One Boy Missing (20 page)

‘Just making conversation.’

George opened a crossword book, one of a dozen or more on the table. He took a minute to study a clue. ‘
Lighter than air
?’ he said.

‘Hydrogen,’ Moy replied.

‘Yes.’ He smiled, writing down the letters and looking back at Patrick. ‘For instance, you never mention your father much.’

‘
Dad
.’

Patrick moved the sultanas to the side of the bowl. He looked up at the old man.

‘What sort of job did he do?’ George asked.

Patrick stared at him, unsure. Eventually he said, ‘He was a designer.’

‘What did he design?’

‘Brochures…stuff you get in the mail. Before they were printed.’

Moy finished his cereal, and studied Patrick’s face.

‘Like Target? K-Mart?’ George asked.

‘I suppose.’

George sat back in his chair, pleased with himself. ‘That sounds very interesting.’

‘He hated it.’

‘Oh?’

‘He wanted to do something else, but there was nothing he could do. He tried mowing lawns for a while but couldn’t make any money.’ He searched his breakfast for more cornflakes.

‘And where did you live?’ George asked, looking sideways at his son.

‘In the house…that burned down.’

‘No, before that.’

Patrick realised what was going on, sat back and glared at George.

‘When you lived with your dad?’ George continued. ‘Was that before you came to Guilderton?’

Patrick swallowed the last of the cereal he was willing to eat. ‘What about your dad?’ he dared.

‘Don’t worry about my dad.’

‘Or your grandad? Wasn’t that Daniel?’

‘I showed him the photo,’ Moy said to his father.

George shuffled off, muttering. There were a couple of minutes of distant huffing before he returned, and handed something to Patrick. ‘This is the only other photo the photographer took that day,’ he said, as if attempting to prove that family stories, no matter how difficult, were always worth telling.

Patrick studied the backdrop of scrub and drought-baked hills. ‘That’s Daniel Moy,’ he said. ‘With…?’

‘With his arm around the photographer’s son,’ George managed. ‘I always thought it was curious. Daniel had just threatened the photographer and his son, that boy, with a knife. Then he’d forced them to drive back to Cambrai in their own cart.’

‘So why is Daniel standing with the boy?’

George leaned back. ‘Well, this is how my father told it,’ he said. ‘As they drove back, Daniel started talking about Elizabeth. How she could make the sweetest soup with nothing more than turnips and sheep shanks; how she was pitch perfect, and could sing every song in the key the composer had intended; how she could make you feel happy, just by looking at you, by smiling, by saying, it’s all just a bit of bother, isn’t it, Dad?’

Patrick studied the two faces.

‘And after all that,’ George continued, ‘Daniel just sat there, his knife in his hand, staring at the floor of the cart. Then he said to the boy, what’s your name, son? and the boy said, William, sir. Then Daniel asked him if he wanted to be a photographer, like his father, and he said, perhaps…perhaps a policeman. Then, all of a sudden,’ George continued, ‘Daniel stood up and threw his knife into the bushes. I’m sorry, he said. Turn around and head back. It was a stupid thing to do. But the photographer said, no, I’ll take your photo. I’m sorry your girl’s gone. And he flicked the reins, and they started off again.’

Then George told him how Daniel, the photographer and the photographer’s son had stopped for a rest on the way to Cambrai. How they’d sat on a rock, and drunk water from a canteen, before the photographer suggested a picture. ‘The thing is, Patrick, my father once told me, just as this photo was being taken the photographer was thinking of asking a favour of Daniel Moy.’

‘A favour?’

‘Yes. When William wasn’t listening, the photographer said, Mr Moy, I feel, already, I can trust you. And Grandad said, you do do you? Why’s that? And the photographer replied, only a very good parent would do what you’ve done.’

Patrick was waiting, hanging off every word.

‘Then the photographer said, Mr Moy, I have to travel to Sydney, for four or five weeks, and I need someone to look after William.’

Patrick sat forward. ‘But Daniel had just had a knife to William’s throat?’

‘True. But that’s what the photographer had come to think of Daniel, in those few hours. As they went they talked, and they struck up a bond. I suppose they discussed family and farming and photography and how hard it was to make a living. And then—they were mates. One minute there was a knife, and the next, mates.’

‘And did he agree to look after him?’

‘Of course. The photographer said, in return, I’ll take all the photos you want.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, no one likes to tell the whole story. Do they, Patrick?’

32

MOY DROVE BACK to work, past the Bryan Moroney Public Pool and what was left of Klinger’s old service station. He could still remember pulling up as a child. George, cigarette in hand, getting out to fill their car. Some sunburnt teenager would pop the bonnet, check the oil and ask if he wanted a top-up. And George would drag on his Winfield and say, ‘Leave it, I haven’t got time.’

He slowed past the Jack Dawes Crèche and Kindergarten.

Yes, my God, it is, he thought, studying the man in work pants and black boots, a windcheater pulled over his uniform. He was talking to a much younger woman who was leaning against a car, laughing.

Jason, you dirty bastard.

He slowed and pulled up on the opposite side of the road. Then he killed the engine and slipped down into his seat, watching. The girl stood up and crossed her arms. She said something and playfully pushed him. He pretended to fall back before holding her shoulder. She smiled. Looked around. Kissed him. Then he dropped his head and whispered something to her.

Soon it was all over. Perhaps it was the epilogue to a secret lunch at the teacher’s house. Perhaps they’d been alone together in the kindy, swapping saliva under a Dorothy the Dinosaur poster. Either way, Jason Laing held her arm, but stopped himself from kissing her again, perhaps remembering the wife and kid and the mortgage he had no intention of repaying. He got into his car and drove off and the girl went back inside the kindy.

And Moy remembered, just as clearly as the smell of fifty-fifty petrol, how quickly the love faded. How, in the end, it was sacrificed to rates and early starts, lawns mowed and gutters cleaned.

He drove back to work and settled behind his desk. He studied the lumps of Blu Tack where his photo had been and listened to the thud of a football from the primary school oval. Someone asking Gary for an application for a gun licence. A kettle boiling. He massaged his forehead, took hold of his mouse and started navigating through the police database.

HELEN JANE BARNES
BORN 9/7/1974
AUSTEN JAMES BARNES
BORN 10/6/1971
MARRIED 1/10/2001
ISSUE 2
THOMAS JAMES BARNES 3/11/2003
PATRICK JAMES BARNES 17/4/2004
CALLOUT FOR DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE. NO
ACTION TAKEN.

That was it. No record of parents or grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles or aunts. It was as though they had just appeared, lived some sort of secret life, moved into the mouse-infested shack on the edge of town, pissed someone off, and suffered. Try as he might, Moy still couldn’t put meat on their bones, dress them, arrange them and move them through the world. They were phantoms, living on the fringes of a town where no one kept secrets for long.

Constable Laing came into the office, placed some files on the desk and looked at Moy. ‘You look tired.’

‘Not half as tired as you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Moy shrugged. ‘You had a job down the kindergarten?’

‘So?’

‘Just sayin’…you look tired.’

‘You watchin’ me?’

‘Just happened to be driving past.’

Laing waited. ‘Community relations.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What?’

Moy looked up. ‘None of my business.’

‘
What?
’

‘It’s not too late…’

‘Say it.’

‘Think what you’re risking.’

Laing looked as if he was biting back a retort. He said, ‘Detective Sergeant, you know how hard it is to get the whole story.’

‘Yeah?’

‘The life of a country copper.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Lot of dust, little bit of justice. It’s not so much the law, is it? More a sort of compromise, between the could and the should. You know?’ He almost winked. ‘What we do, and what we write in that bullshit.’ He indicated the files. ‘You gotta work out what’s important, Detective.’ Waving a finger, he drifted from the room.

Moy stopped to think. Had he just been put in his place?
I’m the detective
. He wondered whether he should call him back in, dress him down. He opened his desk drawer and found the kids’ book stashed at the back.
Mr Slow.
He leafed through. New Year’s before he’d opened his presents. Easter before he’d written his thank-you notes. Laing had given it to him as a birthday present. With a cake, in the staff room, with everyone gathered around. They’d all laughed. He’d laughed along. But he wondered now, was this really what they thought of him? Later, a copy of
Mr Forgetful
. But that was somewhere in the mess at home.

Respect. He’d had it in town. But maybe this is what his colleagues thought of him now. He looked at Mr Slow, his big white moustache and yellow nose, and felt a pang of recognition.

MOY CAME AROUND the back. He tripped on a bag of fertiliser and walked past the kitchen window. He heard voices from inside the house. ‘Thirty years, maybe,’ George was saying. ‘No guarantee it’ll work anymore.’

‘Can we try?’ Patrick asked.

Moy stopped, and looked in the window. He could see that his father had cleared the kitchen table, fetched his old train set from the shed, and set it up on the dining table.

‘Perhaps you could be an engineer,’ Moy heard George say.

‘No,’ Patrick replied.

‘You’ve got your civil engineers, who make bridges and roads, chemical engineers…petrol and the like.’

‘I wouldn’t be smart enough,’ Patrick said.

‘Report card no good, eh?’

Moy could see how Patrick was looking at George. He was fascinated how the two interacted, how they ebbed and flowed, talked over each other, waited, laughed.

‘Or maybe a pilot?’ George said.

Moy could see the detail of their bodies, and clothes, highlighted by the glare off the venetian blinds.

‘No? What about a copper?’

‘That’d be okay, I guess.’

‘A detective?’

‘No, the ones with the dogs. Did you know they get to keep them? Take them home…and when the dog’s too old, they live with them.’

‘No?’

Patrick had finished the track: an elongated oval, stretching a half-inch or so over the edge of the table. He took the tunnel, wiped it down and positioned it next to George. Then he started with the legless, headless farm animals, allowing them to graze the cracked melamine. Every animal was dusted, wiped and positioned carefully. Spots were tested and rejected; angles considered; distances varied.

‘Or maybe you could be a designer?’ George continued. ‘Like your dad.’

Patrick didn’t look up from his menagerie. ‘Dad always said, you learn the job in a month and then you just keep repeating it for the next thirty years.’

George shrugged. ‘That’s most jobs. Farming, for instance. Once someone shows you how to vaccinate a lamb…or fill a seed box. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. You like eating bread, don’t you?’

‘But some jobs are different.’

‘How?’

‘Farmers get to see things grow, which is kind of cool.’

‘Cool?’

‘Yeah…but when you get a brochure, you look at it once, then you put it in the bin.’

Moy smiled. It was like watching a couple of kids play. His father, he sensed, had allowed himself to become happy, almost.

‘So Dad eventually threw it in?’ George asked.

Patrick frowned. ‘Threw it in?’

‘Gave it up? Quit?’

‘No.’

‘But what about when you moved?’

Patrick took a few moments. ‘He didn’t come with us.’

‘Ah.’

‘Coming to Guilderton, that was Mum’s idea.’

Moy tapped on the window. ‘Looks like you two are having fun?’ he said. Then he came inside, and stood looking at the evolving diorama. ‘Bloody hell, where did you find that?’ he asked, leaning against a cabinet that still displayed the best of his mum’s crockery.

‘I don’t throw nothin’,’ George explained.

‘I know,’ Moy replied. ‘Good to see you two getting along.’

‘He’s no trouble.’

‘Best to keep busy, isn’t it, Patrick?’ Moy asked.

The boy looked up at him.

‘Patrick Barnes.’ Moy stepped forward, pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘The funny thing is, you’ve got the same middle name as me: James.’

Patrick’s jaw tightened, and he played with the trees.

‘And the same as your brother, and father…Austen.’

Patrick placed his hands in his lap.

‘Austen James Barnes. And your mum, Helen, but you’ve already told me that.’

‘What’s your point?’ George said.

‘Nothing. Just saying, I managed to find out. Bit of muckin’ around…but I managed to find out.’ He stared at the boy. ‘Patrick?’

‘What?’

‘You could’ve saved me a lot of time.’

‘Bart,’ George said.

‘I told you,’ Patrick shouted.

‘Not enough to help you. See, that’s the thing. You want me to find out where Tom—’

‘Bart!’ George insisted.

‘Dad, thanks.’

‘Tom’s gone,’ Patrick said.

‘Gone?’

‘It’s too late. Whatever I say now, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s not too late.’

‘It is.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He wouldn’t have kept him for that long.’

‘Who?’

‘The man…the men.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos I got out, and ran away, and he said if I told anyone he’d kill my family…’

‘He? Who’s he?’

‘The man in the car…’

Moy took a moment, dissecting Patrick’s words, looking for something tangible. ‘You got out, and ran away?’