The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group

  I felt like strangling both of them.

  ‘You can bring your mother too,’ Father Ramon was saying. ‘Though I doubt she’d be amenable.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have a bar of it,’ I retorted.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘She’d stop me from coming.’ Even as the words left my mouth, I had an idea. And I realised that I would have to do it – I would have to visit the bank vault. Because if I did, I would be able to find out whether Father Ramon and his pals were lying or not.

  ‘Would you be there? At this place?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh – well – yes. Certainly. If that’s what you’d prefer.’

  ‘How far would I have to go?’ I clicked my fingers at Amin, then mimed a pen. He handed me his scrap of paper before looking around for something to write with. ‘Is it near a train station, or what?’

  Father Ramon recited the address, which was in Strathfield. I’d never been to Strathfield, though I knew it had to be at least half an hour away by train. When I made inquiries about the timetable, however, the priest demurred.

  ‘We’ll pay for a cab,’ he promised, as I scribbled away. ‘I wouldn’t want you catching a train at night.’

  ‘At night?’

  ‘Uh – yes.’ He went on to say that there was a slight problem. I would have to inspect the bank vault at night because Sanford – who owned it – was at work during the day. ‘Of course I realise how much this will complicate matters. On the whole, I’d prefer it if we could somehow get your mother on board—’

  ‘No.’ By that time I had everything worked out. I knew that if Mum were told, she would stop me from going. And if I couldn’t go, I wouldn’t be able to execute my plan. And if I couldn’t do that, then I would remain in a terrible state of anxiety and indecision until the next full moon, when Reuben would probably try to kidnap me. ‘No,’ I declared. ‘It’s no good getting Mum involved. She’ll just put her foot down.’

  ‘But if you return home very late—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’ All I needed was a good cover story. ‘So what time should we be there?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘In Strathfield?’ Sensing a lack of comprehension, I wondered if I’d misunderstood him.’You want us there tonight, don’t you?’

  He gasped. ‘Oh!’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘No, I – I don’t think so.’ During the lull that followed, I could just make out a faint murmur in the background – and I realised that he was consulting somebody. Reuben, perhaps? ‘Yes, that should be fine,’ the priest finally confirmed. ‘If you get here about ten, it would give me enough time to make arrangements.’

  Though ten was a little later than I’d expected, I agreed to it anyway. ‘Ten. Right. Gotcha,’ I said.

  ‘Make sure you take a cab. I’ll pay for it when you get to Sanford’s house.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘It shouldn’t take too long. We’ll have you back home by eleven-thirty.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I was keen to get off the phone, since I had my own arrangements to make. ‘But this’d better be good,’ I warned. ‘And you’d better not be trying to set me up. Because I have a friend who’s a drug dealer, and if anything happens to me, he’ll come after you.’

  Fergus immediately scowled. He knew that I was talking about Liam.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ The priest clicked his tongue. ‘I really don’t think you should be mixing with drug dealers, Toby . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Just keep it in mind, okay?’ Before he could start lecturing me on the evils of addictive substances, I pulled the rug out from under him. ‘See you tonight, then. Ten o’clock. Bye.’

  Click. As soon as I cut the connection, Fergus weighed in.

  ‘Liam’s not a drug dealer!’ he protested. ‘You made him sound like a bikie, or something!’

  ‘I know. Sorry. It was just a bluff.’

  ‘What’s all this about Strathfield, anyway?’ said Amin. ‘What’s happening at ten o’clock?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve gotta tell you.’ Extending both arms, I put one hand on Fergus’s shoulder and one on Amin’s. Then I drew them towards me. ‘Listen up,’ I murmured. ‘Because I’ve had this brilliant idea, but I’m gunna need your help . . .’

  You don’t even want to know how much the cab fare was that night. I mean, from Mount Druitt mall to Strathfield? Forget about it.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me just explain that I went to the mall because of my cover story. Mum had been told that I was going to a movie there, with Amin and Fergus. Upon hearing that our preferred session started at 9.15 pm, she’d simply asked me if there was an earlier one.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Except for the one this morning, but we missed that.’

  ‘Okay – well – I’ll pick you up afterwards,’ she said. ‘All of you. I don’t want anyone making their own way home at . . . what is it? Eleven?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty.’

  ‘Then I’ll pick you up outside the cinema. If it finishes early, you can give me a call.’

  In other words: permission granted. I had cleared the first hurdle. My next problem was a technical one; how was I going to turn my mobile phone into a bug? Though I knew it was possible – having dipped into a lot of Internet discussions on the subject – I’d never experimented with the technique myself. And I certainly didn’t own any hands-free headphones, which were a basic requirement for electronic eavesdropping.

  So Amin was forced to borrow his father’s headphones. Then we ran a few tests. By planting my reprogrammed mobile in various bedrooms around the Kairouz house, I was able to listen to Amin’s sisters arguing about wardrobe space, Amin’s grandmother singing something in Lebanese, and Amin’s brother playing computer games.

  On the whole, I was satisfied with these results. And so were my friends.

  ‘But how are you going to get your phone back?’ This was Amin’s one concern. ‘Your mum will kill you if you lose your phone, Toby.’

  ‘I won’t lose it. I’ll call up Reuben tomorrow and say I left it behind. By accident.’

  ‘But what if they turn out to be lying sleazebags? What if they’re such crooks that they won’t give it back?’

  ‘Then I’ll tell Mum, and she’ll call the police. Don’t worry, okay? This is going to work. I know this is going to work.’

  All the same, I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. In fact I hardly ate any dinner that night – and when Mum drove me to the mall, I spent the whole trip praying to God that she wouldn’t suddenly decide to go to the movies herself. Luckily, she didn’t even get out of the car; I think she wanted to rush back home so she could watch the beginning of Law & Order. You can imagine how relieved I was when I saw her waving goodbye.

  It was also a relief to see Amin and Fergus. They both showed up at the cinema on time, though Amin confessed that he’d had a bit of a close call. His older brother had been toying with the idea of coming with us, and had changed his mind only at the last minute. ‘We would have been stuffed,’ said Amin, who was still sweating. ‘Unless we’d bribed him.’

  ‘Not me,’ Fergus rejoined. ‘I’m broke.’ He fixed me with a stern look. ‘By the way, are you sure we don’t have to pay for this cab? What happens if we reach the bank vault and nobody’s there?’

  ‘If that happens, then we really are stuffed,’ I admitted. ‘We’ll have to take the cab back to my place, and Mum will have to pay for it.’

  ‘Which means she’ll kill you,’ Fergus warned.

  ‘Yeah. But I don’t think the priest will stand me up. You should have heard him. He was desperate for me to go. He was begging.’

  ‘Which is pretty strange in itself, don’t you think? Makes you wonder.’ Before I could respond, Fergus gently kicked his backpack, which was sitting on the cinema’s well-worn carpet. ‘I bought some Exit Mould, just in case. And an icepick.’

  ‘Exit Mould?’ Amin was mystified. ‘What’s that for?’

/>   ‘For spraying in their eyes!’ Fergus spat. ‘We were supposed to come prepared, remember?’

  ‘I know.’ Amin was immediately on the defensive. ‘I didn’t forget.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I said, though finding a weapon in my house had been next to impossible. Mum would have spotted a missing kitchen knife in three seconds flat, because all our knives are kept in a wooden block on the kitchen benchtop. What’s more, she doesn’t like leaving dangerous chemicals around. ‘I brought a screwdriver,’ was my feeble contribution, which sounded even more feeble when Amin suddenly announced, ‘I brought my dad’s nail gun.’

  Fergus and I stared at him, awe-struck.

  ‘Wow,’ said Fergus.

  ‘Gee, Amin, that’s really . . .’ I tried to think of a word. ‘. . . really major.’

  ‘Can I carry it?’ Fergus pleaded.

  ‘Nope,’ said Amin.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Dad doesn’t like people touching it.’

  ‘You touched it.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t shoot it.’

  ‘I won’t shoot it . . .’

  They were still arguing as they followed me outside. Since it was a Friday night in summer, there were quite a few cabs around. I’d barely reached the footpath before a taxi pulled up in front of me and disgorged a jabbering mob of girls, one of whom looked vaguely familiar.

  She lifted her hand when she caught my eye. But then Fergus pulled a dumb, drooling face, at which point she decided that I wasn’t worth knowing after all.

  ‘That’s Jasmine what’s-her-name,’ said Amin. ‘From sixth class. I remember her.’

  ‘Taxi!’ I shouted. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Isn’t she the one with the pet frog?’ asked Fergus.

  But I didn’t reply; I was already in the cab, talking to the driver. I don’t usually catch cabs – not without Mum, anyway – so it felt weird telling the driver where I wanted to go. It felt especially weird because I was practically penniless; I didn’t have enough cash on me to pay for a ride to Strathfield.

  Maybe the driver sensed this, because he glanced up into the rear-view mirror and said, ‘That’s a pretty long trip. You boys got the money for that?’

  ‘My uncle will pay when we get there,’ I promised, before adding, ‘He’s a priest.’

  Maybe ‘priest’ was the magic word – or maybe the driver couldn’t bring himself to blow off such an enormous fare. Whatever the reason, he sighed, shrugged, and waited for Amin and Fergus to climb into the back seat.

  Then we pulled away from the kerb.

  My heart was pounding like a hip-hop song by this time. Even Fergus seemed subdued. We didn’t say much as we headed onto the motorway, where the traffic was pretty heavy; I guess the driver’s presence put a dampener on things. He had the radio on, so we all listened in silence to some pathetic top-forty program until we reached Parramatta Road. Then came a painfully slow crawl through one set of traffic lights after another, while the countdown gave way to the news, and then to somebody talking about mental health.

  I kept looking at the meter. It was giving me vertigo.

  ‘My cousin used to work there,’ said Amin, pointing at a used-car yard.

  Fergus wasn’t interested. He leaned towards me. ‘Did you ever read about that guy who was executed with a nail gun?’ he whispered into my ear. ‘The police found something like thirty nails in his skull. Gross, eh?’

  I grunted, but my heart sank. Sometimes you suddenly know that you’ve made a mistake. Sitting in that unfamiliar cab, smelling the driver’s deodorant and watching all the coloured lights flash past, I felt as if I’d been cut adrift in a totally strange world. Not a computer-generated world – a real one. Full of real people and real consequences.

  What the hell did I think I was doing? Was I out of my mind?

  ‘I bet you forgot to bring nails,’ Fergus said to Amin, just as the car began to slow.

  ‘What’s that number again?’ the driver queried. ‘Are you sure this is the place you want?’

  We’d reached a small clump of shops on a modest intersection. There was a newsagency, a hairdresser’s, a pub, a drycleaner’s and a place selling office equipment. There were also several buildings that were hard to identify. One might have been a doctor’s surgery, or perhaps a dental clinic; it was hard to tell in the dark. Another was either a post office or a police station. And there was a two-storeyed structure that obviously wasn’t a house, though it didn’t look much like a business, either. For one thing, it didn’t have any signs affixed to its blank, imposing facade.

  The driver halted in front of it.

  ‘Number sixty-eight,’ he announced.

  Fergus, Amin and I peered out the window.

  ‘That looks like an old bank to me,’ said Amin.

  ‘Yeah.’ I swallowed. ‘You wait here.’

  ‘I can come too,’ Fergus offered.

  ‘No. Both of you wait here.’

  I scrambled out of the car, then approached an imposing set of double doors flanked by two stone pillars. To my surprise, the doorbell was just an ordinary plastic button; I was expecting some kind of elaborate, wrought-iron thing. Overhead a light was burning.

  One of the doors swung open before I could even announce my arrival.

  ‘Ah!’ said Father Ramon. He was standing on the threshold, wearing his cassock. ‘You’re early. Excellent. Did you bring your two friends?’

  My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t talk. So I jerked my chin at the cab.

  Father Ramon responded by slapping his brow.

  ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s right. There’s a fare to pay. Let me take care of that . . .’

  As he hurried past, I saw someone else hovering behind him, just inside the front door. It wasn’t Reuben; it was a little old lady with white hair and a walking stick. Her blue eyes looked enormous, enlarged by the coke-bottle lenses of her steel-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Hello,’ she croaked. ‘I’m Bridget.’

  As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a small group of people standing in an enormous room. Above them, two glowing balls of frosted glass hung from a cavernous ceiling. Glass screens were attached to a distant row of counter tops. The floor was made of polished stone. Every window had been sealed behind a set of massive, reinforced security shutters.

  It was an old bank, all right – and it was being used as an art studio. It smelled strongly of turpentine. An easel had been set up. There were canvases stacked against the walls.

  ‘Hi, Toby,’ said Reuben, who was lurking in one corner near a half-finished still life. He was wearing greasy blue overalls. Beside him were two other people: a pale girl in a long floral dress, with dark hair and matchstick arms, and an old woman with steel-wool hair, who was smoking a cigarette.

  Thinking back, I could recall that Father Ramon had mentioned a girl – someone called Nina. I figured this had to be the same girl. But the old woman didn’t ring any bells. I didn’t like the look of her. I didn’t like her hacking cough, or the way she kept blowing smoke around.

  I liked the look of Nina, though. She had the most Gothic face I’d ever seen, all blanched skin and dark smudges. But she wasn’t dressed like a Goth, so I could tell that she was naturally gloomy and mysterious. She wasn’t putting it on, like all those other girls who strut around in black lipstick and purple velvet and fishnet stockings. She wasn’t trying too hard.

  Maybe it was Nina who suddenly cheered me up. Or maybe I was reassured by a whole range of things: Nina’s pink sandals, and Bridget’s walking stick, and the person who introduced himself to me as Dr Sanford Plackett – who had to be the world’s straightest guy. He was a thin, pasty-faced, middle-aged man wearing a three-piece suit and a boring moustache, like an old-fashioned bank manager. It was impossible to be scared of him. Or of Nina. Or of Bridget.

  I thought, These people aren’t going to hurt me. No way. They’re just a bunch of losers.

  So I took a deep breath and went inside.
/>
  ‘Where’s your gang?’ Reuben asked. ‘Didn’t you bring them?’ He was trying to be jovial, I think, but I wasn’t amused. Not one little bit.

  ‘They’re just coming,’ I rejoined. ‘And they’re not my gang. I don’t have a gang.’ Even as I gestured towards the front entrance, Fergus and Amin stumbled into the room behind me. Amin looked scared and harmless. Fergus, on the other hand, was wearing camouflage pants and Blundstone boots.

  ‘This is Amin Kairouz, and this is Fergus Duffy,’ I said, by way of introduction. The words were barely out of my mouth before it occurred to me: should I have used aliases?

  ‘Hello, Amin. Hello, Fergus.’ Dr Plackett gave a nod. ‘Welcome to my home. I’m Dr Sanford Plackett, and this is Nina Harrison, and Estelle Harrison.’ He pointed at the pale girl, then the old smoker. ‘And this is Bridget Doherty, and you know Reuben Schneider, of course.’

  Fergus grinned when he spotted Reuben. Amin winced. Then they both shuffled aside to admit Father Ramon, who closed the big double doors behind him.

  With the doors shut, everything seemed a lot more shadowy and mysterious.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ said Reuben. In response to a reproving glance from the doctor, he reluctantly added, ‘Sorry I lost my temper yesterday.’

  I shrugged. Father Ramon offered me a nervous little smile.

  ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ he suggested. ‘There’s a proper living room out the back, where we can sit and talk.’

  ‘It’s the old manager’s residence,’ Dr Plackett broke in. ‘I don’t really use this area very much. It’s too hard to heat in winter. I spend most of my time out the back. And in the rooms upstairs.’

  ‘I baked some scones,’ Bridget quavered.

  Hearing this, I couldn’t help sneaking a look at Fergus. Tea and scones? What the hell were these people up to?

  Fergus obviously thought they were dithering about. ‘We wanna see the vault,’ he declared. And Amin echoed, ‘Yeah. We wanna see the vault.’

  ‘But we’ll have some scones afterwards,’ I said hastily, because I suspected that Reuben and his friends wouldn’t be discussing me in the old bank vault, once I’d left. They would probably talk in a comfortable place, where they could sit down with a nice cup of tea. For that reason, I decided to leave my mobile phone in the living room, under a sofa cushion or behind a pot plant.