Disappear (2 page)

Bill Clancy was a large, round, red-haired Englishman who, despite his ten years in Australia, had not lost any of his pommy accent. ‘Ullo, luv. Lucky you caught me. Just closin’ up, I was.’

‘Hi, Bill. Sorry to disturb you but I’m worried about Brian. How long since he left here?’

‘Left here? I’m afraid you’ve lost me, luv. When’re we talkin’ about?’

‘He hasn’t been here for a packet of cigarettes?’

‘No, luv. ‘Aven’t seen Brian at all today. ‘E say he was comin’ ‘ere, then?’

‘Yes. He left home forty minutes ago.’

Bill lifted his arms in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’

‘You’ve definitely only just closed up?’ Jennifer asked.

‘Yes, luv. Look, maybe he decided to try another shop. He’s probably back home now, snug an’ dry an’ all.’

‘No Bill. You’re the closest shop by far. Why would he go somewhere further?’

‘Well, let’s go look for ‘im then.’

‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s all right. I’ll just go home and wait. I’m sure he’ll turn up soon enough.’

‘Bound to be a reasonable explanation,’ the shopkeeper said.

‘Of course there is.’ Jennifer waved as she headed for the door. ‘Thanks anyway, Bill.’

‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do,’ he called after her.

Jennifer walked back home and noted that the storm had passed. Suddenly she was annoyed with her husband. He’d probably changed his mind, gone to a different shop and got held up for one reason or another.
Didn’t he realise I would be worried? Why didn’t he think?

She arrived back home to an empty house. Normally she liked the quiet, but now the silence of their home seemed menacing. ‘Brian!’
How silly of me, to call his name as if he were here.
Then again, maybe he was. Anything was worth a try.

‘Brian!’ He’s snuck back in, she speculated, and he’s hiding somewhere, playing a game. Stupid bloody game, not like Brian at all. The silence, in reply, was deafening.

She sat down to wait. An hour inched by and Jennifer had no doubt it was the longest hour of her life. She went to the laptop, accessed the local directory, and called the Hurstville Police Station. The senior constable on duty, Ken Black, listened as she explained the situation.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Parkes,’ he said, ‘we’ve seen this sort of thing before. Hubby decides to sneak down the local for a coupla’ beers.’

‘My husband doesn’t drink,’ Jennifer protested, inwardly aware that she needed to keep her cool. ‘He went to the corner shop for cigarettes. That was almost two hours ago. He was wet and tired. He could be lying somewhere, hurt …’ Her voice trailed off.

Forced to put her fears into words she realised all of a sudden the reality of it: Something was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

‘Very well, Mrs. Parkes, I understand,’ Constable Black said. ‘Please stay calm. I cannot list your husband as officially missing until he’s been gone for twenty-four hours. But I’ll take down the particulars from you, and drive by the area as soon as possible, keeping an eye out for anything unusual.’

‘How long is as soon as possible?’

‘Twenty minutes or so. Now, let me take some details. Your husband’s full name, Mrs. Parkes?’

Jennifer gave him the details. Height, weight, hair colour and so on. Then all she could do was wait. Again.

After a while the rain began falling heavily once more. Jennifer, restless, walked out to the covered garden rockery that stood immediately outside the back door. She and Brian had spent much of the past few weekends out here, building the rockery, planting the flowers and ferns. Roughly hewn bamboo cross-beams held up the green tinted, clear fibreglass covering.

She listened to the steady rhythm of the rain. Normally it had a calming effect on her. Not tonight though. She felt a great, deep, dark chasm opening up inside. She was nauseous.

What’s happened to you, Brian?
The thought buzzed inside her mind like an annoying insect.
Something must have happened because it just isn’t like you to go traipsing off for hours without saying something. That just isn’t you.

She wandered over to the rock pool she and Brian had fashioned out of rockery stones. The moonlight, tinged by the green tones of the covering, glinted off the dozens of five-cent coins that lay on the bottom of the tiny pool.

It had been Brian’s idea on the first day they’d completed the rock pool. ‘I’m going to make a wish,’ he’d said, and had tossed a coin into the water.

‘A wish?’ Jennifer giggled.

‘This is going to be our own private wishing pool,’ he pronounced. ‘My first wish is that you and I will always be together.’

‘That won’t work, will it? Telling someone aloud what your wish is.’

‘Why not? Our pool. We make the rules.’

‘My turn, then,’ Jennifer said. ‘Got a coin for me? My purse is inside.’

Brian handed her a five-cent piece and she dropped it into the water. ‘I wish for our love to keep on growing and never stop.’

He screwed up his face. ‘Corny.’

‘No cornier than yours.’ Jennifer laughed and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

Standing there, staring into the pool, always made her feel good. There’d been so many good times already and they’d hardly even begun.

She rummaged in her skirt pocket and, to her surprise, found a lone five-cent coin. Maybe not such a surprise, she realised. Since Brian had started this wishing pool thing she’d got into the habit of leaving the coins in her pockets. There was no particular reason for always using five-cent pieces. Just another one of Brian’s crazy “rules.” There had to be rules, he’d insisted, for the magic to work.

She and Brian had often strolled out here, impulsively, and made their wishes. It was fun.

She dropped the coin into the pool.
My wish is that nothing has happened to you, Brian. Please, please, come home safely to me.

‘Come round and take a seat, Mrs. Parkes,’ Senior Constable Ken Black said from behind the long, wide front desk. Jennifer nodded and went through the narrow front opening.

It was 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday morning and the suburban police station was a hive of activity. Two or three calls at a time lit up the switchboard. Each being handled swiftly by a feisty, no-nonsense woman, middle-aged, who wore a constable’s uniform.

Jennifer realised she’d never been inside a police station before. From the open doorway of the radio room, a few feet away along the left wall, came a non-stop series of garbled messages over the police radio frequency. Every voice seemed to quote a series of numbers, tens and fours and so on, a kind of numerical shorthand that reminded Jennifer of the many police drama shows.

She took a seat facing the senior constable.

‘As I told you on the phone,’ Black said, ‘normal procedure with adults, is that twenty-four hours must elapse after a person has vanished before they’re listed as officially missing. The exception is when it’s immediately probable that a missing person may be in danger.’

Jennifer nodded. ‘My husband isn’t the kind of man to go off without telling anyone, Constable Black.’

‘I’m sure he isn’t. Hence our decision to move early and bring in the Missing Persons Bureau.’ He turned towards his PC. ‘I’m going to take a statement from you, and I’ll need all the particulars on your husband.’

‘Didn’t we cover that on the phone last night,’ Jennifer said. Her eyes felt as though they had knives sticking through them. She hadn’t slept. The constable’s return call the previous night, around eleven, had advised her that his drive around the area had revealed no sign of Brian.

‘Yes, but we’re going to need a great deal more than that with which to initiate a thorough search.’ Senior Constable Black typed, firing questions at her as he went along. He took down Brian’s physical description, hobbies, interests and personal habits. The questioning included the names of Brian’s family members and personal friends and, where possible, contact phone numbers and addresses.

Jennifer answered the questions mechanically. In her mind’s eye the words “thorough search” flashed on and off like a neon sign on a garish, night-time city strip. How could this be happening, out of the blue, to her and Brian?
Missing Persons Bureau … thorough search …

‘Who does Brian work for?’ Black asked.

‘He has his own accountancy practice. He set up an office in the city just a few months ago.’

‘Do you have access to his office?’

‘Yes, I have a key.’

‘I’ll arrange for you to meet me there later, Mrs. Parkes. The Bureau will want a list of his clients and any other business associates.’

The questioning continued. Medical history, family history. Was theirs a happy marriage? Had there been an argument the previous night?

‘Please understand that I have to ask some highly personal questions,’ Black explained apologetically.

‘All right.’

‘Does your husband have a drug dependency, or had he ever to your knowledge?’

‘No.’

‘Do you and your husband have financial difficulties of any kind?’

‘No.’ To her own ears, Jennifer’s voice sounded like a watered down version of itself, swept away by a torrent of fears.

Meg Roberts was sitting on the steps outside the house when Jennifer arrived home. ‘I thought I’d hang around in case you weren’t going to be too long,’ Meg said, springing to her feet as Jennifer came up the front path.

‘I’ve been with the cops.’ Jennifer unlocked the front door and Meg followed her through to the living room.

Jennifer was moving as though in a trance. Going through the motions. The police had run a thorough check on all Sydney hospitals. No one matching Brian’s description had been admitted. She’d started to wonder if she was partly to blame. Perhaps she should’ve phoned the police earlier. Why had she waited so long?

Brian had only gone to the local shop, just minutes away. If she’d acted sooner Brian might’ve been found.

It had been close to midnight when Jennifer had phoned Brian’s parents. They lived on the Central Coast, north of Sydney. The anguish in Brian’s mother’s voice had stayed with Jennifer through the long, sleepless night.

‘Jen! I thought I told you to call me. That I’d go down to the cop station with you.’

‘It’s okay, Meg. I’m handling it.’

Meg looked closely at her friend. Jennifer’s eyes were dry but glassy; her face set rigid in an expression of firm resolve. She’s mustered together all her reserves of strength, Meg thought, and steeled herself to face the trauma and get through it. That, in Meg’s opinion, did not mean she was handling it okay. ‘I don’t want you handling it on your own. I’m here for you. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Jennifer conceded.

Meg felt like rolling her eyes. Jennifer was her oldest, closest friend, and she was always insistent, no matter what came along, that she was “handling it.”

‘So what are the police doing?’

‘They took down a lot of details. Just about everything you could think of.’

‘And?’

‘Checked the local hospitals and emergency services. Nothing. So they’ve called in the national Missing Persons services.’

‘They’ll find him, Jen. There’s bound to be a reasonable explanation for all this.’

‘Maybe.’

‘This is not the time to get pessimistic on me. Fashion designers are positive, forward thinking people, right? That’s what you told me.’

‘Point taken. What would I do without you?’ Jennifer gazed gratefully at her old friend. Meg Roberts had always had a bright, breezy personality. She was a pleasantly plump girl with large, expressive eyes, a wide smile and reddish brown curls.

They had been close since their school days, despite the differences between them. In comparison to Meg, Jennifer was often seen as quiet and intense.

Meg grinned. ‘Don’t go getting all buddy buddy now. I don’t think I could stand it. And it’s way too early for alcohol. How about coffee?’

‘Make it strong.’

‘I don’t make it any other way, honey.’ Meg went through to the kitchen and placed the kettle on the stove. ‘So how’s the dress designing coming along?’ she called out as she reached for the coffee jar.

Jennifer sighed. ‘Slowly. I’m still picking up a bit of freelance work with that small fashion warehouse at Surry Hills. There’s not a lot around at the moment.’

When Meg returned to the lounge she found Jennifer, head in hand, crying freely. Meg dumped the two steaming hot mugs on the table and sat down beside her friend. There was so little she could do to help. So little anyone could do. Except wait.

‘It’s good to let those feelings out.’ Meg placed her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. ‘Cry it all out, babe.’

‘Where is he, Meg? What on earth could have happened to him?’

‘He’ll turn up, Jen. Has to. Whatever happened, he can’t be too far away, surely.’

Jennifer wiped the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath, an attempt to regain her composure. ‘There’s something Brian didn’t know. Now … he may never know …’

‘What could he possibly not have known?’

‘I think I’m pregnant,’ Jennifer blurted out. ‘I’m two weeks overdue. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in the morning for the test.’

‘Listen honey, with any luck your old man will be back and he’ll be able to make that doctor’s appointment with you.’
Yeah, so why don’t I feel convinced,
Meg thought, and she hoped her doubt didn’t show. She hated this feeling, the same one she was sure Jennifer had, that Brian wasn’t coming home.

One foot after another hit the pavement in quick succession. There was an acquired art to this, for the sole of each foot to touch the ground only lightly and briefly, the result of the powerful sweeping strides of the runner. One movement passing fluidly into the next.

Jogging in the early mornings and evenings had long since become a popular pastime. Exercise and nutrition had swept the youth culture of the western world, a fad to some, a serious concern to others. These days it was a multi-faceted industry. It suited the jogger’s purposes nicely.