July (4 page)

Three hours later, the auction was almost finished and the last of the buyers were leaving with their purchases. Behind us, other workers
were hosing down the tiled and cement surfaces, clumping around in bulky gumboots.

‘I’m so glad this is almost over,’ said Squid, sprawling on the ground near a brick wall. ‘I need a break.’ He took his phone out of his pocket again and started texting someone.

‘I’m going to duck back to the boat, to get my gear,’ I told him. ‘Back in a minute.’

I snatched up my clothes—they were salty and almost stiff—then jammed them into my
backpack
. I jumped back onto the wharf, hurrying to rejoin Squid.

The place had almost emptied and Squid had disappeared. I lugged the last two containers of sand shark and leatherjacket into the back of a van and looked around again for him. I couldn’t see him anywhere.

Just then, a short guy in overalls—the owner of one of the vans we’d loaded—approached me. ‘Will you help me with this load, son?’ he asked, pulling off his woollen beanie and wiping his forehead with it. ‘If you ride with me to my shop and give me a hand at the other end, I’ll give you thirty bucks. Another young bloke was supposed
to help me, but he’s useless. Didn’t even show up.’

There was still no sign of Squid, and thirty bucks sounded good to me.

‘Sure,’ I said, shaking his hand. I felt bad for taking off without saying anything to Squid, but thought I had to take up the opportunity to get away—I had no idea what the skipper would expect me to do next.

‘My shop’s just a few blocks away,’ the guy explained as we drove away from the markets. ‘I injured my wrist, and Gary was supposed to help me with the load at the other end, but he obviously made other plans.’

Gary
? The guy Squid didn’t trust?

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of Mike’s Seafood.

‘That’s me. I’m Mike,’ he said, pointing a bandaged hand in the direction of the shop.

‘Tom,’ I said, before jumping out and walking to the back of the van. I peered around me, keeping a watch on the street in case of police patrols. Mike opened the doors and I began unloading and stacking his trolley.

I wheeled the first lot of containers through his shop and out to the back where there was a big freezer room. Mike awkwardly unbolted the
door and it swung open, releasing an icy cloud. It was so cold and frosty in there—it was like stepping inside an igloo in the middle of Antarctica—so I unloaded as fast as I could, my breath steaming out in front of me.

Finally, I stacked the last load onto the trolley.

‘Wheel that load into the freezer room too, and then can you wait for me here in the shop? I need to get some cash out to pay you.’ He pointed to an ATM down the street. ‘Can’t spare any from the till, I’m afraid.’

‘Sure.’

Just as I was dragging the last heavy box of fish off the trolley, shivering inside the chilly freezer room, a figure appeared in the doorway, his face half-hidden in a dark hoodie.

‘I can help you with that,’ he said, with an evil chuckle. It was the second deckhand from the
Star of Mykonos
—Gary. As he grabbed hold of the freezer door, I realised too late why his voice had seemed familiar to me back on the boat. On the hand that held the door were
three
fingers! Before I could say or do anything, Three-O shoved me hard up against the trolley, sending me
flying
backwards into the depths of the freezer!

‘I know exactly who you are, Cal Ormond. Did
you think we were all dumb or something?’ he said, spitting at my feet. ‘Everyone knows who you are! The cops were calling your name!’ I jumped up and braced myself, remembering too well how he’d beaten me up at the carpark. ‘There’s a massive price on your head, Ormond, and you owe me big time! I could have got a thousand bucks for spotting that car. It’s time I cashed in!’

He held up a camera phone, and snapped a picture of me.

I lunged at him, but before I reached him, he stepped back and slammed the freezer door shut. My fists slammed into nothing but metal.

I grabbed the door handle and wrenched it, but it wouldn’t open.

‘Let me out! Let me out, damn it!’ I shouted.

I wrenched the door handle again, but
nothing
happened. I couldn’t get out. I banged and bashed, yelling loudly, realising that Three-O must have recognised me back on the boat,
followed
me here, and now he was off to tell the police and show them my picture.

And I was locked up in the freezer, just
waiting
for the cops to come and get me.

‘Mike!’ I shouted, banging uselessly on the door, thinking surely he’d be back any second. He had to let me out before the police turned up. ‘I’m locked in the freezer!’

Already my teeth were chattering. Again, I kicked and bashed and pushed the door, but despite its rusty hinges, it wasn’t budging. swung around to see if there was any other way out, but of course there wasn’t.

I grabbed my phone out of desperation, but it was still as dead as the bins of fish that
surrounded
me. I flung it back into my bag, looking around again for a way out.

Who was going to find me first, Mike or the cops? And how long were they going to take? A thermometer on the wall indicated minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. I didn’t know how long I could last.

‘Let me out!’ I shouted and thrashed my body uselessly against the door. I was going to be a dead fish too if I didn’t get out fast. A few minutes had passed already, and panic was starting to fester in the pit of my stomach. I’d have to get out of here or I’d die. Being arrested was better than freezing to death.

My fingers and toes were aching with cold and my nose had gone numb. I backed away from the door and huddled, hugging my knees,
trying
to warm myself up. The cold was travelling through my body fast, making my arms and legs ache. My ears were throbbing too and the bones in my face were hurting.

I got back up and jumped around, clapping my arms, trying to keep moving. It was impossible to warm up and I was starting to really freak out, like I had that night in Treachery Bay when the sharks were circling, ready to attack. It had been Dad’s words in my mind that got me through that ordeal.
Think, Cal. Think
. I was trying to think, trying to work out a plan of action, but it was like my brain was starting to freeze, making it impossible. How do you get through a locked door? Without being a ghost?

The sight of my fingers made me feel
dizzy
—they were dead white, and when I pressed them together, they felt like pieces of wood, as if they didn’t belong to me. Was this the first stage of frostbite?

I was still racking my brain for a way to open the door … but came up with nothing. Where was Repro when I needed him? I pictured him in his tiny living quarters behind the filing cabinets, surrounded by his piles of lost property and scavenged bits and pieces. And that reminded me of something …

The track detonators!

With my clumsy, frozen fingers, I dragged the backpack off my shoulders and dug around for the tin containing the blast caps Repro had given me.

I figured if I could wedge them into the cracks
between the door and its hinges, then slam
something
against the door to trigger them, there might be a chance for me to blow the whole thing open. And get out.

Aside from the fact that I had no idea whether the tin had stayed airtight, protecting the caps when I’d fallen underwater, I had another
problem
: it was very tightly sealed and my fingers were numb, barely able to move. Feverishly, I battled with the lid, fumbling like a baby as I attempted to get it open.

The intense cold tried to take me down as I battled to prise the lid up. My feet were starting to feel frozen to the floor, like blocks of dead weight, when at last the lid lifted. I threw it aside, and ripped out the mouldy roll that was still in there. Underneath, four blast caps lay flat in the tin. They were dry. They were intact.

It took me ages to fumble the first two caps into position—one above and one beneath the top hinge. But when I went to do the same with the bottom hinge, I realised it wasn’t possible. The door didn’t hang straight and there was almost no gap between the lower jamb and the metal of the door. Two caps weren’t going to be enough.

‘Mike!’ I shouted again. What in the world had happened to him? ‘Help me out of the freezer! Mike, I’m trapped!’

The police were going to show up any minute, and Three-O would get his reward for my
capture
. I didn’t know what to do.

I’d never felt anything like this kind of extreme cold before. My eyelids seemed to be drying out. I blinked desperately, trying to see as I wedged the other two blast caps under the door, in a last-ditch effort. Worried I might explode them early, I flinched as I shoved and kicked them into position.

Now that they were in place, how was I going to detonate them? And how could I be sure that the pressure of the blast would blow the door outward, off its hinges, and not towards me?

I had to try
something
. I
had
to set off the detonators.

All I had was the trolley I’d wheeled in. I grabbed it with fingers that couldn’t feel anything anymore, and with what was left of my strength I backed it up and then ran and rammed it as powerfully as I could against the door.

All four detonators exploded simultaneously!

The impact of the collision ripped through my body, and the sound and pressure of the explosion in the confined space blasted me back against the freezer wall. Icy splinters speared into my face.

A rush of adrenaline gave me the energy to
get to my feet and check the door. The top hinges had buckled and the bottom hinges were twisted, but the door was still stuck. Instantly I forced my half-frozen body right back into action, and got behind the trolley again. I ran full pelt at the door once more, bashing it with the weight of my body. I felt it shift and buckle. Yelling like a crazy man, I had my third go at it and this time I crash-tackled the door down, completely off its hinges, sprawling sideways as it collapsed to the floor outside.