Moy stopped himself from smiling. ‘What you been up to?’
Sergeant Gary Wright tasted and spat back the dregs of a cold coffee. ‘Our Mr Venables was seen emptying his bladder on the front window of Norrie Carmichael’s shop.’
Moy shook his head, and the old man looked up at him. ‘I’d say you got bigger problems, Detective.’
‘I dunno. You gotta take care of the little things first.’
‘Whoever’s got ’im, he could be halfway to Melbourne by now…or have ’im tied up in a room somewhere. Like I said, Detective. First few hours.’
Moy turned and took a few steps towards him. ‘And you don’t know anything?’
‘They brought him in at five,’ Gary said.
‘What were you doin’ out at that time?’ Moy asked, but the old man just looked at him.
Moy pulled off his tie, worked it into a ball, put it in his pocket and stepped towards the desk. ‘Axford’s out?’ he asked.
‘And Jason Laing.’ Gary Wright moved a map of the town centre between them and used a nicotine-yellow finger to point out streets. ‘Ayr Street,’ he said, ‘between Dunlop and Irvine. Side streets—Clyde, Bute, all the way along. Bryce and Ossie agreed to stay on, so I’ve got them searching the showgrounds.’
Moy looked at the old man. ‘So, what more do you think we could be doing to find this kid?’ he asked.
The old man smiled. ‘What kid? You can’t have no kidnapping if no one’s missed him.’
‘Maybe they haven’t noticed yet.’
‘Would you notice if yer kid wasn’t in his bed?’
Moy turned to the sergeant. ‘Why’s he in cuffs?’
‘Took a swing at Constable King.’
Moy looked back at him. ‘Well, that changes everything doesn’t it?’
He approached a door, tapped his code into the pad and passed through into a haze of disinfectant. Benches lined the hallway; he could see where the Filipino lady had wiped between the files that littered them. He walked down the hallway into an office which, surprisingly, was also clean. The black and gold letters on the door said Detectives, although he was the only one they’d had in thirteen years. The cleaner had organised his desk, leaving papers in piles held down by parts from an old copying machine. She’d dusted a vase that hadn’t held flowers for years and cleaned the fried chicken smears off his keyboard. The window was open. Moy could hear the distant voices of children playing in the yard of the primary school.
He leaned out of the window, into the car park of Ritchie’s Bakery, closed his eyes and thought. Then he sat down and flicked through his phone book.
After a brief tussle to explain himself to a receptionist, he was speaking to the principal. ‘A boy, nine or ten. Mousy hair, medium length.’
‘That narrows it down to forty, forty-five kids,’ the principal said.
He waited, listening to the children’s voices. ‘Could you check today’s absentees?’
‘I could, if you think it would help. There are always plenty away—especially this time of year. But if you want me to.’
‘Yes, I think that would be best,’ he said. ‘Brown hair, medium height…wearing some sort of pyjamas. What grade do you think?’
‘Four or five,’ she suggested.
‘That must narrow it down.’
She didn’t sound happy; couldn’t, perhaps, see the point of all this mucking around. Didn’t like to be told what to do.
‘Give me ten minutes,’ she said.
4
MOY RECLINED, STARING out of his window, listening to the blinds rattling in the wind. He tried to imagine the boy but could only see his own son, Charlie. The small boy with his few freckles, lip indented where he always bit into it, was playing on the floor of his old office in the city. He could remember Charlie handcuffing himself to the desk and recalled cursing, having to get up to unlock him. Charlie was singing a Wiggles song—no lyrics, just bum notes and nonsense words—occasionally getting a line right.
Moy opened a folder on his desk. Photos of a body: the stretched neck and the rope mark, the tongue still jammed between the teeth and the cheek. Upper torso hairless, covered in freckles and a scar where subject B73/2013 had been sliced by fencing wire. He was a forty-seven-year-old farmer, and he’d tied a decent knot first. He’d allowed seven or eight inches for the rope to stretch and he’d written a letter which he pinned to the front door: Carol, firstly, don’t let the kids in the tractor shed… Moy looked down and his son was still there, staring up at him. He closed his eyes and he was walking out of the hospital, into the night. There was a bench, and he sat down beside a woman sucking the last gasp out of a cigarette.