Perfect Victim (6 page)

The detective senior sergeant had warned us not to stay out all night. Trying to find her would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Another cliché, but a true one. He told us we could drive down one road only to turn into another just as she might walk into the road we’d just left. Futile, it seemed. It was. We were now approaching the third night without any further leads. In all honesty we could not expect the police to take us seriously in the search if we did not consider what they thought, too – that Rachel may have run away. The search for Rachel should be a two-way partnership, family and police working together. So we decided to search for her as if she really
was
a runaway, so we would have credibility with the police, not because for any one moment we thought she was.

Exhausted, at about 2.00 a.m., we drove into the city.

6

N
O
F
OUL
P
LAY

Day 3: Early hours of Thursday, 4 March

I would not recommend making a tour of Melbourne at two in the morning. It is a different city then.

We drove around but soon realised we needed to be on foot. We parked the car somewhere near the corner of Lonsdale and Russell Streets, grabbed a handful of posters, an exercise book and pen, and made our way towards Swanston Walk and Flinders Street. The heart of Melbourne. This was scary stuff. There were clusters of people. Smoking, drinking, sleeping. No one appeared aggressive but there was a belligerent undercurrent. The city felt as if a haze had slipped over it like a pillow case.

We spoke to a few people and handed them posters. They wished us luck. We spoke to a flower-seller outside the Town Hall. Still selling flowers. Selling flowers, I thought, at this hour?

There were teenagers asleep, huddled against the columns of St Paul’s Cathedral. Teenagers standing in groups, shifting from one foot to the other foot, drawing on cigarettes, downing Coke. Staring. Staring at us. Two crazy parents with posters in hand. We walked up to some of these young people, just children really, and asked them if they had seen any new girl answering Rachel’s description. They shook their heads but one boy said, ‘She’s lucky.’ We paused and looked at him. He drew on his cigarette and added, ‘She’s lucky to have parents like you … who care. You’ll find her.’

I felt like we were stepping over bodies beneath the clocks of Flinders Street station. Not all these people were homeless, but a lot of them looked as if they should have been tucked up in bed with a teddy bear, the dregs of a hot chocolate dried out in a mug beside them.

Our posters were already taped to notice boards. Someone mentioned a public notice board somewhere in Swanston Walk. There were posters there as well. It seemed as though every available spot to place posters already had posters. The Carellas had done well.

I distinctly remember one poster where Rachel’s eyes had been burnt out with a cigarette. I felt as if a dagger had sliced through my heart. Mike took down the eyeless poster and replaced it with another. He took my hand and led me away. It felt like an omen.

An alcoholic, destitute man kept following us. Three or four times he spoke to Mike. He followed us for several blocks. I found this unnerving, but Mike was courteous to him. It was as if Mike had collected a stray while going for a walk.

We quickened our step as we made our zigzagging way through the streets. We spoke to several security guards outside Timezone fun parlours and similar places, finally being convinced by one guard that this was not the right place for us to be.

‘We’re not going to find her, Mike,’ I said, nervously squeezing his hand, and agreeing with the guard. ‘It’s not going to do anyone any good if we both end up dead.’

Mike nodded.

When the car was in sight we ran the last few metres and locked ourselves in quickly. I felt ashamed.

Mike said, ‘Did you notice the police presence?’

‘What police presence?’

We had been in the city for close on two hours, maybe longer, and had seen one patrol car.

‘Shall we drive to Rose Street?’ I can’t remember whether it was Mike or me who said it, but we couldn’t go home. So we ‘cased out’ our first brothel, the one that was the focus of that story in Monday’s
Age
. By day eight we had noted the goings-in and the goings-out of five brothels and one escort agency. And why? Imagined fear coupled with exhaustion. This was the phenomenon the detective senior sergeant was probably trying to save us from.

We drove slowly down Rose Street, not even sure what a brothel looked like, and into the back streets of Fitzroy. Mike was driving now because I couldn’t trust my concentration. We were stopped at one of the back street corners when a group of colourful, and young, dreadlocked adults surrounded the car. Oranges and reds, purple stripes and blue stripes marked their fashion statement.

Mike wound the window down. I couldn’t believe it. We could have been mugged!

To my surprise we found that they were worried about us driving around the streets so slowly. They thought we were lost. Mike told them our story and they asked for some posters, offering to put them up. I was ashamed, again, at my preconception. They were warm and caring, and I had grossly misjudged them.

About 4.30 a.m. we found ourselves outside a pink, illuminated ‘house of ill repute’ in Richmond.

‘She wouldn’t be here,’ I said. ‘It looks too legal.’

‘Right district though,’ said Mike.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s not here.’

Mike drove over the bridge and on until we stopped the car near a small park. We watched a man walking two Great Danes on leashes while we sipped lukewarm coffee which tasted of vacuum flask. We walked around the park, looking under shrubs and in children’s play equipment. Mike checked more dump bins.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’

We did not sleep. We did not talk. We mulled over our unfolding tragedy, independently, for the two hours rest we allowed ourselves.

There was a gentle knock on the bedroom door. ‘Are you awake?’ came a whisper.

‘Yes,’ answered Mike.

My mother opened the door with tea and toast. ‘Don’t get up,’ she said. ‘I heard you come in.’

She sat down beside us. ‘Robbie rang last night and Heather’s fine. She’ll go to the nursery with her today.’

We sipped our tea in silence. No words, just pain.

‘Your parents rang, Mike,’ said Mum. ‘They’ve asked the Major at Inala if the Salvation Army can help.’

‘Good idea,’ answered Mike. Mike’s parents lived at Inala, a retirement village not far away.

‘We walked through the city last night.’

‘
Elizabeth
,’ said Mum, with her concerned mother’s voice from my childhood.

‘It’s so sad,’ added Mike. ‘The city at night. It was terrible. There was this drunk …’

‘Is Ashleigh-Rose okay?’ I asked, breaking yet another silence.

‘She settled late after letting me read to her in bed,’ answered Mum.

The phone rang. It was Ted, our old friend. Mum left the room to refill our cups. She took the plate of cold toast with her.

‘I don’t know,’ Ted told Mike, ‘but I don’t sense she’s come to any harm. I feel she will turn up at the end of the week.’ Mike passed this news to me. I felt relieved.

‘Ted wants to know if you know of an old woman who lived in Mont Albert,’ Mike asked me. ‘Someone who has died.’

‘Not that I can think of.’

‘Someone who is perhaps blind,’ added Mike. ‘Ted says he’s had a message that the blind see. And this blind person is watching over Rachel.’

‘Old Grandma,’ I said. ‘She was blind. But lived in Surrey Hills. Same postcode as Mont Albert, though.’ Grandma died when Rachel was about five. Rachel was her namesake, Rachel Elizabeth, although Grandma hated both names and always called herself Bessie. She told me when she found out I had named Rachel after her that she couldn’t think why. But I think she thought the idea of having a grandchild named after her was appealing.

‘That’s it, then,’ said Mike. ‘The blind see.’ He paused. ‘There’s another call coming through. Ted, can you hold on? … Okay then … Bye, we’ll see you later in the day … Hello … Oh, Mum … no, we haven’t found her yet.’

I relaxed and leant back onto the bed. Some moments later Mike said goodbye to his mother, but dropped the phone. I reached across him, and put it back. Mike stayed where he was, his body over the bed, his arm dropped loosely to the floor, with his fingers flailing.

‘Mike … Mike!’

He was sobbing, uncontrollably.

I had never seen him cry.

‘Oh, Mike,’ I said and wrapped my arms tightly around him, feeling his pain, empathising with his fatherhood’s loss.

‘She’s dead!’ he wailed.

‘She’s not!’ I cried out.

He flung my arms away and rocked recklessly on the bed, flinging his body around in anguish. ‘She’s dead.’ He sobbed and sobbed, and then suddenly his body fell back, and dropped like a rag doll, limp. Still. His eyes glazed.

I thought he was dead. ‘Mum!’ I shrieked.

Mum came in as Mike raised himself again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed, shaking. His whole body racked with torture. Trembling. Almost inaudibly he said, ‘I love my children, I love my children, I love my wife, I love my wife.’

I had never seen him look so terrifying. It was like he was possessed.

Ashleigh-Rose came in. Looked at her father, tried to hold him. He fell back again, limp as a doll, unable to move. She stroked his head.

I ran from the room. Mum ran after me. We left him with Ashleigh-Rose stroking his head, crying in her arms.

I rang our doctor in Mont Albert. Told them what had happened. But because we lived in Heathmont they were unable to make a house visit. They gave me the phone number of a locum service.

Ashleigh-Rose came out and sat on the couch. ‘He’s quiet now.’

The phone rang again and Mum returned to Mike with a glass of water and two paracetamol. It was my father Ivan and stepmother Susan ringing.

Before I could tell them what had happened they asked if Ashleigh-Rose would like to stay with them in Healesville until Rachel was found. Ashleigh-Rose replied with a firm ‘yes’ and started to cry. She had never seen her father cry either – now she had witnessed him sobbing. She was a very scared eleven-year-old.

The locum arrived within the hour and stayed talking, privately, with Mike for another hour. He prescribed medication and rest, but he knew the rest would be highly unlikely.

Mike did rest until noon. We knew the Richmond police were interviewing teachers and students at the dance school so we decided it was best not to interfere.

My father and Susan came to collect Ashleigh-Rose, who had hurriedly packed her bags. We rang one of my aunts to come and sit with my mother so she would not be by herself while she was busy answering phone calls.

Mike was now convinced that Rachel was dead. No amount of persuasion could alter his mind. Rachel was a girl who was afraid of the dark, and tentative in new surroundings. She was a girl who needed the security of family and friends. When we moved to Heathmont she hated having a downstairs rumpus room as a bedroom – she begged to come upstairs. ‘I want to be with you guys.’ So her father emptied his study and she moved upstairs.

I had described her to police as a creature of habit. ‘Rachel was fifteen going on eighteen going on twelve.’ My girlfriend Chris said, ‘She couldn’t help being naive, just look at her mother!’ She was not mature for her age. But we could not deny that from the time Rachel had left school she had blossomed. Young womanhood agreed with her. Mike and I were looking forward to her future.

Thursday and Friday now tend to blur together, but to the best of my memory we left home early Thursday afternoon.

On the way we called into our friend David’s employment where he was just completing the new poster. We had decided not to include Rachel’s name on it, I suppose, for her privacy on her return.

But by now it had been three days and we knew Rachel wasn’t coming home. We knew she loved her family and boyfriend too much to let them worry. There was always the chance she had been raped or kidnapped for a brothel. Some well-meaning friend had informed us about a date-rape drug. We were told she could have been given this in a drink, drugged, even shipped out of the country. I thought this was a fairytale, but by the end of our search we had heard more of a trade where occasionally girls
were
kidnapped and taken overseas. Mike said that if one of the alternatives was being kidnapped for child prostitution, with no chance of rescue, he would rather she was dead.

We decided to call briefly into the dance school before connecting with the police, who in the meantime, thank God, had been to take statements. Monday she was reported missing, Wednesday afternoon we get past the front counter, and finally, Thursday morning some action.

Vicki the dance teacher said, ‘Elizabeth, can I speak privately with you?’ Her tone made me feel insecure, and I followed her into the office of Dulcie the artistic director.

‘It’s about Emmanuel. They interviewed him in considerable detail, and I was present because he was under-age.’

I sipped my tea and thought, what on earth is she going to say?

‘They asked him really private questions. I felt so sorry for him. Like, is she pregnant?’

So that was it. They thought she was running away because she was pregnant. I laughed, and said, ‘They’re not even sexually active.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she replied, and said something like, ‘I thought they were as pure as snow.’

Well, maybe not that pure, I thought.

‘Elizabeth, apparently within the last month … something did happen, but he swears she’s not pregnant. It was protected.’

So, I thought, it had to happen sooner or later. How long had they been a couple? Ten months, and so deeply in love I had been quite concerned by their obvious devotion to each other. He truly was her Romeo.

Silly thoughts come to mind at times like these. Like, Rachel would die if she knew Manni had been through the third degree. Like, poor boy, fancy finally consummating your love only to have some idiot kidnap your girlfriend.