Marty bit down his retort and continued cruising the street at twenty kilometres an hour. A lime-green Ford sedan sped up behind him and honked. He pulled the Audi to the kerb and let the frustrated driver pass. This aimless wandering was getting them nowhere.
‘Is there somewhere in particular that you want to go?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Lexie swung around to face him. ‘Do you think I know where she is?’
With the contusion on her cheek, she looked like an assault victim.
‘Of course not. I mean, are there particular parks or friends’ houses or—’ Marty sucked in his breath ‘—I dunno … bike paths? I’ve got no fucking idea what’s happening here.’
‘You’ve got no idea what’s happening?’ Lexie repeated. ‘Our daughter is lost! What do you think is happening? Blame me, Marty—I know you want to. Yes, it’s my fault. Again.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It is my fault. I should never have gone out to the shop.’
‘Why did you go?’
Marty knew it was unkind to ask the question. But it bewildered him. She never let Bella out of her sight.
‘Because …’ Lexie looked away from him and covered her face with her hands. A sob escaped but she tried to speak through it. ‘Because …’
Her words were overwhelmed by sobs and she bent double in the seat. Marty placed a hand on the sharp ridges of her shoulder blades and searched for Bella through the windscreen.
FACEBOOK
Tara Murphy Facebook page
HELP! My friend’s daughter is MISSING! Bella wandered off from our playgroup near Merrigang shops this morning. She’s in jeans and a pink jacket. Here’s a picture from a few weeks ago. She’s only three years old. It’s her birthday next week. Please help us find her!! SHARE this post. I’m f*cking freaking out!!
486 people reacted to this. 295 shares.
5
BRENDAN PARRISH
OUT ON LUNCH DUTY, BRENDAN LISTENED TO THE SUDDEN CHEER AS one of the girls kicked the soccer ball into the goal. Beyond the school oval, he could see a bunch of police officers. As Brendan watched, they divided up into smaller groups and set off in different directions. Just before the lunch bell, a message had been sent around to all the teachers: A three-year-old girl has gone missing from the playgroup near the shops.
Brendan chewed on his ham and salad roll, slathered with Dijon mustard and barbecue sauce—a great combo and much tastier than the plastic ham they sold at the school canteen. This morning, he’d come in early for a parent meeting and left his lunch on the kitchen bench at home. Luckily, his townhouse was close enough to the school that he could scoot back at recess for his ham roll. That was the beauty of Merrigang—small enough to walk anywhere; it was even smaller than the country town where he’d grown up. Brendan turned his face to the sun: fourteen degrees today, and not a cloud in the sky. Hopefully it wouldn’t warm up next week. Some colder nights and they should get powder on the mountains. One more week until school holidays, then he’d be carving it up at Blue Cow. He had to master the misty flip—almost had it last time they’d been down there but he kept landing on his back and his side. He’d been watching snowboarding videos on YouTube since and now he had the moves figured out in his head.
Surprisingly, the kids in the playground weren’t taking any notice of the police. The last child to go missing from school—apart from Fox, of course—was Danny from year six at the beginning of first term. Like Brendan today, Danny had forgotten his lunchbox and walked home to get it. Unusual. Kids at this school rarely left the grounds.
Apart from Fox.
Fox disappeared whenever she could. She didn’t go home—too far away. Fox’s favourite ‘running away’ places were three secluded playgrounds where she could jump from one piece of equipment to the next without having to push off other kids. And the Merrigang shops. Most of the shop assistants recognised the eight-year-old with the matted dark hair and manic grin, and they would ask her to turn out her pockets. Occasionally, she’d sneak packets of chewing gum and chocolate bars down her socks. Lately, the supermarket manager had been walking her back over to school, with the promise of a chocolate milk when she got to Kathleen at the front office.
Three weeks ago, right after the episode with the paint, Fox had disappeared. She’d been doing extra PE with Jeff and the year five class, running around the bottom oval practising for the cross-country. At the end of the session, Fox was gone. Half an hour later, they discovered her in the bakery at Merrigang shops. Fox had managed to wangle a cheese and bacon roll and a chocolate croissant from the new shop assistant. Brendan left a message on the mother’s phone to inform her of the incident but the woman had never rung back.
Fox’s mother never rang back about anything. Not about the running away nor the chair throwing nor the punching nor the paint incident. That one had really pissed him off. While the rest of 2P had been concentrating on their pictures for Father’s Day, Brendan noticed Fox walk over to the shelf with the paint bottles. What now? So far, Fox had stolen another girl’s paintbrush and trodden on someone’s lunchbox. She had teased three kids, saying their paintings were ‘ugly’. And before recess, Fox had pulled all the blue-level readers out of their boxes and scattered them in the corridor. And this was a good day.
‘Why do you need more paint, Fox?’
‘I’m doing a black sky. It’s night-time.’
‘There should be enough paint on each table.’
After wresting the paint bottle from her hands, he checked the girl’s desk. Her painting had a single yellow moon in the middle of a white page. Fox had already screwed up four pieces of paper because she wasn’t happy. The paint tray on the table only had blue left in it.
‘What happened to all the other colours?’ Brendan asked the three children at the table. They stared down at their own work, refusing to raise their eyes to the teacher or to Fox.
‘Dunno,’ Fox said. ‘They’re gone. I need black.’
It wasn’t until after lunch, when Fox was doing extra sport with Jeff, that the children discovered the wet paint. Brendan asked the class to get their writing workbooks from their desk drawers and Chloe burst into tears. Fox had emptied the paint inside the children’s desks. Their rulers and erasers were multi-coloured, their writing and maths books splattered, black paint sticking the pages together.
‘Chloe, it’s okay, I’ll come and sort it out.’ Brendan comforted the crying girl. ‘The rest of the class can copy down the sentences on the board.’
He dabbed at the paint with paper towel and managed to take off the large blobs. But parts of the workbooks were ruined. Chloe’s three-page story, of which she’d been so proud, was soaked in black paint.
Fox. That little shit. Deliberately wrecking other kids’ work—it made him furious.
In the weekly staff meeting, Brendan had brought up Fox’s behaviour yet again.
‘I need more help for the girl.’
He looked around the room, his eyes settling on Patricia Campbell, the principal.
‘You have a few parent volunteers reading with her in the mornings, don’t you?’ Patricia had asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Yes, but they—’
‘Fox already takes up most of the school counsellor’s allocated hours.’ Patricia shook her head. ‘We’re doing the best we can within our resources. Ask for more parent help.’
We all know it takes a village to raise a child but parent volunteers can’t cope with her behaviour, Brendan had wanted to shout at the principal. They’ve nearly all stopped coming because they don’t know how to handle Fox. There were only two mums left who were prepared to put up with her crap.
‘We need to get her parents to agree to having her assessed,’ Brendan said. He must have repeated that line ten times by now.
‘I have contacted the department again,’ the principal replied.
Brendan sighed. The parents would never agree to an assessment. He’d met the
mother just once. Wearing a long, flowing dress and armfuls of jangling bracelets, she’d reeked of dope and alcohol. She only spoke in a whisper. ‘Fox is a special girl,’ she’d murmured. Brendan wanted to shake some sense and sobriety into her. He suspected Fox had foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
His girlfriend, Claire, worried that some terrible incident with Fox would jeopardise Brendan’s career. But the department hardly ever kicked out teachers—there was enough incompetence in the classrooms for him to see that.
For the past three days, though, he’d been living the dream.
No Fox.
Of course, her parents hadn’t rung in to report her sick. They never did. And while Brendan had marked Fox absent on the roll, he hadn’t yet told the principal. Maybe tomorrow he should mention it.
The children had let their guard down; they were calm and happy. This morning, Chloe had come to the front of the classroom to hold up her picture. Van had shown off a Stars Wars chess set that his dad had bought in America. Without Fox’s distractions, they were whipping through their work. In this afternoon’s period, he would do something special: a reading group under the trees or a nature hunt in the grounds to fit in with their topic on seasons. Collecting leaves, with no concerns about the Tiny Terror causing trouble. Although it depended on the police presence at the playgroup—that would unsettle the class. He’d have to take them down to the other side of the school, with its view of the Brindabellas.
6
LEXIE
WHY HAVEN’T THE POLICE CALLED? SOMEONE MUST HAVE FOUND HER by now. Where is she? My little girl. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
I held myself tightly, my hands wrapped over my arms, my fingers clawing into my muscles.
Midday. Bella would be hungry. And thirsty. Hopefully not cold. Thank God she had on that pink woollen coat, not the thin blue cardigan. Driving and driving and no sign of her. How far could she walk in an hour and a half? Maybe she’d run after a kitten or followed another child. When any other image tried to form in my mind, I’d force it down, along with the hot panic. The chanting helped. And the sting of my fingernails on my skin.
‘Left or right?’ Marty asked as he stopped the car at an intersection.
‘Left,’ I said. Not that it mattered. Soon we would go right. We had to cover all the streets.
In the middle of Merrigang, the streets were familiar. We had walked around here—Bella on her purple scooter, darting down the pavements then asking me to carry it up whenever there was a slope. Merrigang had curling streets: half-circles, circuits and cul-de-sacs, all doubling back on themselves. Nestled against the ridge, the roads weaved along its contours and came to a dead end two-thirds of the way up, where the bushland took over.
‘Marty, STOP THE CAR!’
In a small playground, a child was sitting at the bottom of a slide—not sliding, just sitting. It’s her! She can’t climb the ladder with her broken wrist.
I was out of the car and running while Marty was still asking what I’d seen.
‘Bella! Bella, darling!’
The child glared at me, scrunched up its face and fled to a bench at the edge of the playground. I hadn’t noticed the mother and baby sitting there—my eyes had been locked on the child. Not Bella. A boy. About the same size as Bella, dressed in a pinkish-purple hoodie and blue jeans.
‘What do you want?’ the young mother demanded, tucking her son in next to her on the bench. ‘You scared him.’
I didn’t have time to apologise.
‘Have you seen a little girl? Her name’s Bella. She’s about the same height as your son. Pink coat. Her arm is in a cast.’
‘No.’ The mother brought her pram closer. A neat triangle of mother, toddler and baby. ‘You’ve lost your daughter? Here? In Merrigang?’
‘Yes. If you see her, please call the police.’
The mother’s face, which had been rosy in the outdoor air, turned pale.
After dashing back to the car, I caught a glimpse of the woman through the windscreen. Packing up her kids, taking them home and locking the doors. She wouldn’t see Bella.
‘Hurry up, keep driving,’ I snapped at Marty. ‘Go to the end here and then back down the other way.’
The car crawled along the street in silence. Marty scanning one side and me the other.
‘Has anyone checked the house?’
Such an obvious thought.
‘Someone might have found her lost and dropped her home.’
A spark of hope flared inside me, happy butterflies fluttering into my churning stomach. People were friendly in Merrigang; they knew each other. It was a village community, not a big city like Manchester or Sydney. Of course, someone would drop her home if they found her. Bella knew the name of our street. She couldn’t remember the number but she could point out our house.
‘Go! Fast!’
Two minutes later we were home. No other car in the driveway, no Bella sitting at the front door. I raced through the side gate around to the back. Was my little Tinker Bell out here in the fairy garden, talking to her favourite fairy statue and asking when Mummy would be back? At a quick glance, I couldn’t see her in the garden, but perhaps she was scared and hiding.
‘Bella, it’s Mummy,’ I cried as I bolted from bush to bush. The fairy garden, the back deck, the outdoor chairs, the gum tree, the wooden bench, the grass play area, the sandpit in the blue shell. Empty. No little girl hiding behind the rainwater tank either. Then I realised: she must be inside the lean-to shelter which our gardener had helped her build a few weeks ago. Deirdre had been cutting back one of the trees close to the garage and Bella insisted they could use the branches to make a cubbyhouse. Leafy branches slanted against the fence at the bottom of our block. She was in there. She must be.
At the end of our garden snaked the wire fence and beyond—paddocks, horses, grass and gum trees. Only one section was obscured. The lean-to.
Running, running, running. The distance to the fence had grown longer, miles and miles it seemed. I sprinted past the trampoline and the vegie patch, stumbled in a divot. Thighs burning, throat dry, I dared not call her name. She would be there. She had to be there.
I flung my body to the ground at the entrance of the lean-to, my feet collided with the branches and the whole structure collapsed on top of me. A flicker of pink beneath the leaves.
‘Bella!’
Grasping the branches, I hurled them away from me, desperate to unearth my baby girl. She was here. Scared. Hiding in a safe place.
‘Tinker Bell, I’m so sorry—Mummy’s here.’
Tossing the last branch aside, I sat back on my haunches. My eyes had tricked me. A pink-and-white-spotted plastic tea set lay crushed in the dirt.
Please, God, I prayed, help me find Bella. I’m sorry for ignoring you for so many years. Please, God, please. I need your help to find my little girl.
I scrubbed my scarf across my face and wiped the wetness from around my nose. She has been hit by a car. She’s in someone’s shed, hiding. Bitten by a redback spider and dying alone somewhere. In a car, taken by a bad man. She can’t use her arm to defend herself. The trembling in my hands was spreading around my whole body, making my arms shiver, my legs, my feet, my heart, my brain. Please, God, where is she?
A wailing, keening sound cut through the air. The pain of a wounded dog. Then Marty was next to me, rubbing circles on my back, shushing me.
‘She’s not here,’ I whimpered.
‘Shhh, we’ll find her, Lexie, we will.’
‘The house?’
‘I’ve checked all the rooms. She’s not there. The house was locked anyway.’
Pushing to my feet, ignoring the tremors, I took three steps, aiming to run back to the car, to search the streets again, to find my daughter. But my body refused. Legs wobbling, I collapsed to my knees. My stomach heaved and I retched. Again and again and again, until there was nothing left. The vomit speckled my scarf, the knees of my jeans, my hands.
Marty helped me to stand, hel
d my shoulders until my head stopped spinning.
‘Let’s just clean you up a bit, Lexie.’ He tugged me towards the back door.
Doesn’t he understand there’s no time? Is he trying to delay us on purpose?
‘Come on, Lexie. It won’t take a minute.’ He tugged me again. ‘I’ll check in with the police while you wash your face.’
I let him lead me inside.
‘I’m not changing my jeans,’ I told him. ‘There’s not enough time.’
After rinsing out my mouth and spitting into the sink, I caught sight of the face in the mirror. Red spots on my chin and my cheeks. I recognised them from the horrendous morning sickness when I was pregnant with Bella. Hospitalised three times. Or was it four? A cannula and a drip to rehydrate me and the unborn baby. Broken capillaries from the force of vomiting. Puffy red eyes. A white neck. All the blood had rushed upwards.
Where could she be? I must have left the gate unlocked.
Another thought snaked in.
This is my punishment.
7
DETECTIVE SERGEANT CARUSO
DETECTIVE SERGEANT GABE CARUSO AND SENIOR CONSTABLE SUZE NGUYEN had hoped to spend most of the day working on the brief for the Wilson homicide. They’d collated five of the witness statements and Suze was following up on the forensics reports when they’d been called to the missing persons case in Merrigang.
It was Suze’s first time to this sleepy outlying village, even though she’d grown up in Canberra. Early in his career, Caruso had visited Merrigang Primary School with the police mascot, Constable Kenny Koala, to give a talk on road safety. He couldn’t remember ever attending an incident out here, but the Drugs team had identified a hydroponic cannabis set-up on a nearby farm last year.
The triple zero call had come into the comms centre at 10.42 am; the first responders were two General Duties officers who’d been on foot patrol at the Cooleman Court shopping centre, five kilometres from Merrigang. They’d pulled in two more cars, as well as a motorbike from Traffic. None of them had located the girl yet.
Six Minutes Page 4