Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  Praise for Devastation Road

  “Outstanding”

  “Joanna Baker’s Devastation Road is an outstanding first novel, a genuinely puzzling and intriguing murder mystery with a sophisticated grasp of character.”

  Jane Sullivan, The Age.

  “Intelligent and sensitive”

  Devastation Road was a unanimous choice by all the judges. It’s a lovely, intelligent and sensitive book which deserves to be widely read, and not only by young adult audiences. Judges noted that, had it been entered into the adult category, it would have been a strong contender. One of the things I enjoyed about this book was that the author plays entirely fair with the mystery genre – if you read carefully the clues are all there, but cleverly concealed by red herrings.”

  Katrina Beard, Davitt Award judge.

  About Devastation Road

  The clues were in front of them the whole time. Matt and Chess should have been able to see who killed Debbie. Can you?

  It used to be called Station Road, but eight years ago things started catching fire. Then a girl was killed, and someone got smart with the name.

  Now it’s happening again. There’s a fire. Matt Tingle and Chess Febey find a girl drowned in a pond.

  Chess isn’t Matt’s friend. She’s one of those people you get stuck with - well meaning, total liability. But she knows how to answer questions, and there are plenty of those: Why are Tara and Wando afraid? What is the meaning of the amber necklace? How can a car be blue and white at the same time?

  Before they can find out who killed Debbie, Matt and Chess have to put themselves in danger, they have to look deep into themselves, and they have to reveal things about the past.

  Other people’s secrets …

  … and the truth about what happened all those years ago, on Devastation Road.

  Contents

  About Devastation Road

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  The Elsinore Vanish

  The Slipping Place

  About Joanna Baker

  Copyright

  Prologue

  A fire and a death. That’s what Chess kept raving about, when she was trying to find the patterns in things.

  A fire and a secret and a death.

  And then it turned out that patterns weren’t important at all, and we should have been trying to look inside people’s heads.

  Thoughts and feelings.

  This was supposed to be my field. At the beginning I thought I had it covered. It was only later I found out how much I didn’t understand.

  But they are what mattered in the end. Thoughts and feelings. Knowledge. Intentions. What you mean to do and what you don’t mean. They’re the important patterns behind all human behaviour.

  Even murder.

  Chapter 1

  I opened my eyes and stared into darkness. I was lying on my back facing the ceiling, and I knew without thinking that I’d been woken by a sharp sound.

  Over to my left, about a metre higher than my head, there was some kind of light – sinister, purple. It flickered and changed colour. Without moving, I turned my eyes to look at it. A large eye, deep violet in the iris with a lid of Day-Glo pink, blinked at me in the darkness. It began to move, a short distance to the right and then back. It blinked again.

  Now a lot of people will tell you I’m slow on the uptake and it’s true — I can be amazingly thick, especially when being dragged out of the twilight zone of a deep sleep, but at this point even I managed to remember where I was. I mean there’s only one thing a silent glowing moving techno-coloured eye can be, isn’t there? It was the screen saver on the computer in Mr Roland’s office and I was using the computer to do my history assignment. At least I had been, up until eleven o’clock.

  I’d got as far as typing ‘Matthew Tingle’ at the top of the screen, and choosing the font that most disguised my putrid Teletubbies surname. After that I had to stretch out on the floor for a bit of a think. Then I decided I’d think better if the light wasn’t burning a yellow disc through my eyelids and into my tired old brain. I turned it off and lay down again. I must’ve fallen asleep.

  Now someone was laughing. And there was a sound. I couldn’t quite …

  I sat up. I’d been dreaming. I should get moving. The next thing would be to find out the time. I would move the mouse and get rid of that screen saver. There’d be a clock in the corner of the screen. I could get water and a Mars bar from the kitchen to keep me going, and then I should sit down and finish the assignment. None of that would be difficult. It was a good plan. I went over it again, lying in the dark and I couldn’t fault it, and then, having decided to do it all right away, I closed my eyes.

  Falling asleep is not difficult for me. I am a gold medallist on any surface, and when I say ‘falling’, a better word would be ‘plummeting’. I was plummeting back into a pleasant dreamscape full of girls with purple eyes, dressed in stretchy pants and tops, offering me banana thickshakes.

  Except there was that noise again.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing you could ignore. It was sharp and quite loud, even through a closed door. The sort of loud as when someone drops a glass onto a tiled floor just behind your left ear. And now there was another one. A short smashing sound. And a laugh.

  Mr Roland’s office is a tiny room off the kitchen at the back of his business, which is next door to our house. They call the business —sorry about this — a Craft Gallery and Tea Shoppe, which I suppose gives you the idea ­— pottery and jams and little stuffed mice in aprons and lace, complete with whiskers and dinky little wire walking sticks. Don’t be ashamed to know what I’m talking about. A lot of people come to shops like this. Some even buy the jam.

  Anyway, no one lives at the shop, and my parents — being neighbours, and helpful, and needing the money — act as overnight caretakers. Normally this works well. From our place we can hear anything that happens at Columbine Crafts and Collectables and once or twice we’d had to come over and scare off vandals. ‘Just kids,’ my father had said, which he seemed to think explained something.

  Tonight my parents were away.

  For some reason, the door to the kitchen had a latch on it and that night, without really thinking about it, I’d pushed down the little button that locked it from the inside. I don’t know why, except that it was very quiet at this end of town, and I was alone.

  Now, lying in the dark on the office floor, I managed to convince myself that the sound that had woken me was the rattling of the kitchen door handle.

  I sat up and listened.

  There were voices now. I crawled over and pressed my ear to the door.

  ‘Look, Tommo! Teapot baseball!’ Smash.

  ‘For Christ sake, Mouldy, get me in.’

  ‘Door’s deadlocked.’

  ‘You know what Perry said, the spare key’s in the kitchen. Top drawer
.’

  ‘Yeah, well the kitchen’s locked, isn’t it. Hey Tommo, there’s a lot of really byoodiful stuff in here. Fragile. Know what I mean? Hope I don’t break anything.’ At this there was a huge crash, as if a large piece of furniture had fallen over and a lot of glass had smashed, followed by another moronic giggle. ‘Aw jeez.’

  Great. Beavis and Butthead, one inside and one out, and another bloke somewhere called ‘Perry’, who seemed to know the place. One of them must have climbed in the window on the eastern side of the shop, the side facing our house. That window was difficult to lock but it was high and quite small and Mr Roland didn’t usually worry about it.

  It was at this point I realised I’d left my phone at home.

  The window to my little office was on the west side of the building, facing a scrubby paddock and a few neglected apple trees. We were right out on the edge of Yackandandah, past the public hall, the council offices and the community centre (an old house). Across the road from us was a decrepit servo, and the house of an old couple, both totally deaf.

  I edged away from the door and wondered what to do. I was on my own with these morons and it sounded as if the one called Mouldy was going to do his best to get his mates inside. If I jumped out the office window, I’d find myself in the damp weedy strip between the shop and the paddock, away from trouble but cut off from retreat to my house and the phone. The safest thing might be just to sit here.

  I couldn’t think why they were going to so much trouble to get in. They must have thought there’d be money somewhere, or perhaps they liked jam.

  At least Mouldy had stopped smashing things. I could hear him clumping around and more muffled voices. For a second I wondered if I should just go out there and try to talk them out of it. Maybe they weren’t such bad blokes. They probably just had nothing better to do tonight and, as any kid from our one-bakery town will tell you, that’s common around here. Then something started crashing into the kitchen door. Something really heavy, with a lot of meat behind it. Even after the first impact the door began to creak and crack, as if the wood was splintering. I dived for the window.

  ***

  It’s not as simple as you think, diving through a window. There wasn’t room for me to step out carefully, one leg after the other, and there probably wasn’t time either. I went for the head-first method, hands reaching out to the ground, and tried to lower myself into the long grass. My shins bashed painfully on the window sill. The grass was wet. I grazed my nose on a rock.

  After that it was easy to sneak into the paddock next door and make my way out to the road where I could watch what was going on, shielded from view of the house by a thick bush.

  While I’d been getting to this point, there’d been more banging and smashing from inside the café. Now, after a short silence there was a scuffling sound and a rattle and another idiotic grunt and the front door to the cottage opened from inside. Mouldy had found a key, either the spare one in the drawer or the one I’d left on the office desk.

  Very quietly two people appeared — one from around the corner of the cottage and another out of a car in the road. They were dressed in dark pants and jumpers and they both had black ski masks over their faces, which I thought was a thrilling touch, but stupid because there was supposed to be no one around. They disappeared inside.

  I stood behind my tree and had a think.

  Now what I did next is going to look a bit strange to a lot of people and there’s a major factor that really needs to be explained, and that is that there’s something about night air. Even on a night like this one, when it’s spring but it’s a lot colder than it’s supposed to be and there’s more rain building. Even when my feet are wet and my hands are grazed and my nose has lost three inches of skin, night air acts on me like some kind of drug. Just a little bit of moonlight and some garden smells and a few unidentifiable sounds and a dose of darkness, and I can lose it for no real reason. Pictures come into my head. You know the kind of thing — scenes in movies or games where people chase each other around alleys and dark forests and there’s something weird lurking behind every corner and where the hero must go bravely through every dark door.

  I hear music.

  And I become full of this idea that life is full of mystery and adventure and that something really important is about to happen.

  So there’s no logical explanation about what I did next, except to say that it was something about being out in the night. For a while I stood there straining my ears for sounds from inside the cottage and wondering if it would be safe to sneak past the car and try to get to my own place and call triple-O or something. Then I thought it would be good just to get a look at these guys, in case I recognised anyone. Then I heard a truck rumbling past on Bells Flat Road several kilometres away and that made me aware of all the dark quiet space between me and the truck. There was a strong smell of earth and leaves coming from the paddock. A wispy blue cloud started to drift across the moon and that darkened doorway started to act like a Black Hole, just drawing me towards it. Before I knew what I was doing I was creeping inside.

  ***

  It had gone quiet. I knew there were three of them in here, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I stepped sideways just inside the door so I wasn’t silhouetted against the light.

  I was met by the usual smells of the shop — the dusty woody smell, the wax that Mrs Roland polished the counter with, and the mixed perfume of all the soaps and creams on the shelves to the right. The cottage was a hundred-year-old stone building with a loose wooden floor. Difficult to sneak around in. The front half had been converted into one large room full of little tea tables, and around the walls were shelves full of cups and vases. One of the shelves had been knocked forward, catching on a table and spilling its contents on the floor. There was a lot of smashed china.

  Ahead of me the room narrowed into a corridor that ran down the centre to the back door. Off to the left of this corridor was the door to the kitchen. As I stood there someone turned on the kitchen light.

  I crept across the room to the right, and backed up against a shelf of scented oils and dried flowers. At my feet was a wooden spinning wheel. I leaned over it and peered around into the corridor. At this angle I could see the front corner of the kitchen and through to the office. They had extinguished the creepy purple eye on the computer — by smashing the screen. I leaned back on the shelves to think.

  Then my intestines jumped into my throat. About six inches from my left cheek there was a face. I sucked in a hissing breath and stepped aside, rustling some of the dried flowers. Then I froze and swore under my breath. It was a doll. On the table beside the shelves. A sort of over-sized wooden peg doll, made out of a fence-post and dressed to look like a postman. Maybe it was meant to be a pun. Post-man. That’s the kind of thing they went in for in here. I don’t know what he was for. He consisted mostly of paint. Painted hair, painted arms, painted clothes and a pathetic stiff painted expression that looked as if he was a bit clogged up in his painted toilet department. I had seen it before. There were two of them, one on either side of the shop. Mrs Roland called them Mr and Mrs Muggins. I clutched at the shelves and tried to regain my regular breathing.

  Fortunately my gasping hadn’t been heard by the three guys in the kitchen. They were talking again, quietly now, and I could hear a splashing sound, like running water, or someone pouring tea.

  Well, I didn’t know what they were up to but I didn’t think they were having a cuppa. I also didn’t think I was helping much. It was just dawning on me that it was time to hoof it and head for the nearest phone, when there was a kind of flare-up of orange light. I looked around the corner again, just as the three guys came ripping out. Behind them the kitchen was full of flames. I ducked back out of the way, kicking the spinning wheel.

  They hadn’t seen me, and that should’ve been enough. I should’ve been able to follow them out to the street and just run for it. Unfortunately, in his excitement, dear old Mouldy couldn’t resist the temptati
on to smash just one more piece of furniture, and as he ran past me he gave my set of shelves a shove, sending it down towards me. I dived away but my legs tangled up with the spinning wheel. Something bashed me on the back of the head and fell beside me. The shelves came down with a crash, missing all my vital organs but landing over my legs and the spinning wheel and pinning me to the ground.

  The boys had enjoyed themselves. I heard them yell with exhilaration. I heard the car roar off.

  And then nothing but the friendly, warming sound of crackling fire.

  The back half of the café was all weatherboard. Crimson-orange flames were pushing through the kitchen door now, licking up at the ceiling. My head was throbbing from the blow. I was on my stomach on the polished floor, surrounded by dried flowers and smashed bottles and little puddles of scented oil. I tried to move my legs. There was a sharp pain in one ankle but not much else. Bruises. Nothing broken. I tried to wriggle free of the spinning wheel but my feet seemed to be caught. Every way I moved, another bit of wood got in the way. And the shelves were too heavy for me to budge. I twisted back and tried something with my hands but I could only reach them with one arm at a time and from that position I couldn’t do anything like lifting. I flopped back to the floor, head on one side and let out a frustrated breath. Beside me was the wooden doll. Muggins. I looked into his black ink pin-prick eyes for a minute and tried to think.

  The only thought I had was that if you had to pick a set of things from the whole world that would help a fire along, then high up on your list would be hundred-year-old floorboards, oils, light wooden furniture and dried flowers.

  Actually the fire was doing quite well without any special fuel. It was working its way through the kitchen wall and burning nicely along the ceiling. The temperature was rising, all except for my feet which were cold. The room was filling with black smoke. Fortunately I was following CFA instructions and staying low.