‘But you’ve got the photo,’ Patrick said.
‘Wait, I’ll explain,’ Moy replied. ‘Daniel was in tears…he was a broken man. As the photographer carried on he sat in a chair and cried like a baby. Eventually he stood up and pleaded with the man. You want money? How much money? I only want one photo. But this photographer, he just kept on with what he was doing. You listening? Daniel asked. You listening to me? And then he got angry. He saw this knife on a bench and grabbed it. Then he held it to the photographer’s throat. You will come with me, he said, calmly.’
Patrick looked closely at the photo. Studied the expression in Daniel’s face.
‘Next thing,’ Moy said, ‘this photographer’s son comes in the room and Daniel lets go of the photographer and grabs the boy. He takes the knife and holds it to his throat.’
Patrick’s eyes widened; Moy could see him picturing the boy, his face screwed up, his hands trembling and his knees weak.
Moy talked in a whisper. ‘Right, pack your camera, and let’s get going, Daniel said. He held the knife to the boy’s throat as the photographer went outside and got his cart ready. Then they set off for Cambrai, the photographer driving, and Daniel sitting in the back with the boy, his neck all nicked and bleeding, blood on his shirt.’
Patrick settled back in his chair. Looking, Moy thought, like someone was reading to him from a book. He took the photo and looked carefully.
As the boy contemplated the image, Moy’s inbox rang its little bell. Moy knew he should ignore it, but hoped it might be something useful: the boy’s father discovered, the whole mystery solved in the click of a mouse. He opened the email and there was a message from Superintendent Graves at Port Louis: ‘DS Moy—Is this a familiar face? He was found washed up at Mangrove Point. Early 30s, brown hair, greying on sides, 171 centimetres…’
He opened the attachment and studied the face. The young man’s body had bloated in the ocean, and his skin was red and flecked with broken capillaries. He had three or four days’ worth of stubble. His hair was wet, full of sea grass.
‘He was found like this, naked. Looks like he’d been wearing a ring and earring, both removed.’
Moy studied the dead man’s flat chest and stomach, and his white skin.
‘I suppose you won’t recognise him, but I wondered if someone there might. He’s not a local. Coroner’s coming tonight but they reckon he’s been in the sea for twelve hours.’
Moy saw the lifelessness most in the hands, the fingers. The way they might have, but never would, move or twitch or form a fist.
Doesn’t ring a bell, he replied, but I’ll forward to the fellas here.
23
PATRICK WAS STILL not talking, but Moy had a lead. Sort of. He left the boy in the lunch room in front of a television documentary about seals and set off towards the south-east corner of Guilderton. It was a little enclave hemmed in by roads named Oxford and Cambridge, Margaret and Elizabeth, running off the central spine of King Edward Terrace. But there was nothing regal in the scribbly gums and stunted eremophilas; the roads worn away and colonised by grass; blue metal footpaths and humming transformers.
He pulled up in the driveway of a house on the far end of Cambridge Street. Fibro, with a tenuous brick veneer cladding, most of the fly-screens hanging loose. He walked up the drive past a half-buried fish pond full of brown water and what looked like a carburettor. At the edge of the scoria stunted cacti survived the Armageddon that had laid waste to the front yard.
He went to the front door and knocked. And waited. A neighbour stared over the fence. ‘Hello, do you know if Mr Williams is at home?’ he asked.
Blank face.
‘Alan Williams? Does he live here?’
The man said nothing and went inside. Moy knocked again. ‘Hello, anyone home?’
He took a few steps across the verandah, past a box of old
National Geographic
s and looked in the front window. ‘Mr Williams?’
There was a table with plates and mugs and breakfast cereal. A lounge suite and a coffee table covered with magazines. There were clothes on the floor, and a suitcase with a collection of airline tags attached.
He walked around the side of the house, standing on his toes to look in the higher windows: a bathroom (with frosted windows, latched); a spare bedroom (a single bed with a bare mattress, a dresser, a wardrobe); the main bedroom (a double bed, another wardrobe, open, full of neatly hung clothes); the toilet; and a third bedroom (empty, marks on the carpet showing where furniture had once rested).
His phone rang. ‘Shit.’ He fumbled for it and answered with a whisper.
‘Guess who I just got a call from?’ George said.
‘Dad, I can’t talk now.’
‘You been goin’ behind my back.’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
Moy continued whispering. ‘Dad, I’m in the middle of something.’
‘Speak up!’
He raised his voice slightly. ‘I’m with a suspect, Dad.’
There was a short pause.
‘Well, I’d like a word when it suits.’
‘Fine. I’ll pop around later. I’ve got some news, and someone for you to meet.’
‘Who?’
‘Later.’ He hung up and switched off the phone.
The shed door was locked, so he looked through the louvred windows and saw dozens of boxes, taped up and stacked on top of each other. There was a lawnmower and he could make out one end of a train set on an old door resting on trestles.
He looked around the yard. Tall grass growing through the remains of a vegetable patch. ‘Fuck.’
‘Can I help you?’
He turned to face a woman in late middle age, her hair up in a bun, one eye compressed in what he guessed was the legacy of a stroke.
‘Detective Sergeant Bart Moy,’ he said, producing his warrant card. ‘Guilderton police.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for Alan Williams.’
‘That’s my son.’
‘He lives here?’
‘You know…why are you asking me?’
Moy shrugged, uncomfortably. ‘You live with him?’
‘Are you asking or telling me?’
‘Asking.’
‘In that case, no. One of the neighbours called me.’ She looked at him with contempt. ‘So?’
‘I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Naomi Williams.’
‘Naomi…you might have heard, last Monday, a young boy—’
‘Oh, goodness me,’ she said. ‘You’re making some very… tenuous connections.’
‘No…I didn’t even know about all that business.’
‘There was no
business
, Detective. A few paintings. And a town full of very bored people.’
‘I wouldn’t necessarily argue with that, Naomi. But the thing is, this woman claimed to have seen Alan driving down Ayr Street when the boy was taken…by a man she
said
looked like your son.’
Naomi closed her eye and slowly shook her head. ‘That was very convenient. She got a good look?’
‘She wasn’t sure.’
‘No, she wasn’t, was she? But that’s enough reason for you to come and…snoop?’
He stared at her. ‘Well, yes, in a case of possible child abduction.’
Moy could see her jaw tensing. ‘Seeing how Guilderton has decided that my son’s a paedophile?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, he is, apparently. He brought a student home. The student told everyone, all we did was look at some art, but that’s beside the point. Only a paedophile would
lure
a student back to his house.’
Moy was lost for words.
‘So that’s why you’re looking in the shed. Alan got that child—’
‘We found him.’
‘So
he
would’ve told you to come here?’
A long pause; the sound of the fly-screen tapping.
‘I think I’ll put in a complaint about you, Detective.’
‘I’m sorry you see it that way.’
Naomi turned, found a key in her pocket and opened the shed. ‘Come in,’ she said.
They both walked into the shed. She switched on a light. ‘You can come out now,’ she called.
‘Listen, Mrs Williams, it’s not about what I think,’ Moy said. ‘It’s just my job, to follow up on everything.’
‘Rubbish. Did you ring Alan?’
‘That’s why I came—’
‘You were trying to be clever! As with everyone in Guilderton you assumed—’
‘I didn’t know about your son. I’ve been in the city for the last fifteen years.’
She stood her ground; then she turned and indicated the writing on the sides of the boxes:
paints
;
small canvases
;
brushes
;
sketchbooks
;
charcoals and pencils
.
‘See, after all that business he just didn’t feel like continuing,’ she said.
Moy was scanning the shed. ‘I could imagine.’
‘Now he just gets up and goes to work.’
‘It’s a small town, isn’t it?’
‘And getting smaller, it seems.’
He shook his head. ‘Okay, I’ll be honest, Naomi, I acted very stupidly.’
She looked at him, her face calming.
‘I thought, maybe…What can I say?’
‘Sorry would be a good start.’
‘Sorry.’
Naomi’s eye was clear and bright. ‘And I bet I know who saw Alan near this boy?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘It was the mother—her name’s Silvia.’
‘No, I can tell you. Her name wasn’t Silvia.’
‘Or her sister, the boy’s aunt—Jay.’
Naomi stared at him, and knew. ‘See, you listen to gossip, Detective.’
‘I didn’t say…’
‘You listen to gossip…’
Yes, in fact. It was his job. He said nothing.
‘The thing is,’ Naomi said, finally, ‘Alan drove me to town last weekend and shouted me a ticket to
King Lear
. He took an extra day off school and we drove back on the Monday afternoon.’
‘
King Lear
?’
‘So, he might’ve taken him. Assuming he went missing after that.’
‘No.’
‘When was it again, Detective?’
Silence.
‘Mrs Williams, I’m sorry. I suppose I’d complain about me too.’
Naomi stepped forward, took his hand and attempted a smile. ‘Perhaps it’s best if we all start again.’
‘Yes.’
‘Almost like you’d never been here, Detective Moy.’
24
MOY SAT BESIDE his father at the small dining table in the old man’s kitchen. Patrick sat in a smaller chair, his hands under his legs, occasionally looking up at the stooped man with his big ears and hairy nostrils.
‘We’re looking for Patrick’s parents,’ Moy told George. ‘Until then, he’s staying with me.’
George looked the boy over. ‘You speak?’
‘He’s a bit shy.’ Moy placed another crossword book in front of the boy. ‘You can do these?’
Patrick picked up a pen and started writing.
George glared at his son. Moy stood his ground, his arms crossed.
‘Well?’ the old man asked.
‘What?’
‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’
Moy shrugged.
‘I had a phone call earlier on.’
‘Good.’
‘Don’t get smart.’
‘Who was the phone call from, Dad?’
George stopped to think. ‘Janice…Janet? Either way, she was from the nursing home. She was after you, but she must have got the numbers mixed up.’
Moy didn’t know what to say. ‘I was gonna tell you.’
‘You were?’
‘It was just an inquiry.’
‘He’s put down your name, she says.’
‘There’s a three-year waiting list.’
‘I told you—’
‘Dad, what if you had an accident? What if you couldn’t look after yourself?’
George pointed his finger. ‘You were going to…’ He trailed off, looking at the boy. ‘You got many, Patrick?’
Patrick’s eyes drifted from the old man to the page.
‘Bit old-fashioned, eh? Words. No Facebook here.’
‘I’m not on it.’
‘And, what’s it called, the box thing?’
‘Xbox.’ He looked at the old man. ‘It’s good. I can play…’ Then returned to the crossword. ‘I can do these, too. Here, the most common element, silicon.’ He indicated.
George checked. Maybe the boy had a head for facts.
Moy knew his father wouldn’t let it go. ‘Dad…I’d never willingly put you into one of those places.’
‘Is that why you came home?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I can tell you one thing, you’ll never drag me out of here.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Once is enough. This is all we’ve got to show for a hundred years of killing ourselves. Land. Only a little bit, I know, but enough for some grass and weeds.’
‘Dad.’
‘You’ll never drag me out of here.’
Moy knew these words were raw. He could still remember the swearing and kicked walls from thirty years before; his father pacing the empty rooms of their farm house. Although he couldn’t remember what he said, he guessed it was along the same lines: land, and history, lost; banks as a sort of cancer that ate into honest people’s lives; relief, at least, that his ancestors weren’t around to see it. He could remember the moving van and the boxes of books and toys, and worst of all, the empty sheds and yards.
And then, attempting to convince his dad that it was time to go. ‘It’ll be great, won’t it, walking into town?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Come on then. The movers will need us to open the new place.’
Moy knew how hard it was for his dad. The actual moment of leaving. ‘Dad?’
‘Christ, son, they’ll wait.’
Back in the kitchen, Moy said, ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ve made a decision. I’m gonna move in with you.’
George wasn’t sure. ‘You never said anything about this.’
‘I’m saying it now.’
Patrick looked at Moy with a sort of
does this include me?
expression.
‘Easy done,’ Moy said, looking at both of them. ‘There’s no lease and I’ll be saving a hundred and eighty a week. We can use that for a gardener, or to get the place painted.’
‘You don’t want to.’
‘There’s only one lot of dishes to clean, one afternoon lost vacuuming.’
‘But you don’t
want to
.’
‘Why not? I can put up with you. I have for forty-two years.’
George just stared at him. ‘Maybe
I’m
not so sure.’
‘You gotta decide.’
‘I got things how I like them.’
‘So? We can work around you. Like Dad and Dave.’ He looked at the boy. ‘What do you think, Patrick?’