Bring Back Cerberus Read online

  ‘Don’t sweetheart me, Daddy,’ she said, her voice getting even louder. ‘I want the Cerberus.’

  This time there was no mistaking it – she’d just said ‘the Cerberus’.

  Everybody else in the café was looking in their direction, and it was obvious that Anna’s parents weren’t quite sure what to do.

  ‘We better go,’ said Anna’s mum to Anna’s dad, looking around.

  ‘Not until you promise to get me the Cerberus,’ said Anna, hands clutching the sides of her chair.

  ‘Be reasonable, darling,’ said Anna’s dad. ‘Where are we going to get one if they don’t exist?’

  ‘From him,’ said Anna, arm outstretched, finger pointing at me. ‘He has to get me the Cerberus for my party!’

  Four days ago I’d never heard of a Cerberus and now it seemed that it was all I was hearing about!

  Anna’s mum threw me a look – I’m so sorry – before she stood up.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ she said to her husband, who was already taking a credit card out of his wallet to pay the bill. When Anna and her parents had left Mom said, ‘That poor child.’

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. There was a shotput in my guts. Was this it: the third instalment of The Debt?

  This seemed so different to the other two, when the communication had been straightforward. Okay, maybe a talking treadmill wasn’t that straightforward, but it was when compared to this.

  Then I remembered what Gus had said: that sometimes half the battle was working out exactly what the instalment was.

  ‘Dom, are you okay?’ said Mom. ‘Do you know that girl?’

  Yes, I told her, I’m okay.

  No, I told her, I don’t know Anna.

  But if this was it, the next instalment, then there were a whole lot of crazy coincidences that didn’t make sense.

  Like I just happened to be at this café, at this time.

  Unless …

  ‘Why did you choose this café?’ I asked Mom.

  She gave me a what-sort-of-question-is-that? look.

  ‘I mean, why didn’t we go to Zellini’s like we usually do?’

  She didn’t have to answer, because Simon appeared at our table.

  ‘So glad you could finally make it,’ he gushed.

  There was more gushing, from both Mom and Simon, and I figured now wasn’t the time to pursue the matter.

  The shopping trip was pretty much a disaster because trying clothes on was the last thing I wanted to do. Mom seemed equally as distracted.

  ‘Dom, I don’t think this is working, do you?’ she said eventually.

  I agreed, it wasn’t working.

  She extracted some notes from her purse, shoved them in my hand, and said, ‘Maybe you’re better off doing your own thing today.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, though I think we both knew that the money wouldn’t be spent on clothes.

  Mom moved in for a hug.

  And not a perfunctory before-you-go-to-school type hug either, not even a I-won’t-see-you-for-a-week type hug; this was about as serious as a hug can get.

  Dom, it said, I love you, and I’ll always love you. No matter what happens.

  Okay, it was a hug, not an email, but take it from me, that was what it said.

  SATURDAY

  S IS FOR STYXX

  ‘An architectural triumph’, ‘a cathedral to technology’, ‘as innovative as the products it sells’: people sure got themselves all worked up about the new Styxx Emporium.

  Tomorrow’s Technology Today, said the sign, in that distinctive Styxx font.

  It got me thinking about Styxx, how it had come from nowhere to become a ‘major player in the smartphone market’.

  I had to admit, it was a pretty cool place. You entered at street level through a dazzling glass cube, and then descended a glass staircase into the shop itself. It was always crowded, though. Even though it was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was always crowded.

  I passed a group of excited kids. Apparently the Styxx Emporium now catered for birthdays. Or sPartees they called them, and these kids were waiting to be shown to their very own sPartee sPace.

  I scanned the long queue waiting at the counter. Despite the fact that he was wearing too-big clothes and Two Dollar Store bling, I recognised one of the customers straightaway: Bryce Snell. He was this kid who used to go to my primary school. Freckle-Face, we called him, because he had freckles as big as cornflakes. Behind his back, though, because Bryce Snell was a bully. Actually, one of the reasons I first started running was to get away from Freckle-Face Bryce Snell and his Chinese burns. Last time I’d seen him he’d been working at Big Pete’s Pizza’s but now, apparently, he’d adopted a more urban Afro-American lifestyle.

  I walked up to him and said, ‘Hi Bryce, long time no see.’

  Freckle-Face looked me up and down before he said, ‘The handle’s Thuggee Thug, dawg.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My handle, dawg.’

  ‘Look, Thuggy Thug, would you consider selling your spot in the queue?’ I said.

  ‘Thuggee,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s not Thuggy, it’s Thuggee. You know, with the emphasis on the second syllable.’

  ‘Thuggee Thug?’

  ‘You got it, dawg.’

  ‘Okay, Thuggee Thug, would you consider selling your spot in the queue?’ I said.

  ‘How much?’ he said.

  ‘This much,’ I said, holding out some of the notes Mom had given me.

  ‘This some sort of trick, dawg?’

  ‘No trick,’ I said. ‘Look if you don’t want it, I’ll ask the next person.’

  Thuggee Thug, the freckle-faced gangsta rap artist formerly known as Bryce Snell, took the money and surrendered his place in the queue.

  ‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ came a voice from behind me.

  I spun around to see an angry nerd.

  Okay, I agree that ‘nerd’, as a term, is pretty useless. There’s about a thousand different types of nerd. What was once a species is now a genus.

  This nerd was wearing a T-shirt that had one word on it: gamer.

  I know you shouldn’t judge a nerd by its T-shirt, but I was pretty sure that what I had here was a gamer nerd.

  ‘You just can’t buy your way in,’ he said, in his gamer nerd voice.

  ‘Well, I just did,’ I said.

  Although, to tell the truth, I was actually on his side in this debate. But there were other matters to consider, like The Debt.

  ‘It’s unethical, man,’ he said.

  I took out my wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar note, and held it out to him.

  He snarled at it, like I’d just offered him a free gym membership.

  So I added another one of Mom’s twenty-dollar notes to it.

  Did he hesitate, was there considerable internal debate as to the morality of my offer? No, his hand reached out and swiped the money. Two minutes later, and I was standing at the counter. My Styxx Knowledge Consultant was one of those people who close their eyes when they talk.

  ‘Hope you didn’t have to wait for too long,’ she said, eyes closed.

  There was this kid at school – Ivan Van Berlo – who did this as well and I had the weird thought that perhaps they were related, both carriers of the close-your-eyes-when-you-talk gene.

  ‘Not too long,’ I said.

  ‘And how may I help you today?’ she said, eyes closing.

  ‘I’m interested in the Cerberus,’ I said.

  ‘The Cerberus?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right, the Cerberus,’ I said.

  ‘I think, maybe, you’ve got some wrong information about our models. Maybe it was the Typhon or the Charon you were after. ’ ‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s Cerberus.’

  I was pretty much getting the feeling that I was wasting my time here, as it was obvious she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  ‘Okay, thanks anyway,’ I said wh
en I realised that two security guards were next to me, towering over me.

  ‘Sir, could you please come with us?’ one of them said.

  ‘What have I done?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing, sir. It’s just routine.’

  I followed them down another glass staircase onto the lower level and into a small room with a white table and a pair of white chairs.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said one of the security guards. ‘Somebody will be with you soon.’

  That soon was almost five minutes, by which time I’d established that I was being monitored, that there was a tiny CCTV camera on the ceiling.

  A man and a woman entered the room, both of them wearing black trousers and whiter-than-white shirts.

  ‘Could we see some ID?’ asked the man.

  ‘I don’t have to show you any ID,’ I said. ‘All I did was ask if you had a type of phone.’

  The woman and the man exchanged looks.

  ‘Who told you about this?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was one of my friends who told me about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the …’ I said, the wheels of my mind spinning hard, trying to come up with a plausible-sounding name.

  ‘About the Pheidippides,’ I said, remembering the conversation I’d had with Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘The Pheidippides?’ said the man, and I couldn’t blame him for smiling – who would ever call a phone a Pheidippides?

  ‘That’s right. My friend told me there was this new model coming out.’

  ‘It seems there’s been a silly mix-up,’ said the woman. ‘How about we give you a voucher for your trouble and forget all about it?’

  I left the store with a twenty-dollar voucher (conditions apply) and the knowledge that Cerberus did exist.

  Instalments on The Debt hadn’t exactly been easy so far – turn off all the lights, capture the Zolt – but this one seemed impossible.

  Besides, I wasn’t even sure it was an instalment.

  Or was I?

  Again, I remembered what Gus had told me about working out exactly what the instalment was.

  No, this was the instalment. It had to be.

  As I made my way home it was with the same feeling I’d had before the first two instalments: a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

  Though in this case there was a lot of the latter. How in the hell was I supposed to get something that was only whispered about in the furthest reaches of cyberspace?

  MONDAY

  NITMICK IN JAIL

  Instead of making for my bus station after school I was going in the opposite way, towards the jail, when Mr Ryan pulled up next to me in his Prius.

  ‘You heading in my direction today?’ he said through the open passenger window.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘Hop in,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  Teachers at Coast Grammar were definitely not allowed to offer students a lift. But I guess our relationship had moved from the traditional teacher– student model into the area of lawyer–crim.

  ‘So these things are good on fuel?’ I said when I got in, which I guess is what 92.6% of people say when they first get into a Prius.

  ‘Just doing my little bit for the planet,’ said Mr Ryan, which I guess is how 92.6% of Prius owners respond. ‘Where you headed?’

  I could’ve come up with a whole lot of places on this side of town – the troll recycle centre, Madame Flo’s Retirement Home for Overused Emoticons – but I was getting pretty sick of telling lies.

  ‘The jail.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Ryan, and it was one of those drawn-out ‘oh’s that teachers specialise in, which are invariably followed by a series of increasingly probing and increasingly uncomfortable questions.

  ‘I wanted to ask about work experience for the holidays,’ I said, getting in first.

  Yes, yet another lie, but what choice did I have?

  We were on the highway and Mr Ryan was concentrating on his driving, on maintaining his miserly fuel consumption.

  When the traffic thinned out again, he said, ‘I’ve done some more work on that Zolton-Bander thing.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes. There’s something not quite right going on here.’

  He was right – there was something not quite right going on here – but I wondered if he had any idea how not quite right it was.

  We arrived at the jail and Mr Ryan pulled up outside the visitors’ reception. I thanked him, got out and watched as the Prius puttered off.

  Welcome to the Gold Coast Remand Centre, said the sign.

  I walked up the stairs, the automatic doors slid open, and I was in the reception area. I took a number 264 ticket from the machine. The electronic board said that they were Presently serving number 251, so I had time to have a look around.

  Not that there was much to look at, just a shop that sold a few basics like soap and toothpaste and men’s magazines.

  When my number appeared on the board I approached the window.

  ‘And who are we visiting today?’ said the woman.

  According to her badge her name was Jandyce and she was wearing the pinkest lipstick I’d ever seen.

  ‘Andre Nitmick,’ I said.

  Jandyce checked her computer screen. ‘Ah yes, one of our newer guests.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, getting into the swing of it. ‘He only booked in a few days ago.’

  ‘And if I could see some ID, please?’

  I handed her my ID.

  ‘So you’re Mr Borzakovsky?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  I’d bought the fake ID at lunchtime from Bevan Milne for ten bucks.

  ‘That Russian or something, is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said, wondering if I should have attempted some sort of Russian accent, like one of the bad guys from a James Bond film.

  I also wondered if I should’ve spent more money and purchased an ID that wasn’t so obviously Russian.

  Jandyce seemed satisfied with this, though, and banged away at the keyboard.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said, handing me a pass. ‘When they call your name you can go through to the VIF.’

  ‘The VIF?’

  ‘Visitor Interchange Facility.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, before I thanked her.

  ‘It’s been my pleasure,’ she said.

  I took a seat and five minutes later there was a voice over the intercom: ‘Visitor for Andre Nitmick.’

  First I had to go through one of those scanners, like they have at airports.

  ‘Any metallic objects, keys, belts?’ asked the guard, who looked sort of lumpy, like a no-frills sausage on a really hot barbecue.

  ‘No,’ I replied, but when I walked through the machine beeped loudly, much louder than the ones at the airport, and it felt like everybody’s eyes were now on me and my beep.

  ‘Artificial hips, pacemaker?’ said the guard.

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied, quite pleased with my humorous reply, but I could immediately tell from the bored look on his face that about a million witty people had got there before me.

  ‘Could you please stand aside while we do a hand scan?’ he said.

  I remembered then that exactly the same thing had happened to me at the scanner at the power station.

  Why had I suddenly become scanner-active?

  He passed the hand scanner over me and it made a series of high-pitched robotic noises.

  ‘So no operations of any kind?’ he said.

  ‘Just my appendix,’ I said, resisting the temptation of further humour.

  The guard walked over to have a discussion with his less lumpy colleague.

  Eventually he returned and said, ‘You can go on through.’

  The prison, this part of it anyway, looked like a cheap motel. Not that I’d ever been in a cheap motel, but you know what I mean.

  Inmates sat on one side of
a table, visitors on the other.

  Guards looked on, their faces impassive.

  And the whole place smelt like air that had been recycled over and over again, air that had been belched and farted and coughed, re-belched and refarted and re-coughed, countless times.

  It took a while, but Nitmick, in a shapeless brown tracksuit, shuffled in. Poured himself into the seat. Glared at me.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you, Mr Nitmick,’ I said.

  ‘And I wanted to talk to you, Mr Scumbag,’ he said. ‘Tell me, did you read all my emails to Pixel?’

  ‘Only the necessary ones.’

  ‘You get off on that, did you, you sick piece of scum?’ said Nitmick.

  This was a bit rich coming from somebody with his criminal record, but I understood how he was feeling: I’d hate it if somebody went through my emails.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just doing a job.’

  ‘The old “I was just doing a job”,’ said Nitmick. ‘That’s what the Nazis said, you know.’

  ‘I thought they spoke German.’

  ‘Don’t be a dipstick,’ said Nitmick.

  ‘I want to get you out of jail,’ I said.

  ‘You put me in jail!’ said Nitmick, his voice screeching.

  Again, he’d made an excellent point, and I wondered whether he’d been on the debating team at his high school.

  ‘Like I said, I was just doing a job. But now I feel really bad about it, so I want to get you out of here.’

  ‘And what do you want from me?’

  I lowered my voice. ‘I want to know about the Under World.’

  ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ he said, standing up and walking off towards the waiting guard.

  This was exactly what I’d expected, exactly what I’d envisioned, so why in hell had I hoped it might pan out any differently?

  As I walked back through the reception area the voice over the loudspeaker said, ‘Visitor for Andre Nitmick.’

  I stopped, watched as a curvy woman in a velvet dress, swathed in scarves, dark eyes ringed with even darker mascara, a crucifix around her neck, made for the door to the VIF.

  Ohmigod, I knew her!

  I pulled out my wallet, took out a card: Eve Carides, Numismatist.

  She was the one who had told me that the Double Eagle was a replica, or to use her words, a ‘fakeroony’.