August

PREVIOUSLY

I gulp down a lungful of air as the fishing net I’m trapped in finally lifts out of the water. The boat crew hide me from the cops and I’m forced to work as a wheeler until the debt’s paid off. When I’m helping a guy unload his fish into a freezer, a deckhand–who turns out to be
Three-O
from the attempted car jacking–locks me in the freezer so he can give me to the cops and claim the reward money. I’m desperate to escape before I freeze to death. I end up using Repro’s track detonators to blast myself out.

Back at the beachside mansion my recurring nightmare of the white toy dog and wailing baby continues to taunt me.

Boges gives me an address–‘Manresa’ in Redcliffe–where I hope to find Great-aunt Millicent. Police
presence on roads out of town has been increased which means it will be hard to get there.

Winter has overheard Sligo saying there is
something
written inside the Jewel. I confront her about the photo I found in Sligo’s safe of her
wearing
the Jewel and she denies it’s real, saying the image had to be digitally edited.

After narrowly escaping the cops, Zombrovski and Sligo at the train station, I begin my journey on a bus to Redcliffe. When I notice some guys looking at me, I get off and start making my way on foot, avoiding road blocks as I go.

Winter sends me a warning, saying Sligo has a lead on my location. I know I only have a short time to find my great-aunt. Manresa turns out to be a convent, and I’m told Millicent has taken another name–Sister Mary Perpetua–and that she hasn’t spoken in twenty years. Straight away I start worrying that my trip has been for nothing … I call Boges and tell him about the writing on the Jewel. I spend the night in a dead nun’s ‘cell’.

I meet my great-aunt and to my shock she breaks her silence, mistaking me for her brother, Bartholomew. Apparently my dad contacted her about the Ormond Singularity before he died, but the family papers were put away in an envelope when she entered the convent. She warns me that the Ormond Singularity has meant the death of all who have tried to unravel it, and she also mentions a tragic set of twins–one returned safely, the other one lost … I locate the
envelope
in the convent archives and discover letters from Piers Ormond and a family tree.

Disturbed by a sound in the middle of the night I wander into the corridor and find Zombrovski sneaking around, dressed as a nun! He chases me through the convent and up the bell tower. With nowhere left to run, I’m trapped. Zombie shoves the massive bell towards me, but I lift my body out of its path, narrowly missing its force. The rebound momentum swings back
towards
Zombie, throwing him out of the tower, and sending him free-falling to the ground far below.

The fall was fatal–Zombie is dead. I grab my things and flee on a motorbike, gunning it through
the crossfire of a shootout between Bruno and the police.

Back at the mansion, Boges and I catch up on what happened in Redcliffe. We go over the French script on the Jewel as well as Piers’s letters. The solicitor whose name I couldn’t remember
contacts
me on my blog!