Fraser Calvin's Contract

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4835-5729-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten

When 16 year old Calvin Singer sees a police chase ending on an Auckland motorway and picks up a bag full of cash he has no idea what he has started. Running away with a lot of money is one thing; deciding what to do with it is something else altogether.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fraser, David

Leseproben

ONE This is what happened on that afternoon. I was outside the bookshop. I’d just unlocked the chain securing my bike to the veranda post, and I heard the sirens. In my right hand were the two magazines I’d bought: a Motor, an English one featuring a back to back comparison between a Jaguar XF and a BMW 535, and a local Autocar with a pullout supplement listing best buys for under five thousand dollars. The off-ramp from the motorway divided into two roads – one led to the suburban shopping malls and the other one went past a row of decaying shops and into a maze of small factories that made things like kitchen units. I was standing beside the shop at the end of the row, a second-hand book shop stocked with magazines and books about cooking or gardens or the royal family or sex. Then I heard the noise and looked up. It wasn’t just one siren (which wouldn’t be unusual), there was a wailing chorus of them. At the same time I saw that there were no cars, no traffic at all, coming down the off-ramp. They must have closed the motorway entrances further south and they’d only have done that if there was something major happening, something that I ought to see. I ran across the uneven ground and waist high grass between the shops and the off-ramp. It was edged with an armco barrier strip and dropped quite steeply before it divided into the city roads. I positioned myself behind the armco – it wasn’t an ideal vantage point because it was too low to see everything, but it was probably as good as I’d get. When it happened, it took only a few seconds. A silver Mercedes, an old 500 SEL I thought, appeared at the top of the off-ramp, its engine screaming. The inside rear wheel had lifted clear of the road surface and I could see the driver’s white face as he fought the understeer. The car lurched back onto four wheels and seemed to regain some balance before hurtling towards the barrier strip where I was watching, frozen. As it spun into the armco the driver pushed something out of his open window. It hit the ground, bounced, and thudded into the grass no more than five metres away from me. Perhaps the man saw me at the last minute, because as the object flew through the air his mouth opened in surprise, or maybe a hopeless attempt to shout something. The Mercedes rebounded off the barrier towards the other side of the ramp. It clipped the armco, then its nose seemed to bury itself in the road and the back end rose into the air, high enough for me to see the exhaust system snaking its way from the engine bay to the rear. The car landed on its roof and slid another fifty metres along the ramp towards the junction of the two roads, leaving a shower of sparks behind it. The doors on the driver’s side popped open and a figure catapulted onto the road where it rolled over a few times, and lay still. The car continued to slide, then slammed into the wall at the junction with a huge echoing thump. Flames appeared around the engine and in less than a moment the whole car was on fire. It looked as if a huge flower with crimson petals had suddenly opened. The windscreen shattered and there was a series of muffled explosions. Then the police cars appeared. I crouched in the grass as they approached, howling like a wolf pack. There were five Holdens painted in police colours and two unmarked Fords with blue lights stuck on their roofs. At least one was airborne as it cleared the top of the ramp, then I heard the screaming of brakes and tyres as they slithered to a halt on the road, rows of blue and red lights pulsing. There was a moment of near silence as the sirens were turned off, and a lot of cops in uniforms or plain clothes jumped out of the cars. Some of them stood and stared at the fireball around the Mercedes and three of them knelt beside the man on the road. I wondered why they didn’t do something but then I saw another man in one of the squad cars shouting into his radio and it seemed there was nothing the others could do. It felt as if I’d been paralysed for those fifteen seconds but when I looked down I could see my hands shaking. In the grass a few metres away was a sports bag with an Adidas logo. I crawled over to it and stared for a moment. It looked like an ordinary bag. I stretched my hand out to touch it. It felt ordinary as well. I knelt in the grass, hardly aware now of the blazing car a hundred metres away, and cautiously slid the zip open. It didn’t need to open very far for me to see what was inside. It was money – more money than I’d ever seen in my life. Much later I remembered reading news stories about people who gave money they’d found to the police. They got rewarded with editorials about the wonders of honesty or sometimes with small amounts of cash. No-one at my school believed these stories, or if they did they thought the people who gave the money away were stupid. Isaac Johnstone said if these things happened it’s because God meant them to. If you gave the money away you were obviously trying to defeat divine will and purpose, and you’d probably go to hell. I told him once I didn’t know much about divine purpose and he said this was ironic, given my name. “You know who Calvin was, don’t you?” he said. “He’s a designer. He makes jeans.” “What?” “Calvin Klein. He’s a designer. Jeans and sunglasses, that kind of stuff.” “No, the other Calvin. The sixteenth century one.” I stared blankly at him and walked away. None of this occurred to me as I knelt in the grass beside the partly opened bag. I only remembered the driver with his wide, red mouth in his white face and I wondered if he was dead. He looked as if he ought to be dead. Even if he was alive, the money was probably the last thing on his mind. Then I heard a new set of approaching sirens and something very strange happened, something difficult to explain. I realised suddenly that something fundamental had changed. Nothing exciting or even interesting had ever happened in my life, and now, in the space of a few seconds, it had turned into something like reality television. I could see a pixelated image of myself on the screen, poised to become someone significant. The chase scene was over, the next phase was starting and if I didn’t take this chance, I’d be out of the programme. I lifted my head and looked around, blinking. There were fire engines on the road now, pumping foam over the Mercedes. There was an ambulance as well but I thought they were wasting their time. No-one was looking in my direction. My heart thudded unevenly inside my chest and my hand reached down and closed around the straps on the bag. I got to my feet and picked it up. It was heavier than I expected but I walked with the straps clasped in my hand back through the long grass towards my bike. There was still no-one around. I allowed myself a glance into the window of the book shop. The man who owned it was sitting in a chair reading. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything. No-one was visible in the other shops, but this wasn’t surprising. They never had many customers anyway and two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon wasn’t going to be their busy time. I turned the bike around, pushed my magazines into the bag, and slung it over my shoulder. I started riding away, waiting for someone to shout at me to stop, or for the sound of a siren behind me. There was nothing. I rode past a collection of warehouses and small engineering workshops, feeling the weight of the bag on my shoulder. There were people walking along footpaths or crossing the road – someone had to be be watching me or making notes about what I looked like. I thought maybe I should have dark glasses on but I didn’t own any. Maybe I should try to seem older, or younger, or just different. But as I got further from the motorway, I started to feel calm instead. I was just an average sixteen year old, in a school uniform, with a sports bag over my shoulder. No-one would give me a second glance. It usually took no more than ten minutes to bike from the shop to the flat but I ended up taking a roundabout route while I tried to make a decision about the bag. I couldn’t just keep it at home, because Angela (my mother) or Paul (her boyfriend) would find it, or maybe the police could turn up with a search warrant. When I realised I’d pedalled around the same streets three times, I stopped and forced myself to think. Angela would be at work or at lectures, and Paul would be somewhere else, assuming he was still living with us. I could afford to take the money to the flat for an hour or two at the most while I worked out what to do with it. Then I’d need to hide it somewhere else. I should get something different to put it in I decided, maybe some of those thick black polythene bags, and then I could divide the money into bundles, so I turned towards the supermarket and start chaining the bike to the railings outside when I realise I couldn’t go in with the bag. They’d want to search it and then they’d call the police. I’d have to go home first, hide the bag there, and go back to the supermarket. Then I could buy the polythene bags, divide the money and find places to hide it. My stomach was tightening. This was going to be much more trouble than I’d thought, except that, as I was beginning to understand, I hadn’t really thought at all. I pushed open the gate to the courtyard at the flat. Paul’s Mustang was parked outside but that didn’t mean he was in the flat – he often got a ride somewhere with his mates. I dragged my bike inside the gate and pulled it shut behind me. I dropped the bike against the wall and pushed cautiously at the door of the flat. It was locked...