Mystery At Riddle Gully Read online

  Pollo went limp. She’d thrown every test she could at von Albericht ... and he’d passed them all with flying colours. She had to face it—the big story that was going to change her life was in tatters.

  From Sherri’s armpit, she scraped together what dignity she could. ‘Errrm, Sherri ... The evidence seems to have rearranged itself to form a picture that differs from the one I’d expected.’

  Pollo waited a moment but there was no response. ‘You can let me go now, Sherri.’

  ‘If I’d wanted a speech from Mayor Bullock I’d have asked him along,’ said Sherri, tightening her hold even further. ‘Say what you mean, girl!’

  Pollo gulped. ‘I was wrong about Viktor.’

  Sherri released her clamp on Pollo’s head. Pollo rubbed her ears and walked towards Viktor. Viktor began scrambling to his feet.

  ‘No, wait!’ said Pollo.

  Viktor paused. Keeping his eyes glued to Pollo he sat back down. He remained tense, ready to jump.

  Pollo held up open hands. ‘No weapons, see?’ Carefully she took up his bloodied right hand and shook it.

  ‘I’m very, very sorry, Viktor,’ she said. She looked at Will and smiled crookedly, then turned back to Viktor. ‘I wanted to write a great story, you see. And I hoped you were ... a certain type of person so badly that I saw what I wanted to see. And then Sherri got mixed up in it and Shorn Connery went missing. Everything’s a great big mess.’

  For the first time ever, Pollo looked Viktor von Albericht in the eye. ‘I’m Pollo di Nozi—supersleuth and soon-to-be-former editor of the Riddle Gully ... well, never mind. Call me Pollo. I’m honoured to meet you, Viktor.’

  ‘As I am you,’ said Viktor with a slow, deep nod. ‘Someone with a passion for their work. This I understand.’

  Sherri squatted beside Viktor and began wrapping his hand in Will’s T-shirt. ‘What say we call it a night, Viktor, and go see to this head of yours ... and this hand ... and these wet clothes?’ Will and Pollo looked at each other sheepishly. Sherri grimaced. ‘And this stench of garlic that’s all over everything!’

  Viktor gestured to Pollo and Will. ‘May I invite you to my humble abode?’

  ‘Cool!’ said Will. ‘Can you show us that little bat?’

  Pollo elbowed Will in the ribs. ‘If you’re feeling up to it,’ she added.

  ‘Yeah, ’course ... that too,’ said Will.

  Viktor was about to get to his feet when suddenly his face lit up. He pointed high above him, up into the pale purple sky above the clearing. ‘Look, my friends! There! See?’ Small creatures were flitting back and forth, more and more by the second, diving and darting, their dark wings silhouetted against the soft gleam of the rising moon.

  Pollo recognised them and shuddered. But Viktor von Albericht was smiling. More than that, he was grinning from ear to ear, looking a lot more like someone in a hi-fibre cereal commercial than a vampire.

  ‘So many! So many!’ he hooted in delight, lying back in the dirt of the clearing, pointing upwards. ‘See how the wing tips appear to bend? These are the ones I am looking for! And by the scores I see above me now, I believe I am homing in!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sunday 20:00

  Viktor and Sherri led the way back, Viktor carrying the silver metal case that Pollo recognised from the cemetery. Inside the old ranger’s hut, the timber walls were lined with stacks of scientific journals and books, strange gadgets and crates of supplies. A single bare light bulb dangled from the roof. Viktor laid the case on the table and went to his patient, the injured bat, waiting in a blanketed crate in the corner of the room.

  Pollo sidled up to the table. Handwritten on masking tape stuck to the lid of the silver case was: BAT DETECTOR—THIS SIDE UP.

  Right ... Well it made perfect sense now! How was she supposed to know? She emptied her pockets of her weaponry and lined up the items alongside the machine. It seemed the right thing to do.

  Viktor, under Sherri’s orders, was now sitting quietly on the low camp bed, a packet of frozen peas bandaged tightly to his head. Sherri was making cups of tea for everyone while Will rinsed his bloodied T-shirt in the sink.

  Pollo should have felt relaxed. But now that she knew Viktor hadn’t killed Shorn Connery, terrible thoughts of what had happened to him instead kept creeping around her mind. If her faithful friend was somehow still alive, he must be suffering. And here was the last place she’d seen him.

  Will spread his T-shirt out to dry in front of the kerosene heater. He sat down on an upturned crate next to Pollo and bent forward to pick dirt off the bandaid around his big toe.

  As he did, Pollo noticed a bright-red patch on Will’s shoulderblade. ‘You’ve got nose-blood on your back!’ she said. She dipped a finger in her tea and leaned across to rub it off. But the red gripped the skin tightly.

  Pollo rubbed harder. It was sticking like ... like...

  Dried paint.

  Pollo’s hand drifted away. Dried paint the exact same colour as the graffiti on the school wall! The few things she really knew about her new friend began to muster in her head. She raised her mug of tea to her mouth, pretending to drink, trying to think.

  Will had a close connection with Sergeant Butt— someone he didn’t seem too crazy about. And then there was his amazing string of lies about sheep that rose from the dead and holes in fences. What was all that about? Lighting a fire in a garden wasn’t so bad, was it? Why had he been so desperate to cover it up?

  A nasty thought crawled up her neck and under her beanie. What if Will had been burning something he needed to hide? Pollo’s mind was whirring now. Last night he’d let slip that he’d been at the school that morning. And the Graffiti Kid’s backpack was blue—same as the one Will had at the tip. And the hair under the Kid’s wig was dark and straight—just like Will’s. And, now that she thought about it, that rattle coming from Will’s bike had sounded a lot like the rattle of a spray-paint can.

  Pollo’s eyes narrowed into slits.

  She shook her head. No! Stop it! Now that her frontpage story about Viktor was wrecked, she was bending the facts to get another one, wasn’t she? Seeing what she wanted to see?

  There could be other explanations. Like ... well ... she couldn’t think of any right now, but there were bound to be! She’d jumped to conclusions with Viktor—a perfectly innocent man—and look at him now, sitting there with a packet of peas strapped over a big lump on his head!

  Besides, Will was a friend, whatever else he might have done. He’d come to the clearing tonight to help her out. If he was the Graffiti Kid, her telling the world wouldn’t fix a thing. It would only make Will’s problems—and he looked like he had a few—worse. She sighed deeply. It would just be gossip—gossip that might make her look good to the editor-in-chief of the Coast news network.

  She turned away from the bright-red smear. ‘You’d better wash it off as soon as you get home,’ she told Will.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sunday 20:15

  Viktor leaned forward on the edge of his camp bed. In the palm of his gloved hand he held a reddish-brown, furry creature not much bigger than a mouse. It was on its back, its head towards him, Viktor’s thumb, on the paler fuzz of its stomach, gently pinning it still. The head was dome-shaped, the ears and muzzle snubbed. Its only sound was a soft cooing from time to time, like Bublé made when Pollo scratched his head.

  Pollo forced herself to look. Viktor had gone through so much for the funny little thing and its mates that she felt she owed it to him. And it helped push aside her new worries about Will.

  ‘Beautiful is he not?’ said Viktor. ‘I found him in my mist net just before dawn the other morning. Sadly, he was not in the best of health. It would have put him in great peril to release him in his condition—all the hungry birds up and about.’

  He held the creature to eye-level and smiled. ‘But I am happy to say he has made a full recovery. Tonight we will return him to the forest and tomorrow at dusk he will be flying above the g
orge with his friends.’

  ‘No offence, Viktor, but he looks kind of ordinary,’ said Will.

  ‘Aah! But wait!’ said Viktor. Very carefully he extended the bat’s rubbery wing. ‘See how the edge angles down? This, along with sonar matches from my bat detector, enables me to confirm that he is a Miniopterus schreibersii bassanii!’

  Will, Pollo and Sherri looked at one another.

  ‘A Southern Bent-wing Bat!’ said Viktor. ‘The rare subspecies of the Common Bent-wing. He is one of a population that comes to Riddle Gully each year to spend the winter. Under your country’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, he is listed as a critically endangered mammal.’

  Pollo looked at the furry blob in Viktor’s hand. ‘But it’s only a bat,’ she said. ‘Would it really be all that terrible if it ... you know ... disappeared?’

  ‘Ai-yai-yai!’ said Viktor. ‘Most terrible indeed, Pollo! This little fellow pollinates flowers, he spreads plant seeds, he keeps insects to the levels that Nature intended. But even when something seemingly trivial like a worm becomes extinct—here, my friends, the Lake Pedder earthworm, a former resident of Tasmania, comes to mind—it is a cause for much concern. Each and every organism is part of an intricate biological community on our planet. This community is a beautiful tapestry made of many, many coloured stitches. The more stitches there are, the harder it is for the tapestry to tear.’

  Sherri produced a tin of biscuits from her basket. ‘Speaking of hard to tear,’ she said, taking off the lid, ‘see if you can get your teeth through these. I might have left them in the oven a bit long.’ Will took one and crunched into it.

  ‘We humans seldom know all there is to know about a creature or a plant,’ said Viktor, as Will ran his tongue over his teeth, checking for chips. ‘Take this little fellow here, for instance,’ he said, lifting the bat. ‘What might be the effects of losing him?’ Viktor shrugged. ‘Maybe nothing. Zip, as they say! No one would ever know the difference if he were to disappear.’

  He leaned in closer to Will and Pollo. ‘But maybe, just maybe, he could make a great deal of difference. Perhaps he is the key to another creature’s survival. Or he holds the clue to a medical cure, or the answer to a great mystery we have not yet thought to wonder about. Who knows, eh? And wise not to take the chance, yes?’

  ‘But isn’t the Tasmanian Tiger Australia’s only extinct animal?’ said Will. ‘Apart from that little worm maybe?’

  Viktor sighed. ‘I wish this were so, Will. But sadly, the Thylacine is in the company of many animals—to my knowledge, fifty-five altogether—half of them mammals, as we are. All of them gone! Kaput! Never to be seen again. And these are only the ones that we know of!’

  ‘But how come this bat is endangered?’ said Pollo. ‘We see lots of them every autumn and spring. It doesn’t seem endangered.’

  ‘As you say, Pollo, you see them every year,’ said Viktor. ‘It is natural to take them for granted. But it grieves me to say that there are only one third as many Southern Bent-wings now as when your parents were born. They are going down the hill fast!’

  Viktor cupped the bat between his palms and held it to eye-level. ‘You have had enough, have you not, my friend?’ He turned to the others. ‘You will please excuse us for a moment? It is time to return him to the forest.’

  Keeping his head erect so as not to lose his peas, Viktor eased off the narrow camp bed and made his way into the darkness outside. Sherri held the door open, looking out after him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sunday 20:30

  Viktor placed his protective glove on the desk and began unwinding the bandage from his head, Sherri hastening to take over the task. ‘An excellent result!’ he said, bobbing up and down between Sherri’s arms. ‘Our friend flew away most happily! If only I could grow wings and follow him!’

  He strode across to his sound system. ‘May I suggest a little of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to celebrate his recovery?’

  ‘Magnificent!’ sighed Sherri.

  Soon, eerie tumbling pipe organ music was filling every crack in the room. For Pollo, every old vampire movie she’d ever watched was filling every crack in her head. It was making her jumpy all over again. And something else was wrong too ... something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Another sound she’d heard.

  With a jolt, it dawned on her. She jumped up and flapped her hands at Viktor, who hastily muted the volume.

  ‘Viktor,’ she said, ‘when you went outside did you hear anything funny?’

  Viktor scratched his head. ‘I confess, I was singing bat sounds to my patient as I walked. I didn’t hear a great deal.’

  ‘This might sound silly,’ said Pollo, ‘but I think I picked up a sound while the door was open. It was strange—sort of echoey. But a little bit like ... well ... like Shorn Connery.’

  Viktor, Sherri and Will all started towards the door.

  ‘No, stop!’ Pollo called. ‘Don’t worry about it. I think the organ music must have got to me. If Shorn Connery was out there he’d have come to the hut, same as last night. It was probably Viktor’s singing I heard.’

  ‘This is likely,’ said Viktor. ‘My singing has been mistaken for many things in the past.’

  Pollo was keen to change the subject. ‘Viktor, what did you mean before, when you said the bat was one of a bunch that came here every year?’

  ‘Aah, this is most intriguing, Pollo!’ Viktor began pacing the room. ‘Allow me to explain. Each community of our Southern Bent-wings has both a winter residence and a summer residence. Like movie stars, no? The winter residence—one such as I believe is close here in Riddle Gully—it occupies all to itself. The summer residence, however, is what we in the field call a maternity cave. This cave, it shares with many, many other communities of the subspecies.’

  He rubbed his hands together as though about to tuck into something delicious. ‘At the start of every summer,’ he said, ‘Southern Bent-wings in their tens of thousands make their way from all their different winter caves back to the same maternity cave. Up to three hundred kilometres they fly! And there, at the maternity cave, they give birth to their little bat pups. Year after year, generation after generation, it is a grand reunion!’

  Will frowned. ‘But why do they fly all that way to the one cave? Can’t they just do their business here in Riddle Gully, or wherever they hang out over winter?’

  ‘Ah! Nature is very cunning!’ said Viktor. ‘You see, when the vast numbers of bats all cluster on the roof of the maternity cave, the chamber becomes warm and humid—just like the crowded room. It becomes perfect, then, for the raising of their pups. A natural humidicrib, if you will.’

  ‘They put me in a humidicrib when I was born!’ said Pollo. ‘Dad said visitors didn’t know what to say because I looked like a skinned rabbit!’

  Viktor chuckled. ‘The bat pups too are hairless, much like baby mice. They clump together, hanging from the roof of the cave. But come the end of summer, they have glossy fur coats, are weaned from their mothers’ milk, have learned to hunt, and are ready to flap all the way home to their family’s winter cave.’

  He stroked his chin. ‘You have noticed the bats hereabouts lately, yes?’

  Pollo suppressed a shudder.

  ‘Riddle Gully’s Southern Bent-wings coming home for winter!’ said Will.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Viktor. ‘And, let me tell you, from now until the truly cold weather, they will be very busy. Every evening, they will fly out from their cave to fill their bellies with as many insects as they can catch, trying to get as fat as sausages,’ he said, patting his stomach. ‘For soon the bugs will become hard to find. The shops, so to speak, will shut.’

  ‘What will they do then?’ said Will.

  ‘Ah! They have a trick up their wing!’ said Viktor. ‘They will find the darkest, coldest part of their cave and go into a very deep rest—or hibernation, as we say. They will hang from the roof and let the temperature of their bodies
fall to as low as two degrees—barely above freezing! Their bodies will run so slowly they will need no food for months. The fat they have acquired will see them through. “Au revoir,” they’ll say, wrapping themselves snug in their wings. “Wake me up when it’s springtime!”’

  ‘Cool!’ said Will.

  ‘Indeed,’ smiled Sherri.

  Viktor looked around the group. ‘My task, my friends, is to point the pin to the winter cave of Riddle Gully’s Southern Bent-wings. I believe that what we witnessed this evening, above the clearing where we had so much fun, was their nightly exodus from this nearby cave in search of food. We are close, my friends—very close indeed.’

  ‘Are you sure you need to know exactly where the cave is?’ said Pollo. ‘Isn’t it just nice to know the Southern Bent-wings are around here somewhere?’

  Viktor resumed his perch on the camp bed and pressed his palms together. ‘It is a most delicate situation, Pollo,’ he said. ‘The two maternity caves that remain in your country are quite famous. One is even on the World Heritage List—the bats that go there are celebrities! But sadly, the winter caves to which the bats disperse are very different. Most of them are on private land and are extremely tricky to keep the eye on. The owners of the land may clear trees, or build close by, or spray crops with pesticides that sneak into the bats’ systems. They may even—mon Dieu!—use the cave itself as a rubbish tip! They may not realise they are doing any harm at all.’

  Viktor sighed. ‘On top of this, when the bats are deep in hibernation they are most vulnerable indeed. A disturbance, if it does not kill the creatures outright, forces them to stir and use the lovely fat they acquired to last them through the winter. They may wake up in spring close to starving—or not wake up at all. Without finding and protecting their winter caves,’ said Viktor, ‘I am afraid anything else is not worth the pinch of pepper.’

  He drummed his chin with his fingertips. ‘Imagine a grand orchestra, if you will. Each week, one less musician is able to come and play. Eventually there is only the percussionist, all alone. She taps the rhythm with her foot and every few bars plays a ting! on her triangle to cheer herself up. It could be this way with the Southern Bent-wings, my friends. If, one by one, their winter caves are damaged and disturbed, it will not be long before the yearly reunions at the maternity cave are not so very grand at all.’