One Boy Missing(84)

‘There’s nothing that even looks like proof.’

‘So?’

‘Patience.’ He looked at his dad, and saw some old, forgotten determination.

‘You just drop me at his front door.’

‘Dad.’

‘Don’t worry. It’ll all be down to me. That’s how things used to get done. And it worked.’

‘Sometimes.’

Moy slowed and pulled into an overgrown clearing that ran off the track to the Humphris farm. ‘This’ll do.’ He killed the lights, and engine, and they managed to climb out, scraping the doors, their skin and face on wild blackberry. ‘You wait here.’

‘No.’

‘Dad.’

‘I can help.’

Moy placed his face an inch from his father’s. ‘That’s just what I need. You flat on the ground with another heart attack.’

George crossed his arms. ‘What you gonna do then?’

‘Wait here.’

Moy walked up the road until he could see the house. Then he moved onto a verge of soft sand and continued slowly. He could feel his breath and the sweat on his neck and chest. When he was on the edge of the compound he surveyed the area. The ute was still there, and he approached it. He looked in the back: wire and a long-handled spade. There was sand, and oil stains, and blood smeared on the tray and splattered on the sides. But there was also a pile of ear tags with hair, skin and bits of ear attached.

Then he stood back and looked at the ute. He saw something on the ground, bent over and studied it. A fifty-cent coin. He moved it with his finger and picked it up. Something else, further underneath. He reached for it. Felt it. Small, light, plastic. The toy car from the lucky dip, its fourth wheel still missing.

He started moving down towards the pig sheds. Stopped when his feet crunched gravel, jumped onto a small patch of grass. Walking around each of the sheds, he looked inside. And cursed himself for not bringing a torch. ‘Patrick,’ he whispered.

All he could see were small stalls, sows and their grunting, wriggling litters. Rows and rows of pigs. The smell of shit and stale feed. He turned a corner and there was a dark figure staring at him. ‘Jesus, Dad, what are you…’

‘I checked the others…just pigs,’ George said.

‘Christ,’ Moy hissed. ‘You promised you’d stay put.’

‘Yeah, well,’ the old man muttered, ‘reckon you need all the help you can get.’

Moy just stared at him. ‘Go back to the car.’

‘No.’

Then shook his head. ‘Come on.’

They left the compound and moved into scrub and freshly ploughed paddocks. As they walked along an irrigation ditch they looked in pipes and under culverts, prodded weeds and reeds, searched under trees for any signs of disturbance. ‘Where do you reckon he is?’ George asked.

‘Ssh.’

‘You checked all those sheds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Should we check again?’

Moy had seen a track. Several. They ran off the compound and between each of the paddocks on this side of the farm. Disappeared into valleys and over hills. ‘Where do you reckon they go?’

George shrugged. ‘Far as the farm goes.’

Moy set off along one of the tracks. He walked quickly, then ran. George struggled to keep up. When he reached the top of a low hill, four hundred metres or so from the house, he stopped. He squinted, searching the paddocks, the bush.

George eventually came up behind him. ‘Where you going?’

‘What’s that?’ Moy said, making out a group of what looked like sheds, surrounded by a ring of pine trees, another hundred metres along the road.

‘Pigs…chooks?’ George attempted.

‘Stay here,’ Moy said, and he was off, running at full speed towards the dark shapes. When he arrived he looked around the empty sheds, full of more junk, wire, tractor parts. ‘Patrick!’ he called, a whisper-shout, but there was no reply.

He came out behind the sheds and there was a car. It still wasn’t light but he could see it was a dark-coloured Falcon, boxy, beaten-up, and rusted. He could read the words on the peeling sticker on the back window. Karringa Cars. A back mud flap hung from a single screw. Opening the door, he looked inside. There were a few chip packets and cans, a map book that had fallen apart. The glove box was hanging open but was empty apart from a few lollies and fuses. He popped the boot and went back to look. A spare tyre, a petrol can. He smelled it. Diesel. Gauged the space; saw where a small body might have squeezed in. Dents in the panels like someone had kicked it from the inside.

He sat in the driver’s seat, looking back towards the sheds. Of course, he thought. Of course. There could have been a thousand cars in Guilderton that fitted the butcher’s description. Until you found the one that did.