One Boy Missing(16)

‘How’s that?’

‘You’d think she’d be near a window or door if she was trying to get out.’

‘What, you reckon someone’s walloped her?’

‘Don’t reckon anything. Not till someone’s looked her over.’ Moy stood up. ‘Maybe this time they’ll send someone.’





10

MOY LEFT LAING and King with the body and headed home, stopping at the Taj Masala to buy a chicken vindaloo. He opened his musty house and sat on the back verandah in shorts and thongs. Admiring the view of his dead lawn, contemplating his curry. There were big blocks of hard potato which he pushed aside. Then he tried the chicken, enormous lumps joined by skin and sinew, trailing watery sauce that had started life in a packet.

Undercooked.

Now, he supposed, he’d get sick.

Guilderton had nothing resembling a health inspector. Apparently teams were sent from town to spend their days trawling the pubs and takeaways. Ineffectually, since he always got sick.

He binned the debris, locked up and headed to the Guilderton public links. A ten-minute walk, passing front yards full of home-made Coke-can windmills and lacework outdoor settings. Murchland Drive was alive with galahs celebrating the last minutes of sun. He noticed one of the Paschkes out on a header, its lights cutting through the wheat dust and its giant wheels compacting the earth. He could feel the rumble through his feet.

Checking to make sure the club house was locked, he jumped a waist-high fence and took a plastic bag out of his pocket. Started walking through the bush and leaf litter beside the first three holes. Within five minutes he’d found half-a-dozen balls.

He checked the sand-trap on the fourth hole and moved on to the small lagoon beside the fifth green. It was getting dark so he produced a small torch from his pocket and searched the murky water: six, seven, maybe more. He took off his socks and sandals and waded in.

The lagoon was his best bet, always had been. After he and George moved to town he’d come here of a night with his mates and collect half a wheat bag full of balls. On Saturday they’d fill a big tub with water and bleach and wash them. Then they’d leave them out in the sun to dry, package them in bags of a dozen and sell them to the local sports store.

He crawled out of the water and wiped his feet clean on the grass. Dropped his socks and sandals in the bag with the two dozen balls and continued on.

The scrub beside the sixth and seventh holes ran beside Murchland Drive. There were homes on the other side of the road so he had to move quietly. Three, four months before, an old woman out working in her garden in the twilight had noticed him in the bushes. Minutes later there’d been a patrol car cruising down Murchland Drive, moving its spotlight in and out of the bushes and trees. He’d waited as the light got closer, wondering how it would look on the front page of the Argus: ‘Rogue Cop Stalks Locals’. Just as he’d been about to step forward, the woman had flagged the car down and pointed in the opposite direction. Seeing his chance he’d walked out of the scrub, across the ninth, and sprinted over the fairways towards the back fence. When he was well clear he ran through the sprinklers like a ten-year-old, jumping in the air and calling out at the top of his voice, ‘Who’s been naughty tonight?’

There were no dusk gardeners or patrolling cars now, though. Moy climbed a hill towards a grove of pine trees that always hid balls in a bed of pine needles. He used a stick to search through the litter that sat on the edge of the grove and looked out across Guilderton, squatting grey and solid in the moonlight. Ayr Street was deserted and he could see lights flashing from the Commercial Hotel’s bottle-o. Music was still thumping from the converted cellar that passed as their night club. The back door of the bakery was open and he could feel its lavender light and the heat from its ovens.

His phone rang. Gary. ‘The fire investigator’s arrived.’

‘Already?’

‘Ossie’s taking him out there.’

Moy stopped to think. ‘Okay, I’m on my way.’

He stood up, grabbed his bag of golf balls and looked regretfully at the pine-trash, wondering how many balls still lay hidden.

But then he jogged off down the hill, past a water pipe they’d been meaning to fix since he was thirteen.





11

AN HOUR LATER, Moy arrived at the house on the end of Creek Street. A freshly shaved Metropolitan Fire Service investigator greeted him on the front steps. ‘Sid Lehmann,’ he almost barked, and Moy introduced himself as the lone detective of the mid-north wheatbelt.

‘Nice little town, Guilderton,’ Lehmann said. ‘I was here a couple of years back.’