One Boy Missing(51)

‘No, not yet.’

Then she asked if they had any missing persons, unsolved domestics, drug crops?

‘We’ve got a body in a burnt house, but I’m still looking into that.’

‘Well, our man still hasn’t been claimed. We got the autopsy report back and it says he’s been whacked on the back of the head with something flat. A shovel, or spade, perhaps?’

‘Nasty.’

‘A single fracture to the skull. And there was soil under his fingernails, and pine pollen in his hair and eyebrows.’

‘No one like that reported missing here.’

He could feel her burrowing into his head. There was tension in his neck, and he used his fingers to soften his muscles. Solve your own friggin’ case. I’ve got my own problems. Tell me who the burnt woman is, where she came from, where the missing kid’s hiding. Or buried. ‘Gotta go,’ he said, tired of playing along.

He put his phone in his pocket and took a deep breath. There were a hundred thoughts trying to pierce the endless fog in his head, and none of them connected. All he could think was that he wanted to get away from Guilderton, its gravel footpaths and experimental roads. The smell of the police station, its faintly blue fluoro lights, piles of papers like gas bills, except they weren’t. The lost, dead and dying. Screaming out for attention, like a blown globe or uncut lawn. Multiple jobs—dozens—but none of them he felt up to.

Fuck it, he thought.

‘Patrick!’

THEY LEFT GUILDERTON behind. The grey streets and shop-fronts, the granite Anzac and the smell of burning wood; the café, with its plastic flowers and pipe loaves. As they drove, Moy chose to forget. Memories that filled every room of his house. Weeds in the garden and in the cracks in the driveway. ‘It’s a nice bit of country,’ he said.

‘Not many trees.’

He guessed this wasn’t something a wheatbelt kid would say.

‘They cleared them a hundred and fifty years ago.’

‘I know.’ The boy played with his seatbelt.

‘But they couldn’t get all the stumps. So after they’d planted the wheat someone invented a plough that would…’

‘I know,’ Patrick repeated, looking at him. ‘The stump-jump plough. We went to this museum…’

The edges had crumbled so Moy drove in the middle. A freshwater pipeline followed the gist of the road, stretching across valleys on a viaduct that looked rusted and weak. The steep hills were bare and rocky; the low slopes and plains yellow with wheat. Moy noticed that Patrick wasn’t interested in the scenery. His eyes would move from his lap to the mid-distance, back to the dashboard, the radio, the clouds.

‘This is Guilderton’s water,’ Moy said, indicating the pipeline.

Patrick looked at him, lost in a thought. ‘Where’s it come from?’

‘A big reservoir, off to the north. The highest ground in the district.’

‘Is there enough water?’

‘I assume. It’s not New York, is it? Six or seven thousand people.’

‘Five thousand, eight hundred and eighty. It’s on the sign as you come into town.’

Moy ran over a dead fox with a smear where its head had been. ‘These little buildings are pump houses,’ he said, indicating a small brick structure through which the pipe passed. ‘There’s one every few kilometres.’

Patrick looked at him again. ‘But you said the reservoir was built on high ground. Why do they need pumps?’

‘Maybe it’s not high enough.’

‘There’s lots of pump houses.’

‘There’s a lot of water.’

‘And a lot of gravity.’

Moy stopped to think. ‘I’m starting to see you’re a clever young man.’

Patrick studied the ripe wheat. ‘Tom was smarter,’ he said.

‘Tom?’

‘Don’t be stupid, you know who Tom was.’

‘Your brother?’

No reply.

‘Was he older than you?’

‘Yes.’

Moy was determined to take it slowly. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘What?’

‘Tom. What was he like at school?’

‘He used to teach me my tables. Dad said he had a photographic memory. You could take a list of words, as hard as you like, and put them in front of him. Maybe five or ten minutes later you could test him…a hundred per cent, every time.’

‘That’d be handy for crosswords.’

Patrick stopped, thinking about what he was saying. ‘He remembered all of Dad’s phone numbers. Dad used to call him Teledex, but Tom got angry, so he stopped.’

There was a long pause. Moy was willing to wait. He watched an eagle searching for thermals or perhaps thinking about eating what was left of the fox. ‘Sounds like you really got on with your brother?’