One Boy Missing(20)

When Moy arrived at the burnt-out house he noticed a Major Crime Investigation four-wheel-drive parked on the side of the road. Its back door was open and someone had unloaded cameras, bags and tackle boxes. There was a card table loaded with evidence bags, each holding small black objects: a remote control, sunglasses, knives, forks and jewellery.

He got out of his car, did up his top button and tightened his tie. Then he turned and noticed a farmer, sitting on an idling tractor in an adjacent paddock, watching him through a shelter-belt of sheoak.

‘Got a minute?’ he called to him, walking over to the fence between the shelter belt and the paddock.

The farmer got down off his tractor. ‘Jo Humphris,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘Detective Sergeant Bart Moy, Guilderton police.’

‘What’s going on?’ Humphris looked over to what was left of the house.

‘You didn’t notice the fire?’

‘No, my place is a couple of clicks down the track.’ He gestured to a hill that rose and dropped towards the horizon.

‘But this is your land?’

‘Yes.’

The farmer wasn’t tall, and it seemed to Moy that he might be shrinking as he talked to him. His breasts had formed udders that rested on a stomach straining to escape his flannelette shirt. He wore jeans, bare and white down the front where he’d wipe diesel and molasses from his hands. His boots had calcified, the brown leather worn thin and split beneath a layer of cow shit.

‘You didn’t notice anything?’ Moy said. ‘Yesterday?’

‘No. Why you fellas so interested?’

‘There was a woman inside.’

‘Shit.’ He raised his eyebrows and the white of his eyes caught the afternoon light. ‘Who was she?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. You ever seen anyone in there?’

‘No. Christ, no one’s lived there for years. It’s just a big rat trap…a ruin. We, I mean me and some of the other farmers around here, we’ve been trying to get the council to knock it down for years.’

‘Right…so you don’t think someone lost patience?’

Humphris stared at him, taking a moment. ‘Na…these are sensible fellas. They wouldn’t do that.’

‘And you think they’d know someone was squatting?’

‘Squatting?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘No, that’s a bit of a mystery, Detective…Moy, was it?’

‘Bart.’

‘Good-o.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Just lucky it wasn’t earlier, before we got the crop in.’

‘How’s that?’

‘You ever seen twenty thousand acres burn?’

Moy didn’t really know how big that was. To the fence line? The horizon, the next town? ‘So whoever was harvesting didn’t notice anyone?’

Humphris squinted to see the house hidden in the scrub. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘I suppose not,’ Moy agreed, looking. ‘Thanks for your help.’ He took out his notepad and a pen. ‘Jo, was it?’

‘Yes. Jo Humphris. This is my road here, and this is where it ends, on Creek Street.’ He pointed. ‘You got any problems you come see me. Galbally, that’s my place. We’ve had it for a hundred and twenty years.’

‘Really?’ Moy said, as he scribbled. ‘The Moys used to have land, out past Cambrai. You heard of the Moys?’

‘No.’

Moy turned to go, but stopped. ‘By the way, what sort of car have you got?’

‘Eh?’ Humphris looked at him strangely.

‘We’re just trying to rule people out.’

‘White ute, Toyota.’

‘Good, that takes care of you.’

He started back through the scrub, jumped an irrigation ditch and passed through the gate of an old fence that surrounded the burnt-out house.

‘Moy,’ he said, greeting a sergeant in blue overalls, unbuttoned down to his breastbone, revealing a rug of curly hair.

‘Tim Monaghan,’ the towering figure replied. ‘I was expecting you earlier, Detective Moy.’

‘Detective Sergeant.’ He looked at the sergeant’s carefully trimmed moustache. ‘My father’s ill, I had to stop by. I assumed the firies were still going.’

‘Gone. They’re gonna send you a report. They came for the body, too. She’s on her way to town.’

‘That was quick.’ He made the mistake of smiling.

‘You’ll need these.’ The sergeant handed him a pair of feet covers. ‘Looks like no one much has bothered.’

‘Perhaps it was the CFS,’ Moy said, pulling on the covers. ‘They had two units, and they were all over the place.’