Time's Long Ruin (38 page)

Rosa and Mariel walked ahead of us and in front of them, Con and Kevin, walking with the aid of branches, stopping to look in drains and behind large boulders that were submerged at high tide.

‘You're coping well,' Dad said to me, quite casually.

‘We'll find them,' I replied, watching where I was stepping, feeling the cold mud that had come up over the top of the boot. ‘Maybe not here, but . . .'

‘Maybe not at all,' Dad said.

I was quiet for a few moments. ‘I know that too.'

‘You know how these things go. You've heard enough of what I've told Mum. Sometimes things happen, nasty things. And what I'm saying is . . .'

‘I know.'

‘Can you imagine how worried me and Mum would be, if it was you?'

‘I'd be okay.'

Silence. Dad messed my hair. ‘Maybe you would be.'

‘It doesn't matter. We'll find them.'

Dad knew there was no more he could say. Sometimes you just had to wait for the storm to pass before you could work out where to start cleaning it up. ‘I called about that rego number,' he said. ‘We'll know later. You haven't thought of anything else that might help? Anything? Someone acting strange?'

I thought of Doctor Gunn, his jackal head growing bigger by the minute. I knew I should say something, but couldn't. Couldn't tell Dad what had gone on in the library, or how Doctor Gunn had seemed so interested in Janice on the afternoon of our cricket match. But I felt I'd have to say something soon. I was worried that it might be important, the very thing Dad needed to know. And what if something happened to the Rileys, and the doctor was responsible, and it turned out I could've helped them? Me, Constable Page, the investigating detective . . .

Instead, my thoughts turned to Kevin Johns. I watched him trying to lift his legs, and wondered about the afternoon I'd gone to his house to tell Janice about Himmler the air-conditioner man. ‘I don't think it's anything,' I said to Dad, ‘but that day we had our air-conditioner installed, when was that?'

‘I can't remember, why?'

‘Janice had slept over at the Johns'.'

Dad looked ahead, at Kevin Johns, dressed in football shorts, T-shirt and police boots; at his legs, white and marbled, hairless, although why anyone would shave their legs . . . at his short fat neck, joining his head to his body like an O-ring, his greying hair, shaved close up the sides of his head, fat arms poking out of his body like chicken wings, his drooping shoulders and sagging belly.

‘I went looking for her,' I continued, ‘and when I went to Mariel's house, it was just him and Janice.'

Dad looked at me. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Standing at the door. He was behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, sort of, massaging her.'

Dad looked at Kevin again. He noticed the bandage, still on his arm, and wondered. ‘And how did Janice seem?' he asked.

‘Quiet. She didn't say much.'

‘Where was Mariel?'

‘In bed. I can't remember.'

Dad bent over and picked up a pair of swimming goggles. He tried the rubber strap and it broke. ‘It doesn't sound like Janice.'

‘And she didn't move. Just stood there, letting him do it. Which is funny, cos she wouldn't let me touch her. And she hardly knows him.'

Dad lifted his leg and it pulled out of the boot. He slipped his foot back in, grasped the boot and pulled it free. ‘What else do you know about Kevin Johns?' he asked.

‘Nothing. Except, he coaches the basketball team.'

‘At school?'

‘Yes, they used to play Tuesday night and train on Friday.'

‘You watched them?'

‘A few times. Janice and Mariel did most of the work. The others just stood there.'

I could remember Kevin Johns walking around the court, showing them where they should be and who they should be watching, clapping his hands and whistling when they scored, quietly waiting and watching between plays.

‘I know they all went to Mariel's place a few times. For their break-up, I think.'

‘And Janice never said anything else about him?'

‘No.'

‘Come on.' Dad ploughed through the mud at top speed and I followed him. Soon we'd caught up with Mariel and Rosa and Dad asked, ‘How are you managing, ladies?'

The suck of mud was enough of an answer. The clouds were starting to break up and the sun was warming our swamp. Rosa held a handkerchief under her nose as methane and carbon dioxide bubbled up through the silt. My clothes were damp and mud had dried birdshit-white on my legs.

Dad looked at Mariel. ‘Henry says you play basketball with Janice.'

‘She's our goalie.'

‘And your dad is the coach?'

‘Sort of. He just gets us organised. He doesn't know much about basketball.'

‘What I was wondering, Mariel, is if there's anything you could tell us, anything that might help us explain . . . what I mean is, something Janice said, or did, or somewhere she was planning to go – a friend's place?'

Mariel pressed her tongue against her cheek as she thought. ‘You know she asked me to go?'

‘To the beach?'

‘Yes. I rode past them when they were walking to the station. She wanted me to come but I wasn't allowed.'

‘Who did you ask?'

‘I went home and asked Dad. Then I rode back to the station to tell her.'

‘They were waiting for the train?'

‘They were just getting on.'

‘The Semaphore train?'

‘Yes.'

We walked on silently for a few moments. Bert waved from the other side of the river and called out, ‘Anything?'

‘No,' Dad shouted back.

Bill was walking ahead by himself, Liz and Mum following a few feet behind, talking, as Bert brought up the rear. I don't think anyone expected to find anything. What would they be doing here? There were better places to go, or be taken. Secret places. Scrub, only an hour from town, that stretched out to the horizon. A Coober Pedy mineshaft. A shack within hearing distance of the Peterborough express. But still we searched. What was the alternative? Sitting at home and thinking the same thoughts a thousand times?

‘How was your break-up?' Dad asked Mariel, slyly.

‘We had a pyjama party,' she replied. ‘Our team came last, but Dad said that didn't matter. He cooked a barbecue and bought a crate of Coke. Then we stayed up watching . . .' She clicked her fingers.

‘
77 Sunset Strip
,' I said.

‘That's it.'

Dad trudged ahead again. He caught up with Con and Kevin and I arrived just in time to hear him ask, ‘Kev, hear you're a half-decent basketball coach?'

Kevin Johns smiled. ‘There's worse, I suppose. You gotta keep 'em running, Bob.'

‘And Janice, she enjoys her sport?'

He looked at Dad, unsure, and then replied, ‘Her and Mariel are the only decent players. She doesn't hold back.'

‘No, that's Janice. Gives her all, eh?'

‘She does.'

‘Her and Mariel are best friends?'

‘Mariel's got lots of friends. There's always kids in and out of our house.'

‘Really?'

Kevin stopped. He didn't know why Dad was asking so many questions. At last he said, ‘Do you think I can help you, Bob?'

Dad shrugged. ‘No. Mariel said she hadn't seen Janice for days before they . . . disappeared.'

Kevin stared at him. ‘Well, like I said, she's got lots of friends.' He spat dirt from his mouth and wiped his lips on his sleeve. ‘It beggars belief, doesn't it? How they could just vanish? They'll have to turn up somewhere though, eh?'

Dad didn't answer. He was staring at Kevin. I watched him, and wondered what he was thinking; how he'd learnt to work people out, to pick their minds without them knowing, to set traps, to stand back and let them stumble in. And then to work out whether it was all just in his own head, or a child's imagination, or a set of circumstances that made things look worse than they really were.

‘I wonder why they didn't ask any of their friends to go with them?' Dad asked. ‘Mariel would've loved to go.'

‘They asked me,' I added, thinking I was helping Dad's story.

‘Who knows?' Kevin sighed.

‘I suppose they were in a rush,' Dad guessed.

‘She was a good goalie,' Kevin explained, looking at Dad. ‘She is.'

‘She is,' Dad agreed.

Janice had told me about their break-up. About eight girls sitting in their pyjamas on the lounge-room floor, and Kevin, hunched over the dining-room table, soldering wires onto flashlight contacts, watching them, laughing, smiling, referring to everyone as ‘love' and making popcorn. And, I suppose, helping them with their sleeping bags, packing day clothes into their duffle bags and lending them his wife's hair ties. Helping them to brush out knots.

‘Mariel did see them,' Con said, out of the blue.

‘When?' Dad asked.

‘She came riding up onto the platform. She talked to them as they were getting on the train.'

‘Well there you go.'

Dad smiled at him. ‘Well.' He turned around and called to Mariel. ‘You saw them when they were getting on the train?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she called. ‘I had to tell them that Dad wouldn't let me go.'

‘Where?' Kevin barked, suddenly indignant.

‘To Semaphore.'

Kevin looked at Dad. ‘I can't remember that.' And then called back to his daughter. ‘Maybe it was your mother.'

‘It was you.'

‘Well, maybe my mind was on the cricket . . .'

‘She was the only one on the platform,' Con added. ‘Except Doctor Gunn. He was standing out the front of his shop. He might have waved to them, or said something. But that's not much help, is it?'

‘Never know,' Dad replied. ‘I'll talk to him. They might have said something.'

I looked down at the mud as I walked. I could've sunk into it, slowly, without a word. That's what I should do, I thought.

‘Did Doctor Gunn know Janice?' Dad asked me, and suddenly I was the suspect, being out-talked and outmanoeuvred by my own father.

‘Yes,' I replied. ‘But not very well.'

A glimpse of Janice's batting style, Gavin sulking on the gutter, Anna in the outfield.

‘It doesn't really matter,' Dad added. ‘We know for a fact that they got on the Semaphore train, eh, Con?'

‘At 9.05.'

‘We need to know what happened later, don't we, Kev?'

Kevin tried to smile. ‘That's the hard part, I reckon.'

‘Exactly. The hard part.' Dad looked at Kevin and raised his eyebrows in a gesture that could be taken a dozen different ways. Kevin kept trudging, his head down. ‘We're nearly at the flour mill.'

‘Maybe the river wasn't a good idea,' Dad said.

I was silent, imagining my photo stuck to a blackboard in Jim Clarke's caravan, with the words scribbled underneath, ‘Working with George Gunn'. With a photo of the doctor beside me. And Kevin. And the man in the blue bathers.

On the opposite bank, which was harder, more like soil mixed with shell-grit and sprinkled with crumbled concrete from piers and demolished factories, homes and hotels, Bill continued alone, his head down, mumbling to himself. He held a length of wire that he used to pick up broken objects. He found a leather-bound book, in good condition. He knelt down and leafed through a few damp pages. There was an abstract, and graphs, and tables of figures, but nothing that could help him find his children.

He continued.

‘Bill, slow down,' Liz called.

‘Come on,' he replied. ‘If we finish here, there are other places.'

‘Bill . . .'

‘It's not a bloody picnic.'

Bill remembered driving back to Adelaide. He was holding his steering wheel in the ten-to-two position. It was a thin, hard ring of plastic, sculpted to fit his fingers, but sweaty and slippery when it was hot. Where are they now? he was wondering. Lost, dead? He could hear Janice screaming out for him. He could see her, staring into a stranger's eyes, trying to work out what he was thinking, or what he was about to do.

Another twenty miles to Port Wakefield, he thought.

‘Bill,' Mum called. ‘We can't keep up with you.'

‘I shouldn't have gone,' he replied.

Mum looked at Liz.

Bill loosened his tie as he drove. He was still in his suit, and hot. He felt his shirt sticking to his body and he could smell himself. He fiddled with the radio but there was no signal. Paddocks of stubble rolled on endlessly towards the sea. There were silos pinned down along service roads and old, deserted homesteads surrounded by pine trees and rusted machinery. He saw a farmer repairing a fence and a boy unloading pig rations in front of a shed. But mostly just emptiness. Emptiness that wouldn't buy linen, no matter the discount.