Found

by Melissa Pouliot

Andy, despite feeling slightly intimidated, stuck to his guns.

  ‘Only speaking the truth. This girl comes from a nice family, a small town, an isolated area. The streets of Kings Cross are darker and dirtier in people’s imaginations than what they are in real life, and that’s what we have here. They’re a long way away, and the last thing they need is to come face to face with what’s in their worst nightmares.’

  Bessie made a sound, humph.

  Rhiannon soaked it all in like a sponge and took a deep gulp of her milky tea which Bessie had served up moments before. New to the job, and with more enthusiasm than the entire Kings Cross police force put together, if she’d been on the receiving end of Bessie Fleetwood’s wrath, she would have run a mile. She’d have to learn to thicken her skin. Her mind wandered to her cowboy love back home in southwest Queensland, Mac, for a brief moment. What would he think of her sitting at this timber kitchen table with one of Kings Cross’s most notorious brothel owners, drinking cups of tea?

  Christine sat silently, refusing to make eye contact with anyone as she cupped her hands around her warm tea mug, trying to stop them from shaking. She was exhausted from the worry about Annabelle, and rattled to the core despite being back on the drugs, which she was using to help mellow her out. Annabelle’s disappearance had her questioning everything she’d done that night. Hating herself for leaving her friend alone by the fire. Hating herself for falling asleep on Ant’s lap and ending up back in Sydney, in his apartment, where they made sweet, straight, lovely love, over and over again.

  Rhiannon stepped in. Bad cop, good cop.

  ‘Christine, you mentioned you’d seen a few of the others from the party around the place, can you remember specifically what places you’d seen them? What clubs they hang around? Any tiny detail may help.’

  ‘No, I can’t remember,’ Christine pouted. She’d told them everything she knew. Not quite, but everything she was prepared to share. ‘I didn’t know anyone else at the party apart from Annabelle and Ant,’ she insisted. Ant had helped them round up another witness, Carl Thorn, but he didn’t have much to contribute. He had a record as long as both Rhiannon’s arms but said he’d left the party early. Christine couldn’t remember seeing Carl there but Ant confirmed Carl’s story. The remaining people at the party remained a mystery. Andy told Rhiannon that one credible witness was better than a whole bunch of lying, thieving low-lifes, but they needed more than what they had.

  The campsite had been clean. There was evidence of the bonfire, and a few pieces of garbage, but nothing to indicate the wild party that had reportedly happened. Andy put it down to some do-gooder who’d chanced upon the mess between the time of the party and a week later when they visited the site.

  Andy and Rhiannon knew Christine was hiding something. But her lips were sealed. She wasn’t about to dob anyone into the coppers. Some were from The Kingsmen Bikie Club. They were a danger she wasn’t prepared to flirt with. The only time they crossed paths was for a brief tryst in the back alley, or in the hotel room with the naked nipples on the wall. If they’d been the ones to kill Annabelle, she wasn’t going to be the one to put the wheels in motion to reveal it.

  At a stalemate, Andy made moves to leave.

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. If we’ve got any more questions we know where to find you.’ He nodded curtly to them both on the way out. ‘Bessie. Christine.’

  Rhiannon, feeling obliged to cover his gruffness, took more time and care with her departure.

  ‘Thank you so much for your help. If you think of anything, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to call me.’ Rhiannon left her handmade card on the table, propped up against the flowers in a jar Christine had picked from the garden at the end of the street earlier that morning.

  Bessie couldn’t prise the truth out of Christine either. Or from Ant, the only other one who knew who else was at the party. Waiting until the detectives were out of earshot, Bessie spoke softly, with great care and caution.

  ‘Why you holding back, Christine?’

  Christine didn’t reply. She didn’t know how to. Instead she got up from her seat, walked around to Bessie and wrapped her thin arms around her squishy body, hugging her tight.

  ‘I ‘ain’t holding back anything important, Bessie. Nothing vital that I think is gunna help Annabelle. I’m not prepared to end up dead with a needle in my arm underneath Woolloomooloo Bridge, so I’ve given all I’ve got.’

  ‘I understand luv, all too well. But what about finding Annabelle, isn’t that what we should be focused on, without fear or favour?’

  ‘I care for her as much as you do, Bess. She’s a good chick. A good friend, a better friend than any others. But I gotta make wise choices here. And I choose to keep my lips tight like a fish’s bum hole when it comes to naming names at that party. If anyone there has done her in, I’ve just got to live with that. I’m hoping against all hope it’s not the case, but if they have, there ‘ain’t nothing I can do about it. What’s done is done.’

  Bessie hugged her back, thinking to herself she needed to try and fatten Christine up a bit, she’d become all skin and bone.

  ‘Righto girl, righto. My heart is breaking but when you put it like that, I understand. I understand.’

  Christine awkwardly pulled out of the hug, her eyes stinging, and walked out the door as fast as her ambling gait would allow. She needed a fix of something, or someone. She needed Ant and he’d better bloody be home, otherwise she didn’t know where she’d end up.

  …

  ‘We shouldn’t have left her there!’ She shouted at him, even though it wasn’t Ant she was angry with, it was herself. ‘Someone has hurt her, she’s lying dead somewhere in that fucking forest with the fucking yowies, and it’s our fault!’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Ant snapped. ‘Why would anyone have killed her? Nobody was out there for any other reason than to party on. Annabelle wasn’t hurting anyone in her possie by the fire.’

  ‘Or what if she’s fallen over a cliff somewhere? She was pretty out of it when we left, she could have wandered off for a wee and then got lost in the dark, then stepped over a steep cliff. She mightn’t even be dead! She might be lying there with a broken leg and can’t move, waiting for someone to rescue her!’

  Christine started hyperventilating and instead of a paper bag, Ant handed her a bong. He changed the tone of his voice to something more soothing.

  ‘Here, get some of this into you. It’ll help you even things out a bit.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’m off the stuff, remember?’

  ‘I know, but maybe you just need a bit of a hit right now, until you can get on top of this. Look at you, you’re a mess.’

  Christine slowed down her breathing and took the bong, lit it up and greedily gulped in the sickly sweet drug. She leaned back on Ant’s couch and closed her eyes. Ant had a choof as well, then leaned back next to her.

  ‘Look, have you ever thought that maybe she got up in the morning and decided to go back home? You said yourself she was mentioning home more and more, you thought she was homesick, which is why she was so keen to get out of the city and back into the bush. Maybe she got up and headed home. She could be just about there by now, and the detectives will be able to close the case and we’ll all live happily ever after.’

  Christine’s eyes were still closed. She pushed away the sick feeling in her stomach and tried to replace it with images of Annabelle going home, back to her family and her friends, into their welcoming arms. Images of her leaving her time in The Cross behind her, putting it down to one of life’s experiences, nothing more, nothing less. She opened her eyes and reached out for Ant.

  ‘You’re right, you’re right. One day we’ll wake up and the nightmare will be all over. Annabelle has moved on. She’ll give me a call when she’s settled in her new place. And one day when we’re old, we’ll laugh about the time she had the whole fucking Kings Cross police force out looking for her in the bush, like trying to find a fucking needle in a fuckin
g haystack!’

  Ant moved closer, resting his hand on her upper thigh. He couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t believe his luck that she’d come to him, for comfort and care. It was new territory. Their relationship had shifted to exactly where he’d hoped it would be. The stress over Annabelle’s disappearance made him want her even more. He wanted to comfort her, love her, make her laugh again. That beautiful laugh he had adored for so long.

  He was so far gone there was no going back. She was his everything. The love of his life. He’d never felt like this before. It was wild, exciting, breathtaking. Within minutes he was sitting on her lap, his jeans undone, her pants around her ankles. It was slow, luxurious and mind blowing – all at the same time. For the next ten minutes their heat and passion for each other obliterated all thoughts of Annabelle. Afterwards, their bodies entwined on the couch, they slept. In each other’s arms they both found deep, dreamless sleep where everything felt safe. Holding on tight, that was how they would get through. We miss you Annabelle, but we love each other more.

  CHAPTER 19

  Finding Lee

  2015

  Danny didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. He tried to put himself in Annabelle’s family’s shoes. What would they think if, after all these years, they got a call from Christine, someone they knew of, but had chosen not to acknowledge, during the initial search?

  Christine continued, her voice gathering strength. ‘I know she didn’t want to know anything about me and Bessie back then, I know it was too much for her to take in, her daughter being a prostitute and all. So I never pushed it with Rhiannon or that other copper Andy, to try and speak to Lee, or get a message to her. Andy was just plain rude about it. Rhiannon was gentler, more diplomatic. Explained to us, on the side, that it was already hard for Annabelle’s family and friends, and meeting us would only make it worse. And Jesus, although Bessie suggested it in the first place, deep down we didn’t really want to meet them either. We knew Annabelle was running away, and she didn’t have too many nice things to say about her Mum most of the time. It was much easier for us to stay right away.’

  She took a deep breath, now able to view things from a different perspective. ‘Maybe, just maybe, it’s about bloody time we all put our big girl pants on and faced each other. Get together in a room to see if we can piece anything together that no-one has thought of before.’

  ‘When you put it like that, it does make sense,’ Danny said. ‘You know, like a script planning meeting. A big white board, white board markers and everyone’s ideas all put up, pulled apart, rubbed out, put up again. Yeah, I can see that as working!’ He smiled encouragingly before a frown chased it away. ‘But how exactly are you going to do it?’

  Christine was back on her computer, tapping away.

  ‘First I’m going to Facebook stalk. Then I’m going to call Bessie. The two of us will nut it out together, she’ll back me on this, I’m sure she will.’

  Christine went into her own world again, completely forgetting Danny was in the room. He understood, because he did it too. Once he had his head in a script, a story, the rest of the world disappeared. He crept quietly out of the room, pushing all the awkward uncomfortable feelings about having to square up to Christine’s past life away into a little corner, neat and tucked away. Everyone has a corner like that, don’t they? One where you hid the thoughts which made you squirm in your seat. Thoughts that had no place in the real world. Thoughts that made good fictional storylines for books, television shows, paintings, art sculptures and films. Thoughts you refused to make your own because if you did, they’d destroy everything you believed about yourself and those you loved.

  …

  There was only one way to do this. Feet first. Between Facebook, Google and the White Pages it didn’t take long for Bessie and Christine to track down Lee Brown. A mysterious woman they knew little about, apart from stilted conversations with Annabelle during her brief time with them. Bessie imagined her as some evil woman who had abandoned her strong-willed teenager, unable to understand her complex thoughts and desire for adventure. Christine’s own mother was the furthest thing from Mother of the Year you could imagine, so all mothers were selfish cows as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Who needs your own Mum when you’ve got someone like Bessie to look after us?’ Christine recalled saying to Annabelle during one of their long conversations about the lives they’d left behind.

  ‘I absolutely, wholeheartedly agree!’ Annabelle said enthusiastically. ‘Since she rescued me from that dirty laneway on my first night in The Cross, she’s like the mother I always wished I had.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Christine replied, with some irony. ‘She even sews buttons, hey?’

  Annabelle looked down at her bright yellow shirt, her favourite, and the one she was wearing when Bessie found her. Back then all the buttons were missing and her stonewash jeans were undone after a sleazy old man had his way as she lay powerless beneath him. Now it was neatly pressed and every button was back in its place.

  Christine brought herself back to the present and called Bessie. They ummed and aahed over who would phone Lee. Would Lee relate more to someone her own age, or someone Annabelle’s age? Would she relate better to the polished jewellery designer, living a life of luxury in Melbourne suburbia, or the retired pimp, living in isolation and seclusion in a beachside cottage, shielded from the world by an overgrown garden and rickety iron gate. They finally decided on Christine.

  ‘Hello!’ Lee answered cheerfully on the third ring, breathless from racing to the phone. It was the way she had answered the phone all her life, although she had become larger and was even more breathless these days. Her excitement in hearing it ring; her anticipation to having a chin wag with whoever was on the other end of the line, never got old. Having given up a long time ago that the call might be from Annabelle, accepting she wasn’t going to hear from or see her again, allowed her a shiver of excitement that the loud ring heralded a call from a friend.

  ‘Hello, is this Lee Brown?’

  ‘Yes, this is her.’

  ‘Hello. My name is Christine.’ Christine paused. Despite numerous rehearsals, she hesitated before she spoke the next sentence. ‘I’m a friend of Annabelle.’

  Christine had managed to stop time, stop Lee from breathing, stop sound and all thoughts. She also stopped Lee’s tongue from being able to form words. Stopped her brain from settling on this moment, instead dragging her backwards, downwards and into a gut wrenching, paralysing place.

  Christine rushed on. ‘I know this is a call out of the blue, and I’m sorry for that. It’s just that I wanted to talk to you, you know, about Annabelle…’ When Lee didn’t respond, Christine ran out of words.

  ‘What about Annabelle?’ Lee couldn’t help the sharp edges of her tone. She mentally reeled off Annabelle’s school friends, trying to place who Christine was. It was such a long time ago, their names had all blended together into a mishmash of personal pain and suffering. They had been so eager to help, and she had pushed them all away. How could they help? She didn’t want to know the things they wanted to tell her. Some of them were from the wrong side of the tracks, the side where Annabelle spent much of her time in the lead up to her disappearance. Lee didn’t want to face any of those cold harsh realities. The fact she was gone was reality enough.

  She’d also decided, after nothing came of the focus on Annabelle’s case during National Missing Persons Week a few years ago, she would accept she would never see her daughter again. Part of this acceptance was not looking back. Not talking to Annabelle’s old school friends. This acceptance comprised of sharing happy memories only. Talking with family and close friends about those sweet childhood memories. No more long, dragged out, conversations analysing her disappearance. Examining where she might be. What might have happened.

  She told Rhiannon and Andy, when they’d come to her house to ask if she would agree to having Annabelle’s sixteen year old image age progressed in 2011, then put onto
posters and television screens around the nation in a bid to discover new information, that if this didn’t turn up new leads it was over. That she was going to lay her memories of Annabelle to rest. This didn’t mean she had stopped missing her. It just meant she was going to stop torturing herself with the never ending search for answers that weren’t there.

  ‘Sorry, but I am not sure I remember you. What’s your last name?’ Lee offered.

  ‘Um, ah, you won’t remember me because we never met.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Christine rushed on. ‘I knew Annabelle when she was in Sydney. We hung out, spent lots of time together, she was my friend…’ Her voice wavered as tears soaked her words.

  Lee resisted the temptation to hang up and it fell into place. Christine, the young prostitute who’d reported Annabelle missing. Rhiannon had asked if she wanted to meet her, and their pimp, Bessie. Lee always adamantly refused.

  ‘Please don’t hang up,’ Christine pleaded. ‘I know you didn’t want to meet, or know anything about me, you know, um, back then. But I’m different now. Things are different now. Time, well, time has passed.’

  ‘Yes, it has. And I’ve moved on. So I can’t imagine why you’d be calling me,’ Lee said curtly.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. But I just wondered if perhaps you’d heard anything? Anything new?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Case closed.’

  ‘I see. But is it really closed? I’ve been doing some digging around and it looks like they haven’t officially closed her case, it’s still open, unsolved. There hasn’t been a coronial inquest so, to me, that means they still have some hope. They might know something, some reason for not closing it.’

  ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree,’ Lee said wearily.

  She didn’t want to go into detail with this girl. Why should she? She’d only known Annabelle for a short time. She didn’t have any place in Lee’s, or Annabelle’s world. For all Lee knew, this girl was the cause of Annabelle’s disappearance. She saw her, and Bessie, as the ones who had led her astray. Took her to the streets. When the sordidness of Annabelle’s life in Kings Cross started to creep under Lee’s skin, she had to tell Rhiannon to stop. Don’t tell me anymore. I don’t want to know.