One Boy Missing Read online

  Most people with a guvvie house had given up on caring for it. For one, they were inspected annually and if the agent decided the place was in good condition they’d put the rent up. Secondly, the government didn’t do routine maintenance. Paintwork, cracked windows, nothing. The message was clear: just do your time. Survive, marry a local girl and buy something decent, or piss off.

  Moy passed his own house, slightly shabbier than the rest, the broken blinds drawn, the window shades blowing in the breeze. He could see down the drive, into the backyard, where his undies and T-shirts hung on the line.

  There had been problems with truants—harvest kids, or other ferals—bored shitless during the holidays, stealing washing from clothes lines. Making their way to Civic Park and dressing the busts of old mayors in bras and singlets. Mayor Humphris (1878–1883) in a summer frock with a lace collar.

  Moy pulled out just as a grain truck flew past raising a shower of dust and fine gravel. He listened to it pepper his car and noticed a chip appear in the middle of the windscreen. He reached for his lights and planted his foot; overtook the truck and slowed it to a stop in front of the Guilderton Rotary. He got out, fuming, and the driver climbed down to meet him.

  ‘Well?’ Moy said.

  ‘I got me tarp on.’

  It was one of Paschke’s sons, a farm boy who spent his days driving between his father’s place and the silos. ‘How fast were you going?’

  ‘Wasn’t much over fifty.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty then,’ the driver changed tack.

  Moy took a deep breath and wondered whether it was the chip, his headache or other things. ‘You chipped my windscreen,’ he said.

  ‘Council needs to sweep these roads. Dad’s been on at them.’

  ‘If you go slow enough it’s not a problem.’

  The Paschke boy shrugged. ‘I stick to the limit but there’s two headers, full up, waiting in the paddock. Twenty minutes each way and a line at the silo. Maybe you should tell ’em to build some new receiving bays.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with speeding?’

  Here, Moy guessed, was why he was becoming a second-rate copper; one of the reasons. If he were any good he’d find his infringement book and start writing, but he just didn’t care enough anymore. Paschke’s boy would be back along this road in his truck, ten times a day, raising a cloud of dust and gravel that no one gave a shit about. A few neighbours, perhaps, but they never complained. It was just the way it was if you lived on the western edge of Guilderton. Gawler Street was the only road the trucks could take to get to the silos.

  He looked at the boy. ‘Slow down,’ he said, and walked back to his car. The truck pulled out around him, raising another shower of dust and double-tooting its horn: See you later, mate.

  Moy switched off his lights and let his head drop onto his steering wheel. He noticed a sticky mess where he’d spilled something on the console and thought, things could be a lot worse.

  Which reminded him of the boy.

  He drove along Murchland Drive, over a railway line that was only ever used by a tourist train, and along Creek Street, the waterway dry two months early. He slowed to look in the crevices along the creek, the roots of ghost gums covered in leaf trash where the soil had been washed away. He pictured a small, pyjama-clad body trapped in dead branches. A grazed shin, a lick of wet hair across the mouth and a twisted limb. For a moment he wasn’t sure if he actually hoped to see it.

  There was nothing in the creek. He stopped his car and went into a toilet block. Nothing. Except paper shoved down the head and a cracked sink. Cracked, as it had been when he was a boy, and probably always would be.

  He walked another thirty or so metres into Civic Park. There was an old steam train that kids still climbed over, pretending to be drivers and firemen, burning their legs on iron plates in summer. In the cab all the knobs had been removed and the firebox welded shut. Even as a kid he’d known there wasn’t enough train left for a decent imagining. Surely it was just an easy way to get rid of industrial junk? Shit. Give it to the kids, they won’t know.

  Nothing under the train.

  Then he searched a set of concrete pipes laid out for the kids to crawl through. He found a used franger and a dead bird but no boy in pyjamas. Started to wonder if there really was any boy. A kidnap? In Guilderton? Who was this butcher, this turd-thrower turned meat-trimmer, and why had no one else seen anything?

  He checked the rose garden, the wisteria arbour and even the little bit of space under the electric barbecues.

  Nothing.

  He gazed up and, across the road, noticed the Wesfarmers man dragging rolls of wire out in front of his shop. Then there were packs of droppers on a wheelbarrow, bags of starter rations on a trolley and a few water pumps. He returned to his car and drove down Ayr Street, the shops open now, or opening. The word had got around and a few shopkeepers stood about chatting. They looked at him and he raised a finger from the steering wheel. A pair of mechanics stood at the gate to Boston’s Motor Repairs, looking at something in a newspaper and laughing.

  Moy turned the corner and stopped in front of the butcher’s laneway. Bryce King was still standing with his hands behind his back, scanning the road and laneway as if something might happen.

  ‘Bryce, let me know when Crime Scene arrives,’ Moy called from his car.

  ‘When are they due?’ King asked, approaching.

  ‘It’ll be mid-morning. Everyone in Ayr Street—’ He wound up the window. He hoped King hadn’t noticed the rubbish in his foot wells. ‘Don’t care when they arrived. Ask ’em if they’ve seen a lost kid hanging around.’

  Moy started to drive off. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he called back, ‘remind that butcher to get down to the station.’

  He followed a tractor with a raised plough. Each of the tines was tangled with roots, weeds, pieces of paper, and one with what looked like a flannelette shirt. He studied it, but wasn’t sure. Then, it fell to the ground, and the tractor turned the corner. He stopped, got out, examined it, even smelled it. But it was too big for a boy.

  And how would it have got there?

  3

  IT WAS MID-MORNING before Moy arrived at the station. Up the road a small group had gathered outside the courthouse. He recognised a man with a goatee done up in a white shirt and loud tie. It’d been three weeks since he’d arrested him. Stealing from his employer, a shed company. Coming in on the weekend to help himself to sheets of stainless steel and aluminium that he sold to a cousin who made kitchens. Simple case, no one believed he intended to replace the stuff. And here he was, looking up at Moy, mumbling something to his wife and parents. They turned and glared at him.

  He passed through the glass doors, already trapping heat, announcing: Guilderton Police Station: If Unmanned Seek Assistance at 13 Gawler Road.

  He greeted the desk sergeant, a forty-something Gary with sideburns and a strange semi-afro, and said, ‘Tell me they’ve found him.’

  ‘Not a word.’

  An old man sitting in the waiting area said, ‘You’d think someone would’ve missed him by now.’

  Moy turned and noticed the handcuffs on his wrists. ‘What do you know?’

  The old man replied through a beard full of crumbs. ‘Maybe Mum mighta slept in. But it’s a school day, eh?’

  ‘You keep quiet,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘You wanna find him quick. It’s the first few hours that matter.’

  ‘You wanna stop your mouth flappin’.’

  The old man shrugged, leaned forward on his knees and snorted back into his adenoids. ‘That’s what happens, eh? CS fuckin’ I.’

  Moy stopped himself from smiling. ‘What you been up to?’

  Sergeant Gary Wright tasted and spat back the dregs of a cold coffee. ‘Our Mr Venables was seen emptying his bladder on the front window of Norrie Carmichael’s shop.’

  Moy shook his head, and the old man looked up at him. ‘I’d say you got bigger problems, Detective
.’

  ‘I dunno. You gotta take care of the little things first.’

  ‘Whoever’s got ’im, he could be halfway to Melbourne by now…or have ’im tied up in a room somewhere. Like I said, Detective. First few hours.’

  Moy turned and took a few steps towards him. ‘And you don’t know anything?’

  ‘They brought him in at five,’ Gary said.

  ‘What were you doin’ out at that time?’ Moy asked, but the old man just looked at him.

  Moy pulled off his tie, worked it into a ball, put it in his pocket and stepped towards the desk. ‘Axford’s out?’ he asked.

  ‘And Jason Laing.’ Gary Wright moved a map of the town centre between them and used a nicotine-yellow finger to point out streets. ‘Ayr Street,’ he said, ‘between Dunlop and Irvine. Side streets—Clyde, Bute, all the way along. Bryce and Ossie agreed to stay on, so I’ve got them searching the showgrounds.’

  Moy looked at the old man. ‘So, what more do you think we could be doing to find this kid?’ he asked.

  The old man smiled. ‘What kid? You can’t have no kidnapping if no one’s missed him.’

  ‘Maybe they haven’t noticed yet.’

  ‘Would you notice if yer kid wasn’t in his bed?’

  Moy turned to the sergeant. ‘Why’s he in cuffs?’

  ‘Took a swing at Constable King.’

  Moy looked back at him. ‘Well, that changes everything doesn’t it?’

  He approached a door, tapped his code into the pad and passed through into a haze of disinfectant. Benches lined the hallway; he could see where the Filipino lady had wiped between the files that littered them. He walked down the hallway into an office which, surprisingly, was also clean. The black and gold letters on the door said Detectives, although he was the only one they’d had in thirteen years. The cleaner had organised his desk, leaving papers in piles held down by parts from an old copying machine. She’d dusted a vase that hadn’t held flowers for years and cleaned the fried chicken smears off his keyboard. The window was open. Moy could hear the distant voices of children playing in the yard of the primary school.

  He leaned out of the window, into the car park of Ritchie’s Bakery, closed his eyes and thought. Then he sat down and flicked through his phone book.

  After a brief tussle to explain himself to a receptionist, he was speaking to the principal. ‘A boy, nine or ten. Mousy hair, medium length.’

  ‘That narrows it down to forty, forty-five kids,’ the principal said.

  He waited, listening to the children’s voices. ‘Could you check today’s absentees?’

  ‘I could, if you think it would help. There are always plenty away—especially this time of year. But if you want me to.’

  ‘Yes, I think that would be best,’ he said. ‘Brown hair, medium height…wearing some sort of pyjamas. What grade do you think?’

  ‘Four or five,’ she suggested.

  ‘That must narrow it down.’

  She didn’t sound happy; couldn’t, perhaps, see the point of all this mucking around. Didn’t like to be told what to do.

  ‘Give me ten minutes,’ she said.

  4

  MOY RECLINED, STARING out of his window, listening to the blinds rattling in the wind. He tried to imagine the boy but could only see his own son, Charlie. The small boy with his few freckles, lip indented where he always bit into it, was playing on the floor of his old office in the city. He could remember Charlie handcuffing himself to the desk and recalled cursing, having to get up to unlock him. Charlie was singing a Wiggles song—no lyrics, just bum notes and nonsense words—occasionally getting a line right.

  Moy opened a folder on his desk. Photos of a body: the stretched neck and the rope mark, the tongue still jammed between the teeth and the cheek. Upper torso hairless, covered in freckles and a scar where subject B73/2013 had been sliced by fencing wire. He was a forty-seven-year-old farmer, and he’d tied a decent knot first. He’d allowed seven or eight inches for the rope to stretch and he’d written a letter which he pinned to the front door: Carol, firstly, don’t let the kids in the tractor shed… Moy looked down and his son was still there, staring up at him. He closed his eyes and he was walking out of the hospital, into the night. There was a bench, and he sat down beside a woman sucking the last gasp out of a cigarette.

  ‘Good news?’ the woman asked.

  Moy looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Good news…you just had one?’

  ‘Had what?’

  ‘A kid. You look like you’ve been in there for days.’

  He stood up and walked down the ramp where the ambulances arrived. The smell of paint from a handrail made him feel sick. Sicker. He stopped, turned and looked over the ramp, down three levels to the asphalt below. There was another ambulance unloading. Parents, and relatives, trying to console each other.

  Before he reached the street he saw Megan coming up the ramp. She was shouting at him, standing screaming a few inches from his face. He stepped back and lifted a hand but she just kept going.

  ‘Where is he?’ she was saying, and he pointed.

  He remembered footsteps and watching his wife storm off. He remembered her stilettos, the sound they made on the concrete.

  And then the phone rang, and the principal was back in his ear. ‘We’ve got a couple missing, but we’ve rung home and they’re accounted for,’ she said.

  ‘No one that age?’

  ‘No.’

  He took a moment to think. ‘A kid doesn’t just appear from nowhere. Not in Guilderton anyway.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not local.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He waited, annoyed that she didn’t want to be more helpful. ‘Well, if you hear anything, my name’s Bart Moy.’

  ‘Moy? Didn’t they farm out near Cambrai?’

  ‘Many years ago,’ he said, looking at a photo he kept propped up on his desk.

  It was old. 1915. Black-and-white, blistered. It showed a man in his late forties or early fifties with a bushy moustache extending from his nostrils to his ears, a flat forehead, and wisps of fine brown hair. Daniel Moy, Bart’s great-grandfather, was dressed in a suit, and he’d forgotten to do up a button on his vest. He stared at the camera with a sort of quick, get-it-right expression. His wife was looking down into the mid-distance, her face devoid of any emotion. Helen was wearing her best dress, finished with a brooch and a lace collar, her hair tied back (clumsily, as though done in a rush).

  Between Daniel and Helen lay their twenty-three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, in a black velvet dress and pearls. She, or her mother, had taken time with her hair—braided into a long ponytail that had been posed over Helen’s arm. Elizabeth’s head was tilted, supported on her father’s chest. Her fingers were interlocked, resting in her lap, which was covered with an old rug.

  The room was plain: a raw, board wall; a mirror covered with a sheet and what looked like a harmonium framing their heads. Moy could almost smell the grease, the wood, the fire.

  It was a standard Edwardian portrait, normal in every respect except that Elizabeth was dead. Her eyes were open; she seemed to be looking up at the ceiling. But she was four days dead. Daniel and Helen had posed her, as though they might be trying to fool future generations, but they weren’t. It was a memento mori, a photo taken to remember a loved one lost early. Moy knew it was a way for parents, twenty or thirty years later, to remember what their child had actually looked like. When the body was gone, this would be all that remained.

  According to family history, Daniel had walked two days to find a photographer. Sore with grief, he’d trudged wheatbelt roads, ignoring the blisters on his feet and the dust in his mouth. Meanwhile, Helen, exhausted by tears, had tried to keep her daughter’s body cool, at one point, in the heat of the afternoon, placing her in a bath full of cold water. At night, while Daniel was still walking, she lay next to her daughter in bed, stroking her hair and talking to her.

  All that was a long time ago, Moy thought. All of them gone and nearly fo
rgotten.

  He walked from his office down the hallway and arrived behind Gary. ‘No one missing from the school,’ he said.

  The desk sergeant shrugged. ‘I think your butcher might be full of shit.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Kidnapped?’ Gary looked at him. ‘In Guilderton? That’d be the first time in…ever.’

  ‘Y’reckon?’ Moy hoped he was right.

  ‘Guilderton, seriously? Most parents would’ve lost count of the kids they’ve got. Why would they want to kidnap another one?’

  ‘Gary, how long have you lived here?’

  ‘Long enough to know. Tell you what it was, some dad about to give his kid a whack and he does a runner. Wife says, let him go, but do you think he’s gonna let him? Right now there is a little kid with a very sore arse.’

  ‘No kidnap?’

  Gary just shook his head.

  Moy noticed the empty seat where the old man had been sitting. ‘You lock him up?’ he asked.

  ‘No, he’s gone to buy us some lunch.’

  5

  AFTER LUNCH MOY took his clipboard and set off to get to the bottom of this non-case. He went into the deli and stood waiting, mesmerised by a pair of flies fucking on a finger bun. The assistant, a yeah-but child-woman in leggings, was talking to an older friend who kept checking to see that her baby hadn’t escaped from its pram.

  ‘It’s so predictable, every morning, right at the start of the twenty-five zone,’ the shop girl said. ‘Standing there with his little zap gun. As soon as he’s got one, there’s another.’ She stopped for breath. ‘I mean it’s not like anyone’s actually speeding, is it? A few k’s, so what?’

  Moy looked at the burnt pies in the warmer and wondered exactly what it took to become a local. The Moys had farmed Cambrai for years before the soil had given up on wheat. But they’d never really become townies. Locals. Although his dad, George, had become a Guilderton fixture, a bolt rusting in place on the fringes of what passed as wheatbelt civilisation, he himself no longer had any claim to citizen status. He’d forfeited that years before when he’d left for the police academy. You never got it back.