July Read Free Page B

again, but nothing happened. I couldn’t get out. I banged and bashed, yelling loudly, realising that Three-O must have recognised me back on the boat, followed me here, and now he was off to tell the police and show them my picture.
    And I was locked up in the freezer, just waiting for the cops to come and get me.
    ‘Mike!’ I shouted, banging uselessly on the door, thinking surely he’d be back any second. He had to let me out before the police turned up. ‘I’m locked in the freezer!’
    Already my teeth were chattering. Again, I kicked and bashed and pushed the door, but despite its rusty hinges, it wasn’t budging. swung around to see if there was any other way out, but of course there wasn’t.
    I grabbed my phone out of desperation, but it was still as dead as the bins of fish that surrounded me. I flung it back into my bag, looking around again for a way out.
    Who was going to find me first, Mike or the cops? And how long were they going to take? A thermometer on the wall indicated minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. I didn’t know how long I could last.
    ‘Let me out!’ I shouted and thrashed my body uselessly against the door. I was going to be a dead fish too if I didn’t get out fast. A few minutes had passed already, and panic was starting to fester in the pit of my stomach. I’d have to get out of here or I’d die. Being arrested was better than freezing to death.
    My fingers and toes were aching with cold and my nose had gone numb. I backed away from the door and huddled, hugging my knees, trying to warm myself up. The cold was travelling through my body fast, making my arms and legs ache. My ears were throbbing too and the bones in my face were hurting.
    I got back up and jumped around, clapping my arms, trying to keep moving. It was impossible to warm up and I was starting to really freak out, like I had that night in Treachery Bay when the sharks were circling, ready to attack. It had been Dad’s words in my mind that got me through that ordeal. Think, Cal. Think . I was trying to think, trying to work out a plan of action, but it was like my brain was starting to freeze, making it impossible. How do you get through a locked door? Without being a ghost?
    The sight of my fingers made me feel dizzy —they were dead white, and when I pressed them together, they felt like pieces of wood, as if they didn’t belong to me. Was this the first stage of frostbite?
    I was still racking my brain for a way to open the door … but came up with nothing. Where was Repro when I needed him? I pictured him in his tiny living quarters behind the filing cabinets, surrounded by his piles of lost property and scavenged bits and pieces. And that reminded me of something …
    The track detonators!
    With my clumsy, frozen fingers, I dragged the backpack off my shoulders and dug around for the tin containing the blast caps Repro had given me.
    I figured if I could wedge them into the cracksbetween the door and its hinges, then slam something against the door to trigger them, there might be a chance for me to blow the whole thing open. And get out.
    Aside from the fact that I had no idea whether the tin had stayed airtight, protecting the caps when I’d fallen underwater, I had another problem : it was very tightly sealed and my fingers were numb, barely able to move. Feverishly, I battled with the lid, fumbling like a baby as I attempted to get it open.
    The intense cold tried to take me down as I battled to prise the lid up. My feet were starting to feel frozen to the floor, like blocks of dead weight, when at last the lid lifted. I threw it aside, and ripped out the mouldy roll that was still in there. Underneath, four blast caps lay flat in the tin. They were dry. They were intact.
    It took me ages to fumble the first two caps into position—one above and one beneath the top hinge. But when I went to do the same with the bottom hinge, I realised it wasn’t possible. The door didn’t hang straight and there was