Faster Than Lightning (4 page)

Angus drew his collar more tightly around his neck, leaning in lower over his horse to escape a cool wind that had suddenly sprung up.

He kept his eyes focused on the side of the dirt road, looking for a gap he could sneak through. But the property was well fenced. It had been different when Franky McCann lived here.

Angus saw the cloud of dust up ahead before he heard the motor. Someone was driving towards him. Fast.

Quickly jumping off his horse, Angus grabbed the reins and led King over a small ditch to a copse of trees on the opposite side. He scrambled behind, partly hidden as a car sped past. A white ute with two men inside: the ute he’d seen parked near the tractors at the stud farm. Angus
didn’t think he’d been noticed, but he waited a few minutes longer, a plan forming in his mind as he remounted his horse.

No one was about as he entered the main yard. Even the horses in the stables weren’t visible. Perhaps they’re out in the paddock, Angus thought. Carefully he eased himself down from King, leading him over to the white-railed fence that bordered a paddock to the side of the house. Angus stopped suddenly, staring across at the far rail.

Glancing around again, he pulled out the picture Hannah had printed off. It’s got to be, he thought, scaling the railings and jogging towards the centre of the field. The scene before him was the same as that on the creased paper clutched in his hand: freshly painted railings with a clump of trees behind them. In Franky’s time, the railings had been broken—that’s why he hadn’t recognised them straight away!

A mobile phone with a picture from the stud farm he was now standing in, and in the photo a horse that looked a lot like one who’d been dead for decades. What did it all mean?

Angus was distracted by the sounds of horses neighing to each other near the stables. He ran back to King and tied him up closer to the stalls
so that he was out of sight before returning to the house. He wanted to get another look at the picture on the wall he’d briefly seen earlier that day.

At the back door he stopped. Old Franky’s cage was still there, but instead of a carpet snake there were rabbits. Heaps of them. Black rabbits with white patches. They were all exactly the same.

Angus shook his head and crept towards the door. Just a quick look at the photo, he thought, then home. The flywire screen door opened with a loud creak. He froze, waiting for footsteps or voices. None came. Gently he turned the handle and pushed. The door caught on the floor below, then suddenly swung open. Angus, still holding onto its handle, was flung into the kitchen.

He paused, alert for the faintest sound. Nothing. Dashing across the kitchen into a small hallway, he found himself outside the office door where he’d seen the photos.

It was then he became aware of another sound—a low, humming noise coming from somewhere below and to his right. There’d never been a noise like that in Franky’s time. Angus hesitated, then crept back into the kitchen and down a short flight of stairs to the basement.

Ages ago, he’d played table tennis in Franky’s basement. There was no sign of a table there now: just a deep, throbbing hum. It sounds like generators, Angus thought, pausing outside a door with a square section of glass in it.

He stood on his toes and peered in. The whole room had been transformed into desks stacked with computers, machines and fridges. White cupboards ran along two walls, filled with books, jars, boxes, and beakers full of coloured liquids.

A movement to his right caught Angus’s eye. He flung himself against the other side of the door as someone in a white lab coat walked past inside the room. Angus closed his eyes and waited for the door to open. After fifteen seconds of silence he peered through the glass.

The person in the white coat was bent over a desk looking through a microscope. Angus ducked down below the window and crept back the way he’d come. It was too strange there: what horse stud had a laboratory like that? Just a quick look at this photo, he said to himself, finally reaching the office door, and then I’m out of here.

It was quiet in the corridor but as he stood listening, the telephone rang. Angus swore,
closed his eyes again and took a deep breath all at the same time. The phone rang five times, then clicked—answering machine, he thought, letting his breath out.

‘Bentley’s Stud Farm. Leave a message after the tone.’ A deep male voice spoke, followed by a loud beeping sound.

Angus held his breath. There was a pause.

‘Um, it’s Jim. No sign of the phone. Tried the police. Ricky reckons there were some kids snooping about. I saw ’em too. He swears he had it when we were fixing the horse. Anyways, one of ’em’s down at the track often enough. I could have a little
chat
if you like. Let me know.’

Angus didn’t like the way the man had said ‘chat’. Well, at least I know there’s no one here, he decided, flinging the door open and striding in.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ Tom Bentley was at his desk.

Even as the man spoke, Angus found himself glancing at the photos on the wall behind the desk. But the one he was looking for had been removed.

‘I…I dropped something. I think I left it here,’ Angus said, barely aware of what he was saying.

‘And you just walk into someone’s house, do you?’

‘I knocked,’ said Angus, stepping backwards slowly. Tom pressed a button on his phone. A moment later, a voice came through the speaker.

‘Boss?’

‘I think I’ve just found the owner of that horse tied to the fence.’ He chuckled. ‘You haven’t chopped it up for dog meat yet, have you?’

The other guy snorted. ‘Not yet, Boss, but the bucket and the knife are ready. Just give me the word.’

Tom Bentley stood up. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, hanging around our stall at the racecourse? I don’t think you dropped something in here. But you might have seen us drop something at the track.’ He stepped out from behind the desk and looked at Angus. ‘Have you got a phone of ours by any chance?’

Angus shook his head.

‘No? Not in your pockets? You want to turn them out, just to make sure? I don’t like kids meddling and snooping about.’

Angus thrust both hands into his front pockets, his right hand carefully crushing and
pushing the picture further down. He patted his front and back pockets.

‘I haven’t got anything and I don’t know about any phone,’ Angus said, looking up at the man.

‘So what do you know?’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Angus muttered, staring at an old newspaper cutting spread across the man’s desk. The heading had caught his eye:
Museum Break-In.
Tom saw him looking, snatched up the paper and closed it quickly. He walked around towards Angus, who didn’t flinch.

‘Is that so?’ he said, slowly. ‘Well, I don’t know what it is you want, but if I catch you snooping around here again I’ll call the police. As it stands now, I’ll just call your father.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Angus said, turning to head out.

‘I think a bit of time in the upstairs room while you wait for your father would be appropriate punishment.’

He grabbed Angus by the arm and pushed him out the door. Angus tried not to wince. The man’s grip hurt as he was guided up a long flight of wooden stairs and shoved into a small room.

‘And don’t worry about your horse,’ said Tom, smiling unpleasantly. ‘We’ll look after him.’

The door slammed shut.

Angus stared at it, a chill starting down the back of his neck.

Angus listened to Tom’s footsteps fading away. He knew the door would be locked but he tried it anyway. The only other possible way out was the window, but the two large panes of glass had no catch or opening. Angus looked out across the yard and to the paddocks beyond. There was no sign of King.

The front door of the house slammed shut. Angus watched as Tom marched across the driveway, a phone pressed to his ear.

A moment later two men appeared, leading King towards a white-railed enclosure. King walked calmly alongside them, his head down. One of the men had a bucket in his hand. Angus watched anxiously as the men gathered.

‘Don’t hurt my horse!’ Angus yelled, banging on the glass. King looked up, his ears pricked towards the sound. ‘King!’ Angus belted the glass again.

Either the people below couldn’t hear or they were choosing to ignore him. But King had heard something.

The horse backed away from the men holding his reins, shaking his head up and down, ears flattened. One of the men grabbed the soft part of King’s nose and twisted it. The horse couldn’t move because of the pain. ‘You creep,’ shouted Angus.

Desperately he searched the room for something to break the glass with. He couldn’t watch on helplessly. There was nothing in the room except an old table and two wooden chairs. Picking up a chair, Angus hurled it at the glass. It crashed into the window then bounced back hard, smacking into his head. Angus fell back, hitting the floor with a thud. He sat up, dazed, then staggered to his feet.

Tom snapped the phone shut, gestured with one arm towards the house, yelling instructions that Angus couldn’t hear, and walked back inside. The other man reached into the bucket.

The bucket and the knife are ready.

Angus remembered the voice over the intercom. He thought the man had been joking. Now he wasn’t that sure.

He banged at the glass again. ‘King!’ This time the horse couldn’t look up.

The man pulled something shiny out of the bucket.

Angus felt himself start to panic. Flinging aside the other chair, Angus tipped the table over, its four legs pointing at the window. A burst of adrenalin surged through his body. Behind him, the attic door opened and Tom appeared. But that didn’t stop Angus. He charged towards the window. Glass exploded in a sharp cascade. Angus was still holding the table as it burst through the glass and it carried him out the window and onto the roof. A searing pain burned in his left hand and he let go, sliding across the tiles. A split second before his feet slammed into the gutter, the table tumbled over the edge, smashing onto the driveway below. Wood splintered in all directions as the table tore apart.

This time, the people below did look up. A flock of startled white cockatoos suddenly burst from a nearby tree. Angus didn’t hear them. For him, nothing in the world mattered except the gutter and the roof he was sprawled on.

The gutter held. He looked over at King. The horse had wrenched free of the man holding his nose and was rearing up, front hooves pawing at the air as he tried to shake off the men clutching at his reins.

‘Leave him alone!’ Angus shouted.

The man with the bucket had taken a few steps towards the smashed table, looking up at Angus teetering on the edge of the roof. The other man said something to him, then ran towards the house. He shouted at Angus, ‘I’m getting a ladder, you stupid boy. And then it’s the police.’

Carefully at first, Angus pushed against the gutter, stretching himself up. Rolling gently onto his stomach, he started inching his way back up the slope of the roof, but the tiles were slippery and the pain in his hand was screaming at him to stop.

‘Wait for the ladder,’ Tom Bentley yelled through the broken window.

Angus ignored him. Slowly, he crawled back towards the top, his left hand leaving a bloody smear on the tiles. Swinging himself over the apex of the roof, he quickly took in the scene below. King was thrashing around in fright.

There was a red brick chimney halfway down the other side of the tiles. Angus aimed
and slid feet-first towards it. A cry of pain floated over from the yard where the two men held King.

‘Get ’em, King,’ Angus muttered to himself, sliding down the last part of the roof and onto a flat, square section. He scrambled over the edge, using two pipes to help him down to the ground—and straight into the rough hands of one of the men who’d been holding King.

‘Ya bloody nuisance! What the hell you playing at?’

‘King!’
Angus yelled, struggling to break free.

He swiped at the man with his bleeding hand, smearing his weathered face with sticky red blood. Surprised, the man let go.

Angus dashed past him.

‘King!’ he yelled again, charging around the corner to his horse. King dropped to all fours, pushing his nose into Angus’s chest.

‘Good boy, King.’ Angus grabbed the saddle with his right hand, and tried to clamber up onto the horse. His left hand felt thick and useless with pain.

‘Stop!’ a voice boomed twenty metres behind him.

Angus glanced at the man with the bucket and saw that the shiny thing was just a penknife.
He hesitated, but Tom Bentley was striding purposefully towards him.

King arched his neck around and nuzzled at Angus. It was the encouragement he needed to scramble up and into the saddle. He gathered the reins with his good hand, nestling the other beneath his right armpit. He nudged King with his heels and the horse cantered smoothly away from their pursuers.

Behind them, a motorbike revved.

‘C’mon, King,’ Angus yelled.

King thrust his head forward and bolted. Angus hung on grimly as the horse hurtled through an open gate and charged across a paddock. The motorbike roared menacingly, getting louder by the second.

The pain in his hand was unbelievable, stabbing him at every movement of the horse. Angus slumped forward, a wave of dizziness and sickness sweeping over him. He felt himself slipping sideways and clutched frantically at King’s mane. It took all his will to haul himself back into the saddle. King felt the shifting weight on his back, and eased up slightly.

The motorbike surged forward with a sudden burst of acceleration, coming up alongside them.
For a few moments, horse and bike raced side by side, both churning up clods of loose grass and earth. Too late Angus realised what the rider was doing: King was drifting closer and closer to the fence line on their right. They were being hemmed in.

‘Stop!’ yelled the motorcyclist. He said something else, but Angus couldn’t understand for the noise.

He glanced about desperately, knowing that in another few seconds he’d have to pull up, or risk being pushed into the wire fence. The situation was worse than he’d thought: they were heading for the corner of the paddock. Now he’d definitely have to pull up: jumping a horse over a barbed-wire fence was too risky—if King even touched the top wire, his legs could be ripped to pieces.

The motorbike was so close that Angus could feel the heat from its engine on his face. Suddenly a firm hand grabbed his leg. He kicked out with his foot, losing his hold on the reins. The rider let go, his bike swerving dangerously, just as King was putting on an extra spurt. Angus looked up just in time to see the fence only metres ahead of them. The reins flapped uselessly along King’s neck. Angus sensed the
bike spinning away from them as his horse leapt high into the air.

Angus closed his eyes momentarily, a burst of pain searing through his badly gashed hand as he gripped the mane tightly, urging King to get his legs clear of the rusting wire below. King landed easily, picking up his stride again, the fence untouched behind them.

‘Well done, King,’ Angus said, patting the side of the horse’s neck. He turned to survey the damage they’d left at the fence. The motorbike had skidded into a post. The rider was on his feet glaring at them.

‘Ya forgot ya helmet, ya stupid kid.’

Angus turned to see his helmet being thrown in his direction, but he wasn’t going back for it now.

It was a simple jump after that to clear a bit of white railing that was being repaired and Angus guided King onto the dirt road that led into town. The pain in his hand didn’t seem as bad now that they were free, and Angus grinned to himself.

But something weird was going on at the stud farm. Hannah was clued-up—she’d help him figure it out.