Free Cry of the Taniwha by Des Hunt Page B

longer boring. Keep on digging things up, Matt, and we’ll solve the crime of the century—well, the crime of the nineteenth century at least.
    See ya!
    Eve
    Matt smiled to himself as he read the email. He decided he liked getting emails from this girl. Sherlene Holmes! Who did she think she was kidding?
    Well, Sherlene, he thought, I’ve got news for you. Your research skills might be OK, but your conclusions are lousy. The body is not Mary Basham—it’s a male.
    But of more interest to Matt was the robbery of the deposit boxes. Sitting on his bed at Nan’s was a metal box that, for all he knew, could be a deposit box. It was certainly a strongbox of some description, and it was more than heavy enough to contain ingots of gold; maybe even diamonds. All of a sudden, opening that strongbox had taken on a far greater importance.
    The strongbox did not get opened that night, nor the following morning when he woke up at five and tried again. If ever it was going to be opened, it would need better tools than Matt’s small collection. It needed serious lock-pickingtools. He considered taking it to a locksmith, but decided against that after thinking about the questions he might be asked.
    He planned his day while in the shower. First thing, he was going back to the mud pool to look for more bits of metal: somewhere near where the box was found there might be a key. They’d stopped scanning when they’d found the box. But the key would have been smaller and blasted further out. If that didn’t work, then he’d look for more jewels. They’d only tried two lines out from the blast; there were still many other angles for them to try.
    Hone, however, had other plans for them. He’d got leave for the day and was going to take them to all the rides he’d promised. At first Matt was peeved that it couldn’t be some other day, but that soon changed when they climbed into the gondola and rode up Mount Ngongotaha to the luge courses. For three hours they rode down the mountain on the luge trolleys, and back up on a chair lift.
    Jackson was a natural, beating Matt every time. He was prepared to take more risks and didn’t mind crashing—he appeared to be immune to pain. On the mountain, he was just a kid having fun. All the gang bravado had disappeared. It seemed as if Hone’s plan was working.
    Next stop was drift-racing on go-karts. Again, Matt was beaten. The same thing happened on the quad bikes, but he didn’t mind—never before had he had such concentrated fun.
    They arrived back home too tired to do anything except eat and sleep. Before Jackson went home, Matt took him into his room and told him about Eve and what she’d found out. Jackson became excited by the suggestion that the strongboxmight contain gold and diamonds. Afterwards, they sat and stared at the thing as if willing it to open.
    It didn’t, but somehow it inspired Jackson with an idea. ‘I know how we’ll open it,’ he said.
    ‘How?’
    ‘Tell you tomorrow. I’ve got to arrange sumtin first.’
    Matt looked at him, sternly. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you? More shoplifting?’
    ‘Nah, man! Stay cool. I just got to organize sumtin, that’s all. We’ll do it in the ay-em.’
    Jackson came over just after ten in the morning. ‘It’s all set,’ he said. ‘Bring it over my place and we’ll open it.’
    Matt was suspicious. ‘How?’
    Jackson tilted his head. ‘You’ll find out. C’mon! Let’s go.’
    Reluctantly, Matt picked up the box and trailed after the boy.
    There was a battered vehicle parked in the driveway that Matt hadn’t seen before. If it was Mere’s car, then shouldn’t she be at work already? He began to feel nervous. Something wasn’t quite right here, but he couldn’t work out what.
    He soon found out.
    Sprawled on the chairs in the lounge were five members of the WXK gang. Matt would have turned around and walked out if one of them hadn’t stood and moved to lean against the doorjamb.
    Sitting