‘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.