‘Most mornings.’
‘What, just driving?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who’s in it?’
The shop assistant closed her eyes. When she opened them she was even more determined. ‘This man.’
‘Yes?’
‘And the funny thing is, I think I recognise him.’
‘You do?’
‘He’s a teacher, at the high school.’
Moy leaned forward, splaying his hands on the counter. ‘Are you sure?’
‘As sure as I can be.’
‘And this man, you know his name?’
‘No.’
He stared into her small, brown eyes. ‘And what sort of car is it?’
She stepped back. ‘Goodness, I’m not sure, but it’s an old-looking car.’
‘Old?’
‘You know, 1970s, or early ’80s, with a box shape.’
Moy laid his folder on the counter. ‘Like an old Falcon?’
‘I don’t know cars, Detective Moy. But it’s big and he always drives around with his arm out of the window. You know how they do?’
‘Who?’
‘Young folk.’
‘So he was young?’
‘Yes…well, youngish, not old.’
‘Thirty, forty?’
‘Mid-thirties,’ she guessed.
‘What about his hair?’
‘Brown, perhaps?’
The old woman stood up, walked towards the counter, picked a pair of reading glasses off a stand and tried them on.
‘They’re too weak for you,’ the assistant said to her.
‘At the high school?’ Moy asked her.
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
But she just smiled at him. ‘It’s a small town, Detective.’
17
IN THE EARLY part of the evening Bart Moy passed through the Flamsteeds’ front gate, his arms full of casserole dishes, and knocked on the front door. Louise Flamsteed was out straight away. ‘Let me help you,’ she said, taking the dishes, disappearing into the kitchen. There was a sound of glass and crockery being rearranged.
Moy waited.
‘Mrs Flamsteed?’ he called down the hall.
More dishes; more rearrangement.
‘Doug,’ he heard her calling, standing (he imagined) at the back door, scanning their quarter acre of succulents and cacti for her husband. ‘Doug, Mr Moy’s here.’
Moy looked down the hall at the freshly vacuumed rug, the 1960s telephone table and a macramé pot-hanger overgrown with a maidenhair.
Mrs Flamsteed came trotting down the hall towards him. ‘There was no rush,’ she said. ‘You could’ve held onto them.’
‘I have some others, at Dad’s house, and in the freezer at work.’
‘No rush, I’ve bought a few more.’
‘Not on my account?’
She tried to smile. ‘Come in for a cuppa?’
‘Thanks.’
Ten minutes later there were three cups of tea and a pot with a crocheted cosy cooling under the regard of a Virgin on the wall. A few inches below this was a tired-looking Christ slipping from his cross.
Doug Flamsteed, still in his overalls, snapped a biscuit in half and dunked it in his tea. ‘Harvest nearly done,’ he said. ‘Paschkes at least.’
‘Be glad when it’s over, with the noise,’ Moy replied.
‘Low yield this year.’
Although Moy’s cup was only a quarter empty, Louise Flamsteed topped him up.
‘Thanks.’ He could smell disinfectant again, this time laurel sulphate, a smell he always associated with the glowing lino floors at the RSL.
‘Every year there’s less rain,’ Doug said. ‘Global warming they reckon, who knows? Used to be they’d get thirty bushels to the acre, but not now.’
Moy wondered what a bushel was, but dared not ask. Flamsteed had once taught him maths and probably still thought him stupid. Still, he thought, forty years of metric and the world goes on like it’s 1959. ‘That’s what they reckon,’ he said. ‘Every few weeks they open another power station in China.’
Doug looked at him strangely.
‘Anyway,’ Moy said, looking at the deputy principal, ‘I was wondering, Doug, if you’ve got a teacher at your school who drives an old Falcon, or a Valiant?’
Doug massaged the tip of his nose. ‘Alan Williams?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Teaches art. What’s he done?’
‘Nothing.’
Doug sat forward. ‘He’s a very good teacher. Did that mural on the girls’ toilet, you seen it?’
‘Yes.’
But Doug still wasn’t happy. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No, truly, it’s nothing.’
‘You wouldn’t have asked if it was nothing.’
Moy felt himself back in Mr Flamsteed’s year nine general maths class.