The Vale Girl

by Nelika McDonald

  He went to the window. From here he could see down the main street. Knots of people stood together outside the bakery, the butcher’s. Gossiping, gossiping. The breeze carried fragments of conversation to him.

  ‘And when she said she wanted to paint her fence lilac, of all colours, I just pointed out it wasn’t on the heritage list of colours so the Conservation Society wasn’t likely to approve it.’

  ‘Lilac, for a fence!’

  ‘Thinks she’s still in the city.’

  ‘What’s next? She’d have the neighbours follow suit if she could – Crossley Street painted all the colours of the rainbow!’

  ‘Like a jar of boiled sweets.’

  ‘Boiled sweets! Terrible.’

  Banville loved fresh meat. Something they could peck at like vultures, drag through the dirt and rip apart with their sharp little beaks. It was different to Sydney like that. When someone went missing in Sydney, the locals pulled the blinds down and shut the doors of all of the flats in the block; they kept to themselves, and kept their own at home. In Banville, people gossiped, they conjectured and speculated until they were blue in the face, but never said anything they could be held to. It was a matter of survival. The person you saw mitt-deep in a golden handshake at the livestock auctions could also be the person who helped you finish a harvest when bushfires loomed behind the hills that summer. That person’s wife might teach your children at school. You did not shit where you ate.

  Henson had to sift through this information and misinformation, see if there was anything left afterwards. It had taken some getting used to, the complex network of affiliations and alliances, feuds and enmity, not to mention the unwritten code of conduct that governed it all. He’d put his foot in it a few times before he’d learnt to listen to local wisdom. On his second week here, Henson had arrested Young Vic Caulfield for driving his tractor up Main Street to the feed and grain store with little Molly Rivers on her roller skates tied to the tow bar. But then his deputy, Roberts, had told him that Molly had leukaemia and Young Vic was just trying to make her smile. Furthermore, they had to get feed for the cattle and the Caulfields had no other vehicle because one of the Wolfe boys, Mitch, an aspiring mechanic, had tinkered with their ute and rendered it unusable. He’d taken it apart and couldn’t get it all back together again. The Caulfields had only let him have a go at it because they thought if he was busy under the bonnet he’d stay away from their Rachel. The Caulfields fancied themselves a bit, and had higher aspirations for their daughter than a local hood. Henson had let Young Vic off with a warning.

  The Sergeant relied on Gertie, now, to tell him what was what. He didn’t want Roberts getting too big for his britches. It hadn’t taken Gertie long to insinuate herself firmly into the current of community gossip, and he knew his wife had his best interests at heart. He also knew that the locals would have more respect for a copper who could use his discretion and take into account local extenuating circumstances than one who stuck to the letter of the law like a fly to a dung heap.

  There were other customs in Banville that were so entrenched they might as well have been law, routines that grew from habit into gospel, with reasons for them all. Some of them were just considered the decent thing to do, like buying a round when it was your turn at the pub, or practical, like giving way to northbound travellers at Phelps’s Crossing and southbound ones at the Carter Bridge. Others were silly, like hoisting your mate’s jocks up the flagpole at the council offices on his birthday. Things that a man didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. You did not dob in your neighbours. Sitchwells and Coglins did not speak to one another. Mackeys would speak to a fence post. The minister was a man of God, and therefore untouchable, and so too were the Doyles, men of government, and Old Man Lanagan, because he had been around for longer than the stars – in Banville you still respected your elders.

  It was like living in a time warp in a lot of ways. For the most part, Banville folk were traditional and conservative, with the notable exception of Claudette Stilt, who claimed she could divine the future from the splatter patterns on the mudflaps of cars. The pace of change around here was akin to that of a snail, but the people of Banville weren’t stupid. They knew they were sitting on a goldmine of a rural country idyll, not too far from Sydney for a weekend drive but just far enough to keep the air clear of exhaust fumes. They understood that people came to Banville because of what it represented to them: the alternative to their high-density city lives; a quiet, sweet little town, quaint and uncomplicated. They worked hard to protect that image of their town, because that image put dinner on the tables of a lot of the families who resided there. If the tourists wanted quiet and sweet, then that was what they would get.

  Farms skirted the fringes of Banville and spread well into the state, wheat mostly, but also cattle and some other crops, corn, sorghum, cotton and the like. Those families prayed to the capricious gods of weather for the rain to soak their fields, but everyone else just prayed to the New South Wales Tourism Board. These were the owners of the businesses on Main Street; the gift stores and clothes stores and bookstores, the delicatessens, cafes and tea houses. The operators of guest houses and public houses, the proprietors of nail salons and hair salons. Even those residents who lived on the farms often had a sideline, a Historic Banville tour operating from their minibus on the weekends, an antique restoration service, a roadside stall selling chutney or strawberries, a nephew with a part-time job at the Heritage Museum or the pie shop. They all capitalised on the tourist trade in any way they could, and it pulled them through the dry seasons. And lately, every season had been a dry season.

  The main street of Banville was very pretty, and it was easy to see how visitors could be seduced by her. But it still surprised Henson how few people ever drifted off the tourist trail and into the back streets, where the true heart of Banville was. That would whip their rose-coloured glasses right off their faces. Where the locals actually lived and ate and fought and played and slept, it was just an ordinary town, plain and dull. And in ordinary towns, there were broken things, ugly things, desolate and deserted things, and people who were all those things too. But, the sergeant supposed, nobody actually wanted to see any of that. They could see all of that in the city. And as long as nobody ventured too far or looked too closely, Banville could remain a profitable, charming country haven.

  Henson had come to respect the people of Banville during his tenure there, but he hadn’t had a big case like this in the town before. The gossip mill of Banville would either be a great help, or a great hindrance, he suspected. In fact, this was the first missing-person case that Henson had worked in over ten years. Hence the arrival of the Sydney lot from the Missing Persons Unit. Sergeant Henson sniffed. He didn’t much hold with specialty units. In his opinion, good coppers were all-rounders.

  He looked at the picture that lay on the lunchroom table. A school picture, the only one they’d been able to come up with. Sarah Vale was pretty and fierce-looking, with low, thick eyebrows. She didn’t smile, but looked at the camera in impatience, as though she had other places to be. Dark hair, green eyes. Could do with a good feed, by the looks of those collarbones. The sergeant stared at the planes of Sarah’s face, memorising them. He wondered who else had ever done this, held on to a photo of the girl and really studied her, noticed how the freckles across her nose were sprayed in a fine mist, or how the bow of her lips darted into a sharp point, or how her chin had a tiny gentle cleft in it. Did she have any birthmarks? Did anyone know what her favourite colour was? Or if she sometimes turned the light on in winter, even when she didn’t really need to, because it made her feel warmer? When she went to the bathroom did she ever fold the toilet paper into a point so the next time she came she could pretend she was at a fancy hotel? Did she put the milk or the tea in first when she made a cup? Who was Sarah Vale, anyway?

  When someone went missing, there were several possibilities – suicide, running away, abduction. Henson knew neither of those first two things ha
d happened. Everything about the scene at the creek bank had told him that there had been activity at that site, some sort of scuffle involving more than one person. Footprints from at least three sources were imprinted in the creek bank, overlapping too much to be of any use. Even if he ruled out two sets as belonging to Tommy and Sarah, there was at least one other set to account for. Branches were bent and in several spots completely ripped off a tree that overhung the water, the stumps splintered and gaping. Also on that tree, a couple of smears of blood shaped like comets and about the size of five-cent coins were swiped across the bark near the base. Fingerprints? Two leaves had been found, also with blood on them, and apparently a few shorter hairs had been taken for testing too. Henson was waiting for forensics to get back to him, but he would have bet good money that the other strands of hair they’d found clogged in a dragged patch of mud heading down to the water belonged to Sarah.

  Running away was even more improbable than suicide. Why would she run away from the creek, not from home? In her togs? Why not just head straight to the station? And if she was running away, why would Sarah leave a backpack with her money in it behind? No, neither of those options made any sense. That left abduction. But even that wasn’t straightforward. What was the motive for kidnapping? It sure as hell couldn’t be ransom, unless someone had been misinformed. Unlikely. Susannah’s reputation preceded her.

  Henson was mulling over these questions when the detective from Sydney appeared at the doorway.

  ‘The mother,’ he said.

  Sergeant Henson sighed. The mother. Indeed. He had tried talking to her already. She barely seemed to remember who Sarah was. But at least they were getting out of the station.

  ‘Righto,’ he said, and picked up his hat. ‘I’m driving.’

  When they got to the Vale house, the detective, whose name was Crane, Sergeant Henson, Constable Roberts and two of the Sydney senior officers stood in the front yard looking up at the house. Every time he saw it, Henson was struck by how big it was. How grand it must have been, once.

  ‘Could do with a coat of paint,’ Roberts said, his hands in his pockets and his chest thrust out. Sergeant Henson stared at him until he looked down at his shoes, and then started up the front steps. The door was open.

  ‘Ms Vale?’

  The house was tidy. Everything was old, but immaculate. Someone looked after this place. Sergeant Henson poked his head into the kitchen. Black and white diamond-patterned lino was stretched over the floor, worn in patches in front of the sink and fridge. Crane shuffled through a stack of mail on the kitchen table, and shook his head at Henson. There were no photographs on the fridge, no calendar on the wall. The green laminate bench tops were bare. A single glass, one bowl and one spoon sat on the draining board.

  ‘Down he-ere,’ a female voice called.

  The men looked at each other. Roberts had already started down the hallway. Crane yanked him back by the arm, and walked ahead. Roberts rubbed his arm, his lower lip thrust out, petulant like a little boy. He stayed in the hallway, as did the two Sydney officers. They lurked there, raising their eyebrows and leering at each other like schoolboys. Crane jabbed his elbow into the ribs of one of the Sydney boys as he passed him and hissed, ‘Remember you’re in uniform.’ The officer straightened, grimacing.

  A purple beaded curtain hung in the doorway to the bedroom. Inside, Susannah Vale lay on the unmade bed, propped up on pillows. She wore a thin black dress. As the sergeant and Detective Crane came and stood by the bed, she smiled lazily up at them and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke towards the ceiling. This room was not as clean as the rest of the house. It smelt stale, like the windows hadn’t been opened for a long time, and the wooden floorboards were thick with dust. Clothes were strewn everywhere and dirty tissues littered the floor. Susannah crossed one leg over the other, and her dress rode up on her thighs. A glass with something clear in it sweated in her hand.

  ‘Susannah, we’ve come here to talk to you about Sarah,’ Sergeant Henson said. ‘This is Detective Crane. He’s come from Sydney to help us look for your girl.’

  She gazed at him. Hair fell over her face and she swatted it away. The irritation he saw in her eyes when she did that reminded him of Sarah in the school picture.

  ‘You mean you haven’t come just to see me? It’s been a while, Bobby-boy.’

  ‘Sergeant Henson.’

  ‘Sergeant Henson,’ she mimicked him. ‘The last time must have been . . .’ She frowned and dragged on her cigarette. ‘Hmm. Not sure. How is your wife, Sergeant Henson? Trudy? Judy?’

  ‘Susannah, Sarah is missing.’ Sergeant Henson lost his patience. Susannah rolled over onto her stomach. Through the dress, the men could see the twin curves of her buttocks.

  ‘She’s probably just at a friend’s or . . . something,’ Susannah said, turning her head out of the pillow to speak and reaching to put her cigarette out in a saucer on the bedside table.

  Detective Crane stepped forward. ‘Ms Vale, when was the last time you saw your daughter?’

  Good luck to you, thought Sergeant Henson. He had already asked her all of this.

  ‘He already asked me that,’ she whined, sitting up and frowning at the men. She rubbed her bleary eyes.

  ‘Well what did you say?’

  ‘I don’t remember. It’s Banville. When has one day ever been different from the next?’

  ‘Friday – did you see her Friday?’ the detective tried.

  In the hallway, Roberts coughed, and Susannah leant over to try to see past the men. ‘Who’s there?’ she called. Roberts stepped in. Henson noticed he had undone the top two buttons of his shirt so it was open low on his chest.

  ‘Out,’ Crane barked. Henson smiled to himself. Saved him saying it.

  ‘Hey, let him stay,’ Susannah slurred. ‘He looks nice.’ Roberts winked and backed out of the room.

  ‘Ms Vale, do you have any idea where your daughter might be? Which friends she might have gone to? A relative?’

  Susannah threw her head back and laughed. Her throat was white, with shadows.

  ‘No relatives. And, come to think of it, she doesn’t actually have any friends. Except the little Johns boy. Word has it, they’re very close. Very close.’ She cackled again. ‘She’s got taste, my baby girl. He’s a looker, that Tommy. A chip off the old block.’

  Tommy Johns’ father was an alright sort, Sergeant Henson thought. Kept himself to himself. Wife dead, heart problems. Just him and the boy in the shack off Melaleuca near the old paper mill. More often, just the boy. David Johns tended to go walkabout every few months, doing odd jobs, maybe chasing tail. Word was that he couldn’t bear to spend too much time in the town haunted by his dead wife, or the memory of her. They had moved off their property and closer in to town when the wife died, but it hadn’t been enough, it seemed. Henson thought about the prospect of a cold expanse on the other side of his bed where Gertie usually lay, the jar of her rose-scented face cream on the bedside table with a cloak of dust on it. He could see how it would be easier just to leave those things behind. Welfare knew about Tommy Johns, but every time they showed up he would disappear like he had smelt them coming, so they gave up a couple of years ago. The boy seemed to manage okay.

  ‘Gentlemen, time to go now,’ Susannah said, clapping her hands at them. ‘I need to sleep. The witching hour starts soon, and we have to be ready. The ghosties and ghoulies all come out, don’t they, boys?’ She giggled to herself. ‘They certainly come here. Have to be ready for them . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she fell back on the pillows. ‘See yourselves out,’ she said, waving a hand at them.

  Sergeant Henson and Detective Crane looked at each other. Henson shrugged. There was no point staying. They would get nothing more from her. And she wasn’t being cagey. Henson had heard enough lies in his time to be able to tell when it was happening. The words just didn’t sit right. He pictured them as pieces of machinery, the words like teeth that fitted into slots on a chain. And when someone was lying
, they never quite slotted into place properly. They were a bit off. The chain buckled and broke. Susannah Vale honestly had no idea where her daughter was. And, it seemed, she was too liquored up even to really notice she had gone.

  chapter twelve

  When Detective Crane and Sergeant Henson returned to the police station, Tommy was there waiting for them. Detective Crane barrelled through the door of the station and hurried past Tommy without even glancing at him. Tommy assessed the retreating figure. Expensive suit – not the type you got at Duncan’s Hire. Banville’s hire shop had four suits, all dark grey, in sizes small, medium, large and extra-large. For weddings, funerals, confirmations and any other occasion that might require a suit, the men of Banville discussed it among themselves and sorted out who would wear them. It didn’t have to be a perfect fit, just whatever size was closest. First dibs to family members. Tommy’s own father had worn the size medium for his wife’s funeral. At age four, Tommy had looked at the suit hanging on the door of his father’s wardrobe and assumed his mum had bought it for his dad before she went to hospital. She did all the shopping. He checked each of the pockets to see if she had remembered to put a hanky in one. She always put a hanky in Tommy’s pocket. But there was none. Later, at the funeral, he had watched the tears seeping out of his father’s eyes and been irritated at his mother. If ever there was a time his dad needed a hanky, this was it.