The noise of the roaring crowd was replaced by a TV commercial, blaring out even louder than the game. An ad for Dominos’ Pizza. God, he could do with a pizza. That hospital dinner of unidentifiable meat drowning in gravy hadn’t hit the spot. Normally he hung out with the lads after the game and they had a steak at the Kingo. Where were his rugby boots? Brendan couldn’t remember. The painkillers were fogging up his brain—but they hadn’t made him forget the photos in yesterday’s paper.
That crazy father—what would he do if he found out?
MARTINANDLEXIEROSS.COM
We HATE Martin and Lexie Ross
Sweeter: Looks like the parents did away with another child. Why haven’t the police caught them yet? Don’t miss tonight’s Weekend Wrap program on Channel 10 (in Oz not the US). Maybe we’ll get some answers.
Ding Dong: How can this have happened again? The police are useless.
Mercy: Fuckwits. Fry them, I keep saying it.
Lost99: Those poor children.
33
CARUSO
SUZE OPENED THE PASSENGER DOOR, PASSED CARUSO A LONG BLACK and climbed into the seat, balancing her cappuccino. Sitting in the car on the street outside playgroup, they kept the windows up so their conversation wouldn’t be heard.
On the surveillance camera from the bakery, they’d identified a blond head—almost obscured by other customers—at 10.18 am. Brendan Parrish had been at the Merrigang shops minutes before Bella went missing. A check on Parrish’s rego plate through the ANPR database over the past few days showed his vehicle going to the rugby club, to his girlfriend’s house and to the apartment of a colleague: the PE teacher, Jeff Olsen. They couldn’t find Parrish’s numberplate in Civic at the same time as the CCTV from the shopping centre. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
The Intel team had cross-checked Parrish’s name with other agencies in Canberra and New South Wales. No red flags on Parrish anywhere. Just lots of photos of him on Facebook, snowboarding and knocking back schnapps. He wasn’t Facebook friends with any of the playgroup mums or dads.
The smell of coffee filled the car. Caruso needed an IV of it this morning. ‘Here’s a theory, Suze, just hear me out. What if Lexie and the teacher are in this together?’
‘That she’d arranged for him to take Bella?’
‘Mm—that would explain why they’d both stayed quiet about him being at the bakery. It would match up with the white car on the CCTV in Civic.’
‘Do you think she’s trying to get Bella out of a DV situation?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’ll get Intel to look into any links between them.’
God, they needed something. He sucked air through his teeth, making a clicking sound with his tongue.
‘I thought you were going to stop that,’ Suze chided him.
He’d need three more coffees to wake up. Maybe even a Red Bull. They had to sort out the DV angle; rule it in or out. Was there any history?
‘Let’s speak to the ex-wife and the older daughter again.’
‘Sure. What about that hate site?’
‘The techs are still working on it. But you know, it’s rare for those trolls to come out of their computers and act in the real world.’
Caruso could see why the hate site had evolved. The physio, Yvette Tobin, had called the police after the baby had died, insisting the parents were responsible for his death. But the post-mortem report showed natural causes. Unhappy with the outcome of the police investigation, Yvette had contacted the hospital and Natalie Alvarez. It seemed that Nurse Natalie had latched onto Marty’s case and served him up as an example of a Dr Death, hell-bent on euthanising children. She’d exploited his name and his story for her own crusade. Nurse Natalie was quoted in a number of papers saying: Doctors pledge an oath to do no harm but so many of them, like Dr Martin Ross, take matters into their own hands. He needs to be investigated—at the hospital and at home. Life—every life—is precious. We mourn today for the loss of this little baby. It made for great media headlines and the son’s death had become a media circus, the public whipped into a frenzy.
Chatswood police had checked Dr Parker’s patients for any links to the hate site. Caruso’s team was checking them again, including four families whose children had died unexpectedly under Dr Parker’s care: Hayden, Wang, Bell and Papadopoulos. The hospital had set up an inquiry focusing on the four deaths, and someone on the inside had passed confidential files to Nurse Natalie and the media. From the investigation report and the newspaper coverage, Caruso could see that Martin and Lexie had been dragged through hell.
That didn’t necessarily make them innocent.
Last night, the Royal Military College, Duntroon, had sent some army cadets. Additional SES volunteers had come from the nearby town of Queanbeyan. They’d all continued searching in the soft, drizzling rain. But they’d uncovered no evidence of Bella’s whereabouts. Whenever he shut his eyes, Caruso saw the girl’s smiley face, followed by images of the horrific things a perp might do. All the child cases he’d worked on, read about, studied, heard about morphed together and appeared in his thoughts of Bella.
Yesterday morning, his oldest niece had been playing soccer down at Weston Creek football fields—the closest ones to Merrigang. He’d popped in at the right time to see her team score the winning goal off a corner. Cheering, Caruso hugged the other three children, held them tight for a moment, and then slipped them a dollar each to buy some lollies. They’d started to run off towards the canteen at the edge of the fields when his sister called them back.
‘Stay here until the game finishes,’ she instructed. ‘Then we’ll all go together.’
‘But we always go to the canteen alone,’ argued the eight-year-old.
Above their heads, his sister whispered to him, ‘Any news? Have you found her yet?’
The whole of Canberra was on high alert, looking, waiting, hoping, praying. They’d never seen a case like this where a child had simply disappeared. Occasionally, children were not returned after a visit with the non-custodial parent. In those cases, police had a name and a starting point. As they kept telling the media, abduction by a stranger was extremely rare. But it was those particular cases that haunted the nation. For more than fifty years, police had been investigating the disappearance of the three Beaumont children from Glenelg Beach in South Australia. Years of painstaking detective work, hundreds of witness statements and sightings, a million-dollar reward and ongoing phone calls to Crime Stoppers. Most recently, a forensic dig at an Adelaide factory once owned by a possible suspect. Nothing uncovered but animal bones. The children had seemingly vanished into thin air. Caruso didn’t want that sort of case; he had to find Bella.
The comms centre had received eight calls from people saying they’d seen the missing girl: one in the international terminal at Sydney Airport; another in a fish-and-chip shop in Wollongong; two in the centre of Canberra; one in Melbourne; another in New Zealand; one on the beach in Newcastle; and one down in Tasmania. Some of the callers had taken photos on their phones and sent them in. The sightings were checked by local police. All of the girls bore a similarity to Bella, but not one of them was her.
After the newspaper article on the first baby’s death, a number of callers had rung in about Marty: they’d seen him with a little girl last week; they’d seen him at the hospital; they’d seen him up on the ridge jogging. Nothing suspicious. Another reported that he’d seen Marty taking drugs without signing for them in the hospital pharmacy. An officer was following up, but as the caller had said ‘Dr Ross’, Caruso guessed it was one of Nurse Natalie’s gang trying to stir up trouble for the man.
Caruso took a sip of his coffee and ran a hand over his face. What else? Investigations on the red hatchback were ongoing. In the last three days, they’d doorknocked the whole of Merrigang, checked security cameras from vigilant household owners and talked to bus drivers. They’d interviewed everyone who’d been at the shops that morning and scrutinised their movements. They
’d spoken to the eight protesters from Nurse Natalie’s anti-euthanasia group; none of them had been anywhere near Merrigang when Bella had gone missing.
Caruso drained his coffee then crushed the disposable cup in his large hand. One lead—that was all he needed; one lead to point him in the right direction. Pushing open the car door, he called across to Suze: ‘Let’s get back in there.’
The call came through at 11.07 am. Reverend Edwards from All Saints Church in Ainslie. Caruso slammed his fist against his thigh. Couldn’t the reverend have noticed the bag before the morning congregation had trampled the entire area? He and Suze hurtled across Commonwealth Avenue Bridge to Ainslie—the same suburb where Dr Parker’s teenage daughter had ended up a month ago.
By the time they arrived, the churchgoers had disappeared and Suze could park easily. The church was old sandstone with a tall belltower. Beautiful, if you liked that kind of thing. Caruso imagined brides chose the spot for its Instagram appeal.
The reverend was waiting for them, still dressed in his white robes.
‘I’m sorry but a child picked it up,’ he said straight away, presenting them with a plastic shopping bag. ‘She thought it had been dropped by one of the kids going off to children’s church. I’m terribly sorry.’
Caruso peered inside. A purple Dora the Explorer water bottle with a name tag stuck to the side: Bella Parker. One black shoe with a circular label in the heel. That name tag was decorated with fairies. The two pieces would be sent to Forensics, with everyone hoping for fingerprints or DNA evidence.
The playgroup would now be considered a crime scene but Forensics were unlikely to find anything there—too many people had traipsed through the area.
‘Can you please show us where the bag was found, Reverend Edwards?’ Caruso asked.
The reverend led them to a small alcove between the sandstone and the glass front doors. Had Bella and her abductor spent a night sheltering in the alcove?
‘You know about the missing girl?’ Suze said.
‘Yes, what a terrible situation. We’ve been praying for her to be found safely.’ The reverend sniffed. ‘We have one family who knows Bella. Some of the congregation have been helping with the search.’
‘Which family is that?’
‘Imogen and Lucas Lawrence and their twin boys. They’re obviously distraught.’
‘Were they at church today?’ Caruso asked.
‘No, I don’t believe so. I last spoke to Imogen on Friday about photocopying posters.’
Why would one of Bella’s shoes turn up at Imogen’s church? Had Bella been hidden here while the police were searching around Merrigang, on the other side of town?
‘Did you have a service last night?’
‘We had a wedding in the afternoon. The choir came to practise after that but they’d all left by six o’clock.’
From the alcove, Caruso looked back towards the street. Residential houses, no shops, no CCTV.
‘Do you have any alarms or cameras?’ Suze was reading his thoughts.
‘No cameras but we have an alarm system.’ The reverend smiled. ‘It’s to protect our wonderful grand piano, as well as the statues and stained-glass windows, of course. Let me show you around.’
Caruso hadn’t been to church since Easter. The full family affair—his parents, his sister with her husband and kids, uncle and aunt, cousins big and small. Afterwards they’d had lunch at his parents’ house; his mum had insisted on cooking her traditional dishes—roast lamb, artichokes and potatoes, ciambellone and pasticiotti. His sister had baked an excellent torta pasqualina, and Caruso had brought salami and cheese from a good deli. He’d left early to go mountain biking, before his aunt could interrogate him about the new girlfriend.
As he stepped through the doors and saw the tall columns and the nave leading up to the altar, a sense of peace came over him. We’ll find her. The thought came unbidden. But will we find her dead or alive? he asked Jesus, strung up on a cross positioned in the centre of a huge stained-glass window. High above him, two stone angels trumpeted the Lord.
‘It’s an amazing building.’
Not many of the churches in Canberra were old like this. It was similar to the church that Caruso’s grandparents used to attend in Melbourne.
‘It has an interesting history.’ The reverend blew his nose before continuing. ‘Sorry, winter flu still hanging over me. The building was originally a mortuary station in Sydney. The whole thing was moved down here stone by stone and reassembled.’
‘Mortuary station?’ Suze turned to face him quickly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was the station for funeral trains at Rookwood cemetery. The coffins were unloaded undercover. The railway line would have run into here.’
As the reverend spread his arms out along the nave, indicating where the train tracks would have been, Caruso suddenly understood why there was such a high arch above the front door—so the train would fit through. A shiver ran down the back of his neck and Caruso rubbed his arms.
His feeling of peace had been short-lived.
34
LEXIE
IMOGEN HAD BROUGHT CINNAMON CAKE FOR MORNING TEA. THE SUGARY scent made my eyes well up. When we were little, on cold, rainy days, Mum would set Phoebe and I up in the kitchen to make teacake. As soon as it was out of the oven, steaming hot, we’d slice it up and cover it in butter. Light and fluffy cake, the sweetness of cinnamon sugar and the creamy butter melted together in our mouths. Would I ever bake a cinnamon teacake with Bella?
‘The search kept going through the night,’ Imogen said. ‘They didn’t even stop when it was drizzling.’
Sometime after midnight, I’d taken a sleeping tablet, crept into bed next to Marty and fallen into disjointed dreams.
‘Is the Facebook page helping?’ I asked. I hadn’t dared to open it on my computer.
‘It’s getting the word out there,’ Imogen said. ‘People are reading it and coming down to search or hand out posters. Our whole congregation has been helping as well.’
‘Is there … negative stuff?’ I didn’t know how to ask. ‘About our past? Will people still help?’
Imogen rubbed my shoulder and smiled sadly at me.
‘You know, you could have told us,’ she said. ‘We would have supported you.’
‘No, I couldn’t. I tried once before—in England—and they threw me out of the group.’
Mentioning it brought back the hot flush of shame. Initially, the group had welcomed me, an Aussie in Manchester with a little baby, and then a few months later, when I told them about Archie, they were so kind. But that night, one of them must have read an article online. She texted me to say I had to leave the group. I called two of the others the next day and they refused to speak to me. When I saw them at the shops, they crossed the road to avoid me. These women had been my only friends in Manchester. For days, I sat in the lounge room with baby Bella, crying in front of the TV, so lonely but unable to leave the house for fear of seeing them. When we ran out of food and nappies, I drove to a supermarket in another suburb. The shops were filled with mothers pushing prams, drinking coffee, giving their toddlers a babyccino. I was surrounded by them. And completely isolated.
‘We wouldn’t have done that,’ Imogen reassured me. ‘We’ve all suffered through our own upsets.’
‘Once you read it all online, you’d always be wondering.’
‘I wouldn’t, Lexie.’
Imogen pulled me into a hug. Behind her, the twins were playing with blocks in my living room. All I ever wanted was for Bella to have friends and playmates, normal relationships outside our screwed-up family.
One of the twins screeched and the other bolted over to Imogen.
‘He bit me,’ the boy whined.
‘And what did you do to him, Matthew?’ Imogen asked as she stroked his hair.
‘Nothing.’
‘My foot,’ yelled Thomas from the floor. ‘He stood on my foot.’
Imogen marched Matthew back to t
he rug to sort out the tiff and reconcile the twins over the blocks. Resting my head on the cool marble of the kitchen benchtop, I simultaneously wished Bella was here with them and that the twins would stop playing with Bella’s things and get out of my house.
‘Why don’t you look at this book?’ Imogen had moved Thomas to the sofa. ‘It’s the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. See if you count all the dwarves.’
‘Can Thomas read that?’ I asked.
‘No, but he’s good at counting.’ Imogen came back and sat on the kitchen stool next to me. ‘Apparently Sammy can read.’
If I’d taught Bella to read, maybe she would have been able to understand the street signs and find her way home. I keep failing as a mother. Why don’t they say it out loud instead of treating me like a patient with a terminal illness?
Imogen suddenly embraced me again.
‘We should have been watching her more closely. I can’t believe she disappeared. I’m so, so sorry. We’re to blame.’
I started to disagree, to tell her that it was my fault—and then stopped mid-sentence. She was right: I had trusted them, those playgroup mums, and they were to blame … along with me. We had all allowed her to disappear. But Imogen and Lucas were doing so much to help find her.
A memory from that playgroup dinner came back to me: Lucas wants a baby girl. Imogen had so much of her own stuff going on—the difficult twins, a husband who was away for months at a time in a dangerous job, the pressure to have another baby and cope on her own. And yet she was always there for everyone else. A never-ending well of kindness.
‘Can I do any jobs for you?’ Imogen asked. ‘Shall I put on a load of washing?’
Washing Bella’s clothes ready for when she arrived home. Washing the scent out of them—the shape of her body inside them, the softness of a jumper moulded to her chest, the pockets of her jeans filled with her treasures of pebbles and sticks.
‘No.’
The single word came out more sharply than I intended.
Six Minutes Page 21