One Boy Missing (4 page)

He lifted the pie to his mouth but it was so bloated it split open, lukewarm meat and cold sauce running over his hands and wrist. He dropped the carcass into a bin, found a tap and rinsed the offal from his hands.

The whole staff of Walker and Sons was standing in a line in front of their shop. Fire drill? Maybe they were posed for some sort of promotional photograph. Heads followed him like a row of sideshow clowns.

He could remember his first summer back, nine months ago. He’d talked over the back fence with a neighbour, a fourth generation local by the name of Stuart who claimed his great-grandfather had built some sheds for a Moy, but didn’t think it was out as far as Cambrai. They’d talked two or three times and during their most recent conversation Moy had invited him over for a beer, but he’d never come.

Weeks later there was a heatwave. Moy had sat inside, huddled in front of his one horsepower air-conditioner, listening to Mr Stuart entertaining his friends in his swimming pool. Every day he’d go to work, to keep Guilderton safe, and come home to listen to the perpetual pool party. Couple of dozen children, he guessed, and fat old bastards dive-bombing their way through an endless Guilderton summer, as he sat and sweated. Thinking,
why don’t you scrape your own fucking relatives off the road?

He went into the newsagent. The owner, a fat, stubble-headed man with a decent paunch and man-tits like Moy’s, stood behind the counter on a raised platform and asked, ‘What’ll it be, darls?’

Moy was still taken aback. He’d come across him before, parading around his shop in track pants that outlined a package the size of a Christmas pudding. A Scottish crypto-queen restocking his shelves with the
Legume Journal
as he stopped to chat with retired farmers in search of stud almanacs and soft porn. ‘What can I do for you, darls?’ Or
love
, like he was trapped in some sort of fly-blown
Coronation Street
. He was a local, apparently, but mainly just a curiosity. A sort of Ayr Street freak-show in pink shirts, even though everyone knew he wasn’t a poof. There was a wife, Betty, inscrutably manning the till, dispensing rolls of Lotto tickets like fencing wire from a cradle.

‘You don’t know anything about a young boy picked up in the back lane?’ Moy asked.

The newsagent leaned forward. ‘I heard,’ he said, lifting his eyebrows. ‘You’re a policeman?’

Moy said his piece, and showed him his card.

‘Listen, darls, I’ve already spoken to one of your little friends, and I told him I don’t get here until after eight. So that’s no good, is it?’

‘You’ve never seen a kid hanging around?’ Moy asked. ‘Nine, ten…brown hair?’

The newsagent shrugged. ‘They come in lookin’ for a few titties, but when they realise they’re all covered…’

‘That young?’

‘What else is there to do in this god-forsaken dump?’

And then Betty appeared. ‘Gentleman here’s looking for
Scientific American
,’ she said.

The newsagent looked over at the customer and said, ‘Oh, no, we don’t stock that one. We’ve never stocked that one.’

Moy continued along Ayr Street, past Goldsworthy’s Homemaker store, rifles and shotguns on display behind mesh in the window. The guns still had Christmas tinsel draped across their stocks. At
Mango Meats: Country Killed Daily
there was a trickle of blue water running down the inside of the front window. It gathered in a little trough surrounding a patch of synthetic grass. On the grass were melamine trays, and on the trays were miniature acres of red meat: rib-eye and loin, corned, porterhouse and rump.

He stepped inside, fronting up to a counter of chipped veneer. ‘Justin?’

The butcher shrugged, lifting his hands in mock surprise. ‘Hadn’t forgotten you, Detective…Bart. I was gonna pop over after it got quiet.’

‘I just wanted a quick word.’

Justin Davids turned to the sink and started washing his hands. ‘No luck?’ he asked.

‘No, nothing…which sorta makes you wonder.’

Davids dried his hands and forearms with an almost surgical concern. ‘Wonder?’

‘What’s actually going on?’

There was a long pause.

‘No one’s reported anyone missing. All of the kids are accounted for at school.’

Davids looked up at him. ‘So?’

‘It’s hard to say it’s a crime if you don’t know who’s done what to who. Whom.’

The butcher leaned forward, his head over a chopping board. ‘I know what I saw.’

‘No one’s doubting that,’ Moy replied.

‘I mean, the way you say it.’ He lowered his head, but looked up at Moy.

‘Justin, I’m guessing you’re a hundred percent correct. Something happened. But what?’

‘Well, you’re the copper.’

‘Was there anything that suggested this fella knew the kid? Anything the kid called him?’

‘No, just screaming and kicking.’

Moy paused, listening to the trickle of water. ‘Nothing in the body language?’

‘Like what?’ But he didn’t know himself. His phone rang; he answered it, lifting a finger and stepping outside.

‘Yes, sir,’ he muttered, to the distant officer.

Superintendent Graves was a spectre in his life. Moy had only met him a few times but he rang at all hours. Hassling him about reports, mainly. Avenues of investigations not followed, meetings not attended. Moy knew the type well: all procedure, no originality; strangled by a black-and-white view of the world that placed paedophiles a few rungs above Aborigines.

‘There’s no sign of him?’ Graves asked, and Moy heard, almost as clearly:
Can’t even find a lost fuckin’ kiddy
.

‘Not since this morning. He’s not enrolled at the school, but he could’ve come in—’

‘Just hurry up and find him. Can’ta gone far.’

Moy explained how busy he’d been that morning; how many places he’d visited; how many locals he’d talked to. ‘I can’t see it’s anything sinister,’ he said.

Graves wasn’t convinced. ‘So, you want me to send some fellas up to help you?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I mean, where are we going to look?’

Graves took a moment. ‘Yes…just get the word out, okay?’

Moy felt the old man backing off. ‘The consensus is some sort of domestic. If he was local he would’ve been missed…but we’ll see, after school, if someone’s kid doesn’t come home.’

Moy could hear Graves working on a nostril.

‘Funny one,’ the superintendent concluded. ‘Custody issue, I’d say. Still, write it up, let me know.’

‘Yes, sir.’

And then he was gone, and Moy felt himself relaxing.

6

THAT EVENING MOY drove home with his head full of possibilities: some sort of goat-lady, refusing to send her boy to school; a family holiday, camped out somewhere, kid runs away from dad. Or perhaps something more sinister. He drove past a Mr Whippy van. Maybe he’s in there, he thought. Classic way to catch kiddies. He looked at the young girl behind the wheel.

Not Mr Whippy, then.

He parked his car and made his way up the drive with his arms full of groceries. There was a flower garden, half-weeded where he’d tried to do the right thing but lost interest. Not that he’d planted anything. The stocks had just come up, fighting against wild oats, truck dust and a year-round lack of water.

He surveyed the casserole dish on his porch; knelt down and lifted the lid. The contents were brown, involving carrots, peas and maybe a pack of two-minute noodles. There was a holy card beside the dish: St Francis holding a staff, lifting two fingers:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
…

Mrs Flamsteed again, her Catholic mission to his little house at the end of Gawler Street. Since she’d heard what had happened to Mr Moy, his wife, and his poor kiddy Mrs Flamsteed was a regular visitor. Coffee, her hand covering his as she asked about the little fella, the
tch
of her lips and the sorrowful tilt of her head. She was the wife of the deputy principal at the high school. Here for over twenty years but no more local than him. Mr Flamsteed had joined the bowls and his wife umpired netball but even they weren’t accepted.

He dropped the dish and rolls on the kitchen bench. Emptied his pockets and slipped St Francis under a magnet on his fridge beside Saints Patrick and Anselm and the others who kept watch over his Kelvinator. He adjusted them, so they weren’t covered by bills, just in case. And just in case Mrs F noticed.

…
Where there is greed
…

He surveyed the catalogue of his failings: impatience, intolerance, inability to forgive…Mind you, St Francis probably didn’t know what sort of shit humans were made of. He hadn’t attended a multiple fatality or seen what a drunken dad could do to a crying six-week-old.

There were dishes in the sink, floating in grey water. That’s the way it was these days, the beginnings of something—a bed-sheet straightened, the vacuum taken out—but then a strange feeling of
why bother?
How will a made bed or clean carpet improve anything? Then he’d force himself to keep going for a few more minutes before ending up lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

He took one of the plates, dried it and covered it with Mrs Flamsteed’s casserole. When the microwave pinged he poured himself a glass of milk and went into the lounge room to watch the regional news, read by a woman with bobbed hair framed by images of Ayr Street on an (almost) busy Thursday night. Impending Civic Park development, controversial council decision to limit parking on Dawes Road, three boys from the Harvest Christian School selected to play in the state under-sixteen hockey team.

Finally, the small, pale face concluded, there’s been another death on our roads. Familiar footage of a crushed car and a mostly intact grain truck. A driver in a blue singlet weeping as an ambulance closed its doors.

Moy was lost, his eyes full of the red and blue light. He could feel the small body in his arms, could still sense its weight and see how his son, unconscious for ten or fifteen minutes now, had lost the flesh colour from his face. He could feel the looseness of his body and the way the boy’s legs bounced as he ran towards the door of the emergency department.

Moy talking to him. ‘Hold on, we’re there now,’ and he could feel his own heart racing, his arms sore but strong.

‘Could someone help, please?’ as a room full of faces turned towards him.

‘This way.’ A nurse’s professional calm.

When she took him, Moy dropped his arms, shook them and turned to the sea of faces. He remembered stopping to look at a few of the children, and to see what was on the television. To this day he had no idea why he’d done this.

Moy was staring at the carpet on the lounge room floor of his government house. Outside the persistent
thwack
of a soccer ball against a brick wall. A voice saying, ‘See, that was nine in a row.’

He looked up at the television and there was more about local sport: the Guilderton Thunder ladies’ netball team into the district finals. He turned to his casserole, loading his fork.

Then he heard the ball again. He was standing at his front door, watching Charlie kick a ball against the wall, stop it with his foot and kick it again. ‘One, two…’ he was counting, as Moy forked noodles around his plate.

‘…three, four, five, six…’

And then there was shitty home-made organ music and a chorus of locals singing,
wheatbelt quality home improvements
. A shot of ten or twelve men standing in front of a brand new pergola.

He felt sick.

‘…seven, eight, nine…’

He could feel himself falling, again. There was no way to stop it. The ground opened, and he dissolved. Tears began, and he surrendered to them as he slipped from his seat. The casserole tumbled from his lap and spilled onto the carpet, then he was on his arse on the floor, his diaphragm squeezing and sucking air from his lungs as he wept. All he could think was
stop
,
stop
. He caught his breath and looked up, wiped the tears from his cheeks and took a deep breath; fumbled at the casserole on the carpet, depositing some of the mess back on his plate.

‘…ten, eleven…’

As Charlie’s face lit up.

He was off again, this time settling on his knees, burying his head in the dog-smelling cushion of his couch.

‘The weather,’ the newsreader continued, explaining how there was no rush to get the grain in this year, how there wasn’t even a sniff of rain across the district.

A morse-like tap on the door. Moy knew it was Mrs Flamsteed, wanting but not wanting to disturb him; Mrs Flamsteed, in search of used casserole dishes. He could imagine how she was standing, arms crossed, leaning forward to peer through the bubble-glass.

She would’ve heard the television. He wiped his face and took another deep breath.

‘Just getting changed,’ he called, noticing the remains of the stew on the carpet.

Moments later he was in the bathroom washing his face and drying it with a stale towel. He checked his eyes and took another deep breath. ‘Coming.’

When the door opened Mrs Flamsteed squinted to see him through the flyscreen. ‘Hello, Bart. How are you, dear?’

‘Fine, thanks, Lou.’

‘You got my casserole?’

He remembered he couldn’t let her in.

‘Yes, looks lovely, ta. I might have a bit tonight.’ He had no choice, he had to open the door. She looked at him, studying his eyes.

She knows, he thought.

‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes, fine.’

There was a pause—quiet, except for a distant tractor.

‘Get my card?’

‘Thanks. I’ve got them all on the fridge. It all helps.’

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Yes it does.’ She lit up with a thought. ‘I hear you’re looking for a lost kiddy?’

And he explained, concluding, ‘That might be the end of it, unless someone comes forward.’

‘There was a story in the
Argus
last week. Seems the father kidnapped his own son, from the mother, cos he couldn’t get custody. Couldn’t even visit his boy, imagine that? Still, probably was more to it. Maybe he was a druggie.’

He wondered whether he should risk it, take her straight to the kitchen—but then she’d see he’d already warmed the casserole.

‘From what I hear,’ Louise Flamsteed continued, ‘the courts favour the mother. Is that true?’