July (15 page)

‘That’s me. Mister Straight.’

‘We should go somewhere where we can spread out,’ she said, glancing around, ‘and look at the Jewel safely.’

She must have seen the hesitant look on my face, and she placed a gentle hand on my arm. ‘You have to trust me. I really can help. I know everything that goes on with Sligo. Well, almost everything. And now, after what’s happened with Zombrovski … What
did
happen with Zombrovski? No, save that gory story for later. If Sligo ever suspected that I was helping you …’ The blood drained out of Winter’s face and for a moment she looked like a scared little kid. The part of me that didn’t quite trust her was quickly absorbed by all the parts that did.

‘Hey,’ I said, touching her hand. ‘It’s OK. He’s never going to find out—not from me.’

I should have taken my hand away then, but I couldn’t. It was like there was a charge running between us.

She slowly pulled her hand away. ‘Sligo’s away at the moment so my place is safer than ever. Let’s go there?’

‘You’re joking.’ I remembered last time, and Sligo coming up the fire-escape.

‘Believe me, he’s out of town. One of his top guys was taken
out
,’ she said with a knowing
look, ‘and his other guy was taken
in
, so Sligo’s out recruiting more help. Replacements. My place will be cool, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die,’ she said, marking an invisible cross on her chest.

No doubt Sligo was scrambling to clean up the mess after Zombrovski plunged to his death, and Bruno—was he behind bars? Was that what she meant?

We were at Winter’s tiny place, on the roof of the old apartment building. She grabbed some cans of soft drink out of her fridge and put them on the counter, along with a packet of pretzels, while I started pulling things out of my bag. Music from a small radio played softly in the background.

Winter took out a little notebook, then sat down, waiting expectantly.

I went to her front door and locked it. I looked out the front windows, past the geraniums, and the empty clothesline, then closed her curtains. I was aware she was watching my every move.

When I sat back down, we went over
everything
that had gone on since we’d last spoken,
and I explained in detail what had happened to Zombie. She listened, intrigued, munching on pretzels and nodding. She said Sligo was furious when he found out, even punched a hole in one of the walls at his new place.

‘I have some really old letters written by Piers Ormond,’ I said. ‘He mentions an amazing story he heard about our family.’ I paused. ‘That’s exactly what Dad said in his letter. Isn’t it weird, how it’s happening again, nearly a hundred years later?’

‘History often repeats itself,’ she said before leaning towards me. ‘You looked really sad then, when you mentioned your dad.’

I nodded. ‘It’s the anniversary of his death tomorrow. I’ve kind of been dreading it.’

I had to turn away from her face because if I’d kept looking at the concern in her eyes, I’d have started crying. Very uncool. I cleared my throat and continued. ‘Piers Ormond was gathering important information. He left his findings with the family solicitor for safekeeping nearly one hundred years ago. But then he died in the First World War and never reclaimed the documents. So whatever the secret was, it stayed locked up in some solicitor’s filing system and nothing more was done about it—until my dad stumbled onto something last year at the conference in Ireland.’

‘Your dad picked up where Piers stopped,’ she said. ‘And now you’ve picked it up for both of them.’

‘Right. We thought Dad had gone crazy and wasted all our savings because his brain was so messed up, but it wasn’t that at all. Somehow, he must have tracked down the Jewel—found out that it still existed in one piece, then spent the money buying it back.’

‘Well? Where is this famous Ormond Jewel? Let me see it already! The suspense is killing me!’ she smiled.

I laid the Jewel on the table.

‘Oh my,’ she gasped, picking it up. ‘I have never seen anything so beautiful! I can’t imagine how much money something like this must be worth.’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘Not just for the jewels—that huge emerald and the pearls and rubies—but for the fact that it’s hundreds of years old.’

She carefully opened it and gazed at the
portrait
in its oval frame. ‘And look, there’s the inscription that I told you about,’ she said
tracing
the line of tiny engraved letters with her fingertip.

‘This is what it says,’ I said, pulling out the piece of paper on which Boges had written the foreign words.

‘Amor et suevre tosjors celer,’ she quoted, with what I guessed was a perfect French accent. ‘Just imagine how much this Elizabethan
miniature
portrait alone is worth,’ she said. ‘Cal, you can’t just be carrying this thing around in a
backpack
! This is a priceless antique. You need to put it somewhere safe. At least in a box or something.’

‘I gave it to Boges to look after while I went to see my great-aunt, but now it’s back with me and I sleep with it by my side. It’s always with me. It can’t get safer than that.’

Winter turned her attention to the Ormond Riddle and read it again with great
concentration
. She looked pretty awesome with her wild hair and its glittering ribbons framing her
serious
face as she worked. For a few minutes, as she studied first the Riddle and then the Jewel, I studied her, remembering the last time I’d been here and how close we’d seemed—two outsiders who didn’t belong anywhere—who no longer had a family they could turn to.

Suddenly, she jumped up, holding the Ormond Riddle, her hands shaking with excitement, her eyes huge with surprise.

Her mouth opened as if she were about to speak, then closed again. ‘Oh my God!’

‘What is it?’

‘I’ve just seen something!’

‘What?’

Ribbons sparkled as the infuriating girl shook her head.

‘First you have to tell me everything you know about this amazing jewel, and then I’ll tell you what I’ve just noticed. I can’t believe no-one else has picked this up before!’

Her eyes were shining with excitement, but her mouth was very determined.

‘So tell me then. You tell me what you can see,’ I said, trying like crazy to see what she had just spotted.

Winter Frey stood there, drumming the fingers of her folded arms, waiting. Then she firmly shook her head. ‘No way. You first. I need to know that you’ve told me everything before I say any more.’

‘Why are you making this so hard?’ I said. ‘Just tell me what I need to know without all this
drama
.’

‘This is
not
drama!’ she cried, her eyebrows gathering together in a frown. ‘The more you tell me, the easier it will be to solve this! You guys need all the help you can get! You and your friend haven’t been able to work out what I’ve just seen. I have the sort of mind that is good with mysteries. I’ve been living with mysteries most of my life!’

‘Living with mysteries? What do you mean?’

‘Never mind,’ she said.

‘OK,’ I relented. ‘You pretty much already know everything I know. How my great-uncle read out a description of the Jewel to me, and how it fits with this,’ I pointed to the glowing jewel lying in front of us. ‘And how these two pieces, the Riddle and the Jewel, go together to solve the mystery of the Ormond Singularity. That they form—’

‘The two halves of the double-key code,’ she interrupted, like she was trying to rush my words out for me.

‘Right.’

‘Your great-uncle was spot on!’

‘What have you just seen?’ I repeated,
running
out of patience.

I watched her looking excitedly at the Jewel and then back to the Riddle. She picked up the Jewel and held it reverently in her hand, gently opening it. ‘I guess you know who
she
is?’

‘Sure I do. Queen Elizabeth the First. She gave the Jewel to one of my ancestors.’

She gave me a triumphant glance. ‘So what else do you know about this ancestor?’

‘He was Black Tom Butler, the tenth Earl of Ormond. He and his family acted as the Queen’s stewards, working in the interests of the Crown. It was a tricky job. Trying to keep in the good
books with his Irish countrymen as well as
staying
popular with the Queen. But he must have done well because she gave him this. Remember, we worked out ages ago that the drawing of the waiter pointed to the word “butler”, and if you look at the drawing of the boy with the rose, you’ll see that there’s a rose on the back of the Jewel.’

Winter turned the Jewel over once more, at the same time glancing across to the drawings, looking from one to the next.

‘Come on. Quit stalling. If you really know something, spit it out.’

‘Just a couple more questions, promise. I get that your dad drew this Sphinx to tell you about the Riddle, but what’s with the head of Caesar? Any ideas about that?’

‘No. Nothing so far. Except that it could mean something about a great ruler, or leader. The Queen, maybe. We don’t have anything on the monkey either.’

‘Great.’

She wasn’t being sarcastic. I looked at her in surprise.

‘What’s great about it?’

‘I like a challenge,’ she purred. ‘The
trickier
the better. I’ll chase up everything I can on Caesar and riddles and pyramids and sphinxes. I’ll check out monkeys with jewelled collars and
golden balls. I think I said once before that he looked familiar.’

She made a note for herself.

‘Maybe it’s somebody’s pet?’ she suggested. ‘It has that cute collar. Maybe your dad couldn’t draw the person he really meant to tell you about, so he drew the person’s pet?’

It was as good a suggestion as anything I could think of. ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘That’s how my dad’s brain was functioning towards the end.’

‘You look really sad again. You OK?’

I nodded. Although it made me feel a bit
better
when she noticed, it also made it harder. Her concern forced me to deal with how I was
feeling
, and most of the time I just wanted to push it all away. Far, far away.

‘Like I said before, tomorrow is his
anniversary
,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it’s been a year. There are so many questions I want to ask him. And things I’d like to say. But that’s not possible and it’s like this big, shadowy tombstone looming up in the middle of the year, days before my birthday. I just need to get past it.’

She didn’t say anything and I was relieved. Again, I had the sense that Winter really knew what I was going through.

‘Also, right now,’ I continued, ‘I need to be totally focused on solving this,’ I looked at
everything
on the table, ‘and whatever it is that you’ve just seen. If you’re ever going to tell me.’

She nodded. ‘OK, last thing,’ she said, sliding the transparency closer to her with the tip of her pinkie. ‘Please tell me what you know about this.’

‘One of the words is the name of a place in Ireland—maybe where Dad stayed or something. Not sure about the other one.’

‘I can tell you this for free,’ she said. ‘
Vulkan
is determined to discover what the Ormond Singularity is, and he will try anything to make sure nobody gets there before he does. You must be very careful, Cal. He wants that Jewel back desperately, and he has it in for you more than ever now that he’s lost a man.’

‘He’s not the only one who has it in for me. He’ll have to join the queue.’

‘OK,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with
energy
. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve seen in this double-key code.’ She picked up her own, handwritten copy of the Riddle as she spoke. ‘I’ve been
obsessing
over this. I’ve learned it off by heart. These words have almost become a part of me, and the minute I opened up the Jewel and saw the Queen’s portrait inside, I had a sudden flash: I thought—what if the lady mentioned in the Riddle is Queen Elizabeth? The same as in the Jewel?’

A light flashed on in my brain. ‘So,’ I said
thinking
aloud, ‘if that lady in the Riddle is this lady inside the Jewel, then those words about leaves and grace and numbers and all the other stuff—are describing this locket with her portrait inside?’