One Boy Missing(81)

‘You mentioned John Preston.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you know of anyone else?’

There was a long pause. Then Foster said, ‘There was a fella called White…has alpacas. And whatsisname…Humphris. Jo Humphris. Place out along Creek Street.’

Moy felt his heart racing. His mouth was dry. ‘Humphris?’

‘Yes.’

‘End of Creek Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whole heap of pigs?’

‘Yeah, think he’s got pigs.’

And then Moy remembered. The small man, sitting on the tractor, watching.





42

IT WAS ALMOST ten-thirty when they turned down the dirt road, driving slowly, stopping to open and close two gates, crossing stock grates, following the track across the lip of a dam, through a small forest of old sheoaks and finally, to a sprawl of sheds and leantos, silos and the farmhouse.

They stopped and got out.

‘Watch for dogs,’ Moy warned, but all they could hear were pigs, sniffing, shifting about in their own shit.

‘Hello, anybody home?’ Jason Laing called.

Moy walked towards the house and a security light came on. A 1960s cream-brick box, complete with a terrazzo verandah and collapsing gutters. There was no driveway or paths, just dirt and gravel spread out around the house. He approached the front door, littered with a pile of muddy shoes and boots, and knocked. ‘Mr Humphris…police.’

He knocked again. ‘Hello?’ Then he moved around to the front and side windows and looked in. He turned to Jason. ‘Torches.’ Laing returned to the car and fetched two torches. They spent a few minutes looking in windows. Drawn curtains. A few gaps. Shadows. Furniture.

Away from the house, in a shallow valley, there were six long pig sheds. They walked down and around them and Moy asked, ‘Why would you build your house so close?’

Laing shrugged. ‘Maybe he likes pigs.’

They looked around the tractor shed, up and over a near-new John Deere 7030, a spray unit and a seeder with long, languorous arms sprouting hydraulics and seed tubes. There was a hayshed, chooks, an old transportable work-room and two old silos. They were rusted, laid flat beside a collection of smaller scarifiers, ploughs and seeders. And behind all this, a sort of junkyard of things-that-might-come-in-handy. Rolls of wire, galvanised iron and piles of sand, gravel and lime.

Moy studied the sheets of iron. They were the only material not under- and overgrown with oats and weeds. He lifted a few sheets. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked Laing.

‘What?’

But then something else caught his eye. He quickly walked the ten or so metres towards a fence-line that separated the compound from an area of bush. He stopped and looked down. Laing came up beside him and asked, ‘What is it?’

‘You can see,’ Moy replied, indicating.

A concrete slab, three by four metres, freshly cured. And nearby, a mixer, a bucket and a coiled hose.

‘So?’ Laing asked.

‘Patrick said they were kept in a shed.’ He knelt down, running his finger along the side of the slab.

‘What is it?’ Laing asked.

‘Here,’ Moy replied, and showed him. ‘A depression, where there’s been a wall, and maybe a post.’ He used both hands to move soil.

Laing shone his torch on it. ‘You think Patrick’s here?’

Moy stood up. He turned in one complete orbit, taking in every detail of the compound. ‘Patrick,’ he called. And then waited, listening. ‘Patrick?’

‘Maybe there’s another—’

‘Ssh.’

Moy was listening. To everything, no matter how distant. A rusty hinge, miles away; Doug Flamsteed locking his car. ‘Patrick?’

There were headlights. Through the bush, then on the drive. The gates. Stopping. Jo Humphris got out of a battered ute and stood looking at them. Moy recognised the small, flannelette body, the pot belly and short legs, the fat face and wild black hair.

‘Detective Sergeant Bart Moy,’ he said. ‘This is Constable Laing.’ They walked over to him.

‘Yeah, I remember you,’ Humphris said, attempting a smile, taking both men’s hands and greeting them. ‘You were looking into that fire, at that old squat?’

‘Yes,’ Moy replied.

‘You catch your man?’

‘We did, as a matter of fact. Alex Naismith. You know him, eh?’

‘Yes.’ He turned and headed towards his front door.

‘He worked for you?’

‘If you’d call it that.’

Moy and Laing followed him.

‘And you know what happened to him, don’t you?’

They reached the door and Humphris turned and looked at them. ‘I took him on for a harvest, and he stayed on after that. But then he started turning up late…never finished nothin’. Then he started arguing. So I sacked him.’