One Boy Missing (5 page)

‘Mostly.’

‘So it’s no wonder. The police talked to this fella, but he said he didn’t know anything about it. Said he hadn’t seen his son for weeks.’

‘Maybe he hadn’t.’

‘Wife reckoned he took the kid interstate, to the rellies.’

Another long pause.

‘Maybe that’s what you got, Detective Moy,’ she said. ‘A custody battle gone bad?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Well, if you could just leave the dish on my doorstep.’

‘Of course. I do appreciate the food, you know.’

She squeezed the meaty bit of his hand.

7

THE FOLLOWING MORNING was cool, a slight breeze rustling the stubble. Moy pulled up in front of an old stone cottage on the south side of town, close to the city road. The original porch had gone, replaced by tube metal that supported a functional verandah. He got out of his car and approached a fence with a proud little wooden gate.

The path to the front door of his childhood home was littered with paper and envelopes. As he came into the yard he picked up a gas bill addressed to his father, George Moy. Then he cleared up the whole mess. There was a letter from Centrelink and brochures for some of the Ayr Street shops.

George and Bart had moved to this house in Clyde Street when Bart was twelve. His mother Anne dead already, claimed by breast cancer when he was nine. Their thirty thousand acres of low-yielding country at Cambrai sold three years later to a neighbour, their debts cleared with enough money left over to buy a place in town. Then came the moving truck, the furniture gone (from the very same room of Elizabeth’s
memento mori
), their sheep trucked off to the abattoir and George left to cry, secretly, in the empty tractor shed.

‘Dad,’ Moy called out, mounting the front steps. He noticed three coffee mugs on a table on the front porch. Most of them were half full and there was a small swarm of flies gorging themselves on the separated milk. He put the letters and junk mail in his pocket, balanced Mrs Flamsteed’s casserole in one hand, gathered the mugs by their handles and went inside. ‘Dad?’

‘Over here,’ a voice replied.

‘You dropped your mail,’ Moy said, searching for his dad in the dark lounge room.

‘Help us up will yer?’

George Moy was sitting on the floor, gazing into a television that glowed with a kids’ animation about a happy rabbit.

‘What are you doing down there?’

‘Just help us up, will yer?’

Moy dropped the mugs in the kitchen sink, took his father under the arms and lifted him. ‘Come and sit at the table.’ He walked him to a small table where he ate his meals, picked his horses and worked on his crosswords.

After George was settled, Moy asked, ‘You didn’t have another fall, did you?’

‘No.’

He sat opposite him. ‘Why were you on the floor?’

George’s face was set hard.

‘Dad?’

‘I don’t have to answer to you.’

‘You couldn’t even get up.’

‘Yes, I could.’ He glared at his son.

Moy looked around the combined lounge, dining and kitchen area. He could see what looked like dried tomato soup on the floor, and where his dad had walked through the mess and carried the stains onto the carpet. ‘You been okay?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

‘They bring your lunch?’

George pointed to the empty Meals on Wheels plates.

‘I’ve got your tea,’ Moy said.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s a stew.’

‘Mrs Flamsteed’s?’

‘That okay?’

His dad took a moment to think. ‘Guess it’ll have to be. Why’s she always makin’ you food?’

‘Suppose she feels sorry for me.’

‘She still prayin’ for you?’

‘Probably.’ He stood up, approached the fridge, opened it and looked inside. The smell of mouldy cheese wafted out at him. ‘Dad,’ he said.

‘I’s getting to it.’

Moy smelled the milk. ‘It’s off.’

‘I wasn’t going all that way for a bit of milk.’

‘You put this in your tea?’

‘Boiling water will kill anything.’

Moy looked at the four casserole dishes lined up in the fridge. Each had its own square of masking tape with a date, name and contents carefully recorded. Butter chicken, lasagna, sweet and sour pork. A shepherd’s pie with the mince scraped out and eaten leaving a collapsed crust of burnt potato.

‘Have you finished with these?’ he asked. ‘I think she wants her dishes back.’

‘Get rid of ’em,’ George said, waving his hand.

Moy spent the next ten minutes cleaning out the fridge, scraping the casserole dishes and washing the cups and crockery. Most of the food was so old he had to fetch a paint scraper from the tool box to get it off.

George was a tall man and he’d grown lanky in his old age. He had freckled skin and sunken cheeks with high bones. There were a few wrinkles on his forehead, only noticeable when he frowned or lifted his eyes to let the Meals on Wheels lady know he wasn’t happy with the menu. His arms were all bone, joint, long fingers and careful hands.

Moy sat down opposite his dad. He dried his hands on a tea-towel and looked at a pill box on the table, a plastic container with holes for each of George’s pills: before and after breakfast, lunch and tea, Sunday to Saturday. He restocked it every Sunday morning when he visited; following his Saturday morning trip to the chemist with his father’s scripts; following his semi-regular Friday afternoon visit to the doctor with George.

The pills for the previous evening were still in their little plastic slot. ‘What’s this?’

George looked at the pills. ‘I thought I’d had ’em all.’

‘Dad, you can’t afford to miss any.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

Moy knew it was time for his usual speech: how he had to be more careful about his pills; how it wouldn’t be an issue if only he’d agree to move to a nursing home; how he, DS Moy, couldn’t be here all the time (although George always countered with the fact that Bart had told him he’d only returned from town to help look after him); how the house was run down and needed tens of thousands of dollars spent on it; how George couldn’t look after himself anymore; how he needed specialised help, especially considering what was just over the horizon.

‘Should I take them now?’ George asked.

Moy paused to think. ‘No, I don’t think you should.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’d be too much, I think. I should ask Dr Smith.’

George crossed his arms. ‘What would he know?’

‘He’s a doctor.’

‘Didn’t stop me from getting sick.’

Moy raised his hands in desperation. ‘So you
are
sick?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Dr Smith told you.’

‘Doctor? Ha! He’s been doin’ it fifty years. Lot of things change in fifty years.’

‘People still get sick…people die.’

George tried to change the subject. ‘Haven’t seen Megan for a while.’

Moy tried to work out what he meant. Eventually he said, ‘Neither have I.’

George looked confused. ‘Why’s that, she busy?’

Moy stood up and went into the laundry. He filled a bucket with hot water and found the mop. ‘Don’t you remember?’ he called to his dad.

‘What?’

‘We separated—eighteen months ago.’

George struggled to remember. ‘Right…you were together… then you moved here. She didn’t come, did she?’

‘No.’

‘Cos you separated?’

‘Yes.’ Moy returned to the kitchen and started mopping the floor. His father glanced down at his unfinished crossword. He picked up the newspaper and a pen and read the clue. ‘Pulsing star? Seven letters, third letter u.’

8

THE PRINCIPAL’S NAME was Rebecca Downey and Moy thought she looked far too young to be in charge of three hundred little people. She’d gathered her hair in a bun, he thought, to counter that impression. ‘Nice bunch of kids?’ he asked as they walked down the hallway towards the assembly.

‘Mostly,’ she replied, fixing an earring. ‘The farmers’ kids are just…content.’

‘Content?’

‘You know, passing time until their legs are long enough to reach the brake on the header.’

They passed an older woman emerging from a room that smelled of fresh bread.

‘This is Mrs Maxwell,’ the principal said, stopping. ‘Mrs Maxwell has been here for…how many years?’

‘Thirty-four,’ the older woman replied. Mrs Maxwell was wearing an apron. She took a tea-towel from a pocket and wiped her hands. ‘I think I might have taught you.’

‘Yes. 1981?’

‘Very likely.’

‘This is Detective Sergeant Bart Moy,’ the principal explained.

‘Very impressive,’ the teacher said.

‘Yes, I was the only boy in the class,’ Moy recalled. ‘All the boys chose plastics and metalwork, but I liked cooking. So, they all assumed I’d turn out gay.’

‘And did you?’ She laughed, squeezing his arm.

‘I remember it came to sewing,’ he said, ‘and all the girls had some frock they were working on and you…I think perhaps it was you, or that other lady, the Chinese one, Mrs…?’

‘Lee, she passed, four years ago.’

‘Oh, sorry to hear…One of you said, so, Bart, what are you going to make? And I said, well, perhaps it’s time to go back and make a spice rack.’

Mrs Maxwell smiled. ‘You were quite a pioneer.’

Rebecca Downey was growing impatient. ‘We must go, the assembly’s started.’

‘Nice to see you again,’ Moy said, as Mrs Maxwell waddled along.

Moy said to the principal, ‘Nothing much has changed.’

‘Well, she’s way past retirement, but it’s hard to find a good home ec teacher…Any home ec teacher, really.’

‘I mean, nothing much has changed physically. Same lockers, same chairs, same desks.’

She looked at him strangely. ‘We have a master plan. Most of the rooms have been renovated and recarpeted.’

‘Really? Well…’ He looked in one of the grade five classrooms. ‘Looks just the same.’

‘Interactive whiteboard,’ she pointed out. ‘Data projector.’

‘Yes, but look at those macaroni murals. What’s that one?’

‘I think it’s meant to be a face.’

They arrived in the gym. All three hundred children were waiting for them, sitting on the ground in year level lines: the youngest, their hands in the little valley of flesh created by their legs; the grade ones and twos, more alert, staring at the strange man beside Miss Downey; the threes and fours, laughing and holding their nose because someone had farted; the older kids, their lines snaking across the floor at the back of the gym, their legs stretched out, whispered threats and promises passing up and down the line.

Principal Downey waited at the front of the hall with her arms crossed. Eventually, over a minute or so, the students fell quiet.

‘Well, that was quite a wait,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why I should have to wait here for so long when it’s obvious what I want you to do.’

Silence; as the teachers thought the same thing as the kids.

‘I’ve explained,’ she continued, ‘how it should be so quiet that I can hear the air-conditioning.’

And they all listened, realising no one had turned it on.

There was a boy staring at Moy with a scowl on his face. Moy glared at him, opening his eyes wide and clenching his jaw. The boy mouthed a word. Moy couldn’t make it out. Was it
please
? Was he pleading for something? Perhaps he was saying his name: Peter, Paul? Pavlich? He said it again.

Poof
.

Jesus, nothing changes.

‘Howard!’ the principal growled, and the boy looked forward. ‘The Student Council is meeting this Thursday. They’ll be voting on four proposals put forward by you, the students.’ And she indicated, in case they’d forgotten who they were. Then she read from a clipboard. ‘One: soft drinks for the canteen.’ She looked up. ‘Well, I don’t know how that one got through.’ She smiled at an efficient-looking woman to her left. ‘That wouldn’t fit our healthy eating policy,’ and Moy wondered, if that were the case, why there were so many fat kids.

He noticed a wall covered with sporting pennants dating back to the 1960s, boasting first, second and thirds for football, cricket, hockey and athletics. No pennants for netball. There were clubs for that.

On his first day at high school Rodney Elvis had given him the best advice of his life. ‘In your first sport lesson,’ the older boy had said, ‘make sure you put in zero effort.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re watching you. In your second lesson they’ll put you into groups and they make the advanced group run, play footy, do weights.’

And so it came to pass that by March the advanced group was running circuits, jogging around the school and battling each other for the title of longest kick and quickest sprint. Meanwhile, the remedials were escorted to Judell’s Pool Room for an hour of snooker.

‘And now, Detective Sergeant Moy, from the Guilderton CIB—is that right?’ the principal asked.

‘We don’t really have a CIB, as such.’

But she didn’t care. ‘Mr Moy wishes to speak to you. So, best manners, no talking or you might end up in handcuffs.’

He came forward. ‘I would like to ask for your help,’ he began, and there were murmurs at the back of the hall.

‘Perhaps if you could speak up,’ the principal said.

‘Fine. Is that better? Can you hear me?’ he asked, and one of the grade sevens said, ‘Loud and clear, Detective.’

The whole group laughed. Downey stood glaring at them with her hands on her hips. A few of the other teachers stood up and started walking in the spaces between the rows.

‘Yesterday we had a report of an abduction from a laneway behind the shops on Ayr Street.’ And he explained. When he stopped he noticed the poofter boy mouthing something different: Gary, gate, get off…gay…Gay, yes it was gay. The boy repeated it.

‘Sorry, what was that, son?’ he asked, but the boy just looked down.

‘We think, perhaps, this boy didn’t come to this school,’ Moy continued, ‘but we’re wondering if anyone knows of a new boy that’s been in town?’

Silence.

‘Someone new. Maybe someone’s relative…a cousin?’

More silence; a distant truck.

‘Maybe if you mention this to your parents. You don’t have to say anything now, you probably don’t want to, but if you stay behind…or speak to a teacher, or Miss Downey.’