Digger Field (12 page)

Then I added a voice-over, just like on a real news report.

I started by saying, ‘On the banks of the Clarry River, in the sleepy suburb of Pensdale, is this deserted house. Locals claim that the ghost of an eleven-year-old boy, who was mysteriously killed here, still haunts the house. But it’s not ghosts that are walking the corridors at night. It’s this unknown man. In the cellar under this hidden, locked door he keeps native lizards and snakes.’

Then I said, ‘Experts believe they are being traded internationally by this illegal animal trafficker. Sergeant Tranh, of Pensdale Police, is keen to hear any information that may lead to the identification and arrest of this man.’

I signed off with, ‘Digger Field reporting.’

The finished news report was just like you’d see on the evening news. Wriggler and I were really proud of it. We showed it to Tearley when she came back around.

‘Who are the experts?’ she asked.

‘Me,’ I answered.

‘Are you sure about posting this on YouTube?’ said Tearley. ‘Shouldn’t you be sure before you tell the world Mr Black’s an animal trafficker?’

‘You saw what was under that trapdoor,’ I said. ‘What else could he be?’

Wrigs hit ‘upload video’ on the computer and the news report went straight onto YouTube. We called it ‘Animal Trafficker Caught Red-Handed’.

‘But what happens if Mr Black really is a bad guy, and he sees that clip and comes after us?’ Tearley said.

I hadn’t thought of that. And he knows where Wrigs and me live.

CHAPTER 30

DAYS 28 / 29 / 30: Friday / Saturday / Sunday

Skims from anybody: 0

May never skim again.

Money made for tinnie: Nothing. Nada. Nil. May never see the river again.

Busted big-time. Grounded. May never see daylight again.

Life used to be so much simpler. We were proud of the YouTube clip at first, but now we’re too scared to go to the river in case Mr Black has seen it.

Tearley couldn’t come around because she’d gone to stay at her granny’s for a couple of days.

Wrigs and I had to find things to do. On Friday morning we superglued five-cent coins onto the driveway and told Squid that someone had dropped them. We watched him trying to force them off the concrete. Normal kids would have kicked the coins a few times and then given up when they realised they weren’t going to budge.

Squid kicked at the coins. Then he tried to pry them off the concrete with a screwdriver. Then he got a sledgehammer and tried to bash through the concrete to loosen them.

Nothing worked. The coins were still stuck to the concrete. It would have made a great TV ad for the glue company.

Then Squid found a chisel and dug a trench around each coin. He grabbed Mum’s metal nail file from the bathroom and tried to get under the coins and force them off.

At that moment, Mum drove around the corner and through our front gate. In front of her was Squid sitting in the middle of the driveway, surrounded by holes. He was still gouging into the concrete and trying to lever off the coins with her nail file.

Mum got out of the car.

‘What are you doing, Cooper?’

Mum only called Squid ‘Cooper’ when he was about to be in big trouble.

Squid pointed at the coins stuck to the ground.

‘David,’ she shouted.

I was about to be in really big trouble.

Wrigs and I had been watching from the verandah. I walked down to the driveway like I was facing a firing squad.

She was angrier than I had ever seen her before. She sent Wrigs home and grounded me.

If Mum had been angry, she had nothing on Dad. When he got home from work and saw what I’d done, he said that until I got the driveway fixed I could kiss my freedom goodbye. And then he said the only way of getting the driveway fixed would be to get a tradesman in, which I would have to pay for myself. I could never afford that, which meant I was grounded for the rest of my life. I might as well kiss the tinnie and the world championship goodbye, too.

I had to spend the rest of the weekend doing chores. I had to clean out the chicken coop (twice), mow the lawn, trim the hedges and then vacuum the whole house. And, just to rub my face in it, Mum made me clean Squid’s bedroom and wash Dean’s clothes.

I didn’t reckon it was fair. It wasn’t me who hit the driveway with a sledgehammer.

Whenever Mum and Dad weren’t looking, I checked on YouTube to see if anyone had watched our video.

At the end of Sunday it had been viewed seven times, of which I knew five were mine. I reckoned Tearley and Wrigs would have looked at it, too. So much for the whole world knowing what Mr Black was up to.

It was the worst weekend ever.

CHAPTER 31

DAY 31: Monday

Skims from anybody: 0

Chances of ever getting the tinnie: None.

Out of one bit of trouble, into a worse bit.

I woke up determined to find a way to fix the driveway. Everything depended on it. The tinnie. The world record. Catching Mr Black.

I rode down to the hardware superstore first thing. Mum had agreed to lift my grounding as long as I went straight there and back. No stopping.

I walked into the superstore, which is a warehouse about a kilometre long with about seven hundred and fifty aisles of shelving stacked full of tools and boxes and hinges and taps.

I had no idea where to start looking. I didn’t even really know what I was looking for.

None of the staff looked interested in talking to an eleven-year-old. Not even one whose whole existence depended on finding something that would fix a concrete driveway.

Just as I was about to give up, around the end of an aisle came Mr Black. He was carrying a huge pair of bolt cutters. The kind you could use to cut through padlocks. Or fingers. He didn’t see me.

I ducked down another aisle and raced to the other end of the warehouse. Mr Black came around the corner just after me. I dashed across to another aisle and five seconds later he came around the corner of that one, too. How many Mr Blacks were there? Maybe Wrigs was right and Mr Black was a ghost.

I couldn’t get away from him. I was pretending to look at some orange pipe things when he came up and stopped behind me.

‘Hello, yeah, are you doing some plumbing?’

‘No, I’m looking for something to fix up concrete,’ I said.

‘Ah, yeah, these won’t work. What do you need to fix?’

I told him about Squid and the coins and the driveway. He started laughing. His laugh was so loud it shocked me. His mouth was wide open. His gold tooth flashed in the light.

When I told him about the sledgehammer he started snorting. He sounded like a donkey.

‘Your little brother, he is very smart, yeah. Did he get the coins?’

‘No, and I got into trouble.’

‘Too funny, yeah,’ he said. ‘What you need is a combined quick-set cement and sand. It’s down in the aisle next to all the paints.’

‘Do you work here?’

‘No, but I’m here so much maybe I should, yeah,’ he said. ‘Come, I’ll show you where it is.’

We walked down to the right section. ‘You’re in big trouble, yeah?’ he said.

‘Kind of,’ I said.

‘We all make mistakes, yeah,’ he said. ‘Not because we’re bad, it’s just what happens, yeah. And people look at it and think, he’s bad, yeah, but you’re not, it just looks like it. You just made a mistake, that’s all. You know what I mean, yeah?’

We stopped in an aisle and he pulled off the shelf what looked like a huge bag of flour. It was the quick-set cement and sand.

‘What you need to do, yeah, is clean out each hole. Make sure there’s no dirt in them, yeah. Then you get some of this stuff and mix it with water, like it’s a cake. Only do enough for one hole at a time, right? Then you put it in the hole and use a trowel to smooth it out. Easy, yeah? Make sure no one walks on it for twelve hours.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘And stop looking so worried, yeah, worse things happen. See ya, yeah?’

Mr Black left. The cement and sand mix cost twenty dollars. I rode home and told Mum about it. She said she would lend me the money as long as I cleaned out the chicken coop every weekend for the next three years. Man, I wish Dad would get rid of those birds.

I rode back to the superstore and bought the mix. Then I spent the rest of the day cleaning, mixing and cementing.

It worked. And it was easy, yeah. The world was looking up.

I rang Tearley to tell her about Mr Black. I told her how I was worried that maybe we had got carried away in thinking he was an animal trafficker. He seemed too nice.

‘I’m not sure whether putting the clip on YouTube was the right thing to do,’ I said.

‘Bit late,’ she said. ‘I just checked and it’s had two hundred views.’

It had gone viral. Two hundred views. Mr Black may have been one of them.

CHAPTER 32

DAY 32: Tuesday

My skims: 0 (Harder than it sounds.)

Wriggler’s skims: 0

Tearley’s skims: 5

Sergeant Tranh’s skims: 5 (Pathetic.)

Constable Stevens’ skims: 7 (Not bad for a first-timer.)

Countdown to tinnie going on eBay: 2 days

Chances of us getting it: 0%

The knock on the front door made the whole house shake. It was 8.00 am. Dad was on his way out to work. He took one look at Sergeant Tranh and called out, ‘Dean, it’s for you.’

Sergeant Tranh looked at Dad and said, ‘Is Dean about nine years old, a hundred and forty-five centimetres tall, and a Caucasian male with a squeaky voice and mousy-brown hair?’

Dad called out, ‘Digs, it’s for you,’ and carried on to his car.

Nine years old? A hundred and forty-five centimetres tall? Tranh’s got to be the least observant cop in the whole of policedom. I am exactly a hundred and fifty-seven point five centimetres tall, which is the exact average height for an eleven-year-old.

As soon as I got to the door, Tranh said, ‘Son, I’ve had fifteen phone calls this morning, all asking about a certain OurTube clip.’

‘YouTube.’

‘Whatever. It’s a very serious offence to obstruct police work.’

‘What do you mean, obstruct? We told you about Mr Black. We showed you the video of the native animals.’

‘Were you aware there was an ongoing investigation into the goings-on at the deserted house?’

‘Is there?’

‘Well, no. But there might have been and that’s my point. If there had been you could have jeopardised the whole operation.’

That was ridiculous. How could I be in trouble for something I had no idea was happening even though it wasn’t?

I must have looked confused because Tranh said, ‘Anyway, we’ll worry about that later. We’ve got to sort this out. Get that Tearle girl and the kid that’s missing the arm to meet us at the river.’

‘Wriggler?’

‘The ginga,’ Tranh said.

‘He’s not missing an arm. It’s broken.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay get the ginga with the two arms,’ said Tranh.

I rang Tearley and Wriggler and told them to meet us at the river.

I went in the police car with Tranh and Stevens. On the way to the river Tranh stopped at the police station.

‘Back in a moment,’ he said and he and Stevens raced into the station.

This was the worst thing ever. I could hear Mr Black’s words ringing in my ears. ‘
People think, he’s bad, yeah, but you’re not, it just looks like it.
’

I had posted something on YouTube saying he was guilty of trafficking animals and now I wasn’t so sure.

Worse still, the police were going to arrest him, and it was my fault. I felt sick in the stomach.

Sergeant Tranh and Constable Stevens came out and got back in the car.

They were no longer in police uniform.

‘Son, it’s important we do not raise suspicion if the male of interest happens to be at the alleged crime site, so Constable Stevens and I have changed into civvies.’

He had on a backwards cap, a hoodie and a pair of low-cut, baggy red jeans. He looked like an idiot. Stevens looked much more normal in a white t-shirt and blue jeans.

‘If anyone asks, Constable Stevens and I are your homies. At all times we must keep in character and not let anyone think we are hiding something. Oh, and I brought some of these in case we need to skim.’

He handed me a bag of the pebbles from the police garden.

He started the car and squealed the tyres. As we drove off he said to Stevens, ‘I love undercover work.’

On the way to the river Tranh said, ‘I can’t believe three hundred and fifty people have watched your clip. I had no idea about it until the Police Commissioner rang this morning and told me to sort it out.’

Three hundred and fifty people. This was getting worse. I’d tried to call Wrigs about a million and seven times the night before, to get him to take the clip off YouTube but he wasn’t home.

Wrigs and Tearley were waiting for us at the top of View Street.

‘W’sup, bro,’ said Tranh and fist-bumped Wrigs.

Then he said, ‘Hey, sis,’ and high-fived Tearley. ‘Have you brought your laptop?’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Tearley.

‘It’s not Sergeant today,’ said Tranh, ‘it’s Tranh-man. Listen up, dudes, and I’ll tell you what’s goin’ down. You’re going to show me the manhole and where you set up the surveillance camera. In case the alleged trafficker is in the vicinity we will maintain the charade of being “homies” who have come to “skim” so as to avoid suspicion. Any questions?’

Any questions? Apart from, was he for real?

‘No, Tranh-man,’ said Tearley.

We walked down the path to the house. We showed Tranh and Stevens the manhole.

‘Are you going to open it?’ asked Wriggler.

‘Not straight away,’ said the Tranh-man. ‘Well, not for two days. We want to catch the alleged trafficker in the vicinity of the animals. If he even thinks we are onto him he will disappear and we won’t have a case.’

‘What’ll be different in two days?’ asked Tearley.

‘It’s not in his interest for the animals to starve, so if he doesn’t return in the next forty-eight hours it means that he has realised we are onto him.’ He looked at me. ‘Probably because of a certain clip.’