One Boy Missing(56)

‘Whatever you do, don’t start an argument. He’ll just get his back up.’

Patrick moved on to his second and third seedling. ‘Was he like this when you were a kid?’

‘Worse. He used to have a very short temper. Once, I remember, something happened in the traffic—someone cut him off, or didn’t indicate. So there he was, flashing his lights, tailgating him.’

Patrick was almost laughing. Moy knew he couldn’t stop now, even if he had run out of story. ‘So, Dad followed him all the way to Port Louis.’

‘Port Louis?’

‘Yes, just cursing him. You bastard! Pull over! And when this fella finally stopped…’

‘What happened?’

‘He storms out of the car, and Mum’s saying, George, get back in, don’t be so stupid.’

Patrick was sitting forward, the last petunia clutched in his hand. ‘Your mum?’

‘So Dad marches forward and it’s this little old lady. And she says, have you been following me? Like that. Have you been following me?’

Patrick started laughing.

‘And Dad says, Oh no, Missus, I’s just comin’ back from the shops.’

Patrick made a hole and put the last petunia in. He pressed around it with his fingers and Moy watered the flowers. ‘There, finished,’ he said, standing, looking at the seedlings. ‘As good as new.’

Patrick stood next to him. ‘You think they’ll survive?’

‘Of course. Now I’m gonna sweep out the trailer. How about you put on the kettle and make me and Grandpa a cup of tea?’





30

THE NEXT MORNING, the first they were all together in George’s Clyde Street house, Moy was up early sitting in his bedroom at his computer. He’d closed his dad’s door, put on the kettle and made a coffee. Then came the dishes, scrubbed, scalded and put away. He’d returned to his room, stopping and surveying the boxes, the names of the products crossed out and relabelled with BM’s DVDs; my clothes; old elec equip.

He’d spent half an hour setting up his computer on a desk made from the planks and bricks of his old bookcase. Started his old machine, connected to the internet and checked his emails. Nothing much, just work. Stuff (he guessed) a better cop would be onto straight away—reports, requests—as well as spam about cheap hotels and a photo of seventeen nuns in a mini.

In the end he’d drifted back to the news: some footballer out three weeks with a hamstring, a new tax on cigarettes, a boy dead after waiting fifty-seven minutes for an ambulance.

He clicked onto the story and studied the boy’s face: freckles, and fine black rings around his pupils. The child, still in his pyjamas, was sitting beside his bed, playing with toys.

He knew when I needed a hug and I knew when he did, his mother had said.

Moy felt unable to take his eyes from the boy’s face.

A spokesman for the ambulance service. We received a call at 12.47 and the first unit was dispatched two minutes later.

Moy tried to make out what the boy was playing with. It was a plane, two wings and a broken propeller.

The address we were given was Forbes Avenue, but in the rush to respond our paramedics read this as Forbes Street.

Missing wheels.

By the time they’d realised their mistake it was 1.07, and by then, I believe, the parents had rung a second time.

And a red lump which, he supposed, was the pilot.

We extend our sincere apologies to the family. Both paramedics have been stood down pending the results of an investigation.

The mother explaining how she tried, for thirty or forty minutes, to get a ball of plasticine out of her son’s throat. How she patted his back and squeezed his chest, but he kept turning blue.

Moy looked out of the window. The blinds were half-closed and the early morning was dark, split into small Cartesian moments. The blue and white of the sky pulsed with energy. He sipped his coffee and wondered how many people it would happen to again today. A hundred, a thousand?

‘Good morning,’ Patrick said, appearing behind him.

Moy clicked off the screen, and turned. ‘Hey, Patrick, sleep okay?’

‘Sort of.’ He winced, moving forward. ‘I think I heard George snoring.’

‘That’s something you’ll have to get used to. Along with several other…issues.’

‘Like what?’

But before Moy could provide the details his phone rang. It was Gary Wright. ‘This place is turning into a hive of excitement,’ he said.

Moy took a moment. ‘Please tell me, nothing major?’

‘I don’t think…but you better take a look.’

THEY DROVE PAST Civic Park, along Creek Street and turned onto Dutton Street. Halfway along there was an empty block with a tall sculpture sitting in the middle of weedy ground. It was granite, sitting on a plinth: a single stem of ripe wheat in the shape of a man, a farmer with broad shoulders and a sort of earless, mouthless head. And growing from the head, ram’s horns, turning in concentric circles that (a plaque explained) represented the rhythm of the seasons, the circle of life. ‘It’s called The Australian Farmer,’ Moy said.