‘What’s going on?’ Humphris looked over to what was left of the house.
‘You didn’t notice the fire?’
‘No, my place is a couple of clicks down the track.’ He gestured to a hill that rose and dropped towards the horizon.
‘But this is your land?’
‘Yes.’
The farmer wasn’t tall, and it seemed to Moy that he might be shrinking as he talked to him. His breasts had formed udders that rested on a stomach straining to escape his flannelette shirt. He wore jeans, bare and white down the front where he’d wipe diesel and molasses from his hands. His boots had calcified, the brown leather worn thin and split beneath a layer of cow shit.
‘You didn’t notice anything?’ Moy said. ‘Yesterday?’
‘No. Why you fellas so interested?’
‘There was a woman inside.’
‘Shit.’ He raised his eyebrows and the white of his eyes caught the afternoon light. ‘Who was she?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. You ever seen anyone in there?’
‘No. Christ, no one’s lived there for years. It’s just a big rat trap…a ruin. We, I mean me and some of the other farmers around here, we’ve been trying to get the council to knock it down for years.’
‘Right…so you don’t think someone lost patience?’
Humphris stared at him, taking a moment. ‘Na…these are sensible fellas. They wouldn’t do that.’
‘And you think they’d know someone was squatting?’
‘Squatting?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘No, that’s a bit of a mystery, Detective…Moy, was it?’
‘Bart.’
‘Good-o.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Just lucky it wasn’t earlier, before we got the crop in.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You ever seen twenty thousand acres burn?’
Moy didn’t really know how big that was. To the fence line? The horizon, the next town? ‘So whoever was harvesting didn’t notice anyone?’
Humphris squinted to see the house hidden in the scrub. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’
‘I suppose not,’ Moy agreed, looking. ‘Thanks for your help.’ He took out his notepad and a pen. ‘Jo, was it?’
‘Yes. Jo Humphris. This is my road here, and this is where it ends, on Creek Street.’ He pointed. ‘You got any problems you come see me. Galbally, that’s my place. We’ve had it for a hundred and twenty years.’
‘Really?’ Moy said, as he scribbled. ‘The Moys used to have land, out past Cambrai. You heard of the Moys?’
‘No.’
Moy turned to go, but stopped. ‘By the way, what sort of car have you got?’
‘Eh?’ Humphris looked at him strangely.
‘We’re just trying to rule people out.’
‘White ute, Toyota.’
‘Good, that takes care of you.’
He started back through the scrub, jumped an irrigation ditch and passed through the gate of an old fence that surrounded the burnt-out house.
‘Moy,’ he said, greeting a sergeant in blue overalls, unbuttoned down to his breastbone, revealing a rug of curly hair.
‘Tim Monaghan,’ the towering figure replied. ‘I was expecting you earlier, Detective Moy.’
‘Detective Sergeant.’ He looked at the sergeant’s carefully trimmed moustache. ‘My father’s ill, I had to stop by. I assumed the firies were still going.’
‘Gone. They’re gonna send you a report. They came for the body, too. She’s on her way to town.’
‘That was quick.’ He made the mistake of smiling.
‘You’ll need these.’ The sergeant handed him a pair of feet covers. ‘Looks like no one much has bothered.’
‘Perhaps it was the CFS,’ Moy said, pulling on the covers. ‘They had two units, and they were all over the place.’
‘None of your fellas?’
‘Well, I’d hope not.’ He wondered whether Monaghan’s lips ever moved from the horizontal.
‘We’ve got stuff crushed up everywhere in here.’ The sergeant led Moy back into the house. ‘It’s like the Keystone Cops.’
Another investigator was taking photos of the floor in the lounge room. He’d set up markers and Moy was surprised to see that there were at least thirty points of interest around the room. ‘What have you found?’ he asked Monaghan.
‘A few footprints, but fuck knows who they belong to.’
‘Right, but nothing that might tell us who she was?’
‘No.’ The sergeant glared at Moy. ‘We’re still interviewing the possums. What about you?’
You prick, he thought. ‘The closest homes are down the end of Creek Street. Nothing of much help. The fella that called it in was driving past with his kids, going into town for some bread and milk.’
‘You’ve done the door-knocks?’
‘Yes. I had a couple of constables work their way right along.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Doesn’t leave you with much.’ Monaghan knelt down where the body had been. ‘The fire investigator reckons she was covered in diesel. Don’t know much else until the coroner’s done. No stab marks, no strangulation.’ He looked up at Moy. ‘You finished your initial report?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Yeah.’ He stood up. ‘This way.’
Monaghan led him into the kitchen. They walked on a raised aluminium walkway that had been laid throughout most of the house. ‘More prints here,’ Monaghan said, indicating unburnt boards. ‘Then there’s ash, and more prints.’
They arrived in the kitchen and Monaghan indicated the sink, full of broken dishes, and a chicken carcass on a burnt chopping board.
‘I could be wrong, but that’s a lot of dishes for one person,’ the sergeant continued.
‘Maybe she wasn’t houseproud.’
‘Maybe.’ He walked over to the sink and ran his index finger across some of the plates. ‘All greasy,’ he said, looking at Moy.
Moy shrugged. ‘So, perhaps, whoever did it had tea with her first?’
‘Maybe. That’s what
you
gotta find out, DS Moy.’
‘Right.’
‘That’s what the statistics show, isn’t it? People getting knocked off by someone they know? So, if these were squatters…itinerant, probably. Unlikely to be local. You work it out. You get paid more than me.’
‘Eat the chook, then have an argument?’ Moy said.
‘What about the diesel?’
Moy stared at the broken plates. ‘I suppose I could start with the chicken shop?’
‘Don’t bother.’ The sergeant held up a plastic wrapper. ‘They roasted their own.’
And so the tour continued, with more suggestions about what he might want to consider next time, how there was a manual about securing crime scenes, easily downloadable.
‘I’ll do my report,’ Monaghan concluded, as they returned to the front porch. ‘You may be the only detective on this, at least for a while. But that’s good, eh? You know all the locals, that’s how you’re gonna solve it. People don’t just appear from nowhere and then disappear into thin air.’
MOY HEADED BACK to town. Light rain had fallen and dried. As he slowed for the intersection of Creek Street and Peyser Avenue his car skidded on a slew of loose gravel and ended up stalled in the middle of the intersection. He sat looking both ways but there was nothing coming. His heart slowed and he took a deep breath, pressing his foot to the brake before realising it was too late.
Then he heard the shriek of tyres from further along Peyser Avenue. He started the car and headed towards the tennis club where, it turned out, a pair of cockies’ sons in a hot ute were busy with circle work on the newly resurfaced courts.
The ute had fat tyres and big rims, metallic paint and a pair of spotlights welded to a roll-bar. The driver, a peach-fuzzed teenager in a black singlet, was laughing, leaning into an ever-tightening circle as he called to his mate. There were a dozen or so skid marks covering all four of the courts. Moy could smell the rubber.
He pulled up on the side of the road and punched the number on the clubhouse into his phone. The club secretary answered and Moy asked him to come straight away. Then he got out and sat on the bonnet of his car with his arms crossed. Eventually the driver noticed him. Stopped; said, ‘Fuck it,’ and went back to circling. Moy stood up, and held his warrant card against the fence.
The ute stopped.
Moy walked over to them. ‘Morning, lads.’
The driver turned off his engine and got out. ‘Just a bit of fun.’
‘Assuming you had
some
sort of intelligence, wouldn’t you do this at night?’
The driver shrugged; his mate was trying not to laugh.
Moy took the keys from the boy in the black singlet. ‘It’s a very nice ute,’ he said.
‘Y’reckon?’
‘Of course, those tyres are illegal, and the rims.’
A few neighbours, from homes across the road, had gathered to watch.
‘I just don’t get it,’ Moy said. ‘If you robbed a bank, you’d wear a mask, wouldn’t you?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You would. Got a licence?’
‘Yeah.’
‘P-plates?’
‘Yeah…’ He looked. ‘Must’ve fallen off.’
Moy couldn’t understand why each new generation of farmers’ sons just kept getting dumber. Supposedly they were better educated. The water, the food, the air didn’t change. The schools didn’t change, the shops. Nothing…nothing ever changed. So why?
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said.
‘What, that’s it?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re not gonna do anything?’
‘No.’
‘Well…okay, thanks.’ He held his hands out for the keys.
‘No, I’ll take these. Mr Allen, he runs this place, he’ll be here in a minute. He said he’s happy to sort it out. Okay?’
They looked stunned. The boy kicked the tyre.
‘Mr Allen, he’s not a happy man at the best of times.’ He got in his car and started it. ‘I’ll hold on to these,’ he said, as he drove across the gravel.
There was policing and there was policing; he’d learned that in the early days. Gary had told him stories—about when he was a boy, growing up the son of a country copper in Mount Wilson. How back then the government didn’t supply police cars, and how he remembered holding onto his seat as his dad chased crooks through the backblocks in the family car, mum holding her hat, his sister and him, still in his Sunday suit after a morning in the Baptist church. How, when one fella ran his car off the road, his dad got out, took him by the collar and punched him in the face. Said, ‘Maybe you’ll think twice next time.’ Before getting back in the family car, straightening his tie and heading home for the Sunday roast.
The sun came out as he headed back through town. He passed George’s house and saw him out with the plumber, talking.
He stopped. ‘You okay, Dad?’
George stared at him, squinting. ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s me, your son.’
‘Oh…yes, I think it’s fixed.’
A few minutes later he was back in his office. He pulled a drawing out from under his blotter. A house with a smoking chimney and a boy, a circle with stick legs and arms; trees with orange trunks, and two brown suns. A sort of hybrid dragon-stegosaurus roaming the neighbourhood.
Moy was watching Charlie colour the beast with a glitter pen. ‘Is it a good one or a bad one?’ he asked.
Charlie looked at him and bit his lip. ‘Good.’
‘Has he got a name?’
Charlie nodded. ‘George.’
‘Grandpa? Is Grandpa the dragon?’
He felt himself descending, his head dropping, his shoulders sagging, the shudders rising, the tears. He pulled himself together in case someone came in. Took a deep breath, wiped his eyes and slipped the picture under his blotter.
But he still saw the small face, and the wiry legs. The frown of concentration.
Gary Wright appeared, framed in the doorway. ‘Coupla visitors out front.’
Moy lifted his head. ‘Is anyone dead, dying or lost?’
‘It’s the baker from the Hot Bread Café. He’s caught some kid stealing.’
‘Some kid?’
Moy returned with Gary to the foyer. He shook the baker’s hand.
‘Robert Wyeth,’ the baker said. ‘I got something for you, Detective.’ He used his hand to present a boy of maybe ten years old as if he were a prize on a game show. ‘I just about had a heart attack chasing him three blocks.’ He looked at the boy. ‘Well, what yer got to say for yerself?’
The boy kept a head of dusty hair resolutely lowered.
Moy took the baker’s arm and led him across the foyer. ‘How about I leave you here with Gary? I’ll take him and have a word.’
Wyeth thought about this. ‘Okay. You can have him. I just don’t want to see him back shoplifting.’
‘Right. I’ll let you know what’s happening. He wasn’t with anyone?’
‘Not that I noticed. What sort of parent would let their kid…I mean, let ’em out of school, let ’em run feral?’
‘We’ll talk to the parents.’
Wyeth wasn’t sure. ‘Watch him, he can run. He woulda got away, but he turned to look back, and then he ran into a bus stop.’ He studied the boy. ‘It’s probably not his fault. Probably the parents.’
Moy thought he could hear the baker’s voice softening.
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help.’ Wyeth took a deep breath. ‘You listen to the policemen,’ he said to the boy. ‘You’ll be okay…’
The boy looked up at him, refusing to concede anything. There was dirt, bark perhaps, in his hair. His lips were dry, scaly, and he kept licking them. Blue eyes floating in an ivory ocean and a fluorescent glaze. Moy waited for him to explain. But he just flicked hair from his eyes. Wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
14
TWENTY MINUTES LATER the boy was sitting in Moy’s office, busy with one of Mrs Flamsteed’s stir-fries. Moy had had it in the station freezer for months, squeezed in between the pies and Chiko Rolls. The boy smelled of disinfectant from where Gary had cleaned the grazes on his arms and legs.
‘Enjoying that?’ Moy asked.
There was no reply; just two eyes meeting his, searching the room and returning to the stir-fry.
‘My neighbour cooks for me,’ he said. ‘She knocks on the door and if I’m not home she leaves it on the porch with a picture of Jesus.’
The phone rang; he lifted the receiver and replaced it. The boy raised the plate to his mouth and scooped the food straight in.
‘Her name’s Mrs Flamsteed,’ he said. ‘If I don’t answer the door she walks around the house looking in all the windows.’ He demonstrated, peering through an imaginary window with a squashed nose and pouting lips. ‘And there’s me, hiding behind the bed, or in the bathroom.
Mr Moy
, she calls.
It’s just me
…
wondering if every
thing’s okay?
’