Revenge (6 page)

‘Work it out?' Winter muttered again. I could hear her scrambling for something in her pocket. ‘His letter, Boges. Quick, give me some light!'

I shone my key light on her as she searched through Cal's crumpled words once more.

The paper shook as her hands trembled. She'd found something in there. Something bad.

‘Tell me!' I said. ‘What is it?'

Her face was grim with fear. ‘I knew it,' she whispered. ‘I
knew
he'd try to get a message to us, no matter how dangerous. It's the letters at the start of each sentence.'

Winter's voice trembled as she slowly and quietly read out five deadly words: ‘Sorry … Life … I'm … Gotta … Only … S—L—I—G—O!' she shouted. ‘Sligo's alive!
Sligo
has him!'

‘That's right!' the familiar voice roared, throbbing through the speaker above us. ‘Back from the dead!'

We swung round.

Scowling back at us, in close-up on the screen, was the round, repulsive, fleshy face of Vulkan Sligo!

One eye bulged like a toad's, while the other was half closed and perched uselessly above a deep purple scar on his cheek. He wore his characteristic cravat around his neck, yet this one was stained and dull, nothing like the
perfect
silks I'd seen choking him before.

This was Sligo, all right, but a Sligo who looked like he'd been dragged through …
the mud
.

I cowered away from his terrifying image, pulling Winter close to me.

‘I knew you were still alive!' she gasped. ‘You're like a cockroach that just won't die! Where have you taken Cal?'

‘What kind of a “welcome back” reception do you call that?' he spat. ‘Hardly what I'd expect from the poor little orphan I raised in my own home.'

‘Your home? It was
my
home! You murdered my parents and you stole everything from us!'

His mouth tightened back into a scowl.

‘Listen very carefully,' Sligo instructed. ‘Cal has been injected with a lethal dose of poison.'

‘You poisoned him?' Winter cried. ‘With what?'

My entire skull was pounding as the camera angle changed and Cal's slumped head came back into view, his body motionless.

‘Cal!' I shouted, trying to get a reaction. ‘Cal!'

He seemed to move—his fingers twitched—but before I could tell for sure, the camera returned to Sligo.

‘Your friend's days are numbered,' he said. ‘If you continue to do what I say, I will give him the antidote. If you run to the authorities, or do anything not strictly according to my wishes, I will inject him with a second dose of poison that will have fatal results … within seconds.'

‘We won't tell a soul—we just want Cal back!' I shouted. ‘But what do you want from us? Money? Whatever it is, we'll get it to you. Just don't let anything happen to Cal,' I pleaded. ‘We'll get you anything you want!'

Sligo gritted his yellow, rotting teeth. Spittle flew from his sausage-like lips. ‘You three
stole
the Ormond Jewel from me and snatched the Ormond Singularity from my grasp. You destroyed my dreams of ruling the city, and gaining the respect and admiration I deserved. You ruined my name and my empire. But you won't ruin me. I will make a return. I will find a way. But first I need money. And lots of it.'

‘Fine,' I said, squeezing Winter's hand and willing her to keep her mouth shut. ‘We'll get you as much as you want.'

‘Yes, you will,' he nodded. ‘I will send for you again when your instructions are ready.'

Winter shook my hand away. ‘Ready? When will they be ready? Just tell us what you want now!'

The screen went blank.

Only the rasping voice remained, hanging in the darkness as Sligo hissed, ‘If you haven't noticed, you little ingrate,
I'm
the one calling the shots. Get them out of there!' Sligo ordered over the speaker.

I sensed someone rush at us and the force knocked me to the ground.

‘Help!' Winter screamed. ‘Somebody help us!' But Winter's cries were quickly muffled.

I clawed at the earth in a futile attempt to hang onto something as I was grabbed from behind.

A thick, heavy hood was pulled over my face.

DAY 4

27 days to go …

‘Get out of here,' ordered a loud voice, waking me up with a jolt. My hands instinctively flew up to cover my head. ‘Come on, get up and get out.'

A very serious-looking police officer glared down at me.

‘Get your girlfriend on her feet and get out of here,' she said. ‘This is not a place to camp for the night, do you hear me?'

I looked to my right at Winter. She was already scrambling to stand and began pulling me up. Her eyes were wild, and her hair looked matted with knots. Her knees were dirty and grazed.

‘We're leaving now,' she said.

Together we half-stumbled, half-ran out of the cenotaph, with no memory of how or when we'd been dumped there.

As we staggered towards Winter's place, all I could think about was Cal. Sligo had him in his clutches and was bent on revenge. How could I save my friend?

‘You were right,' I said to Winter, as we approached her house. ‘You knew Sligo was still alive.'

But she wouldn't even look at me.

‘I'm sorry I argued with you,' I persisted. ‘I mean it.'

‘You
laughed
at me, Boges,' she said,
turning
her tear-streaked face to mine. ‘You told me I was “just paranoid” thinking there was a chance someone had made it out of the Inisrue Marsh alive.'

‘Like I said, I'm sorry.'

‘Whatever, it doesn't help Cal, now, does it?' she said, as she approached her front door. She unlocked it, threw it open, and stormed inside and up the stairs.

‘Hey!' I called after her, taking the stairs two at a time. I ran to her room and flung the door open. I'd come up with a plan. ‘We have to work together to get Cal out of this. I have an idea.'

Winter turned and glared at me.

I held up my hands, palms facing me. ‘Look at my nails.'

‘Boges, have you gone completely nuts?'

I shook my head. ‘Soil profiling,' I said. ‘I have physical evidence under my fingernails. I'll scrape it out and find out what's in it.'

Winter's anger and disappointment shifted. ‘You mean we could get some answers? About where we were taken? But how?'

‘Different soils have different profiles
depending
on the areas they come from. It's not like pinpointing a position on a GPS, but it's a start!'

From one of Winter's kitchen drawers I found a small zip-lock bag. I pulled it out and headed for the bathroom. In the near-empty mirrored
cabinets
that sat above the marbled sink I found a metal nailfile. I propped myself on the edge of the spa bath in the corner and carefully began scraping out the grit wedged under my
fingernails
into the bag.

My pathetic reflection glared at me from the corner of my eye. I turned my head left, facing it front-on.
Dude
, I thought to myself,
you look
completely
Neanderthal
. You belong in the Natural
History Museum, in a glass cabinet next to a pair of woolly mammoths. How could you have made it last with Maddy anyway?

I shook my bushy hair, and bits of grass and dirt rained down on the pristine tub. I scooped up some of it for my collection. I'd have to sneak into one of the school labs to analyse the soil and see if it would give me any clues as to where Sligo had taken us yesterday. If we managed to find that room, maybe we'd find something that would lead us to Cal's prison.

I knocked on Winter's bedroom door before walking in. She was sitting cross-legged at the head of her bed, a woollen shawl wrapped around her shoulders. A small bedside lamp lit the room.

‘There has to be something else in this,' she said, without looking up. She was jabbing at Cal's coerced letter. ‘He was smart enough to get the
SLIGO
clue to us. There might be something else in here that we're missing.'

I wanted to tell Winter not to get her hopes up—the letter was so short and written under Sligo's watchful, bulging
eye
. But the don't-
you-dare
look on her face warned me against it. I bit my tongue and sat down next to her.

‘He took us to that hovel and showed us Cal, just to torture me,' said Winter. ‘He didn't need
to snatch us just to show us footage of Cal on a screen. He didn't need to, but he did. Just because he could. He's sick, Sligo.'

She looked up at me with mascara-smudged eyes.

‘We'll find him,' I said. ‘We have to.'

I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned on the sofa, trying to get some rest.

Winter came thudding down the stairs.

I sat up. ‘What is it?' I called out, groping for the light switch.

‘I've found something! I knew it!' she cried, jumping onto the sofa beside me. There was a new hope in her voice.

‘What is it?'

She held up Cal's letter. ‘Look at it,' she said, holding it up in the light. ‘Notice anything unusual? The tiny smudges?'

‘What smudges?' I said. I couldn't make out what she was talking about. I knew she wanted to believe there was another hidden clue in Cal's letter, but could that really be true?

I took the letter from her and held it close. I squinted at it and scanned the page for smudges until I understood.

She was right!

There were six letters marked with a tiny, almost unnoticeable, smudge! I began reading them out loud. ‘C, O, F, F …' I stopped in
amazement
. ‘Coffin!' I shrieked. ‘He spelt out “coffin”! Winter, have I told you you're the most amazing girl I've ever known?'

‘Not lately.'

‘What do you think he's trying to tell us?' I wondered. ‘To go to the undertakers'?'

‘Exactly! Someone
is
working with Sligo, we know that much. He has someone he's
ordering
around—helping him grab us from the clock tower. Whoever it was hiding in the shadows in that room we were in. What if Sheldrake Rathbone is alive and Sligo lied about chucking his body in the bog? What if they're working together again? Rathbone's not exactly “muscle”, but it sounds like he could be our man, and his brother's funeral parlour sounds like the perfect place to hide something.'