July (3 page)

The cops started boarding. I heard their muffled voices, followed by their thudding steps down into the cabin. There were things being lifted and thrown about, doors opening and
closing. The footsteps came closer and closer … I cowered, hoping they wouldn’t find the hatch I was in.

‘Where are the engines?’ a voice asked, dashing that hope instantly.

I held my breath as the freezer was shifted once more, revealing the hatch door and my hiding place. The door opened and a beam of light shone in. I pressed myself against the floor, as the light played over the machinery that I hoped would obscure me.

A sudden gush of heat rushed out.

‘Nothing here,’ someone said, before coughing and swearing. ‘Bloody fumes.’

The door slammed shut.

I barely breathed again until I heard the police disembark, and
Stingray
sped away to continue the search for me elsewhere.

Cramped and sweating, I kicked a leg out at the hatch door—I’d waited long enough for the cops to move on—I needed to get out. But it wouldn’t budge. I kicked again, this time harder. Still nothing. They’d locked me in.

Loud thumping woke me up. Despite everything,
I must have slept, or passed out from the fumes.

‘You can come out of there now,’ said the skipper, opening the door. Soft light fell on my face, and I sucked up the fresh air.

Awkwardly, I squeezed my stiff and stinging body out from under the engines and emerged. The skipper wasn’t smiling anymore. There were no jokes about his crew all being on the run. His face was stern and hard.

‘You must have done something real bad, boy,’ he said as I lifted myself up and leaned against the edge of the freezer. ‘You owe me.’

‘You saved me,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ I added. ‘I’m innocent.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ he scoffed, sarcastically. ‘You work for me now.’

‘Work for you? For how long?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Until you’ve paid me back. Otherwise I give you to the police. Understand?’

I nodded. I knew I had no option. I’d escaped the net but was still trapped.

‘I’ll send one of the boys down to get you started. Stay here until then.’

He turned and vanished up the narrow steps.

The curly-haired deckhand jumped down the steps into the cabin, his narrowed eyes watching me
with curiosity. He didn’t seem hostile, but I was very wary of what he was going to tell me to do.

‘The Little Mer-
boy
,’ he joked. ‘I’m George,’ he said, his face grimacing with dislike at his name, ‘but everyone calls me Squid.’ He pulled a duffel bag down from a luggage rack. ‘We’ve just pulled in to the fish market wharf.’

‘OK,’ I said, expectantly.

‘So, Merboy, what’s your story?’

‘The name’s
Tom
, actually,’ I said, even though the police boat had been hollering out my real name, just hours ago.

He considered this for a moment, before saying, ‘Nah, I like Merboy better. What’s in the bag?’ he asked, nodding towards my backpack.

‘Nothing much. What’s
your
story?’

‘Pretty much the same as the other guys. Most of us take this kind of work because there are no questions asked.’

‘But you’ve just asked me two of them,’ I pointed out.

He laughed, dumping the duffel bag on one of the narrow bunks. ‘So I did, you’re right. And you just avoided answering both. Sounds like you’ll fit right in with our crew!’ He sat down beside his bag before continuing. ‘If you’ve done this type of work before you’ll know that casual deckhands on fishing boats are often on the run
from something. Maybe it’s the law, maybe it’s the missus, and maybe they just want to get lost for a while. Whatever the case, there are a lot of crooks.’

‘And you’re not one of them?’ I asked, smiling.

‘Not really. Never done anything really bad.’

‘Same,’ I said. ‘I just need to lie low for a while.’ I shrugged. ‘Family stuff.’

‘Mate, I understand. But all the same, you’ll need to stay on your toes. The cops do a lot of lightning raids; they swoop down on the wharf, looking for people who might be trying to avoid them. We’re trying to catch fish, and the cops are trying to catch us!’

He stood back up and stuck out his hand with a grin. It was grimy and scaly, but I shook it.

‘Welcome aboard, Merboy. Stick with me, keep your eyes peeled and you should be OK. I can show you the ropes.’ He frowned for a second, peering closely at me. ‘You sure you haven’t worked the boats before?’

‘Never,’ I said, before he backed away, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

‘No-one smells good round here, but you smell like the bottom of the bait tin! How ’bout you wash up a bit and I get you some dry gear?’ He rummaged through his bag and threw me a black shirt and a pair of work overalls. ‘Here.
You can have these.’ He pulled a worn towel out of the cupboard and threw that at me as well.

I followed Squid up to the deck and onto the wharf. The skipper and the other deckhand were busy sorting and stacking big plastic tubs of fish.

The skipper looked up briefly as we passed. ‘Show him where to go,’ he ordered Squid. ‘When I’ve got time, I’ll show him how to clean and scale. Meantime, he can be a wheeler with you.’

Squid nodded.

‘Wheeler?’ I asked, hurrying after him along the wharf.

‘After the fish are auctioned,’ he explained, ‘the wheelers stack and load the boxes onto trolleys and wheel them over to the loading areas where the pick-ups are waiting.’

We’d reached a tiled shower area, and Squid nodded towards one of the open cubicle doors. I stepped into one and locked the door behind me, then quickly rummaged through my backpack to check how everything had held up. I peeled the tape off the package at the bottom of my bag, and tipped the Ormond Jewel out.

I could hardly believe it. Somehow it had
survived
, just like me. I stared at it again, amazed at the emerald and precious stones. I turned it over and looked at the images on the back—a red rose and rosebud. Water had dampened the
edges of the Riddle and the drawings, but they were OK. I re-wrapped everything tightly and stuck the tape down again, as best I could. My phone wasn’t so lucky—it had not survived the drenching. Water streaked across the dead screen.

It was rough standing under the spray of hot water—every little cut on my body stung like crazy. It was so painful, but knowing everything I’d collected was safe got me through. Without realising it, the gruff skipper had given me some serious cover.

‘I need to dry my gear out,’ I said to Squid as I came out of the shower cubicle.

‘Take it back to the Star.
Star of Mykonos
, that’s the name of our boat. Find somewhere to hang it. Hurry up!’

‘And I need to make a phone call first. Urgently,’ I added, showing him the dead screen on my phone.

‘It’ll cost ya,’ he said, reaching into his back pocket.

‘How much?’

‘Five bucks.’

‘Five bucks for one, quick call?’

‘It’s a good deal for an urgent call!’

I was in no position to argue. I dug into a pocket in my backpack, scrounged up five bucks
in coins and handed it over. In exchange, Squid passed me his mobile.

I stood there, waiting.

‘Oh, I get it’ he said. ‘Girlfriend, eh? You only got one minute, OK? It’ll be my head on the block if you’re caught slacking off.’

I ducked back into the cubicle and closed the door.

Boges picked up the phone so fast, like he was there waiting for it to ring.

‘You’re not going to believe this!’ I blurted out.

‘Whose phone are you calling from? The state is in lockdown!’ he yelled over me. ‘There’s a man-hunt going on around the beaches. Where are you?’

‘I’m at the fish markets.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll explain later, I don’t have much time to talk. We’ve gotta meet. We have everything now. The Riddle, the Jewel.’

‘That’s great, but I’m serious, you have to keep out of sight! Hide, blend in, do whatever it takes, and then we can meet up when
everything’s
cooled down again. I’m stuck here at the moment anyway, trying to get my application together for an internship.’

Squid banged on the door. ‘Hurry up! The boss wants to know why we’re not working!’

‘Gotta go?’ Boges asked.

‘I’ll call you,’ I said before hanging up.

‘Be back here in five!’ Squid shouted at me as I ran past him, head down, on my way back to where the fishing boat was moored.

It didn’t look like anyone was on board, so I jumped on and draped my damp gear over some crates on the deck. The wind and sun would dry them out soon, I hoped.

I’d been very lucky. I’d escaped the police—again. But Boges was right, and I already knew the whole state would be looking for me. I hoped Oriana de la Force and Vulkan Sligo didn’t have any information on where I was.

What Squid said about the police raids on the wharves had me rattled. This was a good enough place to hide out for a while, but I couldn’t stay here too long … I wanted to meet up with Boges and see what we could make of cracking the double-key code, now that we had both
halves
—the Ormond Riddle and the Ormond Jewel. I also wanted to know if he’d had any luck tracking down Great-uncle Bartholomew’s sister, Millicent.

I could hear Squid yelling out, so I slung my backpack on and jumped off the boat to join him.

Squid and I hurried over to a spot where
hundreds
of boxes of fish were piled high. The fish auctions were in full swing and the voices of the
auctioneers boomed through the area. Buyers and sellers milled around on the wet and
slippery
floor.

We worked hard, loading the heavy boxes onto our trolleys as they were purchased, and wheeling them through the crowds to the loading dock. Once there, we’d unload them and help the buyers stack them on the backs of their trucks, or in their vans.

As we were lifting a really heavy box of red fish on top of a couple of boxes of flathead, Squid groaned and wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Gary’s supposed to be helping us,’ he said.

‘You mean the other guy?’ I asked. ‘The other deckhand?’ I’d barely seen him—only heard his voice and I hadn’t liked what he’d said.

‘That’s Gary. He’s only been working here a few weeks. He just disappears when there’s hard work around. I don’t like the guy,’ Squid
continued
. ‘I don’t trust him. I mean, I know you can hardly trust anyone around here, but I
really
don’t trust him. The skipper only keeps him on because it’s hard to find deckhands.’