Hat Trick! (29 page)

During the 1972 tour of England, Ian Chappell took 10 wickets at an average of 10.6 runs per wicket. He topped the Australian bowling averages for players who bowled in 10 or more innings and took 10 or more wickets.

Thursday—evening

AFTER
tea I went up and stared at the computer. I desperately wanted to go back and look at the secret Father Time site, but was worried about what Ben had said.

It wouldn’t hurt to go to the main Scorpions page, I thought, opening it in my browser. I scrolled down and left the cursor hovering over the blank area, as Ben had done the previous evening.

And anyway, my IP address was different to Ben’s, so there was nothing to worry about as far as tracing the computer went, I tried to tell myself.

The new blank screen appeared and I scrolled down to the faint watermark of Father Time.

My hand paused on the mouse. I stared at the image, its ghostly lines almost invisible on the white background. Then, before I could change my mind, I clicked on the picture.

When the new page appeared I quickly punched in the username and password, then spun around to check that no one was at the half-open door. I hurried over and kicked it shut. My heart was racing.

‘Toby!’ Mum called from downstairs. ‘Phone!’

I looked back at the screen, the page only half loaded. I sighed and closed the browser.

‘Coming!’ I met Mum on the stairs and headed back up to my room with the phone.

‘Toby, it’s me, Ally,’ came the breathless voice on the other end.

‘Ally?’

‘I’m in. I’ve confirmed that I’m the fifth person and—’

‘Ally!’ I screamed. ‘You’ve what?’

There was silence. Her voice was a lot quieter. ‘I…um, you know, I went into the site and wrote in that text box up at the top, saying…’

‘Saying?’ I tried to make my voice sound calm. I guess I shouldn’t be sounding so high and mighty—after all, what had I been about to do? Though maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what Ally had just done…or was it stupidity?

‘I’ve stuffed up, haven’t I?’ she said.

‘Not yet,’ I told her, trying to sound confident. ‘Smale doesn’t know who you are, does he?’

‘Nope.’

‘And I’m not sure he’s smart enough to work out all that IP stuff Ben was talking about.’ Silence. ‘And even if he did, well, what have you done wrong by
going into a website? I mean, you haven’t broken any law, have you?’

‘Exactly,’ Ally said, not sounding reassured at all.

‘So, what happened?’ I asked.

‘Well, nothing. Nothing at all. I just wrote that I was making contact. You know, that I was the fifth person.’

‘Did you say who you were?’

‘Of course not, you idiot. I used your name.’

‘WHAT?!?’

‘I’m joking,’ she giggled. There was another pause. ‘So what happens now?’

‘How long ago did you do it?’ I asked, wondering whether there might be a change on the website.

‘An hour, maybe an hour and a half. Why?’

‘I’m going to check the site. Don’t do anything. I’ll call you back soon, okay?’

‘Okay, Tobler, whatever,’ she sighed.

I tossed the phone onto my bed and logged back in, scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

Once again I was interrupted, this time by a gentle tapping on the door. I quickly hit the ‘Print Screen’ button as Jim poked his head around the door.

‘Jim!’ I cried, jumping up, but closing my browser first. He entered, his eyes immediately going to my small collection of
Wisden
s on the bookshelf by the window.

‘Hello, Toby. I just called by to see how your father’s studio is progressing. And, of course, to say hello to you as well.’

‘Jim, I think we’ve got a problem,’ I told him, offering him my seat. Instead he plonked himself onto my bed.

‘Our friend Phillip Smale?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘How did you know?’

Jim smiled. ‘An old man’s intuition. What’s concerning you?’

Grabbing the printed sheets from Ben’s computer, I told Jim about the card we’d seen and the Internet site we’d hooked into. Jim took the pages and studied them, looking darker by the minute.

‘Well, I think this needs investigating,’ Jim said. ‘I warned Phillip of the terrible potential for danger in playing with all of this, but he doesn’t seem to have heeded my warning, does he, Toby?’

I shook my head. ‘But what do we do?’

‘We reveal a secret weapon,’ Jim said with relish, rubbing his hands together.

‘A secret weapon?’

‘Pixie,’ he said firmly, slapping his thighs and standing up.

‘Pixie?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Pixie, though by name only. She looks and performs like no pixie you will ever encounter, Toby Jones, I can assure you.’

I had no idea what Jim was talking about. ‘Well, Pixie will have to get a move on,’ I said to him, turning back to the keyboard. ‘Have a look at this.’ I opened up Word, and pasted in the webpage I’d
copied. Jim walked over to the screen and read the final entry.

Thursday

Well, now we have confirmation from all. Number Five, I shall arrive tomorrow morning before 7 a.m. to deliver your instructions. You have made a wise decision that I know you won’t regret.

‘Well, it looks like an early start for one of us,’ he chuckled, shuffling towards the door.

‘One of us?’

‘Toby, let me handle this one. Phillip Smale is a dangerous man. I’ve a good mind to alert the authorities, however I fear they’d take me for a doddering old fool who was talking through his hat. Our friend Smale is a slippery customer, but I’m not sure he’s done anything illegal.’

‘Yet,’ I said, quietly.

‘Yet,’ he repeated. ‘Come along, Toby. Peter sent me up to see if you were in bed…’

‘But what about the scorecard? He forced you to give that to him!’

‘He did, but the fewer people who know about this the better. Now, come along—’

‘Jim,’ I interrupted. ‘What will you do? Who’s Pixie? Can’t I come too?’

‘I shall follow our intrepid friend; Pixie is a car;
and no, you can’t come too. Now, I believe you have some teeth that need attention, then it’s bed.’

‘Is Dad taking you home now?’ I asked.

‘That’s right. We’ll talk some more tomorrow, okay?’

Jim headed for the door. I waited a few moments, grabbed a small notebook and pencil, then followed him. Creeping downstairs, my back scraping along the wall, I listened for the sound of adult voices. They were coming from the kitchen, and I could hear the jangle of keys.

I snuck out past the laundry, sped around the side of the house and arrived at the back of the car. It was a big four-wheel drive with loads of room in the rear section. Would the car be open? I wondered. Yes! I opened the hatch a little and slipped in as quietly as possible, closing it behind me. I commando-crawled over to the enormous blue tarpaulin Dad used for tip runs and scrambled beneath it. A few seconds later I heard the front doors open and Dad and Jim get in.

The engine started. I stayed still, pencil at the ready to describe as well as I could the trip Dad was about to take. The plan had only half-formed in my head as Jim was leaving my bedroom, and even now I didn’t know quite why I was doing this, but somehow I knew that Jim was too old to tackle Phillip Smale alone. If he was going to follow Smale in Pixie, then I was going to be there with him. But first, I needed to know where on earth Jim lived. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too far away.

Dad broke the silence. ‘He is really very fond of you, Jim.’

‘And I of him, Peter. But I can’t possibly impose on you like this. You are a young family. You have so many things that you’ll want to do without the burden of an old man…’

‘Jim, I’m not quite sure you understand. We’ve all discussed this at length. Jane, Toby, Nat and I would dearly like you to join us, perhaps on a trial basis if you like—a month with the Joneses. I’m sure that would be enough for you anyway!’

‘I shall indeed think about your very generous offer, Peter.’

There was silence for a while then Dad spoke again. ‘You know, you and Toby have an amazing affinity…some sort of connection.’

I held my breath, wondering whether Jim would spill the beans.

‘He has a passion for cricket and a knowledge of the game quite remarkable for one so young. He reminds me so much of myself when I was his age.’

‘Well, it would seem you benefit from him as much as Toby benefits from you, Jim.’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt about that, Peter. No doubt whatsoever.’

Their chat moved on to other things and I concentrated hard on noting down left turns and right turns, but it was difficult. Finally, after about 10 minutes we came to a stop and Dad turned off the engine.

Walk Jim to his door, Dad, I thought to myself. Luckily I heard both doors open and, very slowly, I lifted my head to sneak a look. Dad and Jim were standing by his door. It was a tiny little house, one in a row of them. There were no front gardens, just a long thin porch that connected each building. A dim light glowed over Jim’s front door, but the rest of the street was dark and I couldn’t see any road signs anywhere.

Before Dad returned I angled myself better beneath the tarp, leaving myself a line of sight through the back-left window. All I needed to see was a street sign or a special feature—something recognisable.

After only a minute of the return journey I got my break: a service station with a big green and gold sign. Then it was gone. But I knew where we were.

In 1999, Wasim Akram took a hat trick in two consecutive Test matches against Sri Lanka. The first was in Lahore, Pakistan, and the second was in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the final of the Asian Test Championship. Wasim Akram was named Man of the Series.

Friday—morning (early)

I
woke up to the muffled ringing of my mobile phone, buried beneath my pillow. Last night I’d texted Georgie and told her my plan. I looked at the digital clock on my bedside table: 5.50 a.m. I swore, and grabbed the phone, pressing the ‘On’ button.

‘Georgie?’ I whispered.

‘No, it’s your fairy godmother. C’mon, you lump. I thought you said half past five.’

I jumped out of bed. ‘Okay. Where are you?’

‘Two doors up, on my bike, freezing. Hurry.’

For the second time in eight hours I was skulking down the stairs like a burglar, then sneaking out the back door. Dad’s bike and then Nat’s crashed to the concrete as I tried to retrieve mine from behind them. I might as well have rung the front door bell for the sound I’d just made.

I closed my eyes, swore again and waited for someone in the house to stir. Nothing. Somewhere
down the street a dog barked. I decided to leave the two bikes lying there and hoisted mine over the top. Putting my helmet on, I wheeled the bike down the driveway.

‘I’m still half asleep,’ I whispered to Georgie when I met up with her a few moments later.

‘Then someone else must be sleepwalking too,’ Georgie said, nodding towards my house. A light had just come on, and the side drive was as bright as day.

‘Let’s go,’ I murmured, mounting the bike and pedalling hard.

‘How far is it?’ Georgie said, catching up.

‘It’ll take us 10 minutes, tops,’ I told her. I’d checked out the area on a map I’d downloaded from the Internet and there were a few laneways we could take to make the trip shorter.

It was cold and eerily silent. There was also a wispy fog that dimmed the streetlights.

‘Hey, it’s pretty good at this time of day, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘What are we actually going to do?’ Georgie asked, ignoring my question.

I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe we could sneak into Pixie, like I had into Dad’s car last night, though big cars were not the first things that came to mind when I thought of Pixie.

‘Here we go,’ I said, ignoring her too. ‘This is the service station I saw. I reckon Jim’s place is straight down this street, on the right.’ Somewhere ahead an
engine was idling—the sound was a throaty rumble, deep and threatening.

‘C’mon,’ I called, speeding past Georgie. About halfway down the street was the line of houses I’d seen last night. An enormous car sat outside Jim’s, shaking a bit and blasting out plumes of smoke from its exhaust.

‘That’s Pixie?’ Georgie gasped, staring at the old car shuddering in front of us.

Jim’s garage door stood open; I was amazed the car could actually fit inside it. ‘It must be,’ I whispered. We ran our bikes into the garage and dashed back to the car, stooping low to avoid detection. We needn’t have bothered.

‘I take it you’ll be letting me drive,’ a voice called from the front of the house. We both spun round.

‘Jim!’ I gasped. ‘Um, well, me and Georgie, we were out—’

‘Come along,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘We may already be too late.’

‘This is Pixie?’ I asked, trying to open the passenger door.

‘The very one,’ Jim said, climbing stiffly into the driver’s seat.

‘I can’t…I can’t open…’ Georgie grabbed the long silver handle with me and together we managed to open the door, which creaked and groaned.

‘Better hold it while I get in,’ she said, grinning as she shoved past me.

‘I’m not sure when I last had passengers,’ Jim said, reaching back for his seat belt.

‘Maybe the 1960s?’ Georgie suggested, hunting around for a seat belt herself.

‘Hmm, you’re probably right there.’

Georgie and I looked at each other. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. ‘Jim? Are you sure you…’ I began to say before we were both flung back against the seat as the car lurched and sputtered into action.

‘It needs a bit more choke,’ Jim muttered, pulling out a little lever by the steering wheel.

‘Choke?’ Georgie mouthed to me.

I shrugged.

Jim pulled hard on a thin stick poking out from behind the steering wheel and the car jolted again.

‘Right then,’ he said, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead. ‘I guess you two are wondering why you always see me in a taxi, and not in a Pixie.’ Jim grinned, looking at us in the rear-view mirror. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Pixie’s been out of action for quite some time, but I’ve recently discovered mobile mechanics.’

I just hoped the mobile mechanic hadn’t botched the job. Pixie certainly didn’t sound well-oiled and tuned.

‘Now, I take it you two are also keen to find out just where Mr Smale is heading this morning with his letter of information?’

‘Er, yes,’ I replied, feeling tiny on the brown leather seat, which was cold against my bare legs. I looked enviously at Georgie in her jeans. She had finally fastened her seat belt.

‘And what’s your assessment of the situation, Master Jones?’ Jim asked.

‘Well, I reckon Phillip Smale has organised five people to travel back to a game in the past, using the scorecard.’

‘Just what we hoped he wouldn’t do,’ Georgie said. ‘But knew he would,’ I added. Pixie rumbled and grumbled as we waited for the lights to change.

‘And now?’ Jim asked, looking at me in his mirror.

‘Well, we go to Smale’s place and hopefully we can follow him to where he’s going to hand over the letter. Then we—’

‘Then we reassess the situation,’ Jim said firmly. ‘I take it your parents don’t know you’re driving across town with an old man at the wheel?’

‘We didn’t want to wake them, did we, Tobes?’ Georgie said.

I shook my head. ‘No, why worry them?’

Jim was working hard to negotiate a roundabout.

‘How much further, Jim?’ I asked.

‘Almost there. We’ll park a short distance away.’ After a couple of minutes Jim pulled in behind another car.

‘Which house is Mr Smale’s?’ Georgie asked.

‘Three up on this side,’ Jim said. ‘I think we’ll give our friend half an hour, then head back for breakfast.’

‘What if he’s already gone?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t I just slip out—’

‘No!’ Georgie and Jim cried together.

Fifteen minutes later, having finally convinced Jim that it was time to do something, I had wrenched open the door and was darting from bush to bush. Jim had said Smale’s garage would probably be locked but that I might be able to see, possibly through a window or under the door, whether his car was there or not.

Smale’s house was big and modern, and a huge fence ran along the front of an impressive garden, but the gates were open. I didn’t think this was a good sign, so I darted through them then crept along the side fence, avoiding some rose bushes as best as I could, until I reached the garage. The door was closed.

But just as I rested my ear against the door to see if I could hear anyone inside, it clanged and started going up. Wildly I searched for a place to hide. There were no trees or large bushes anywhere, so I belted across the front garden and hauled myself up the wooden fence on the other side. There was a three-metre drop to the neighbour’s yard, but a sore foot seemed better than meeting Phillip Smale in front of his house.

I grabbed the top of the fence with both hands and gently lowered myself down, trying to reduce the distance between my feet and the ground. Letting go, I luckily landed on soft earth. I jogged back towards the road, careful to stay low.

‘Oi!’ a voice shouted from behind me. ‘Are you the new paperboy? I said I wanted my paper delivered to the porch, here, not down in the garden.’

Smale’s car was reversing down his driveway.

‘Yep, right you are,’ I looked around for the paper. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s over there,’ the man growled, pointing to a bird bath on his open lawn. I grabbed his wrapped-up paper and took it up to him.

‘On the porch in future, got it?’ he snarled, snatching it from me.

I backed away, listening for Smale’s car. It sounded as though he had backed out and was heading up the street, towards Pixie.

‘Well, what are you waiting around for?’ the guy on the porch asked, starting to get suspicious. ‘Where are all your papers, anyway?’ he said, moving towards me.

‘Um, I…I was just…wondering…’

Smale drove past and the mean guy gave him a wave.

I spun around. ‘Okay, I’m off,’ I called, running back to the pavement. Smale’s car was well past Pixie by the time I started sprinting down the street towards Jim and Georgie.

‘He’s gone!’ I panted, struggling to open the door. ‘Did he see you?’

‘We hid,’ Georgie said. ‘You?’

‘Nup, don’t think so.’

Pixie’s engine grumbled deeply as it warmed up. Slowly Jim wheeled her around to face the other way, but he couldn’t do it in one turn and had to reverse before heading off.

‘C’mon Jim, floor it!’ I yelled, doing up my seat belt.

‘Hold on!’ he called. Pixie quickly picked up speed and we charged back the way we’d come.

‘There!’ Georgie called, looking out her window. Jim hauled on the wheel and we spun to the right. I looked at Georgie, who had turned a bit pale.

‘Don’t worry. I did an advanced driving course some years ago, and you never forget these things,’ Jim chuckled, a gleam in his eye.

We managed to stay a good distance behind Smale’s sleek black car. A few times Jim backed right off and twice I thought we’d lost him, but Jim seemed to know what he was doing and a moment later there was Smale’s car, 50 metres ahead.

‘Ally lives around here,’ Georgie said as we turned into a street with big trees along each side.

‘And I think our friend does too,’ Jim said, slowing down and carefully parking a safe distance from the black car’s position. We watched Smale march up to the door and knock. Nothing happened.

‘Did Ally choose this address?’ Georgie asked, as Phillip Smale glanced about furtively.

‘Nope. She just made contact. This must be the house of the fifth person,’ I said, ‘but no one seems to be home.’

As I watched, Smale became more and more frustrated, slapping an envelope against his thigh. Again he banged on the door, this time with his fist. Finally he left the front of the house and walked
around the side. A minute later he reappeared, but without the letter.

‘He must have found someone,’ Georgie said.

‘Time to go,’ Jim said, reversing Pixie.

‘But Jim, what about…’

‘All in good time.’ Jim launched Pixie back onto the road. We turned and headed up a side street where we waited for a few minutes, before crawling back to the mystery house.

This time we all got out. Jim hung back, pottering about near the front while Georgie and I dashed down the side. It was Georgie who found the letter, with a hastily scrawled note written on the back, under the doormat at the rear of the house.

‘Right then, detectives. That was a successful mission, wouldn’t you say?’ Jim beamed as he took the letter from Georgie and we hurried back to the car. ‘We shall reconvene this afternoon—at your house, Toby.’ It appeared that Jim was going to get first look at Smale’s letter. That was fair enough, since it was his Pixie that had brought us to it.

‘Why do you call the car Pixie?’ I asked, settling back in the enormous seat.

‘Maybe it’s got something to do with its size?’ Georgie said, rolling her eyes.

‘But this car is a monster,’ I replied.

‘Exactly,’ Jim chuckled.