‘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.’
He let his eyes settle on the group and felt in control.
‘Alternatively,’ he said, ‘this boy may be sitting in front of me today. It may be that he was not taken but has things going on at home, with Dad, or another relative…something Mum doesn’t know about.’
Why was it his job, he wondered, to say these things? There was no point saying any more; they either knew what he meant or they didn’t.
‘So, maybe it’s not you…maybe it’s a friend. And if you were a good mate…’ He let it hang, then looked up. ‘Miss Downey?’
‘Thank you, Mr Moy.’ She returned to the front and started telling the kids what an exciting life a detective leads.
9
IT WAS MID-MORNING, cloud threatening a blue sky, when Moy received a phone call from Justin Davids asking him to return to the laneway. He drove past a row of empty shops and slowed past the old cemetery. He’d sometimes spend an hour on a Sunday morning walking around the graves. The marble headstones, their names and dates and Asleep with God all faded.
He arrived in the laneway behind the Ayr Street shops and the butcher and two girls from the two-dollar shop were waiting for him. He got out of his car and shook hands. ‘What’s up?’
Davids indicated the tape that had been strung out around the crime scene. ‘All my deliveries,’ he said. ‘The guy has to park on Boucaut Street and carry everything in.’
‘We’re trying to bring stuff in the front,’ said one of the shop assistants, ‘but it’s in the way, and we’ve got people tripping over.’
Moy looked up and down the length of the laneway. ‘Haven’t seen that car again?’
‘No, nothing. Is anyone official actually coming?’
Fuck it, Moy thought. He pulled the plastic tape from the wall and started gathering it in a ball. ‘That’s probably the end of it,’ he said.
Davids started on the other end and soon the cordon was down, the tape dumped in the hippo bins.
Moy moved on, driving a few blocks, stopping beside Civic Park where three teenagers were sitting on the bottom rung of the monkey-bars, white school shirts hidden under windcheaters. A tall boy lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and passed it to a girl. She took a quick puff and passed it to another girl who kept inhaling and refusing to hand it back to the boy.
Moy stared at the teenagers. Fuck it, he thought again. Who made me the truant officer? There’d just be excuses and arguments and then they’d walk off. What would I be taking them back to anyway? Surface area of a sphere? Quotes from Macbeth? Stuff that couldn’t possibly mean anything to anyone in the wheatbelt.
His mobile phone rang and he checked the display.
‘How are you, Gary?’ he said, recognising the voice.
‘You’re never gonna believe this.’
‘What?’
‘A house fire.’
Moy watched the teenagers stand up and walk back towards the high school.
‘I didn’t hear any sirens,’ he said.
‘Fire’s out…but they want you there.’
Cigarette in bed, Moy thought. Someone falling asleep in front of the telly. Faulty wiring. There were a few people in town who claimed to be electricians. Generally they were also builders, tilers, plumbers and carpet-layers.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘A woman, what’s left of her.’
Gary gave him directions and he scribbled down the address. He drove out of town in a north-east direction. A few minutes later he turned onto Creek Street, a faded stretch of bitumen with grass eating away at its edges. The street followed what was left of Belalie Creek as it narrowed and became overgrown with weeds. A kilometre out of town there was still enough of it to warrant a small bridge but another hundred metres on it flattened out into a rocky patch of scrub.
As Moy left the town behind the road turned to gravel. The houses along Creek Street started spreading out. Dead orchards and wrecking yards; chooks, and a few sheep. These were the backblocks: fences overgrown with prickly pear, goats that hadn’t been shorn in years, whole yards full of door-less fridges and lid-less washers, children that ran mostly naked through forests of salvaged fence posts.