Patrick was still looking, unsure.
‘Come on,’ Moy said, going into the cell, sitting and then lying on the bed. ‘It’s mainly for the farmers who get on the grog.’ He stopped again. ‘It’s like a cubby house.’ He motioned for Patrick to come in.
Patrick took a few steps, looked up at the bars and then crossed the threshold.
‘See, you could decorate it: lava lamp, the whole lot.’
Patrick’s face twisted. He dropped to his knees, fell forward and crumpled into a ball.
Moy knelt beside him. ‘You okay?’
‘Please…’
‘Should we take you out?’
But the boy just kept crying.
Moy picked him up and carried him from the cells. He draped him across his shoulder, entered the code and left the room. When he had him in his office, he lowered him into a chair. ‘Hey,’ he said, but Patrick just sobbed, fighting for breath.
Laing stepped into the office. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine,’ Moy replied.
The constable just waited.
‘Fine.’
Laing left the room.
Moy sat beside the boy. ‘I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t such a good idea, was it?’
A vacant stare. Moy looked around. Picked up the old photo on his desk and held it for a while. ‘I didn’t tell you what happened to Daniel Moy, did I?’
Patrick shook his head and sniffed.
‘See, after all that walking, the photographer wouldn’t go with Daniel.’
Pause. ‘What do you mean?’
‘After walking for two days the photographer wouldn’t go with Daniel, to take the photo of his daughter, Lizzie. So Daniel said, listen, she’s my only daughter, and she’s gone. Me and my wife are worried we won’t remember what she looked like.’
‘But you’ve got the photo,’ Patrick said.
‘Wait, I’ll explain,’ Moy replied. ‘Daniel was in tears…he was a broken man. As the photographer carried on he sat in a chair and cried like a baby. Eventually he stood up and pleaded with the man. You want money? How much money? I only want one photo. But this photographer, he just kept on with what he was doing. You listening? Daniel asked. You listening to me? And then he got angry. He saw this knife on a bench and grabbed it. Then he held it to the photographer’s throat. You will come with me, he said, calmly.’
Patrick looked closely at the photo. Studied the expression in Daniel’s face.
‘Next thing,’ Moy said, ‘this photographer’s son comes in the room and Daniel lets go of the photographer and grabs the boy. He takes the knife and holds it to his throat.’
Patrick’s eyes widened; Moy could see him picturing the boy, his face screwed up, his hands trembling and his knees weak.
Moy talked in a whisper. ‘Right, pack your camera, and let’s get going, Daniel said. He held the knife to the boy’s throat as the photographer went outside and got his cart ready. Then they set off for Cambrai, the photographer driving, and Daniel sitting in the back with the boy, his neck all nicked and bleeding, blood on his shirt.’
Patrick settled back in his chair. Looking, Moy thought, like someone was reading to him from a book. He took the photo and looked carefully.
As the boy contemplated the image, Moy’s inbox rang its little bell. Moy knew he should ignore it, but hoped it might be something useful: the boy’s father discovered, the whole mystery solved in the click of a mouse. He opened the email and there was a message from Superintendent Graves at Port Louis: ‘DS Moy—Is this a familiar face? He was found washed up at Mangrove Point. Early 30s, brown hair, greying on sides, 171 centimetres…’
He opened the attachment and studied the face. The young man’s body had bloated in the ocean, and his skin was red and flecked with broken capillaries. He had three or four days’ worth of stubble. His hair was wet, full of sea grass.
‘He was found like this, naked. Looks like he’d been wearing a ring and earring, both removed.’
Moy studied the dead man’s flat chest and stomach, and his white skin.
‘I suppose you won’t recognise him, but I wondered if someone there might. He’s not a local. Coroner’s coming tonight but they reckon he’s been in the sea for twelve hours.’
Moy saw the lifelessness most in the hands, the fingers. The way they might have, but never would, move or twitch or form a fist.
Doesn’t ring a bell, he replied, but I’ll forward to the fellas here.
23
PATRICK WAS STILL not talking, but Moy had a lead. Sort of. He left the boy in the lunch room in front of a television documentary about seals and set off towards the south-east corner of Guilderton. It was a little enclave hemmed in by roads named Oxford and Cambridge, Margaret and Elizabeth, running off the central spine of King Edward Terrace. But there was nothing regal in the scribbly gums and stunted eremophilas; the roads worn away and colonised by grass; blue metal footpaths and humming transformers.