One Boy Missing (28 page)

‘Dad.’

‘I’m waitin’.’

‘What?’

There was a pause. ‘I’ve packed my gear and I’ve signed myself out.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘They won’t let me walk home.’

‘I was just about to go somewhere.’

‘Come and get me, will yer?’

‘Now?’

‘I’m all ready to go. This nurse isn’t gonna let me be.’

‘Okay. I’ll bring you home, then I gotta go out.’

‘It’s Patrick? No point wastin’ any time. I’ll come with yer.’

‘No.’

‘I’m not sittin’ around on my arse. Not when he’s lost. Not like I’m gonna have another heart attack, is it?’

Moy stopped to think.

‘Hurry up. God knows where the poor little kid’s hidin’.’

Moy slammed the front door, jumped from the porch and was in his car in three strides. He shot back onto the road and selected drive. Then he saw Mrs Miller, running across her yard towards him. ‘Have they found him?’

He wound down his window. ‘Very soon, Thea…I’ll let you know.’

He drove along every road at full speed, braking hard. A few minutes later he was parked in front of the hospital’s glazed doors. George was standing in the foyer wearing slippers, track pants and a jumper with his old suitcase and a hard-faced nurse behind him.

‘Ready?’

George was already putting his case in the back seat.

‘Thank you,’ Moy called to the nurse, standing watching them from the foyer. She smiled grimly and walked off.

‘Old dragon,’ George muttered, as he settled into the passenger seat.

‘Seatbelt,’ Moy said, slipping in beside him.

He followed a familiar route back towards Creek Street. He felt like he’d spent years trawling this town, cruising the same roads in fractured grids that always came back on themselves. Like he knew every front yard, every rosemary bush, every frangipani. Knew the people who lived in these little boxes, too, the colour of their cardigans, their dressing gowns. But the more you knew people, he guessed, the less you really understood them. What they did in their sheds, their spare rooms.

‘So what’s up?’ George asked.

‘Jo Humphris.’

‘Humphris?’

‘Farmer, on Creek Street. All that land behind the burnt house. Alex Naismith used to work for him.’

George shifted in his seat. ‘Naismith…that fella that took the boys?’

Moy explained.

‘So, I’m thinking…that’s where they must have been taken.’

‘Why didn’t Paddy tell us?’

Moy shrugged. ‘Too scared.’ He braked, and turned down the dirt road to the Humphris farm.

George was staring at him. ‘So, what’s this fella done to Paddy?’

‘That’s what I want to find out.’

‘I’ll kill the bastard.’

‘There’s nothing that even looks like proof.’

‘So?’

‘Patience.’ He looked at his dad, and saw some old, forgotten determination.

‘You just drop me at his front door.’

‘Dad.’

‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be down to me. That’s how things used to get done. And it worked.’

‘Sometimes.’

Moy slowed and pulled into an overgrown clearing that ran off the track to the Humphris farm. ‘This’ll do.’ He killed the lights, and engine, and they managed to climb out, scraping the doors, their skin and face on wild blackberry. ‘You wait here.’

‘No.’

‘
Dad
.’

‘I can help.’

Moy placed his face an inch from his father’s. ‘That’s just what I need. You flat on the ground with another heart attack.’

George crossed his arms. ‘What you gonna do then?’

‘Wait here.’

Moy walked up the road until he could see the house. Then he moved onto a verge of soft sand and continued slowly. He could feel his breath and the sweat on his neck and chest. When he was on the edge of the compound he surveyed the area. The ute was still there, and he approached it. He looked in the back: wire and a long-handled spade. There was sand, and oil stains, and blood smeared on the tray and splattered on the sides. But there was also a pile of ear tags with hair, skin and bits of ear attached.

Then he stood back and looked at the ute. He saw something on the ground, bent over and studied it. A fifty-cent coin. He moved it with his finger and picked it up. Something else, further underneath. He reached for it. Felt it. Small, light, plastic. The toy car from the lucky dip, its fourth wheel still missing.

He started moving down towards the pig sheds. Stopped when his feet crunched gravel, jumped onto a small patch of grass. Walking around each of the sheds, he looked inside. And cursed himself for not bringing a torch. ‘Patrick,’ he whispered.

All he could see were small stalls, sows and their grunting, wriggling litters. Rows and rows of pigs. The smell of shit and stale feed. He turned a corner and there was a dark figure staring at him. ‘Jesus, Dad, what are you…’

‘I checked the others…just pigs,’ George said.

‘Christ,’ Moy hissed. ‘You promised you’d stay put.’

‘Yeah, well,’ the old man muttered, ‘reckon you need all the help you can get.’

Moy just stared at him. ‘Go back to the car.’

‘No.’

Then shook his head. ‘Come on.’

They left the compound and moved into scrub and freshly ploughed paddocks. As they walked along an irrigation ditch they looked in pipes and under culverts, prodded weeds and reeds, searched under trees for any signs of disturbance. ‘Where do you reckon he is?’ George asked.

‘
Ssh
.’

‘You checked all those sheds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Should we check again?’

Moy had seen a track. Several. They ran off the compound and between each of the paddocks on this side of the farm. Disappeared into valleys and over hills. ‘Where do you reckon they go?’

George shrugged. ‘Far as the farm goes.’

Moy set off along one of the tracks. He walked quickly, then ran. George struggled to keep up. When he reached the top of a low hill, four hundred metres or so from the house, he stopped. He squinted, searching the paddocks, the bush.

George eventually came up behind him. ‘Where you going?’

‘What’s that?’ Moy said, making out a group of what looked like sheds, surrounded by a ring of pine trees, another hundred metres along the road.

‘Pigs…chooks?’ George attempted.

‘Stay here,’ Moy said, and he was off, running at full speed towards the dark shapes. When he arrived he looked around the empty sheds, full of more junk, wire, tractor parts. ‘Patrick!’ he called, a whisper-shout, but there was no reply.

He came out behind the sheds and there was a car. It still wasn’t light but he could see it was a dark-coloured Falcon, boxy, beaten-up, and rusted. He could read the words on the peeling sticker on the back window.
Karringa Cars
. A back mud flap hung from a single screw. Opening the door, he looked inside. There were a few chip packets and cans, a map book that had fallen apart. The glove box was hanging open but was empty apart from a few lollies and fuses. He popped the boot and went back to look. A spare tyre, a petrol can. He smelled it. Diesel. Gauged the space; saw where a small body might have squeezed in. Dents in the panels like someone had kicked it from the inside.

He sat in the driver’s seat, looking back towards the sheds. Of course, he thought. Of course. There could have been a thousand cars in Guilderton that fitted the butcher’s description. Until you found the one that did.

He stood up and sprinted back towards the crest of the hill, and his father. ‘Let’s go.’

‘We haven’t finished.’

‘
Let’s go
.’

They walked back to the fence that surrounded the compound. Moy lifted a wire and George squeezed through. His pants caught and tore on a barb. ‘Shit.’

‘
Ssh
,’ Moy repeated, following.

They moved around the edge of the compound, past the tractor shed and the silos. George tripped on a length of metal, fell and then sat up. ‘Christ,’ he said, loudly, forgetting.

‘
Ssh
.’

A light went on in the house.

‘Quick,’ Moy said. He helped his father up, took him by the top and dragged him towards the back of the shed. They hid behind the double wheels of the big John Deere and waited.

‘What’s the time?’ George asked.

Moy checked. ‘Quarter past five.’

‘Maybe he’s feeding the pigs?’

‘Maybe you woke him up.’

The front door opened and Humphris emerged from the house. He was in shadow. He straightened his back, coughed, and looked around the compound.

‘What’s he doing?’ George asked, looking across the twenty or so metres between them.

‘Not a word,’ Moy whispered in his ear.

They waited. Humphris went back into the house and re-emerged with a lit torch. He slipped his feet into a pair of boots and started walking towards them. Moy pushed his father’s head below the tyre. ‘
Ssh
.’

Humphris stopped in front of the shed. Moy watched the white beam working its way through the dark: a wall lined with hessian bags, halters and chains hanging from rusty hooks, the green and gold reflection from the machinery.

Father and son almost stopped breathing. They heard the torch click off, footsteps, then on again. Humphris was searching the other sheds, his scrap yard, the mid-distance of sheep pens and a small cattle yard with a broken crush. Footsteps. Light. Shallow breathing.

‘Be light soon,’ George whispered.

‘Ssh.’

‘You got your gun?’

Humphris returned to his house. He took off his boots and went inside. The outside light stayed on.

‘Should we go?’ George asked.

‘Wait.’

‘It’ll get light.’

‘Wait.’

Twenty minutes later Moy was ready. They moved around the compound, staying hard up against the sheds. They walked quietly, without talking, the first whiff of sun on their skin. When they were back on the road Moy said, ‘That wouldn’t have happened if you’d done as I said.’

George just shrugged. ‘Y’never get anywhere by listening to common sense.’

44

THEY ARRIVED BACK at the car and Moy said, ‘Right, get in.’ He held the door open for his father.

George climbed into the passenger side and Moy went around, and sat beside him. ‘I’ve gotta deal with all this, and then the thought of you, lying on the ground.’

‘Stop fussing. Get on with it.’

Moy called the station and waited while the radio hissed.

Eventually Gary came on. ‘You heard anything?’

‘You couldn’t do me a favour?’

‘Go on.’

‘Anyone you can get a hold of, call ’em, ask them to get to the station as soon as possible. Then, can you get down here? Watch this place while I get a warrant.’

‘What do you need a warrant for?’ George asked.

Moy glared at him. ‘Dad, let’s just dot the bloody i’s, eh?’

Half an hour later, Gary arrived.

‘I’m pretty sure he’s got Patrick inside,’ Moy said. ‘Just stay here, wait, watch, while I drop Dad home, and go see Sutton.’

George didn’t look happy. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘You are,’ Moy replied. ‘And this time I’m not arguing.’

At six-thirty, after dropping his father home, Moy knocked on the door of 18 Dunlop Terrace, offering his hand to Andrew Sutton, JP. ‘Bart Moy,’ he said. ‘Guilderton police. We have a missing child.’

‘I heard.’ Sutton massaged his unshaved chin. He appeared determined to make the most of what might be his only big moment.

‘I think I know where he is.’

‘Come in.’

For thirty minutes, as Mrs Sutton made tea and toast, Moy explained the last few hours and days, concluding, ‘So, the chances are he’ll act soon. I have a car parked in his drive, watching.’

Sutton reached for his briefcase. ‘I’ll just arrange the paperwork.’

Moy returned to the station to muster the other officers. They strapped pistols over T-shirts and Moy found the biggest of the door rams. Then he gathered them in the lunch room and explained. ‘If I’m wrong, I’m gonna look pretty bloody stupid.’ But he knew he was past the point of inaction. He
felt
he was right. Knew, somehow, Patrick was inside the house.

They set off in two marked cars: Moy and Jason in the first; Andrew, Bryce and Ossie in the second. They sped towards the farm, slowing onto the dirt road.

‘It’s gonna be warm,’ Jason said.

Moy ignored him. ‘Bolt cutters?’

‘Got ’em.’

The scrub was three metres thick on each side of the track, dense melaleuca and ti-tree growing around gums, themselves overgrown with mistletoe and blackberry. Moy could see that it might be a good hiding place.

‘Early summer,’ Laing said.

Moy looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Early summer…might even get a sweat up today.’

But Moy didn’t know what he meant. A sweat? Searching? He just didn’t get Laing. ‘You should be careful. One day she’s just gonna walk in on you.’

‘That would simplify things.’

He looked at him. ‘I should have called for an ambulance first.’

Laing stared ahead, at the house in the distance, on the hill. ‘Wait.’

When the two marked cars arrived back at the side-track, Gary was missing. They got out and looked around before making their way towards the house. When they were just short, Moy saw Gary kneeling in the bush, using the dawn light to study the compound. He knelt beside him. ‘Anything?’

Gary kept his eyes on the house. ‘Bit a’ movement. Curtains. No one’s come out.’

Moy turned towards the others, who had gathered, their revolvers drawn, behind him. ‘Right, follow me,’ he said. He ran from the bush, supporting his pistol wrist, looking back, telling them to spread out.

A few moments later he was at the front door. He knocked. ‘Patrick, you there?’

No answer. He waited, and for a moment, imagined the scene inside.

‘Patrick?’

‘Bart?’ he heard from inside.

He shook the door. ‘It’s me. Open up.’

Patrick threw the door open. He stood, making sure, half-smiling, half-crying. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, before taking a single step forward.

Moy took him, and pulled him close as Laing and Gary brushed past, guns drawn, shouting for Humphris to show himself. Moy buried his face in the boy’s dirty hair. He could feel him crying, struggling for breath, finally consumed by the horror and relief that washed over him.