• Could you please send me your phone number? I tried your old one from a few years ago but it said that the number was disconnected.
• What’s it like being a crime reporter?
• Do you ever go undercover?
• Do you have an undercover identity? (I won’t tell anyone.)
• Do you live in a nice part of the city?
• Do you ever go on stakeouts?
That’s all for now. Thanks for the comics you sent me a couple of years ago. I have read them all 150 bazillion times. Can you please write back to me with the answers at 12 Cavanbah Crescent Katoomba NSW Australia 2780. And if you want to know about me, just include some questions.
Thanks.
EIGHTEEN
STAKEOUT
I stared at Harry’s laptop for a long time before I opened it. I’m a snoop but I have boundaries. I would never search through someone’s personal files.
Not usually. But I was trying to uncover the details of a felony. (I loved using the word ‘felony’ rather than ‘crime’.)
I took the laptop into Harry’s bedroom and sat on the far side of his bed, making sure I wasn’t visible from the front door in case he came home. I lifted the lid and the screen demanded a password. I had no idea what it might be. You needed to know someone to guess their code.
I punched in ‘0000’. I tried ‘1111’. I tried ‘9999’. I tried ‘1234’ and ‘9876’. I tried ‘magic’ and ‘harry’ and ‘harrygarner’. I tried his birthday: ‘230954’.
Nothing.
I shut the lid and put the laptop back in the cupboard under the kitchen bench.
At midday, I flicked on the TV to catch the news. I prayed that there might be something related to the crime. What if, somehow, someone else had seen what had happened? Maybe the man had been arrested leaving the building. Maybe the body had turned up somewhere.
The news anchor thanked us for joining her. The top story was about a footballer involved in a nightclub brawl – apparently the most important story in the world today. There were freak weather events across the country. The Prime Minister denied any connection between these events and climate change. There was a story on the crime wave ‘sweeping the city’ – young men using new technology to stay ahead of police. That was something my dad had reported on a few weeks back – a new breed of criminal using encrypted messaging apps and social media to organise themselves in ways that old-school police were finding impossible to keep up with. Next was a ‘Could it happen here?’ story on the fear of local terror attacks, encouraging citizens to remain ‘alert but not alarmed’. Then, ‘In sport, big news for the Brisbane Broncos, Geoff…’
No story on the guy who fell or anything related.
I switched off the TV.
I sat.
I waited.
I worried.
I listened.
At one stage I thought I heard something. A single footstep twisting against a floorboard above. But then nothing more.
I watched the yard and the train tracks from the rear window.
I checked the door locks again and again.
I turned over the events of last night in my mind, making notes when I thought of something to ask Harry.
Mum texted.
Are you doing your
schoolwork?
Are you doing your hospital
work?
Yes, as a matter of fact.
Good girl
I liked it when I managed to distract her from the truth without lying.
I tried reading some of our novel for English – Number the Stars by Lois Lowry – just to make Mum happy, even though she would never really know.
I did some work on my comic book.
Next thing I knew, I woke up on the couch, my head resting on Magic, who was snoring. I wiped drool from my cheek and saw my notebook lying on the floor. I had only drawn a single frame of the comic before I fell asleep. I felt like a pretty lame cartoonist and crime reporter. What kind of reporter sleeps on the job? What if Moon Face had broken in? What if he’d sent someone to grab me?
The only good news was that it was 4.47 pm. It was time to meet Scarlet. I would get as much information as I could and try to tell her as little as possible. The fewer people involved in this the better.
NINETEEN
INTERROGATION ROOM
I folded the red serviette over and over again, into tinier and tinier squares until it wouldn’t fold any more. I was sitting at the back of the narrow cafe at a sticky table with wonky legs. The walls were bare concrete and the chairs were mismatched. I couldn’t work out if it was meant to be cool or if the owners were just cheap. I was the only customer in the cafe.
The angry, bearded waiter – dressed like a lumberjack who had never been outdoors before – stood next to the coffee machine drying glasses with a red tea towel. He looked up at me occasionally, like he was suspicious I might steal a salt shaker or a sugar cube. I hadn’t ordered yet. I would wait for Scarlet. It was 5.07 pm. She’d said she’d be here at five. I prayed that Harry wouldn’t come back early and discover that I’d left the apartment.
I mentally prepared to hold my first real-life interrogation. I would skilfully wheedle the following information out of her:
1. Who are the Hills who live in apartment 6A?
2. Did you see or hear anything from that apartment last night?
3. Have you seen or heard anything recently that would raise suspicion?
4. When this is all over, would you like to go see a movie with me?
Not really the last one. But if I wasn’t a total chicken I would. I watched the front window of the cafe. From here, the peeling gold lettering of the words ‘Cafe Oska’ on the rain-spattered window looked like ‘Cafe Oska’. City workers hurried past the window in the semi-darkness, huddled under umbrellas and hooded raincoats.
If this was a scene from one of my comics, the hulking figure of the man from last night would pass the window under his black umbrella. At the last moment he would look up and see the kid in the cafe. He would stop. Their gaze would lock. The kid in the cafe’s eyes would go wide and he’d stand, knocking over his chair, causing the lumberjack to look up. The kid would drop the folded serviette to the floor and run through the kitchen, past the toilet and out the back door of the cafe into an alley where he would be confronted, once again, by the enormous man. The man’s eyes would glow yellow as he coughed broken glass and laughed like a chainsaw.
In reality, the front door of the cafe swung open and a girl with rain-soaked, dyed-red hair, a backpack and a guitar case wiped sheets of water off her arms and legs, flicked it onto the floor, then looked down the length of the narrow cafe towards me.
She mouthed the word ‘sorry’ and the lumberjack put his glass and tea towel aside to escort her to her chair. She walked towards me, her guitar case swinging gently beside her. In my comic, it would not be a guitar that she was carrying in that case.
I wondered if she had dyed her hair bright red because her name was Scarlet or if she had changed her name to match the hair – unlikely, but you never know.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘My lesson went on forever and the bus was late.’
‘That’s okay.’
She put her case down, took off her backpack and sat in the rickety wooden chair opposite me.
‘I can’t stay long. Mum’ll want to know where I am.’
She drummed her multicoloured fingernails excitedly on the table and said, ‘So… tell me.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Lumberjack asked, looming behind her.