Good old Dick and Frances. I wonder whether they’re happy with their new kitchen, he thought. They never did thank me for setting fire to their old one.
‘My foster father was a locksmith,’ he said. And a violent bible-basher who flogged me every night to beat the devil out of me. ‘Best foster placement I ever had. I used to practise with his tools every night, and when I left, he donated them to me.’
Well, maybe not exactly donated.
‘Cool,’ said Zac. ‘So how do you do it?’
‘With a lot of practice. But once you get it, you just get it, and it’s so easy. See this nail? Watch this.’
He used a pair of pliers to bend the top quarter of the nail over to a ninety-degree angle. Then he tossed it high in the air, caught it, and twirled it in his fingers in front of Zac’s eyes.
‘See, now it’s a torque wrench. And now I’m gonna grind this other bit of metal so that this end bends up a little, and that’ll be my rake. You use the rake as your scrubber.’
‘You use the rake as your scrubber?’ Zac snorted. ‘What the hell language are you speaking? What are you talking about?’
Luke used the tools to demonstrate his words.
‘Look. You put both of these inside the barrel of most locks and you can open it in ten seconds. Inside the lock there are these five little pins, and you use the rake to scrub over them. It sort of loosens them, and then this torque wrench,’ he twirled the nail between his fingers, ‘will engage the lock. You hit the sweet spot and
Zac stared at the nail and piece of metal and raised an eyebrow again. Yeah right, he said, without saying anything.
Luke sighed. ‘It’s actually easier to do it than to explain it. Anyway, these are just the most basic tools. But they’ll crack any of the crappy old tumbler locks they use around this place.’
‘Well, I’d have to see that to believe it,’ said Zac.
Luke grinned. ‘Maybe you’ll get to one day, but right now, it’s our turn on the grinder. Bring your stuff. I need you for cover.’
He made his way over to the grinding table with his soon-to-be-very-useful tools hidden in the toolbox. He helped Zac unpack his kit, keeping half an eye on Blainey. The teacher had his open-mouthed-snore-thing going on. Pretty soon he’d have a stream of spit connecting his lip to his shirt collar.
Luke quickly shaped his rake, sparks flaring briefly from the screaming hot metal as he pressed it against the grinder.
The reshaping took just a couple of minutes. He studied his new tool, still hot from the grinder. He felt Zac watching him and gave him a quick grin before slipping the rake into his sock, next to the nail.
He straightened, studied Blainey: dead flesh, or as good as, anyway. He turned to Zac, who had deftly begun the first stage of his toolbox, his beetle-black hair a glossy hardhat.
‘You get used to it. The neglect, I mean. You know, I could be here welding your thumb to your ankle, and Blainey would snooze on regardless. What happens is that they send us all the teachers who have been kicked out of the education system. But you look like you’ve done this before, anyway.’
‘Well, it’s not that hard to read instructions,’ said Zac.
‘It is for ninety per cent of the kids in here,’ said Luke. ‘Most of them can’t read the exit sign over there.’
Zac continued to work with the tin in front of him.
‘But doesn’t everyone steal all this stuff?’ he said after a moment. ‘I mean, what with Blainey sleeping?’
‘We get searched,’ said Luke. ‘Well, we’re supposed to. He wakes up when the bell goes and does a basic search. But this is why I love Blainey. He’s never very dedicated at doing anything, if you know what I mean.’
Zac nodded.
Luke watched him, and decided to try his special guessing game – figuring people out. Understanding why people did things had kept him alive more than once. Let’s see, what would little Zac Nguyen be locked up in here for? Stealing a car? Hmm, maybe.
‘How long is your sentence, Zac?’ he asked.
Zac kept his eyes on his work. ‘That’s usually the second question people ask in here. Aren’t you supposed to ask me what I’m in for?’
‘Aren’t you innocent anyway? Everyone else in here seems to be.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Zac laughed. ‘Well, I got twelve months.’
Luke whistled. Okay, all right, so it’s either a repeat offence or maybe he screwed up a suspended committal – he got charged again when he was on a bond for something else.
‘Ever been in before?’ he asked.
‘Nope.’
Something pretty serious, then.
‘How many times had you been to court before this one?’ he asked.
‘Never,’ said Zac.
So… maybe he stole a car and someone got hurt?
‘Did you steal a car and kill someone?’ said Luke.
‘Ah… No. Not lately.’ Zac stared at him. ‘Why don’t you just
‘What are you in for?’
‘Assault.’
‘Right. That makes sense. With the whole ninja thing you did last night. Thanks for doing that, by the way.’
‘I hate bullies.’
‘Well, you’re gonna love it in here then, Nguyen,’ said Luke, beginning to pack up. ‘Because that’s exactly how the screws control us. They’ve got their own little private army. They’re the generals, Toad and his buddies are the soldiers, and we’re the enemy. Oh, and you do know that Taylor, Toad and Holt are now gonna make it their life’s mission to make you sorry you were born?’
Zac shrugged.
‘Come on,’ Luke said. ‘We gotta get off this machine. Watson’s waiting for his turn.’
Back at their bench, Luke shaped a handle for Zac’s toolbox using a spare piece of tin. ‘That must have been a pretty bad assault,’ he said, positioning the handle. He knew that first-offence assault charges usually didn’t involve a custodial sentence, let alone twelve months.
Zac’s mouth turned down a little. ‘He was a bad guy. I taught him a lesson.’
‘You must have done, to get twelve months.’
‘He had people around him with a lot of money and a good lawyer, that’s all.’
‘So what did you do to him?’
Luke always asked for the war stories. It was worth a shot to see whether something could shock him, make his heart race a little like he heard people talk about. It hadn’t happened yet. But Nguyen seemed different to everyone else.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Zac, turning to face him. Luke was only average height, but Zac had to tilt his head back to eyeball him. ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘Who cares how I got here?’
‘All right, all right. Don’t get all emotional, Princess.’
‘Why are
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Luke.
He laughed when he saw Zac’s face. This guy has anger issues. I like him. I’d like to have some anger issues. They sound like fun.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll bond later. The bell’s about to go.’
In the dining hall, Luke took a seat in the Section Six area. He thought that maybe he was hungry now, but he wasn’t sure how well he was going to be able to chew with his mouth hurting this bad. He prodded gingerly at his
