One Boy Missing(4)

Which reminded him of the boy.

He drove along Murchland Drive, over a railway line that was only ever used by a tourist train, and along Creek Street, the waterway dry two months early. He slowed to look in the crevices along the creek, the roots of ghost gums covered in leaf trash where the soil had been washed away. He pictured a small, pyjama-clad body trapped in dead branches. A grazed shin, a lick of wet hair across the mouth and a twisted limb. For a moment he wasn’t sure if he actually hoped to see it.

There was nothing in the creek. He stopped his car and went into a toilet block. Nothing. Except paper shoved down the head and a cracked sink. Cracked, as it had been when he was a boy, and probably always would be.

He walked another thirty or so metres into Civic Park. There was an old steam train that kids still climbed over, pretending to be drivers and firemen, burning their legs on iron plates in summer. In the cab all the knobs had been removed and the firebox welded shut. Even as a kid he’d known there wasn’t enough train left for a decent imagining. Surely it was just an easy way to get rid of industrial junk? Shit. Give it to the kids, they won’t know.

Nothing under the train.

Then he searched a set of concrete pipes laid out for the kids to crawl through. He found a used franger and a dead bird but no boy in pyjamas. Started to wonder if there really was any boy. A kidnap? In Guilderton? Who was this butcher, this turd-thrower turned meat-trimmer, and why had no one else seen anything?

He checked the rose garden, the wisteria arbour and even the little bit of space under the electric barbecues.

Nothing.

He gazed up and, across the road, noticed the Wesfarmers man dragging rolls of wire out in front of his shop. Then there were packs of droppers on a wheelbarrow, bags of starter rations on a trolley and a few water pumps. He returned to his car and drove down Ayr Street, the shops open now, or opening. The word had got around and a few shopkeepers stood about chatting. They looked at him and he raised a finger from the steering wheel. A pair of mechanics stood at the gate to Boston’s Motor Repairs, looking at something in a newspaper and laughing.

Moy turned the corner and stopped in front of the butcher’s laneway. Bryce King was still standing with his hands behind his back, scanning the road and laneway as if something might happen.

‘Bryce, let me know when Crime Scene arrives,’ Moy called from his car.

‘When are they due?’ King asked, approaching.

‘It’ll be mid-morning. Everyone in Ayr Street—’ He wound up the window. He hoped King hadn’t noticed the rubbish in his foot wells. ‘Don’t care when they arrived. Ask ’em if they’ve seen a lost kid hanging around.’

Moy started to drive off. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he called back, ‘remind that butcher to get down to the station.’

He followed a tractor with a raised plough. Each of the tines was tangled with roots, weeds, pieces of paper, and one with what looked like a flannelette shirt. He studied it, but wasn’t sure. Then, it fell to the ground, and the tractor turned the corner. He stopped, got out, examined it, even smelled it. But it was too big for a boy.

And how would it have got there?





3

IT WAS MID-MORNING before Moy arrived at the station. Up the road a small group had gathered outside the courthouse. He recognised a man with a goatee done up in a white shirt and loud tie. It’d been three weeks since he’d arrested him. Stealing from his employer, a shed company. Coming in on the weekend to help himself to sheets of stainless steel and aluminium that he sold to a cousin who made kitchens. Simple case, no one believed he intended to replace the stuff. And here he was, looking up at Moy, mumbling something to his wife and parents. They turned and glared at him.

He passed through the glass doors, already trapping heat, announcing: Guilderton Police Station: If Unmanned Seek Assistance at 13 Gawler Road.

He greeted the desk sergeant, a forty-something Gary with sideburns and a strange semi-afro, and said, ‘Tell me they’ve found him.’

‘Not a word.’

An old man sitting in the waiting area said, ‘You’d think someone would’ve missed him by now.’

Moy turned and noticed the handcuffs on his wrists. ‘What do you know?’

The old man replied through a beard full of crumbs. ‘Maybe Mum mighta slept in. But it’s a school day, eh?’

‘You keep quiet,’ the sergeant said.

‘You wanna find him quick. It’s the first few hours that matter.’

‘You wanna stop your mouth flappin’.’

The old man shrugged, leaned forward on his knees and snorted back into his adenoids. ‘That’s what happens, eh? CS fuckin’ I.’