One Boy Missing(27)

16

THE FOLLOWING MORNING there were two dramatic bursts of rain. Within minutes the clouds had cleared and the sun had appeared. George always put this sort of thing down to a rain shadow, and Moy always told him there was no such thing. George would ask how he knew. Had he studied meteorology? Had he farmed beyond Goyder’s Line all his life? Or was he just a smart arse? One day, sick of his son’s arrogance, he went to the library and photocopied an article out of a Britannica. That night he’d put it in front of his son. ‘See? A dry area on the lee side of a mountainous area.’

‘Yeah, but this isn’t a mountainous area,’ Moy had replied.

George had just looked at him. ‘The point is, rain shadows exist.’

‘Not around Guilderton.’

Bart Moy was wearing jeans and a polo top, holding a clip-board as he stood at the counter of Bowey’s Chemist. An old woman in a cardigan was arguing with an assistant over safety nets, referring to receipts in a shoe box on the counter beside her. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ the assistant said to Moy.

‘No rush.’

Moy sat down and waited. The smell of eucalyptus and cheap perfume radiated from the front of the store. It reminded him of pills—wrapped in foil and deposited in boxes, hundreds of them, with Mrs Anne Moy printed in economical letters on the front. His mother making little piles of pills on a bench. Ten, twelve, eventually fifteen—yellow, white and pink. By the time she was done she’d have to go back to bed, as George buzzed around asking if she wanted tea or toast, mostly destined to be vomited.

The old woman finished, but then presented a new script. ‘Does this have a repeat?’

‘It is a repeat,’ the assistant replied.

‘Oh, so I’ll need to go back to the doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And my gout medication?’

‘You don’t need a prescription for that.’

And the smell, again. Something, he guessed, to spread on a sore or insert up your arse; something to rub on a rash; or maybe, yes, that was more likely, an antiseptic: something to tip in a bowl and soak your feet in. It was a smell he remembered from the oncology ward, drifting down the hallways they mopped and buffed every few hours. Mandarin, or pineapple. It was always there, as he buttered toast in the visitors’ kitchen.

‘Do you want to wait or come back?’ the assistant asked the woman.

‘Eh?’

‘Do you want to wait?’

‘What for?’

‘Your medicine.’

The old woman looked at her strangely. ‘Where else am I going to go?’

Toast. He was sure he could smell toast. And he could remember carrying the plate in to his mother in the room with the recliner chairs and drips. Placing it on the table beside her and smiling and asking, ‘Is that enough?’ The clear bag, too, nearly empty (caution cytotoxic drug), and the pump that beeped every ten minutes for a nurse to come and press more buttons. His mother’s face, and George spending hours on the same page of a magazine.

But mostly he remembered the plate of toast, still untouched, hours later, as his mother was helped from her chair, saying, ‘Bart, take that back to the kitchen, the nurses are busy.’

Moy approached the woman at the counter, introduced himself and showed his identification. ‘You’ve heard about this boy?’

‘In the back lane?’ she said, indicating a door at the back of the shop.

‘Yes.’ He looked at her name tag. ‘Jay?’

‘Quite young?’ she asked.

‘Nine or ten, perhaps. We’ve found him.’ He showed her a photo Gary had taken of the boy before he left with the carer. ‘Not familiar?’

She studied the photo. ‘No.’

‘Let’s see,’ the old woman said.

Moy showed her.

‘Has he been taken?’

‘He was, we’ve found him.’

‘Good…parents’ll be glad.’

Moy returned to Jay, and a hair comb holding back her fringe. ‘Could I leave a copy?’ He gave her the photo. ‘He won’t say a word, so we have no idea who he belongs to.’

The shop assistant was lost in a thought. She met Moy’s eyes, took a moment and said, ‘This is probably completely irrelevant.’

He leaned forward. ‘Yes?’

‘Just a thought,’ she whispered, looking around. ‘I open in the mornings.’

‘Yes?’

‘And I walk to work…I only live down Dawes Street. The thing is, I often see this car…’

He waited.

‘Just cruising around.’

The old woman was sorting through her prescriptions.

‘How often?’ Moy asked.