceive.
‘So how did you find that out?’ he said.
‘I went through all the postings on the Facebook page,’ I said. ‘Over and over again, and there were some that started to look suspicious.’
Hound nodded.
‘Once I’d zeroed in on those, it was easy as to crack the code. It was pretty simple,’ I said, allowing myself a touch of arrogance.
‘Technically it’s a concealment not a code, but, hey, I’m loving your work. Okay, so tell me this, boy wonder: who was he communicating with?’
I was just about to say, ‘His mum, of course,’ but I stopped myself.
‘Pool our resources’ he’d said, but so far he hadn’t done much pooling.
‘So how come you let him get away?’ I said.
The colour rose in his face. His hands gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. Hound, obviously, had anger-management issues and for a second he looked like he was going to lose it.
He managed to restrain himself, however. ‘Fair question,’ he said. ‘I was taking him across the mainland in a boat. Had him cuffed, there was no way he could get away.’
‘But he did,’ I said.
‘The boat appeared out of nowhere. Guns everywhere. ASIO types on board. Telling me that the kid’s a national security risk, and that they can’t let me land him. “Of course, you’ll get your reward,” they tell me. “You’re a national hero,” they tell me. So I let them have him.’
‘They weren’t ASIO?’
‘Of course they weren’t,’ he said. ‘Oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it.’
He really did seem to be disgusted with himself and I felt sorry for him.
‘Hey, everybody has an off day,’ I said.
‘Not in this game, you can’t,’ said Hound. ‘Too many off days and you’re a corpse.’
‘And the Nutella?’ I asked.
‘The Nutella is bullcrap. You hear that? Bullcrap. Some idiot puts rubbish like that on the internet and next thing you know it’s spread all around the world.’
I couldn’t help laughing. Hound’s enormous hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing.
Like I said, anger-management issues.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nutella, spread all around the world. I thought you were making a joke,’ I said, forcing the words through a constricted oesophagus.
Hound de Villiers relaxed his grip.
‘I don’t make jokes. You got that? Never.’
‘Got it,’ I said.
‘Okay, so your turn: who do you reckon he’s been communicating with on Facebook?’
‘His mum, of course,’ I said.
Hound smiled at me. ‘Exactly what I was thinking. So it’s about time you paid Mrs Bander your respects, don’t you think?’
‘Me?’ I said, perhaps the smallest, most vulnerable ‘me’ that had ever come from my mouth.
‘She don’t like me much,’ said Hound. ‘It’s gotta be you.’
HOME WITH THE ZOLTS
I remembered what Mrs Jazy had said about there being ‘a vibrant community here in the seventies’.
Catch the Zolt Page 12