‘You go ahead,’ I called. ‘I just have to duck into the bathroom first.’
I waited until she’d walked outside before I dashed across the kitchen towards the back exit near the laundry. I could hear Sister Jerome and Mother Superior talking to the officers. Their voices were getting louder and I figured they must have been on their way in. I took off through the back door, flew past the laundry, and over the vegetable patch and herb gardens, around to the side of the convent.
I peered out from behind the wall, assessing who I had to get past in the front grounds. The sun was just starting to come up, sending soft light over the police car and coroner’s van that were parked on the grass to the side of the driveway. A group was huddled around Zombrovski’s body, which was still sprawled out on top of the crushed cactus plants. Cameras flashed and nuns muttered amongst themselves.
I didn’t think my feet could carry me away fast enough down the driveway, through the gates and away from the big Manresa property. I looked around the backyard for ideas. The minibus flashed into my mind, but I couldn’t possibly go back inside to retrieve the keys. Not now.
As if in answer to my prayers, standing near the shed, the key still in the ignition, was an awesome, custom-decorated motorbike. Glossy blue, its streamlined curves and chrome-plated engine fittings, together with silver, curved knives joining the wheels to the hub instead of spokes, created a gleaming machine just asking to be ridden. This had to be Blue Streak, the motorbike belonging to Matt, the guy I’d helped in the garden yesterday.
He was standing next to one of the cops who was looming over the body taking notes. They both had their backs to me.
Boges and I had ridden trail bikes a few times with another guy from school a couple of years ago, but I’d never been on anything like this blue monster! I jumped onto the heavy bike, bouncing into the saddle, one leg on the ground to steady myself. I made sure my backpack was on tight and I pulled the sleek, black helmet that hung from the handlebars over my head. I switched on the ignition, jumped on the accelerator, and kicked away the stand. I scooted my leg along the ground, helping the bike move, while turning the throttle under my hand. The powerful bike roared into acceleration and I was off, heading for the gates.
Before I had even reached the front yard, a gunshot rang out—a bullet whizzed past me! I hunched over the bike—I couldn’t believe it! The police were shooting at me!
How did they know who I was already?
I wrenched the bike to the left, skidding wildly as I aimed for the back of the shed, ducking under a line of washing on my way. Within seconds, voices were shouting and people were scrambling.
My chest was pounding as I turned the bike around and peered out from behind the cover of the shed and through the washing. I scanned the whole area, searching for the shooter.
It was when my eyes were drawn up high that I caught a glimpse of my sinister assailant.
It wasn’t the police who had fired at me … it was Bruno—Red Singlet!
He was hunched over one of the bell tower arches, the perfect 360-degree position for a sniper. A sniper with vengeance on his mind.
Now I was really scared.
Another shot ricocheted off an incinerator and splintered through the shed wall, just centimetres from where I was keeping watch. Didn’t he realise the police were already here?
The shouting surrounding the convent had intensified and sirens were approaching. Sergeant McInerney must have called for backup the second he heard the first shot ring out. I could sense people stirring, and preparing for an attack, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Bruno.
The once peaceful convent was now hosting the cops, a dead body, Bruno—Sligo’s top man—and the most wanted juvenile in the state. I was in double danger—I had to dodge Bruno and the police, and somehow make a desperate rush on the motorbike, in full view, out the gates.
I had to break cover and go for it. There was no other way. I couldn’t wait for them to come and get me. I silently walked the bike along to the edge of the shed closest to the gate, a leg on each side of the engine housing. My plan was to kick the accelerator, grit my teeth and fly behind the line of washing, then weave my way out.
Even with the police presence increasing by the second, Bruno could still fire off the shot that would ensure I never reached my sixteenth birthday.
Police were yelling through a loudspeaker now, ordering Bruno to put down his weapon, and aiming their pistols up at the bell tower. If their attention stayed on him, maybe I would live after all.
I pictured what I had to do—gunning the bike and getting the hell out of there through the gates! But then I saw something I hadn’t accounted for. Two police officers, weapons drawn, had positioned themselves on either side of the gates, on the dirt road.
I would have to ride straight past them. There was no way I could do that without being seen. My brain raced feverishly, trying to formulate an idea.
More gunshots rang out. I jumped back as one bullet darted past my head, while a second bullet hit one of the squad car windscreens, shattering it. I heard a police vehicle screech around the back of the convent, adding to the force already in place, blocking Bruno’s escape. I could feel the sweat breaking out on my face as I switched on the ignition. Blue Streak roared into action.
I released the brake and pushed away, twisting the throttle full on. Blue Streak reared up and roared forward, jerking me with it. I clung on, squeezing my knees hard against it, keeping my balance as together we swerved fast towards the open gates.
The cops that were focused on the bell tower spun around to see what was going on. They recklessly turned their weapons to me, and shouted at me to stop.
No way!
A shot from the bell tower fired down at me, and the cops instantly turned their weapons back on Bruno. They didn’t know who to aim for!
Taking advantage of their confusion I gunned the throttle and hunched over, riding like a speedway champion. I hurtled through the cross-fire, through the gates, and along the dirt road, blowing the weeds and dust up behind me.
I’d made it out, unharmed. I clung onto the powerfully-charged motor, racing through the countryside, leaving Bruno behind to fight it out with the cops.
I kept riding, heading south, waiting for the sound of a siren to come up behind me. But it never came.
It wouldn’t have taken long for the police to work out who I was—the Manresa guest who’d not-so-coincidentally arrived just before Zombrovski.
Blue Streak was a liability—cops would be alert and equipped with the vehicle’s description at all surrounding locations—so I knew I was going to have to abandon it pretty soon. My plan was to ride as far as the fuel would take me, and then it’d be time to tackle my journey back to the city on foot.
When Blue Streak started shuddering with an emptied tank, I wheeled it into a sheltered spot off the road, covering it with branches and leaves. I hoped Matt would get over the fact that I’d taken his bike, and I hoped that it would be returned to him somehow. One day, I thought, I’d find a way to repay him.
161 days to go …
i’m back at enid. zombie’s DEAD. crazy shoot-out with cops and bruno. don’t know how i’m still alive. call me when u wake up.
Back on the rug in the living room, I looked through the three Piers Ormond letters. It wasn’t just the spidery, fading sepia ink that made them difficult to read—once Piers finished writing a page, he’d turned the paper sideways and continued writing over the existing words. It was like he must have run out of paper or something.
I was falling asleep, but really wanted to get up and change my look. There were people gunning for me and I wasn’t going to make it easy for them. The panic that pumped through my veins every day was pumping harder now that Zombie was dead. Yeah, it was one less guy chasing me, but now Sligo would be chasing me twice as hard.
I needed to look like another person. I stared at my reflection in the pristine, marble bathroom, then tore open a packet of brow
n dye I’d bought from a chemist, and fumbled around for a pair of scissors.
When I was done, my hair was darker, shorter, different. I scrubbed the sink, removing all remnants of hair and colour. Would the day ever come when I could just be myself?
‘Zombrovski’s dead?’ Boges’s voice came down the line, sleepy, but shocked. His call had woken me up, so I was just as dazed.
‘He was trying to kill me,’ I explained. ‘I found him roaming the halls on my second night at the convent, and we fought each other all the way up this bell tower … and then when he was trying to wipe me out by shoving this massive bell towards me, I dodged it, and it ended up swinging back and swatting him out into the sky.’
Boges was silent, in what must have been disbelief.
‘Broke his neck when he landed,’ I added. ‘The cops were on their way, so I knew I had to get out, and then Bruno showed up, guns blazing, so I had even more reason to get outta there.’
‘Cal, that is not good news,’ said Boges, very seriously. ‘Sligo will go even crazier trying to … to get you now.’
It was obvious Boges was trying to avoid saying kill you.
‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘So I’m back at Enid Parade. Your uncle’s not going to spring me here, is he?’
‘Nah, you’re cool there for now.’
‘So tell me about what the Jewel says. What did you find?’
‘I did what you said, and gave it the once-over with a powerful magnifying glass. At first, I thought the words were just tiny scratches, but when I looked really closely on the narrow strip of gold that runs around the inside, framing the portrait, I could see there were letters engraved near the hinges.’
‘Say it: “Winter Frey was telling the truth”.’
Boges groaned.
‘Go on.’
Boges groaned again. Louder.
‘Go on!’
‘All right, all right, she was telling the truth!’ he admitted. ‘But don’t think that means I trust her all of a sudden. Anyway, back to business: it’s in French. I’ve run it through an online translator, but it’s turned up all sorts of rubbish.’
‘All we need to do then is find someone who speaks French,’ I said, instantly thinking of Winter—she seemed like the type of girl who’d understand French. ‘We need to take a look at these letters I took from the convent archive.’
‘Did you find Piers Ormond’s will?’
‘No, but I have some old letters of his. They’re really hard to read,’ I added.
‘So, what are we waiting for? Let’s meet up already,’ said Boges. ‘I’ll come over as soon as I can.’
‘How’s your back fence escape route?’ I asked. ‘You sure it’s safe?’
‘Should be OK. I won’t come if it’s not. No-one’s been out on the street for days. And Zombrovski was the regular house-sitter, but I guess he won’t be coming round any time soon.’ Boges laughed awkwardly. ‘This arvo cool?’
‘Yep. See you when you get here.’
‘Nice look!’ said Boges, in a way that made me unsure whether he was making fun of me or not. My hair was pretty different, and I was wearing a blazer I’d picked up at a thrift store, over jeans and a T-shirt.
‘Something smells good. What’s in the bag?’ I asked, checking out the heavy-duty bag Boges had in tow.
He looked down at his watch. ‘Early dinner?’
We tucked into some kebabs, and in between greedy mouthfuls I gave Boges a more detailed run-down of my trip to Manresa. When we’d finished we took a look at the Jewel.
‘It never leaves my side,’ said Boges, carefully handing it to me, along with a magnifying glass. ‘Take a look for yourself.’
Sure enough, what had looked like nothing but tiny scratches before suddenly jumped into focus, and groups of letters began forming words.
Boges held out a piece of paper. ‘Here, I wrote it down.’
‘Awesome,’ I said. ‘Something about celery!’
‘“Amor” means “love”,’ Boges explained, ‘but I’m not sure about the rest. I can ask Madame Rodini at school. I’ll just tell her it’s for a … umm … oh, I’ll come up with something, don’t worry. Your turn; let’s take a look at the Piers Ormond letters.’
‘Paper must have been scarce or something,’ I said as I grabbed the envelope. ‘Check it out; when he finished going one way, he turned the paper around and wrote over the top of what he’d just written.’
Boges pulled out his laptop, and handed the letters back to me. ‘Start reading out loud and I’ll type it up,’ he said. ‘That’ll make it a bit easier. Just focus on following the lines.’
I put aside the first two, which were about travels from Australia to London and Dublin, and began on the third.
‘“Kilfane”,’ said Boges. ‘That’s from the transparency!’
‘Yep,’ I said, ‘it was the first thing that jumped out at me.’
Boges dug through his backpack and brought out a folder with the transparency safely stashed in it. Sure enough there were the two names—G’managh and Kilfane, with the black dot between them. I remembered my kidnappers’ interrogation: Your father gave you a map. Where is it?
Was this a map? Was this what they had been referring to?
‘What do you think that black spot between them means?’ I asked Boges.
‘Another place? Unnamed?’
‘I wonder if Piers went back to the Black Abbey the year after, like he said he would. Maybe he found the last two lines of the Riddle. Maybe he had them!’
‘No, dude,’ replied Boges, shaking his head, ‘Piers Ormond never went back to the Black Abbey. Because before he could, the First World War broke out in 1914.’
Trust Boges to know that. ‘And what was the rumour he was investigating?’ I asked. ‘A rumour that was regarded as fact? Do you think it was something to do with the Ormond Singularity?’
Boges shrugged. ‘I’m more interested in the fact that he believed there was a version of the complete Ormond Riddle in a book in the library at the Black Abbey. Or at least the last two lines.’
‘Let’s just jump on a bus and check out the Black Abbey library ourselves,’ I joked.
Boges ran his hands through his hair. ‘It’s frustrating these places are so far away, but it’s good to know that the Ormond Angel comes to the aid of the heir,’ he said.
‘I haven’t noticed any angelic aid lately.’
‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’ Boges tapped his fingers impatiently over his laptop keyboard. ‘Let’s keep going. Turn the paper.’
‘Awesome! Piers Ormond was on track all right!’ said Boges. ‘He knew way back then in 1913 about the Ormond Singularity. He was doing what we’re doing! Trying to gather information and work it out.’
‘And what Dad was doing nearly a century later,’ I added. ‘He’d also stumbled upon some incredible information that he didn’t want to put down in writing. He was going to tell me all about it as soon as he got home. But by then he was too sick to tell me anything. Anything other than the cryptic messages in his drawings.’
‘Sounds like we could be talking late 1700s,’ said Boges, staring at the words he’d typed up, ‘if Piers Ormond’s great-grandfather was involved.’
Boges looked up from his laptop, his round eyes wide with excitement. ‘We are dead-set getting closer to cracking the Dangerous Mystery of the Ormonds. This is awesome!’
‘It would be more awesome,’ I said, kicking myself, ‘if I could remember the name of that solicitor. His firm could still be holding valuable information about my family and the Ormond Singularity.’
Boges gathered up the letters and carefully refolded them, squeezing the old envelope to make room to put them back in. Suddenly he frowned. ‘What’s this? There’s something else in here.’
He tipped the envelope and shook it. A fine piece of paper fluttered out. I picked it up gently. ‘It’s an incomplete family tree,’ I said, smoothing it down on the floor in front of us, ‘in connection with the O
rmond Singularity—I’m guessing that’s what the initials “O. S.” stand for.’
‘So much of it’s faded,’ said Boges, ‘but it looks like someone was tracing the firstborn sons down a particular branch of the Ormond family line. The Ormond Singularity seems to affect the firstborn sons.’
‘You can say that again,’ I muttered, thinking of the 365-day countdown, and the warning Millicent had given me about the deadly secret. ‘My great-aunt,’ I told Boges, ‘said it had been the death of all of the Ormonds who had tried to unravel it. She said it should remain a secret.’
My friend suddenly looked nervous. We both knew that if we kept adding to the family tree, my dad’s name would have been circled next, and then beneath that, mine. Would I die like my dad? That was the question I think we were both asking ourselves.
‘So Ferdinand,’ said Boges.
‘My great-grandfather,’ I added.
‘Was next in line.’
‘Next in line,’ I said, ‘to be cursed by the Ormond Singularity.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it. So after Ferdinand came your grandfather, and then your dad.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was the firstborn male of that generation.
‘And then comes you. So the Ormond Singularity, whatever it is, will affect you.’
‘I hope by “affect” you don’t mean “kill”. There have been a lot of people trying to make that happen. But the Ormond Singularity affects other people too, not just the firstborns in the family. What about that poor, crazy guy? He said the Ormond Singularity was killing him as well.’
‘I think we have to remember that just knowing about the Ormond Singularity is dangerous. That’s why your dad warned you not to say anything.’
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