Mystery At Riddle Gully (11 page)

Pollo was shaking out the last drops when a familiar voice cut across the clearing.

‘Apollonia di Nozi! What in God's name are you doing?' Sherri rushed across the clearing to where her picnic companion lay spluttering. She knelt beside him and glared at Will, who hastily removed his foot from von Albericht's chest.

Sherri narrowed her eyes at Pollo and helped her friend to sit up. ‘This had better not have anything to do with that silly vampire business!' she said. ‘I asked you to come and meet Viktor—not to accost him!'

Pollo's nerves were still zinging. She stepped back, avoiding Sherri's eye. There was still one more test to do on von Albericht—and she'd never get a better chance.
It was for Sherri's sake, after all! True friends did what needed to be done, didn't they? She pressed the bulge of the pen-knife in her pocket.

Sherri had relieved Will of his T-shirt and was using it to clean Viktor's face and hair. Will, who feared that attempted murder would now be added to his rap sheet, crouched next to her, pointing out the bits she'd missed.

Sherri looked up at Pollo. ‘Well, don't stand there like a letterbox! Come and meet the man you nearly killed.' Pollo shuffled forward.

Sherri cleared her throat. ‘Everyone, this is the world renowned bat specialist, Dr Viktor von Albericht. Viktor, this is Pollo di Nozi and this, I take it, is Will.'

Will and Viktor shook hands. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,' said Viktor, sounding as pleased as someone who'd got a toilet brush for Christmas. He offered his hand to Pollo.

Pollo didn't move. Will and Sherri looked at her, then at Viktor's hand, hanging in mid-air, then back again. She was rigid and glassy-eyed.

Her mind, on the other hand, was whirring. The stakes were too high! Just one more test and she'd know for certain, once and for all!

She snapped to life and plunged her hand into her pocket. She grabbed Viktor's hand and squeezed hard with both fists.

‘Eee-aah-ooo!'
Viktor's howl of pain sent a flock of cockatoos squawking and flapping into the dusky sky.

Viktor clutched his hand, pressing his left thumb into his punctured palm, and looked up at Pollo, his face distorted by puzzlement and pain.

‘Why do you wish to kill me? I am a zoologist. I love the animals.' Viktor looked as though he might cry. ‘I am a nice person!'

But his protests weren't heard by Pollo, her ears, along with her head, being clamped under Sherri's armpit as the older woman dragged her across the clearing. Pollo's arms cartwheeled, but Sherri held her firm in a headlock mastered in countless jujitsu classes from her cruise-ship days.

Through her squished face, Pollo shouted. ‘Will! Check his hand! If there's no blood on it, run for your life!'

Sherri jiggled her. ‘Stop this nonsense immediately, Pollo, or I'll tie you by your tonsils to that tree over there.' She swung Pollo around to show her the one she had in mind.

Will trotted over and tapped Pollo on the top of the head. ‘Err, Pollo?' he began.

‘Sherri's gone to the dark side!' shouted Pollo. ‘And it's too late for me! Just do me one favour, Will! Look after Shorn Connery if he ever comes home!'

‘Umm, Pollo?' said Will. ‘Viktor's actually—'

‘What? Healing? Tell me straight! I can take it!' wailed Pollo.

‘Viktor's actually bleeding quite a lot, Pollo. Look.'
He gestured to Viktor to hold up his hand.

Pollo stopped struggling for a moment and screwed her head sideways to eye the man. Looking away and pouting, Viktor held up his palm, from which dark blood oozed like sap.

Viktor suddenly waved both hands in the air. ‘I do not understand!' he said. ‘Why is this good that I bleed like a stuck pig?'

Pollo went limp. She'd thrown every test she could at von Albericht ... and he'd passed them all with flying colours. She had to face it—the big story that was going to change her life was in tatters.

From Sherri's armpit, she scraped together what dignity she could. ‘Errrm, Sherri ... The evidence seems to have rearranged itself to form a picture that differs from the one I'd expected.'

Pollo waited a moment but there was no response. ‘You can let me go now, Sherri.'

‘If I'd wanted a speech from Mayor Bullock I'd have asked him along,' said Sherri, tightening her hold even further. ‘Say what you mean, girl!'

Pollo gulped. ‘I was wrong about Viktor.'

Sherri released her clamp on Pollo's head. Pollo rubbed her ears and walked towards Viktor. Viktor began scrambling to his feet.

‘No, wait!' said Pollo.

Viktor paused. Keeping his eyes glued to Pollo he sat back down. He remained tense, ready to jump.

Pollo held up open hands. ‘No weapons, see?' Carefully she took up his bloodied right hand and shook it.

‘I'm very, very sorry, Viktor,' she said. She looked at Will and smiled crookedly, then turned back to Viktor. ‘I wanted to write a great story, you see. And I hoped you were ... a certain type of person so badly that I saw what I wanted to see. And then Sherri got mixed up in it and Shorn Connery went missing. Everything's a great big mess.'

For the first time ever, Pollo looked Viktor von Albericht in the eye. ‘I'm Pollo di Nozi—supersleuth and soon-to-be-former editor of the
Riddle Gully ...
well, never mind. Call me Pollo. I'm honoured to meet you, Viktor.'

‘As I am you,' said Viktor with a slow, deep nod. ‘Someone with a passion for their work. This I understand.'

Sherri squatted beside Viktor and began wrapping his hand in Will's T-shirt. ‘What say we call it a night, Viktor, and go see to this head of yours ... and this hand ... and these wet clothes?' Will and Pollo looked at each other sheepishly. Sherri grimaced. ‘And this stench of garlic that's all over everything!'

Viktor gestured to Pollo and Will. ‘May I invite you to my humble abode?'

‘Cool!' said Will. ‘Can you show us that little bat?'

Pollo elbowed Will in the ribs. ‘If you're feeling up to it,' she added.

‘Yeah, 'course ... that too,' said Will.

Viktor was about to get to his feet when suddenly his face lit up. He pointed high above him, up into the pale purple sky above the clearing. ‘Look, my friends! There! See?' Small creatures were flitting back and forth, more and more by the second, diving and darting, their dark wings silhouetted against the soft gleam of the rising moon.

Pollo recognised them and shuddered. But Viktor von Albericht was smiling. More than that, he was grinning from ear to ear, looking a lot more like someone in a hi-fibre cereal commercial than a vampire.

‘So many! So many!' he hooted in delight, lying back in the dirt of the clearing, pointing upwards. ‘See how the wing tips appear to bend? These are the ones I am looking for! And by the scores I see above me now, I believe I am homing in!'

Viktor and Sherri led the way back, Viktor carrying the silver metal case that Pollo recognised from the cemetery. Inside the old ranger's hut, the timber walls were lined with stacks of scientific journals and books, strange gadgets and crates of supplies. A single bare light bulb dangled from the roof. Viktor laid the case on the table and went to his patient, the injured bat, waiting in a blanketed crate in the corner of the room.

Pollo sidled up to the table. Handwritten on masking tape stuck to the lid of the silver case was: BAT DETECTOR—THIS SIDE UP.

Right ... Well it made perfect sense now! How was she supposed to know? She emptied her pockets of her weaponry and lined up the items alongside the machine.
It seemed the right thing to do.

Viktor, under Sherri's orders, was now sitting quietly on the low camp bed, a packet of frozen peas bandaged tightly to his head. Sherri was making cups of tea for everyone while Will rinsed his bloodied T-shirt in the sink.

Pollo should have felt relaxed. But now that she knew Viktor hadn't killed Shorn Connery, terrible thoughts of what had happened to him instead kept creeping around her mind. If her faithful friend was somehow still alive, he must be suffering. And here was the last place she'd seen him.

Will spread his T-shirt out to dry in front of the kerosene heater. He sat down on an upturned crate next to Pollo and bent forward to pick dirt off the bandaid around his big toe.

As he did, Pollo noticed a bright-red patch on Will's shoulderblade. ‘You've got nose-blood on your back!' she said. She dipped a finger in her tea and leaned across to rub it off. But the red gripped the skin tightly.

Pollo rubbed harder. It was sticking like ... like...

Dried paint.

Pollo's hand drifted away. Dried paint the exact same colour as the graffiti on the school wall! The few things she really knew about her new friend began to muster in her head. She raised her mug of tea to her mouth, pretending to drink, trying to think.

Will had a close connection with Sergeant Butt—
someone he didn't seem too crazy about. And then there was his amazing string of lies about sheep that rose from the dead and holes in fences. What was all that about? Lighting a fire in a garden wasn't so bad, was it? Why had he been so desperate to cover it up?

A nasty thought crawled up her neck and under her beanie. What if Will had been burning something he needed to hide? Pollo's mind was whirring now. Last night he'd let slip that he'd been at the school that morning. And the Graffiti Kid's backpack was blue—same as the one Will had at the tip. And the hair under the Kid's wig was dark and straight—just like Will's. And, now that she thought about it, that rattle coming from Will's bike had sounded a lot like the rattle of a spray-paint can.

Pollo's eyes narrowed into slits.

She shook her head. No! Stop it! Now that her frontpage story about Viktor was wrecked, she was bending the facts to get another one, wasn't she? Seeing what she wanted to see?

There could be other explanations. Like ... well ... she couldn't think of any right now, but there were bound to be! She'd jumped to conclusions with Viktor—a perfectly innocent man—and look at him now, sitting there with a packet of peas strapped over a big lump on his head!

Besides, Will was a friend, whatever else he might have done. He'd come to the clearing tonight to help her out. If he was the Graffiti Kid, her telling the world
wouldn't fix a thing. It would only make Will's problems—and he looked like he had a few—worse. She sighed deeply. It would just be gossip—gossip that might make her look good to the editor-in-chief of the Coast news network.

She turned away from the bright-red smear. ‘You'd better wash it off as soon as you get home,' she told Will.

Viktor leaned forward on the edge of his camp bed. In the palm of his gloved hand he held a reddish-brown, furry creature not much bigger than a mouse. It was on its back, its head towards him, Viktor's thumb, on the paler fuzz of its stomach, gently pinning it still. The head was dome-shaped, the ears and muzzle snubbed. Its only sound was a soft cooing from time to time, like Bublé made when Pollo scratched his head.

Pollo forced herself to look. Viktor had gone through so much for the funny little thing and its mates that she felt she owed it to him. And it helped push aside her new worries about Will.

‘Beautiful is he not?' said Viktor. ‘I found him in my mist net just before dawn the other morning. Sadly, he
was not in the best of health. It would have put him in great peril to release him in his condition—all the hungry birds up and about.'

He held the creature to eye-level and smiled. ‘But I am happy to say he has made a full recovery. Tonight we will return him to the forest and tomorrow at dusk he will be flying above the gorge with his friends.'

‘No offence, Viktor, but he looks kind of ordinary,' said Will.

‘Aah! But wait!' said Viktor. Very carefully he extended the bat's rubbery wing. ‘See how the edge angles down? This, along with sonar matches from my bat detector, enables me to confirm that he is a
Miniopterus schreibersii bassanii!'

Will, Pollo and Sherri looked at one another.

‘A Southern Bent-wing Bat!' said Viktor. ‘The rare subspecies of the Common Bent-wing. He is one of a population that comes to Riddle Gully each year to spend the winter. Under your country's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, he is listed as a critically endangered mammal.'

Pollo looked at the furry blob in Viktor's hand. ‘But it's only a bat,' she said. ‘Would it really be all that terrible if it ... you know ... disappeared?'

‘Ai-yai-yai!' said Viktor. ‘Most terrible indeed, Pollo! This little fellow pollinates flowers, he spreads plant seeds, he keeps insects to the levels that Nature intended. But even when something seemingly trivial like a worm
becomes extinct—here, my friends, the Lake Pedder earthworm, a former resident of Tasmania, comes to mind—it is a cause for much concern. Each and every organism is part of an intricate biological community on our planet. This community is a beautiful tapestry made of many, many coloured stitches. The more stitches there are, the harder it is for the tapestry to tear.'

Sherri produced a tin of biscuits from her basket. ‘Speaking of hard to tear,' she said, taking off the lid, ‘see if you can get your teeth through these. I might have left them in the oven a bit long.' Will took one and crunched into it.

‘We humans seldom know all there is to know about a creature or a plant,' said Viktor, as Will ran his tongue over his teeth, checking for chips. ‘Take this little fellow here, for instance,' he said, lifting the bat. ‘What might be the effects of losing him?' Viktor shrugged. ‘Maybe nothing. Zip, as they say! No one would ever know the difference if he were to disappear.'

He leaned in closer to Will and Pollo. ‘But maybe, just maybe, he could make a great deal of difference. Perhaps he is the key to another creature's survival. Or he holds the clue to a medical cure, or the answer to a great mystery we have not yet thought to wonder about. Who knows, eh? And wise not to take the chance, yes?'

‘But isn't the Tasmanian Tiger Australia's only extinct animal?' said Will. ‘Apart from that little worm maybe?'

Viktor sighed. ‘I wish this were so, Will. But sadly,
the Thylacine is in the company of many animals—to my knowledge, fifty-five altogether—half of them mammals, as we are. All of them gone! Kaput! Never to be seen again. And these are only the ones that we know of!'

‘But how come
this
bat is endangered?' said Pollo. ‘We see lots of them every autumn and spring. It doesn't seem endangered.'

‘As you say, Pollo, you see them every year,' said Viktor. ‘It is natural to take them for granted. But it grieves me to say that there are only one third as many Southern Bent-wings now as when your parents were born. They are going down the hill fast!'

Viktor cupped the bat between his palms and held it to eye-level. ‘You have had enough, have you not, my friend?' He turned to the others. ‘You will please excuse us for a moment? It is time to return him to the forest.'

Keeping his head erect so as not to lose his peas, Viktor eased off the narrow camp bed and made his way into the darkness outside. Sherri held the door open, looking out after him.