Vanished

by James Delargy

  35 Emmaline

  Daylight. The sun rose turning the land and everything on it from black to violet to orange to yellow like a bruise slowly fading in time. Emmaline was certain that the memory of this night wouldn’t fade quickly.

  No one had responded to the gunshot. There had been no shouts, no search parties.

  With the rising sun came the heat. Her problem remained. A dead body and ten hungry animals. Ready to pounce and reclaim their meal. An idea arose. From her pocket she fished out the matchbook Matty had given her. His number. That had been a new experience, like some hard-boiled noir where the leading man gives his number to a damsel in distress. But Matty was no leading man and she was no damsel in distress. Just a damsel with a problem she now knew how to solve.

  Gathering some twigs and dried leaves from a straggle of trees the dingoes weren’t huddled in, she constructed a small fire near the body. Splitting the six matches in half to give herself two attempts, she struck three in conjunction. The grey-topped matches fizzled into life. Placing them beneath the kindling of dried spinifex grass, it caught immediately, smoking for a few seconds before bursting into flame. She piled on more twigs and a couple of dead branches, watching as they blackened and finally caught fire.

  Praying that the unnerving presence of fire would hold the dogs off for a while, Emmaline sprinted back to the caravan, over the sand dunes, rocks and tufts of spinifex, her legs running through treacle. Reaching it she grabbed her keys and sped off in the 4x4 barrelling towards Hurton, one eye on the road and one on the phone. Close to Hurton, one bar flashed up. Braking suddenly and searing two dark tyre marks into the tarmac she called it in, her breathlessness causing a slight panic at HQ as if she was the one in trouble. She assured them that she was just fine. But that Lorcan Maguire wasn’t.

  Hanging up, she dragged the vehicle around and headed back to Kallayee, back to where she hoped the fire was still warding off the hungry scavengers.

  36 Emmaline

  The fire had been on its last legs by the time she returned to the scene. A few of the braver animals had inched closer only to scatter again upon her arrival. Rather undignified, she had face-planted down the dune for the last few metres, her weary legs giving up.

  From there she sat, regained her breath and waited for backup. First came Rispoli, Barker and Anand. MCS were dispatching a team to help, backed up by dedicated admin support based at HQ.

  Forensics arrived soon after. Emmaline watched as they did their thing, the crime scene manager organizing the common approach path, the metal plates slowly sinking into the sand as if being eaten by the hungry desert. Other SOCOs swarmed around the body, collecting samples, photographing, some writing on pads, some working on tablets, another sketching the scene. It was as if Emmaline had warded off one attack only to let Lorcan succumb to these albino vultures.

  Rispoli approached her with a steaming cup of coffee.

  ‘Long night?’

  Emmaline took a sip. It burnt her tongue but her body saluted the caffeine.

  ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘A pack of dingoes.’

  Rispoli raised his eyebrows. ‘Lucky.’

  ‘Luckier if we had found him earlier.’

  ‘What do you reckon happened?’

  ‘I think we can assume that this connects with the message we found on Lorcan’s phone. Someone was after him. They already had Naiyana. He fled and made it to here.’

  ‘And Dylan?’

  ‘His backpack is at the scene. He’s not.’

  Even to her it sounded like a blunt summary of what had happened. Seeing the team leader step away from the scene, Emmaline got up and approached. Pulling the hood from her head, she could make out Dr Rebecca Patel, her dark hair shiny with sweat that streaked her face.

  Making for the off-road vehicles that were parked on the far side of the dunes, Rebecca pulled a bottle of water from a cool box and swigged it. No coffee for her.

  ‘What do we know?’ asked Emmaline, shielding her eyes from the vicious reflection of the white smock.

  ‘Facts?’ asked Dr Patel.

  ‘Facts.’

  ‘It wasn’t a dingo attack that killed him but I’m sure you already knew that.’

  Emmaline nodded. ‘I was the one under attack.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  She suddenly remembered that Rebecca Patel didn’t do jokes. Nothing should lighten the mood. Maybe she was right.

  ‘We have one male, around thirty years old. Missing a significant amount of flesh.’

  ‘The dingoes?’

  Dr Patel stopped, a look of abject sympathy on her face. ‘That is not a fact. The examination and any teeth marks will determine exactly.’

  A waste of time, thought Emmaline but kept it to herself.

  ‘But an assumption can be made—’ said Emmaline.

  ‘Can be made by you, Detective.’

  Emmaline pressed on. ‘Any initial determination on the actual cause of death? And date?’ She fully expected it to match the date of the frantic phone message – a week ago, 30 December. Lorcan hadn’t even made it to the New Year.

  Before Dr Patel could shoot her down with assumptions not being facts, Emmaline jumped in. ‘And I want your assumptions.’

  ‘But they might not make the report.’

  ‘I can live with that.’

  Dr Patel paused as if she was weighing up her whole career in that instant.

  ‘Shot. Once in the chest. No powder residue on the entry wound,’ said Dr Patel, sipping the water.

  ‘So not a suicide?’ asked Emmaline, the caffeine in her system suddenly hitting the right spots, her muscles abuzz.

  ‘There is residue on the victim’s two remaining fingers. But in my opinion the victim fired a gun during a separate instant. His death was definitely not a suicide.’

  ‘What type of gun?’

  ‘Hard to be a hundred per cent sure as yet but my assumption is a rifle.’

  ‘The type of gun that might be used to ward off dingoes?’

  Dr Patel considered this for a moment. ‘Yes. And the type of gun that makes suicide difficult unless you have very nimble toes. And he was still wearing trainers.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  ‘A week or so given the state of the body, plus the advanced decay from exposure to the heat. We’ve been lucky. Any longer and the evidence would have all disappeared.’

  ‘What about the broken bone? A defensive wound from a bullet?’

  Dr Patel shook her head. ‘No. There is a lack of soot for that to be the case.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It is badly fractured. Blunt force probably. A heavy impact.’

  Dr Patel delivered this coldly, the ice water now flowing through her system, doing the same job as the coffee was for Emmaline. Wakening her to a murder case.

  * * *

  Emmaline returned to the scene and found the Forensics team removing the body for further examination. Thankfully the remoteness of the location had prevented any media attention as yet. But that was sure to come soon. Like the blowflies that sense a rotting corpse, the press would come.

  Rispoli, Barker and Anand joined her at the side as Forensics underwent their final provisions. Emmaline filled them in on what she had learned so far. She would have to fill in whoever MCS sent out too. But her boss, Detective Inspector Angela Moore, had made it clear she was in sole charge. Solve the case.

  ‘How sure are we it’s Lorcan Maguire?’ asked Rispoli.

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent,’ said Emmaline.

  ‘More than what’s left of him, anyway,’ said Barker. It didn’t get a laugh.

  ‘So he was shot out here?’ asked Anand, looking around the scene. ‘And no one came to check?’

  ‘I performed an impromptu experiment last night,’ said Emmaline. ‘I can confirm that no one came to help me.’

  ‘Hurton is still over six kilometres away. Maybe they didn’t hear it.’

  ‘There’s little to block
the sound,’ said Rispoli.

  ‘Maybe it was someone from Hurton,’ said Barker.

  It was something Emmaline had started to consider. The people in Hurton hadn’t been inviting for the most part, unco-operative about what they knew about the family, all except for the drunk woman and Matty. And that was no reason to rule either out.

  ‘It adds weight to the message on his phone,’ said Rispoli.

  She nodded. ‘Someone came after them. And in the recording, he said that Naiyana was already gone.’

  ‘So her body is out here?’ asked Anand, joining Barker in looking around as if Naiyana’s body would suddenly rise from the sand.

  ‘Or somewhere,’ said Emmaline. ‘All we know is that whoever was after Lorcan Maguire caught him. And maybe Dylan too.’

  According to the message Lorcan had been escaping with his son. But he was nowhere to be found.

  37 Lorcan

  It had been a long drive back. With a stop-off in Wisbech for ice cream. All in all it had been a delightful road trip. Father and son together. He had picked up everything he needed – a cupboard, chairs and a second-hand sofa. He felt like he had achieved something significant. It was time to build on that. Literally. He had even managed to find a play park for Dylan to tire himself out and sleep in the cab while he nipped off to run an errand.

  On returning to Kallayee, Dylan immediately resumed operations in his thriving mine. Naiyana though had seemed distracted, acknowledging the successful haul of goods but when he had suggested getting started with constructing the cupboards she had waved it off for another day. As if she wanted the house to herself. Maybe she was nesting. He was sure that was a thing he had read somewhere. Getting used to a place. Making it your own. Feeling safe and secure. Whatever the reason he was happy to oblige. The well was waiting for him.

  While Dylan had slept he had stopped by an outdoor store and picked up a climbing harness. Securing it and strapping himself in, he lowered himself into the well. He continued to dig, filling buckets that he winched out using the old pulley that he had found, the harness making digging somewhat awkward but a damn sight safer than his weight collapsing the cap and plunging to his death.

  An hour in, the earth began to rumble, low but insistent, dust crumbling from the stone sides, choking the air. His first thought was that the well was collapsing but aside from the shower of dust the old blocks remained intact. His second thought was a low-flying plane overhead, so he looked up and searched for it. This was something he found himself doing on occasion, casually following the planes across the sky until the horizon or his vision gave out. But there was no plane in view. This rumbling was coming from underground again, but during the day this time instead of at night.

  From his time at school, he knew that West Australia as a whole was not known for major earthquakes apart from a large one in Meckering in 1968 and a smaller one in Kalgoorlie in 2010. There were also a lot of active volcanoes stretching from Melbourne to Mount Gambier but no eruptions in five thousand years. So he was pretty confident that he wasn’t digging down into a magma chamber.

  Ignoring the rumble for the moment he continued to fill another couple of buckets, but the rumbling failed to cease. Levering himself out of the well awkwardly – something that would get better with practice – he took the harness off and went hunting.

  Putting his ear to the ground he felt the reverberations through it. He walked towards the other side of the road and put his ear to the sand once again. He might have been mistaken but it felt stronger.

  Moving another few metres away from the well, further from their house, he tried again. This time the reverberations were accompanied by laughter.

  ‘What are you doing, Daddy?’

  He turned to find Dylan staring at him, the yellow dumper truck clasped in his hand.

  ‘Searching for something,’ he said.

  ‘Can I help?’

  Lorcan nodded. He continued to move and check, Dylan doing the same behind him, moving past the crossroads. The noise was definitely stronger in this quarter of town but where was the source? He had checked out most of these buildings before – even the recently collapsed one – when he’d gone scavenging for anything useful.

  A fruitless hour later he gave up. As he turned to go back home, a foil wrapper floated past him sparkling in the sun. He trapped it with his foot and picked it up. It hadn’t been faded with the sun. Recent. He wondered if it was one of Dylan’s. At that age kids had little or no concept of littering, leaving things behind like a marker to reassure them that they had been there before and that the path was safe. But the wrapper was for a Chunky Peanut Butter KitKat. A type Dylan detested.

  Resuming the hunt, he entered the nearest house. It was a solid wooden structure, one that he might have considered as their base but for the inner wall that had collapsed turning two bedrooms into one and causing irreparable damage to a hallway wall that a strong puff of breath could knock over.

  The rumbling was powerful here, shaking the wooden slatted floor as if he was standing on one of those massage plates at the gym. The cupboards rattled as if the town was being shelled, shaking the house to its foundations. Then he noticed something. A cupboard that was out of place, the skid marks in the dust showing that it had been moved. Had Dylan done this? And why? But even empty it was a sturdy piece of furniture, too much for a scrawny six-year-old to move on his own. Had Naiyana moved it? She had taken to walking around town to film her vlog, sometimes even at night, according to Dylan. Had she been here checking out furniture to take? Possible. But scavenging wasn’t his wife’s MO.

  38 Lorcan

  He put his hand on the cupboard. It was vibrating, almost buzzing like a generator but more powerful. As if something was alive inside. Which was possible. Lorcan opened the cupboard and jumped backwards. With his eyes closed. Only when he had retreated a safe distance did he take a peek. He expected to see something large and deadly. But inside there was nothing but a fine, floating dust like magician’s smoke.

  Following the tracks in the dust, he inched the cupboard to the side. It revealed a hole in the floor. Big enough to enter. With a pitch-black tunnel beyond. Without the cupboard hindering it, the rumbling sound increased in voracity. There was something down there. He wondered if it was some odd geological force, an anomaly never before discovered. That would be perfect for his book, a mystery solved.

  He was still considering this when he returned to the house to get a torch.

  Naiyana was inside, editing a vlog on her phone. It took three attempts to get her attention, like she was on another planet entirely.

  ‘I found a tunnel.’

  She looked up at him and frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A tunnel in one of the houses. The rumbling we keep hearing is coming from it.’

  Naiyana paused as if lost at what to say. Then she found the words. ‘What about the well? What about plastering the walls? Getting that furniture made?’ she said, pointing to the boxes propped in the corner.

  ‘You told me not to bother.’

  ‘I didn’t mean go off potholing, or whatever you’re doing. Besides having a hole in the basement isn’t unusual. Look at Coober Pedy and those places, houses with personal mines dug into the basements.’

  ‘For opal mining. This isn’t opal mining. It sounds like something is growing down there.’

  Naiyana glanced around, lowering her voice as if afraid Dylan would hear. ‘Focus on our house, Lorcan, rather than some adventure. I already have one kid to deal with.’

  ‘I’m checking it out,’ he insisted.

  ‘And what if it’s some kind of underground aquifer?’

  ‘That would be a good thing.’

  ‘Not if you fall into it.’

  ‘I won’t…’ he started but realized it was a losing battle. Grabbing the torch, he moved for the door. Act now, talk later.

  She interrupted his march. ‘I’m meeting an old friend tomorrow. And will check out the school in town t
oo. For Dylan.’

  Lorcan turned. She had tried to bury the bad news up front. ‘What old friend? Not one of the charity lot?’

  She gave him a faint shoulder shrug.

  ‘You know that’s not wise, Nee.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me about what’s not wise. You’re about to wander down a hundred-year-old tunnel cut into someone’s basement,’ she said, mockingly.

  Lorcan had no comeback to this. So he left the house with harsh words warning him that he should concentrate on fixing the house.

  * * *

  The tunnel was dark. The torchlight illuminated buttresses and joints that were solid but antique. The rumbling had disappeared, replaced by the clap of his footsteps. The construction was old but the smell was new, moisture in the air that made him wonder if it was indeed an aquifer. But in addition to the moisture was the unmistakable smell of hot oil. Worked oil. Industry. Maybe an open, underground oil deposit. If such a thing was possible. His geographical and geological knowledge didn’t extend that far.

  After ten minutes of careful manoeuvring, his torchlight fell on a small generator attached to what looked to be a red sifting device, conveyor belt and a grinding machine with wheels and a hammer. New machinery, not from the 1970s when this town was supposedly abandoned for the last time. He touched the side of the grinding machine. It was still hot. Someone had been down here. Mining. And recently. Lorcan felt his nerves take over. Suddenly he felt like he had stumbled upon something that he shouldn’t have.

  Who could be here? What were they looking for? And were they finding anything? In his educated opinion there were only two reasons to be down a hole in the middle of nowhere: drugs or gold. He didn’t want to be caught up in either of those possibilities alone and unarmed.

  It meant his exit was infinitely more rapid than his entrance speed, the torch bobbing in front of him, expecting at any moment to be confronted by person or persons unknown. Clambering out of the tunnel he tripped and skidded across the floor, smearing his shirt in fine dust.