July

by Gabrielle Lord

  Boges shook his head. He looked angry. He stood up and started pacing around the room. ‘What are you doing, giving him your number? As far as he knows you’ve tried to murder your own family! Yeah, he was mates with your dad, but you don’t have a clue yet whether you can trust him. He could have gone straight to the cops! What if he sent the skull message?’

  Boges stopped pacing. He put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. ‘Dude,’ he said, calmly, ‘you have to be more careful. Seriously. You can’t trust anyone. OK?’

  He was right. It was a stupid thing to do. ‘You’re right,’ I finally agreed. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t have the right number anymore. Thanks for this,’ I said, pocketing the mobile. ‘I want to get out of here—the city. I’ve gotta find Millicent. Bartholomew thought she might have helpful information. It’s weird, she’s my great-aunt but I barely know anything about her.’

  ‘Weird, yes,’ Boges agreed. ‘So you’re going to visit her?’ he asked, taking off the sunglasses and cocking his eyebrow. ‘And how exactly?’

  I was stumped.

  ‘How about this then?’ Boges pulled a sheet of folded paper out of his little black book, triumphantly slapping it down in my hand.

  It was a directory webpage print-out, with a couple of lines highlighted in yellow.

  ‘I searched for “Millicent Ormond” in an online country phone directory,’ said Boges. ‘And there she was! Finally something simple and straightforward. Kind of.’

  Beside my great-aunt’s name, fully printed out as ‘Millicent Butler Ormond’ was the address ‘Manresa’, Redcliffe.

  ‘She must live on a property like “Kilkenny”,’ I said, thinking of Great-uncle Bartholomew’s homestead that was now nothing more than charred ruins. ‘All I have to do is find Redcliffe and then ask around for “Manresa”.’

  Boges pulled out his laptop and turned it to face me. ‘Here’s Redcliffe,’ he said, pointing to a state map. ‘It’s way up there—in the north. A long way past Mount Helicon. About one hundred kilometres inland from Paradise Beach. It’s going to be a long trip for you.’

  ‘Boges, this is unreal. Thanks heaps.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Jumping trains, hitching rides, walking endless kilometres. One day, I promised myself, all this running would be over. But until then, and until I’d searched out the huge secret that Dad had partly unearthed, I had to stay on the road, stay alive, keep ahead of my enemies. Three hundred and sixty-five days, the crazy guy from New Year’s Eve had warned. The mysterious Ormond Singularity was supposed to end on December 31st too. I was more than halfway through the year now, and I couldn’t wait for the day when I could clear my name and be safe at home with my family. Mum, Gabbi and me.

  ‘How are they?’ I asked, straightening up. ‘Mum and Gabbi? I’ve been wanting to call, but…’

  ‘Gabbi appears to be showing signs of life, but she’s still in the coma. Your mum and Rafe latch onto every flicker of her eyelids, every movement in her body, believing that one day she’ll come around. Your mum is looking after her now at Rafe’s place—apparently he’s hired a full-time specialist nurse for her. He even tore the wall down between two of his upstairs rooms to make one big room for Gab, one that fits her bed, the hospital machinery and monitors. The doctors still say there is every chance of a full recovery. It’s just an extremely slow process.’

  ‘She’s at Rafe’s place?’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Yep. They think being in a home environment might help her wake up.’

  ‘Has she spoken or anything yet?’

  Boges scrunched up his face and shook his head.

  ‘And Mum?’ I asked. ‘Is she any better?’

  Boges hesitated. ‘I would say she’s doing fine. Your mum and Rafe—well—they seem to be getting along fine.’

  My stomach muscles tightened at the way he said ‘fine’.

  ‘Fine?’ I asked.

  My friend squirmed uncomfortably, and then started scratching his head.

  ‘How fine?’ I repeated, bothered by the look on his face.

  He turned away, clearly uncomfortable with my question. And that was answer enough. I didn’t want to think about Mum and Rafe getting along. I was happy he was around to help her, to do all those awesome things to make Mum and Gab comfortable, like altering the house, but I just wanted everything to go back to how it was before. The fact that Rafe looked so much like Dad—he was his identical twin—made everything worse. It was like a parallel universe, where Dad had died and been replaced by a slightly different version of himself.

  When Boges spoke again, his expression had changed.

  ‘Let’s get down to business. Come on, dude. Show it to me. At last I get to see this infamous Jewel.’

  I pulled my backpack off and carefully pulled out the Ormond Jewel.

  I held it out to him; it was as big as the palm of my hand, the oval emerald glowing.

  Slowly, Boges picked it up and studied it as he turned it over in his hands. The rubies flashed like fire as he lifted the catch and opened it. Inside was the painted portrait of a woman with red-gold hair, a jewelled crown and necklace.

  ‘Elizabeth the First of England,’ said Boges.

  He closed the heavy gold locket and put it down, but couldn’t take his eyes off it. I couldn’t either. It was mesmerising, filled with power. There was something about it that drew me to it, like a magnetic aura. It was like some sort of medieval transmitting device, pulsing out a huge, hidden secret, waiting hundreds of years to be joined with the old poem, and then decoded by just the right person.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ I said. ‘Great-uncle Bartholomew knew about it, but believed it had vanished long ago—broken up and sold. He had an old book that described it exactly, although it was written in old-fashioned language. He also said that the Ormond Riddle and the Ormond Jewel are the two halves of the double-key code.’

  ‘Yes, so all we have to do is solve the Riddle, and crack the code, by putting it all together, somehow, with this awesome Jewel. Then we’ll understand the Ormond Singularity. Mmmm,’ said Boges. ‘Sounds like you need yourself a genius,’ he grinned, pulling at the tops of his overalls, hinting that he was the man for the job.

  ‘That’s right. Any ideas on where we can find us a genius?’

  Boges laughed and started sorting through his bag. ‘All families have secrets,’ he said, ‘but it must be a big one if it has all these barriers around it, protecting it.’

  ‘And everyone trying to get their hands on it.’

  Boges placed copies of the photos from Dad’s memory stick on the concrete floor in front of me. ‘I printed these out for you. Let’s put the two halves of this double-key code together and see what we have.’

  I pulled the drawings out, laying them in a row next to the Ormond Jewel. Then I laid the Riddle beside the shining Jewel.

  ‘So what do we have so far?’ I said, half asking myself. ‘The Angel images led us to the Piers Ormond memorial. We have the drawing that told us we were looking for something that could be worn—and that turned out to be a message telling us to find the Jewel. There’s a connection between the drawing of the boy and the rose, and the rose on the back of the Jewel. There’s the Sphinx—which could have been pointing to the Riddle, but I’m still not exactly sure about the Roman bust.’ I tapped the drawing of the butler with the blackjack. ‘Here I think Dad was trying to tell us about Black Tom Butler. The Queen gave this Jewel to Black Tom, the tenth Earl of Ormond.’

  ‘Man,’ said Boges, looking up from the Jewel to me. ‘Old Black Tom, eh? I feel like I’m handling a piece of history.’

  ‘You are.’ I felt a shiver of dangerous excitement. ‘Everything here in front of us is trying to tell us what the secret is. Boges, it’s all here.’ I thought of the missing final lines of the Riddle. ‘Almost all here,’ I corrected.

  I stood up and walked around the room. I was starting to get edgy. I remembered my dad’s eyes and the desperation in th
em as they followed me around his hospice room, after he returned from Ireland, sick. He had so much to tell me, but I just wasn’t getting it.

  Dad, help me.

  I re-arranged some of the drawings.

  ‘Look,’ said Boges, ‘there’s a “5” in your dad’s drawing, and a “5” on the gate in his Ireland photos.’ He leaned closer to the images and shifted a few more pages around. ‘And your dad drew some sort of door, which could have been an attempt to send us to this wardrobe!’ he said, pointing to the photo of the ornate piece of furniture that was also taken in Ireland. ‘Hey, what happened to your hands?’ asked Boges, suddenly noticing the fading cuts and scratches that were all over me from being netted and dumped on the deck of the Star of Mykonos.

  I began by backtracking a bit and telling him in more detail about the carjacking I stupidly got involved in, courtesy of Griff Kirby, and everything that went on after the jewel heist with Repro. Then I explained what happened with the Southport Police—my crazy cop car and jet ski escape—getting caught by a fishing boat, and then ending up locked in the freezer at Mike’s Seafood by Three-O.

  ‘You’re mixing with some seriously dangerous characters,’ said Boges.

  ‘They seem to mix with me. My job is to keep out of trouble—and to stay alive.’

  ‘What happened with that ex-detective guy who contacted you on your blog?’

  ‘Nelson Sharkey? Nothing, yet,’ I replied, amazed at Boges’s ability to remember so much when everything in my mind was completely chaotic.

  I picked up the picture of Dad standing in front of a stony ruin. ‘But once I talk to Eric—I’ll be on guard, don’t worry—I think he’ll be able to fill in a lot of the gaps about what happened in Ireland when he was there with Dad. Plus I’m sure I’ll find something in Redcliffe.’

  ‘I think it’s a good idea to get out of the city again. And now you have a clean mobile, so they can’t get at you electronically either. You can access the internet on it too, so you don’t need to risk going into any more internet cafés, OK?’

  ‘Cool!’ I said, pulling the phone out and looking at it more closely. ‘How are you paying for all this?’

  ‘It’s taken care of. Don’t worry about it. Here,’ said Boges, passing me a hundred dollars. ‘I should give you this before I change my mind!’

  I looked at him in disbelief.

  ‘I’m making heaps of money at the moment on eBay,’ he explained, ‘plus I have cash coming in from tutoring and the cleaning work with Uncle Sammy. I got that new mobile for you at a great price too—the seller thought it was too damaged to repair, but not too damaged for me! So now you have money, a clean phone, and a mission. And we’re way ahead of the crims—we’re the only people in the world who know about the meanings in these images,’ he said, glancing at the display we’d made, ‘and, of course, the double-key code.’

  I was silent, knowing that wasn’t true. Boges stared hard at me.

  ‘We are the only people in the world, aren’t we?’

  ‘Winter knows about Black Tom and how the Riddle and the Jewel go together to make the double-key code.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Calm down, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘Winter Frey is cool. You don’t know her like I do.’

  ‘Clearly!’ Boges jumped up off the floor and kicked a piece of scrap timber that had been used to stir paint. It hit the wall and bounced back, raising dust. ‘I knew we should never have trusted that cheating, lying, double-crossing chick! You forget the name of the solicitor we need, but you don’t forget to tell that sneaky chick everything we know! She gets around looking all fancy, wearing shiny stuff in her hair like she thinks she’s some little angel, and pretends to help us while all the time she’s playing us for fools! She’s trying to work up a fake friendship with you, and then behind your back she runs to Sligo with every scrap of information. Have you got some kind of death wish?’

  ‘Hold up, she’s the one who told us about the double-key code! You’re way out of line, Boges,’ I said, angry at my friend’s outburst. ‘You don’t know Winter like I do.’

  He turned his attention back to his laptop.

  ‘Incredible,’ he said after a minute or two, his eyes wide in surprise at something he’d just seen on the screen. ‘Don’t even think of calling her!’ he shouted as I peered over his shoulder.

  If only Boges knew about the photo in the safe. That was the only reason I hadn’t called Winter. I turned the laptop back to him without commenting, even though inside I felt like I wanted to call Little Bird more than ever.

  After another minute, he directed the screen to me once more.

  I read the last sentence again and swore. It was going to be hard getting to Millicent.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said, gathering everything up. I hesitated for a moment before handing it all over to Boges. ‘I don’t want to carry this with me on the road to Redcliffe—could you look after it for me?’

  Boges nodded, silently shut down his laptop and then loaded up his backpack. I trusted him more than anyone else, but handing it all over felt like I was losing a part of myself.

  I ended up taking back the drawings. They were all I had left that connected me to my dad.

  We walked to the door and both pulled it up. I was half-expecting sunlight to stream through, but it was well and truly dark now.

  Boges patted his backpack, protectively, acknowledging the importance of what was concealed inside. He put out his hand to shake mine.

  ‘Good luck, buddy.’

  176 days to go …

  As soon as I heard her voice on the other end of the line, my gut churned with strange, mixed-up feelings of excitement and suspicion. I needed to know what she had to say about the photo of her wearing the Jewel.

  ‘It’s Cal,’ I said.

  ‘About time!’ said Winter. ‘I’ve been stinging to talk to you—I heard something important about the Jewel.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It has something written inside,’ she said. ‘I heard Sligo talking about it on the phone to someone—about an inscription. He said it was “a crucial guide”.’

  ‘Guide to what?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’ She paused at the end of the line. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I saw a photo of you in Sligo’s safe.’

  ‘What in the world are you talking about, Callum Ormond?’

  ‘You were wearing a silver dress … and around your neck you were wearing the Ormond Jewel.’

  ‘What?’

  Her surprise sounded genuine.

  ‘You heard me. I want to know why you pretended you had never seen the Ormond Jewel. I want to know why you lied to me.’

  ‘Cal, I didn’t lie to you! I’ve never even seen the Jewel! Do you think I wouldn’t tell you if I had? Why would I help you get inside Sligo’s—put myself in serious danger—’ she inhaled loudly before speaking again. ‘This is ridiculous!’

  ‘But you were wearing—’

  ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about! It never happened. Got it? Never happened.’

  ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’

  There was a pause. ‘Cal, I think I know what’s happened.’ Winter spoke slowly, as if thinking out loud. ‘Sligo had my photo taken last year in my favourite silver dress. It was a portrait—by a professional photographer, but I definitely wasn’t wearing anything around my neck. Not even Mum and Dad’s locket.’

  ‘So how do you explain the photo I saw?’

  ‘Wake up, Cal! People can do anything with digital photo editing! This is so typical of Sligo and his pathetic dream of becoming respectable! You know he wants to host the New Year’s Eve Council Ball. He wants to sit up there with the city councillors, parading me on one side and the Mayor on the other. He’s always going on about visualising your dreams to make them happen—he probably made the picture up as part of that belief! Don’t you see?’

  I thought back to the picture and recalled that it had looked grainy. Was she telli
ng the truth? I was sick of the trust in our friendship see-sawing, and I really wanted to believe her.

  I had a strong sense that she was telling the truth.

  ‘Just when I thought we were getting close, something else throws you into a spin … I so want to see the Ormond Jewel,’ she continued. ‘And I want to see you. I’ve been working on the Riddle and I’ve had some thoughts on solving it. We need to meet up. To talk about everything.’

  ‘What ideas have you had?’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to discuss them on the phone. But I really think I’m on to something, Cal. There’s a portrait of the Queen inside the Jewel right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I also have some ideas about that.’

  I really wanted to see her, but I couldn’t quite shake all my suspicions. Boges’s doubts had rubbed off on me.

  ‘I’m going to be—’ I hesitated, unsure as to how much I should reveal about my trip to Redcliffe, ‘occupied for a while,’ I said. ‘Let’s meet up when I’m free, down the track. We can put our heads together and see what we can come up with.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said. I could almost feel her smile coming down the line. ‘You have my number. Don’t forget to use it.’

  172 days to go …

  It was time for me to leave the mansion and make my way to Redcliffe. I kissed the rug, the five bathrooms and the home theatre goodbye, and headed towards Central Station with my backpack, full of supplies, and sleeping-bag in tow. I wasn’t feeling very confident about getting through security, but had to give it a go.

  I was hoping I could somehow sneak into Central Station and jump on a train that would take me at least part of the way to Redcliffe. But as soon as I reached the huge entrance hall of the station, I saw a stack of new security cameras, and cops on patrol. Hurriedly, I backed away.

  A black van cruised up alongside me. I looked hard through the windscreen and nearly died when I saw who was driving it—Sligo’s bodyguard, Zombrovski! He swerved the car towards me, forcing me to dive aside to dodge it!