One Boy Missing (27 page)

‘Yes.’

There was an uneasy silence.

‘Well? Who was it?’

‘Patrick.’

There was another pause, and George saying, ‘Fuck.’

Moy told him. From their time at the lucky dip, the three-wheeled car, the scones and water-colours. ‘I just left him for a moment…there were people everywhere.’

‘And no one saw anything?’

‘No.’

There was another long pause, but Moy could see his father shaking his head, whispering curses. ‘They said a nine-year-old boy but I didn’t think…’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find him.’

‘He’s been taken, hasn’t he?’

‘Maybe.’

‘It’s the same fella, isn’t it?’

‘Dad—’

‘Right, I’m dressed. Come and get me now.’

Moy took a deep breath. ‘What good’ll that do?’

‘I’ll help you look.’

‘We’ve got patrols, CFS, the SES are looking on the outskirts of town.’

‘I had no idea there was any sort of threat,’ George said.

‘There are other options. He might’ve found his dad or his brother.’

‘And just gone off without telling you?’

‘Perhaps. Or they made him.’

‘Or someone else made him,’ George said. ‘Listen, I’m not gonna lose Paddy, right?’

‘There’s no point picking you up, he might come to you.’

Silence.

‘You’ve gotta find him, Bart.’

‘I know, Dad.’

‘You
have
to.’

Moy could hear his father’s breathing. ‘I will.’ He looked at the empty street and wondered if Guilderton would ever yield any of its secrets.

‘I will,’ he said, and hung up.

Laing was looking through the pile of notes clipped into Moy’s folder. ‘Your old man still tellin’ you what to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Same as mine. Never any fuckin’ help, but lots of advice.’

‘They’ve grown close,’ he said. He saw Patrick’s face, confused, staring up at him. ‘He’s a good kid.’

‘I know. Funny, always thinkin’.’

Moy could see Patrick’s red cheeks, tanned by the wheatbelt sun. His neck, with one big freckle beside his carotid artery.

‘We’ll find him,’ Laing said.

‘Dad takes him bowling.’ He trailed off again. His head was full of faces, landscapes, snatches of news reports; headlines, photographs torn from newspapers. Long minutes filled with every comment, smile and lifted eyebrow he’d noticed since that morning in the alleyway. The key was there, he realised. But it was small, and it wouldn’t look familiar.

And then he was back at Mango Meats, talking to Justin Davids and the apprentice, Ray Foster. He was listening to the young man’s words:
worked around the place
…

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

Moy made a U-turn and returned to the station. He went to his office, looked up the butcher’s phone number. ‘Justin? Have you got Ray Foster’s number?’

‘Yeah…somewhere in the mess.’

The phone dropped and Davids’ wife asked if there was something wrong.

‘It’s that copper,’ Davids replied. ‘Something’s up.’

A few moments later the butcher was back on the phone. ‘Here it is.’ The numbers careful on his lips, as though he sensed the importance of each digit. Moy wrote clearly, crossing a seven and looping a two.

He called the number. ‘Ray? Sorry to disturb you; we’ve got an emergency.’ He didn’t stop to explain. ‘Listen, when we were talking about Naismith, you said he’d worked around the place.’

‘Yes.’

‘You mentioned John Preston.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you know of anyone else?’

There was a long pause. Then Foster said, ‘There was a fella called White…has alpacas. And whatsisname…Humphris. Jo Humphris. Place out along Creek Street.’

Moy felt his heart racing. His mouth was dry. ‘Humphris?’

‘Yes.’

‘End of Creek Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whole heap of pigs?’

‘Yeah, think he’s got pigs.’

And then Moy remembered. The small man, sitting on the tractor, watching.

42

IT WAS ALMOST ten-thirty when they turned down the dirt road, driving slowly, stopping to open and close two gates, crossing stock grates, following the track across the lip of a dam, through a small forest of old sheoaks and finally, to a sprawl of sheds and leantos, silos and the farmhouse.

They stopped and got out.

‘Watch for dogs,’ Moy warned, but all they could hear were pigs, sniffing, shifting about in their own shit.

‘Hello, anybody home?’ Jason Laing called.

Moy walked towards the house and a security light came on. A 1960s cream-brick box, complete with a terrazzo verandah and collapsing gutters. There was no driveway or paths, just dirt and gravel spread out around the house. He approached the front door, littered with a pile of muddy shoes and boots, and knocked. ‘Mr Humphris…police.’

He knocked again. ‘Hello?’ Then he moved around to the front and side windows and looked in. He turned to Jason. ‘Torches.’ Laing returned to the car and fetched two torches. They spent a few minutes looking in windows. Drawn curtains. A few gaps. Shadows. Furniture.

Away from the house, in a shallow valley, there were six long pig sheds. They walked down and around them and Moy asked, ‘Why would you build your house so close?’

Laing shrugged. ‘Maybe he likes pigs.’

They looked around the tractor shed, up and over a near-new John Deere 7030, a spray unit and a seeder with long, languorous arms sprouting hydraulics and seed tubes. There was a hayshed, chooks, an old transportable work-room and two old silos. They were rusted, laid flat beside a collection of smaller scarifiers, ploughs and seeders. And behind all this, a sort of junkyard of things-that-might-come-in-handy. Rolls of wire, galvanised iron and piles of sand, gravel and lime.

Moy studied the sheets of iron. They were the only material not under- and overgrown with oats and weeds. He lifted a few sheets. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked Laing.

‘What?’

But then something else caught his eye. He quickly walked the ten or so metres towards a fence-line that separated the compound from an area of bush. He stopped and looked down. Laing came up beside him and asked, ‘What is it?’

‘You can see,’ Moy replied, indicating.

A concrete slab, three by four metres, freshly cured. And nearby, a mixer, a bucket and a coiled hose.

‘So?’ Laing asked.

‘Patrick said they were kept in a shed.’ He knelt down, running his finger along the side of the slab.

‘What is it?’ Laing asked.

‘Here,’ Moy replied, and showed him. ‘A depression, where there’s been a wall, and maybe a post.’ He used both hands to move soil.

Laing shone his torch on it. ‘You think Patrick’s here?’

Moy stood up. He turned in one complete orbit, taking in every detail of the compound. ‘Patrick,’ he called. And then waited, listening. ‘Patrick?’

‘Maybe there’s another—’

‘Ssh.’

Moy was listening. To everything, no matter how distant. A rusty hinge, miles away; Doug Flamsteed locking his car. ‘Patrick?’

There were headlights. Through the bush, then on the drive. The gates. Stopping. Jo Humphris got out of a battered ute and stood looking at them. Moy recognised the small, flannelette body, the pot belly and short legs, the fat face and wild black hair.

‘Detective Sergeant Bart Moy,’ he said. ‘This is Constable Laing.’ They walked over to him.

‘Yeah, I remember you,’ Humphris said, attempting a smile, taking both men’s hands and greeting them. ‘You were looking into that fire, at that old squat?’

‘Yes,’ Moy replied.

‘You catch your man?’

‘We did, as a matter of fact. Alex Naismith. You know him, eh?’

‘Yes.’ He turned and headed towards his front door.

‘He worked for you?’

‘If you’d call it that.’

Moy and Laing followed him.

‘And you know what happened to him, don’t you?’

They reached the door and Humphris turned and looked at them. ‘I took him on for a harvest, and he stayed on after that. But then he started turning up late…never finished nothin’. Then he started arguing. So I sacked him.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Last year.’ He slipped off his boots. ‘So that’s what you’re here about, eh?’

‘Sort of,’ Moy replied.

‘At this time of night?’

‘I just thought it was strange. Alex…that place…up the end of your drive?’

Humphris glared at him. ‘He was probably screwin’ her. That’s one thing he was good at.’

‘Yeah?’ Moy paused. ‘Screwed her…then killed her?’

Humphris tried his key in the door. ‘I don’t know what he got up to.’

The door opened and Humphris switched on the hall light. He looked at Moy. ‘So that’s what you wanted to know about, eh? Naismith?’

Moy stepped between the farmer and his front door. ‘You been out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where?’

Humphris’ face began to harden. ‘What’s it any business of yours?’

‘
Where?
’

‘The pub.’

‘And before that?’

Humphris took his time. ‘You got a warrant…to be on my place? In the middle of the night?’

‘
Where?
’ Moy almost shouted.

‘Home,’ Humphris replied, calmly. ‘All day.’

‘By yourself?’

He smiled. ‘I’m a bachelor.’

‘
All day?
’

‘Yes. Watched the midday movie. James Stewart.’

Silence.

‘Why? What am I meant to have done?’ Humphris asked.

‘You never met a boy? Patrick Barnes? Or his brother, Tom?’

Humphris shrugged. ‘Don’t know ’em.’

‘They used to live just down that road.’ He indicated.

‘Nup.’

‘And you didn’t go to the show today?’

Humphris took a moment. He looked at both men. ‘Yeah, sorry, popped in for half an hour. Got a price on some new equipment.’

‘Was that before or after James Stewart?’

Humphris glared at him and almost took a step forward. ‘Bit of a smart arse, are you?’

‘What time?’

‘After lunch. One, perhaps. It was only thirty minutes.’

‘And you didn’t see the boy, or talk to him?’

‘What fuckin’ boy?’

‘Patrick Barnes.’

‘Told ya, I don’t know any boy.’ And he stepped forward.

‘I noticed you’ve poured a fresh slab of concrete over there,’ Moy said, indicating the yard of shadows and dark objects.

‘So?’

‘New shed?’

‘It will be.’

Moy took his time. ‘Well, you know, thought maybe he’d wandered up this way.’

Humphris glared at him.

‘These questions, they’re all standard. We’re not accusing you of anything, Mr Humphris.’ He studied the farmer’s face, his red cheeks, his hard chin. ‘You wouldn’t mind if we came in, for a chat?’

‘Christ!’ Humphris growled. ‘It’s late. I’m tired. What’s there to
chat
about? I know you’ve got a problem, but I’m telling you, I can’t help you.’

Moy stepped back and smiled. ‘We’ll let you get to bed then.’

43

MOY DROPPED LAING at the kindy teacher’s house. The porch light was on and he could see eyes peering out between curtains. ‘She expecting you?’

‘I think she cooked tea.’

He drove along the dark streets, thinking of what Megan would say.
Fucked that up too, then?
Her arms crossed, her head tilted. Then he’d say something like, At least I tried to help him, and she’d say
tried
, staring into his eyes, lifting her eyebrows.

He kept looking up driveways, down laneways. Got out and walked the bike track on Gawler Street. Twenty minutes later he was back in Clyde Street. He sat in the car. Unwilling, or unable, to go in. It was as though by opening the front door he was admitting defeat; by putting on the kettle, giving up on Patrick. As though life was about to return to the drab days before the boy’s arrival. He thought about starting the car again, backing out, continuing his search, but it was after two and the events of the previous day had already begun to settle.

He got out and walked up the drive. Noticed the seedlings and a book Patrick had borrowed and sat reading on the porch. Looked down the side of the house. ‘Patrick?’

And there was Thea Miller, standing in her nightie and dressing gown, looking over the untrimmed box hedge. ‘No word?’

‘You heard?’

‘Everyone’s heard.’ She waited. ‘You okay, Bart?’

‘Yeah. He can’t be far.’ He updated her on the search.

‘Anything I can do?’ she asked, finally.

‘No. Thanks. He’s just wandered off.’

‘Of course.’ She paused, and smiled. ‘He’s such a lovely little fella, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well-mannered, which always says a lot.’

Moy looked at the light glowing inside her living room.

‘Ironing,’ she said. ‘It’s this damn insomnia.’

Moy shrugged, but there was no point discussing anything.

He let himself into the house and stood in the dark hallway. ‘Patrick?’

As his eyes adjusted he noticed clothes, piles of shoes, their mud dried, crumbling, forming a pile of dirt on the boards. He moved into the lounge-room. ‘Patrick?’ There was a shape on the couch; small, cramped, irregular. He touched it. It was just a blanket, twisted around the other rugs George nested in as he watched American crime shows. Asking questions like, ‘They’d need a warrant to do that, wouldn’t they?’

Think…think
. What would I do with a boy? With Paddy? Probably the same thing I’d done with Tom.

He sat down and tried to imagine both of them. Track pants and T-shirts, tied up with heavy ropes, blindfolded, gagged. He had to feel the power, in his stomach, his chest and neck, his head. To know what it was like to enter a darkened room, to kneel beside them, to have the power of life and death. To work out what
he
would do next.

Silence.

He sat forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘Patrick,’ he whispered. He stood up, went to the boy’s room, switched on the light and stood thinking.

He looked in the wardrobe. Pants, shirts, more jackets; empty pockets, apart from lolly wrappers and lint.
Robinson Crusoe
, borrowed from the library with a gleaming new card.

His phone rang. He fumbled it, studied it, answered it. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me.’