The Cartographer (8 page)

‘Hey, Mum. Matthew Foster says they fished a body out of the Yarra, and he'd been murdered.'

‘A drunk fell off the
Herring
last night and drowned,' she said, as if she was bored stiff. ‘And I want you to stay away from the river.'

Bloody Matthew Foster. Still, that night I prayed that I would not dream about murderers, or old codgers who were half dead, or crazy ladies with forks, and went to sleep hoping to God that the drunk who fell off the ferry was none other than the murderer himself.

I went over to the Commandos Club after school on Tuesday. There was a special meeting to discuss Miss Schaeffer, a new teacher at St Felix's who looked like Debbie Reynolds, and to show off my compass; but the meeting did not go well.

For a start, the only thing the other Commandos wanted to talk about was making up a new game based on the murder, one in which we would pretend to murder each other, and because I could draw, we could get an exercise book, and I could make drawings of all the different murder methods we dreamt up. Normally, this plan would have met with my approval — drawings of murders were my cup of tea — but I knew that it would only make me more worried, and I could live without that.

But the worst thing about the plan was that it had been Matthew Foster's idea, and now the other Commandos were thinking of letting him join our club. I could see that if I voted against this, I would probably make myself unpopular, so I agreed. It made me wish Tom was still around, because then I would have had two votes, if you see what I mean. There were two consolations, however. First, according to the rules, Matthew Foster would have to be a private (I was a corporal) as he was the last person to be recruited. (This suited Luigi down to the ground as it meant he could be a lance corporal at last. He said he could hardly wait to tell
his dad; and he meant it, too.) And second, he would have to be initiated.

Even so, that meeting put me off being a Commando a bit, so I decided to spend the rest of the week after school concentrating on the map, not that I had a lot of choice as one of the local kids had gone missing — the younger Harrigan kid, I heard Mum tell Mrs Carruthers — and after that none of us were allowed to go anywhere but straight to school and back. I knew who the Harrigan kid was, because his big brother, Greg, had once stuck bubble gum in my hair when Tom and me were at the flicks, and the little kid had been with him. Mum had to cut so much hair off that I ended up looking like Friar Tuck, so Greg Harrigan was our sworn enemy. But after Tom died, I lost interest in getting back at him.

The Commandos reckoned that he'd probably run away to join the navy, but I wasn't so sure as he was even younger than us. My money was on the old attic trick: Berny Aldersear, one of the kids at school, had once run away from home and gone no further than his own attic. He was there for a fortnight before they caught him raiding the fridge one night. His parents already reckoned he hadn't gone too far when they discovered that he was still putting his socks and undies in the laundry basket. Old habits.

But it's lucky I did spend more time at home as it gave me time to think about the map. There are two kinds of map: the first kind shows you where all the good things in the world are so that you can find them, and the other kind shows you all the scary stuff so you won't walk into it — that's how my map had started out. But both kinds hide things that are
so
bad that they give you nothing but trouble. It's up to
you
to find them, then decide where they should be on the map. After the Incident in
the Broken Down House, I decided that my map was crawling with those hidden things you had to watch out for. But there were way too many and after a little while I worked out why: I was cursed.

Others might have seen it right off the bat; I did not. It took, for me, three new thrillers:
Murder on the Second Floor
,
The Mystery of the Old Man in the Laundry
and
The Forking of the Dead-end Boy
(a new form of crime, as far as I could tell, and one that I hoped might one day be named after me, as its discoverer) before the penny dropped.

When I thought about it, it made sense that I was cursed; in fact, I was probably long overdue. Look at the facts: I knew the location of the Phantom's Skull Cave, Superman's Fortress of Solitude, the Batcave and Jet Jackson's secret laboratory with its jet hangar. And now I knew what the murderer down Kipling Lane looked like. I knew way too much to be allowed to live! I had brought this on myself; this had been coming for a long time, since Tom, really. In fact, I suppose I'd been half expecting it. This was not one of those curses that some loony old witch doctor bungs on you for refusing to marry his daughter; this was one of those curses that you catch, just by doing the wrong thing, like Pinocchio's nose — and thank God
that's
not a true story. It's the kind you get when you can't help someone who's dying. I didn't get it when Tom died — there was probably some kind of mix-up — so God sent the woman down Kipling Lane, to make sure the curse worked the second time round. You can't fight that kind of stuff.

But you can trick it. And I thought of a way to do it. I would become a new person, though exactly
who
I had not yet figured out, only that it would be someone with powers and abilities far beyond mortal men, someone who could outfox murderers,
and do as he pleased without having to worry about bumping into his archenemy. The main thing is, I would no longer be the person who had been cursed. Then the expeditions could continue. For the new person I'd become, the map would hold no dark secrets, but would help me to succeed and to find my way.

So once I'd refined my map, I worked at putting a new explorer's kit together. Soon my bag had in it: a magnifying glass; binoculars, a birthday present from Granddad, and damn handy at the races; my new compass; a red multi-purpose pocketknife (another birthday present, this time from Dad, before he shot through); a liquorice strap, to keep my strength up; a Spirax notebook (a real reporter's notebook); and a pencil (HB: the initials of Harry Black, the private eye, who had lost it on one of his capers). The only thing missing that I really wanted was Mum's Brownie Box camera, but I had no idea how to work it — I made a mental note to find out. If I'd had that damn camera when I saw the murderer looking at me, I could have taken his picture, mailed it to the police, and saved myself about twenty-seven nervous breakdowns.

A few days later, the paper said that the Harrigan kid had been kidnapped and his family had received a ransom note. So all the kids were allowed back on the street, as our parents reasoned that the kidnapper was hardly likely to kidnap every kid in Richmond. And besides, the kidnapper was probably flat out at home, now that he had an extra mouth to feed.

I was so glad to be out and about again that I went for a walk — a practice walk, to test the explorer's kit — down the lane that followed Church Street along the back of its shops. I had an idea that if I went for a nice long walk I might bump into Dad,
who I thought might be working undercover as a spy. Dad had shot through before, but never for a whole month, and usually to some place we all knew, it being pretty impossible for anyone in my family except Granddad and me to keep a secret. He'd lobbed on Uncle Ivor so often they'd cleaned out the lean-to for him and his bike. And Nanna Blayney kept a bed for him at her place, though he preferred not to show up there, as it only upset Mum more, if that was possible. This time he hadn't gone to either place, but no one in the family was walking around going: ‘Now where's that scallywag Bill Blayney got to?', which struck me as strange.

‘Granddad,' I said to him one night when he came over to deliver a wooden crate full of lollies that he'd found, ‘
you
seem to know everything.'

‘Uh-huh,' says he, offering me a humbug from a little jar, but already not liking where this was going.

‘Where do you reckon a bloke would go if he wanted to disappear, motorbike and all?'

He looks at me as if he's just discovered he's got a cavity in one of his teeth. ‘What you mean is, where's your father?'

‘You could say that,' I said with a mouth full of humbugs: one for me and one for Tom.

‘Well, I'll tell you this much' — he looked around to make sure we were alone — ‘he's all right, and thinking of you, and he'll be in touch when the time is right.'

‘You mean when he's completed his
mission
?'

He made a frog mouth. ‘Yeah, when he's completed his mission.'

I knew it!

‘Thanks, Granddad. Help yourself to a humbug — they're on me. Have two.'

I reckoned that if I did bump into Dad, he might take me to the pub and shout me a lady's waist of raspberry vinegar and lemonade, and I'd forget everything that had happened for a while. As I said, it was an idea.

It was a quiet afternoon. There was nobody around, just cats — I actually saw a black and white cat with three legs, and he is now on the map. I thought it was lucky for me that I had not been around when he lost that leg as that would have done nothing for my confidence at all. Anyhow, I was walking, and being extra careful not to overdo the exploring (in view of my track record) when I came to a particularly interesting box that had been dumped in the lane, probably because no one wanted it (the only reason something
would
be in a lane — or anywhere else, come to think of it). It was a box full of books.

I once heard Granddad say to Jack Whaley, the SP bookmaker, that he was partial to a good book, and I know just how he feels. But these books had pretty boring titles. Checking my Spirax, I see that one was called
Abbey Girl
, and another
Naughty Nights
. They had thin covers that were made for folding back, like the
Argosy
and
Reader's Digest
, but no pictures, even on the front. I decided to take one home for Mum, who had been doing a lot of reading lately. I chose
Hot Housewives
, because she was always complaining of slaving over a hot stove, but I could tell by the look on her face that it was not a good choice. Still, she read it. So the box was not a bonanza, but it did tell me something about the people who threw it out: they probably had a lot more books they didn't want.

The gate nearest the box of books was one of those high tin gates that you find at the back of most shops, and it had a hole you put your hand through to open it. I made sure I had a good look through the hole first, and also through the crack at the
side of the gate, to make sure there was no dog in the yard as it is a well-known fact that a dog can be trained to keep quiet until a hand is stuck through the hole in the gate and then the dog bites it off. You can't take the hand with you to hospital for it to be sewn back on either, because the dog would be trained to eat it. These dogs are called watchdogs because they are trained to watch you, and they live in watch-houses, which are kennels for watchdogs. I thought I heard something in the yard, so I decided not to stick my hand through the hole but climb up and take a peek over the fence instead. I hopped up on the box of books, my left foot on a copy of
House of Sin
, and stuck my right shoe in the hand hole to push myself up — I was not worried about getting my shoe bitten off because I'd heard that watchdogs are only trained to bite exposed flesh.

The yard was empty, so I climbed over the fence and let myself down the other side. The back wall of the building was made of red brick, and was still damp from the last rain. Most of it was hidden by a shed that was joined to the building, which I guessed was a shop as it had a tin sign leaning against the wall, saying in red letters:
THE ARGUS
. The shed door had a padlock on it, which was unlocked.

Inside, the shed turned out not to be a shed at all, but the back room of the shop, and it was lined with books, so that there was just barely room for me to squeeze through. I had smelt books before, but never like this place. It was so good I had to stop and sniff for a sec, and I see that on the map I gave it a six (though the memory is worth more). At the far end there was a door with a keyhole in it, which turned out to be unlocked as well. Inside was the back of the shop itself. The smell of books here was even sweeter, and there were other smells as well: pencils, newspapers and, of all things, tea. It
took me a second or two to realise that the tea was right beside me, freshly brewed and in a cup. It was not one of those lady's cups with red roses on it, but a thick white cup bearing the letters ‘VR' with wings on either side. I knew what that stood for as Granddad had a cup the same, and he once told me with a wink that it had fallen off the back of a train. So I reckoned that some bloke who was a lot like Granddad owned that cup and he would be back any second to drink his tea. The last thing I wanted was to get caught by the kind of bloke who collects things that fall off the back of trains, so I crept out the door and carefully closed it again. That left me in the little back room.

I decided to have a bit of a look around, in case there were any Phantom comics or racing car books. There was only one thing I saw that I had to have: the
Royal Australian Survey Corps Mapping Manual
. It was thick, it was coloured, and when I opened it in a few places, I saw that it was full of maps. Also, it was clear from the List of Contents that it would teach the reader how to make proper maps. It went into my bag so fast that if a watchdog
had
turned up he would not have seen what I did with my hand. I walked back through the yard but did not climb over the gate; I opened it and stepped through it like William the Conquerer. I came, I saw, I conquered. The curse was lifted. I had the antidote. I had a Secret Manual that told me how to make the perfect map. That was my new mission: not to walk; not to amble aimlessly, merely to explore; not to climb ladders that led I knew not where; not to trip over I knew not what and be murdered by I knew not whom — but to
map
.

True, there would be exploring, but I would never again wander into places that ran with blood, like the steps of the sacrificial temples of the Mayans. I would determine, using
the Manual, the way a successful soldier does, the best way to go, the best terrain to map, and the best way to represent my travels. No longer would the outcome be the thrill of exploration — I was
sure
that exploration would be involved — but the thrill of discovery itself, surely the aim of exploration. There was a big difference, and as I wandered away from the back of the shop, turning down this lane and that, I felt I was in safe hands, whatever that meant, and I saw clearly that my life would never be the same again. I even began to think that I might now be able to find out where the hell Dad was holed up.