‘Not that I noticed. What sort of parent would let their kid…I mean, let ’em out of school, let ’em run feral?’
‘We’ll talk to the parents.’
Wyeth wasn’t sure. ‘Watch him, he can run. He woulda got away, but he turned to look back, and then he ran into a bus stop.’ He studied the boy. ‘It’s probably not his fault. Probably the parents.’
Moy thought he could hear the baker’s voice softening.
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help.’ Wyeth took a deep breath. ‘You listen to the policemen,’ he said to the boy. ‘You’ll be okay…’
The boy looked up at him, refusing to concede anything. There was dirt, bark perhaps, in his hair. His lips were dry, scaly, and he kept licking them. Blue eyes floating in an ivory ocean and a fluorescent glaze. Moy waited for him to explain. But he just flicked hair from his eyes. Wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
14
TWENTY MINUTES LATER the boy was sitting in Moy’s office, busy with one of Mrs Flamsteed’s stir-fries. Moy had had it in the station freezer for months, squeezed in between the pies and Chiko Rolls. The boy smelled of disinfectant from where Gary had cleaned the grazes on his arms and legs.
‘Enjoying that?’ Moy asked.
There was no reply; just two eyes meeting his, searching the room and returning to the stir-fry.
‘My neighbour cooks for me,’ he said. ‘She knocks on the door and if I’m not home she leaves it on the porch with a picture of Jesus.’
The phone rang; he lifted the receiver and replaced it. The boy raised the plate to his mouth and scooped the food straight in.
‘Her name’s Mrs Flamsteed,’ he said. ‘If I don’t answer the door she walks around the house looking in all the windows.’ He demonstrated, peering through an imaginary window with a squashed nose and pouting lips. ‘And there’s me, hiding behind the bed, or in the bathroom. Mr Moy, she calls. It’s just me…wondering if everything’s okay?’
Moy studied the boy’s face. Nothing. No words; no smile. ‘She’s a strange woman,’ he explained, but the boy just looked at him, eventually placing the plate on the table, wiping his chin and sitting back.
‘Basil,’ Moy said.
Nothing.
Gary knocked on the door and asked Moy to step outside. He said Wyeth had made his statement and left. Then he outlined how Wyeth had stood inside his shop watching the boy; and after a few minutes the boy had grabbed an apple pie from the clearance table in front of the shop and sprinted down the street. How Wyeth had chased him the length of Ayr Street, the boy ducking and weaving around shoppers before slamming into one of Guilderton’s six bus stops.
Back in his office, Moy examined the boy’s hands: the long, dirty fingernails; the grazed knuckles. ‘You like living in Guilderton?’
Their eyes met and at last Moy noticed some expression, a squint. ‘It looks like you get out on your bike,’ he said, indicating the grazes. ‘Or is it footy…or soccer?’
Nothing.
‘You can talk…I’m here to help. No one can get in here. No one can touch you. You’re safe.’
Just the hum of his computer. As he thought, Christ, what am I going to do with this one?
‘The thing is, I gotta find out what’s happened. I need to know who you are. You won’t tell me? So I can help?’
The boy’s eyes continued moving around the room, studying every feature. Eventually they settled on the old photo on the desk. Moy noticed his fascination, his eyes searching for some understanding. ‘That’s my great-grandfather, Daniel Moy,’ he said. ‘His wife, Helen, and his daughter. She’s dead, see?’
The boy looked more confused than shocked.
Storytelling, thought Moy. You could read kids with stories. ‘See, after the girl died, Daniel and Helen decided they needed a photo of her, to remember her. So, Daniel went out to his stable to saddle his horse, so he could go to town and get a photographer. But when he got out there he remembered the damn thing had slipped a shoe.’
The boy moved his eyes between Moy and the sepia image.
‘Daniel was pretty upset. He sat down in the hay and cried. But he wasn’t easily put off, so he started walking to town. He didn’t even go back inside to tell Helen what he was doing. Just got up… left. Didn’t take any water or food. Nothing.’
Moy was watching Daniel set off from the farm, leaving the gates open, his shoulders slumped but his collar still done up, his tie tight, his vest buttoned.
‘He walked through the heat. Into the northerly wind and dust. When his feet blistered he walked in his socks. And when they were just holes he went barefoot.’