by Joy Dettman
‘I was in your Commodore,’ he said. ‘Five wouldn’t have fit into the Ferrari.’
‘Five?’
‘Islanders.’
‘Where were you going on a Saturday night?’
‘I was looking for your son,’ he said.
‘Were you harmed?’
‘I was in the boot for hours, trying to kick my way out. My feet need an appointment with the podiatrist.’
‘I wrote his number down on that pad I left beside the phone,’ she said, then got down to business. ‘I’ve got around twenty Australian dollars on me, Freddy.’
‘I thought your tour was all inclusive?’
‘All inclusive doesn’t cover everything. Did you give them our PIN?’
‘I told them my wife knew it, but was currently in Thailand.’
‘Bali,’ she said. ‘I left you a copy of my itinerary beside the phone.’
‘When are you coming home?’
‘We fly out late on Thursday night – and I can’t manage for a day on twenty dollars.’
‘The locals manage on less,’ he said.
‘I’m not a local. I’ll have to borrow from one of the girls, I suppose. What’s the matter with Rolly? He sounded upset when he answered the phone.’
‘He missed school today,’ Freddy said, and offered the phone to her Rolly, who had his hands full, helping himself to ice-cream from the container. ‘Your mother wants to know why you missed school, Rolland.’
MISSING
On Tuesday, in their own individual styles, two of Melbourne’s newspapers featured an identical school photograph of Lisa Simms, missing from her home since Friday night. Their headlines were similar.
FAMILY FEAR FOR FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD LISA
The second headline made no mention of her age.
FAMILY FEAR LISA FREEWAY KILLER’S FIFTH
Lisa Simms was last seen leaving her friend’s house on Friday evening…
Her colouring was similar to that of Monica Rowan, who too had left her friend’s house on a Friday evening. There were similarities enough for many readers to relate Lisa’s disappearance to the abduction of Monica. To those who looked deeper, there were none.
Lisa Simms wasn’t fifteen. She was seventeen, and her employer’s description didn’t match the schoolgirl image in the papers. He described Lisa as a well-developed, independent sort of girl. The killer took immature girls.
It was Lisa’s employer who’d raised the alarm when his previously reliable employee, after failing to arrive for her Saturday shift, left him in the lurch again on Monday. He’d called her mobile half a dozen times before her boyfriend picked it up and told him that he didn’t give a fuck where Lisa was, that she’d pissed off with someone called Liam on Friday night and forgotten to take her phone.
Her parents had been located, one in Frankston, one in Canberra. Neither had been in contact with Lisa in weeks. Her housemates hadn’t seen her since she’d left for work on Friday morning.
Seventeen-year-old girls may take off with a new love, but they don’t forget to take their mobiles. Seventeen-year-old girls can’t live an hour without their mobiles. Ross smelled foul play, though not the child killer. He was waiting now for the boyfriend to be brought in. To date he’d been uncooperative. Running the gauntlet of a bunch of newspaper and television reporters could loosen the tongues of the innocent.
Danni Lane’s disappearance had been given no space in either newspaper. Casualties of matrimonial warfare didn’t sell papers. Until Captain William Daws, ex-army, Danni’s grandfather, contacted Inspector Johnson on Monday afternoon, Danni had been considered such a casualty.
‘Take no notice of my daughter’s nonsense about a previous kidnap attempt. She used the uncle’s boating mishap as a weapon in a prolonged and acrimonious custody dispute,’ he’d said.
He’d told Johnson that Martin Lane was on a boat due to dock at Townsville sometime on Tuesday afternoon. He said he’d been in touch with the agent who handled the Lane brothers’ fishing tour bookings. Ross had contacted them since, and according to the agent’s records, the Lane brothers had sailed on Friday afternoon with half a dozen American tourists on board, three of whom had planes to catch at six thirty this evening.
William Daws was en route from Sydney, estimated time of arrival thirteen hundred hours – one o’clock.
Too much, and nothing happening right now. Ross was waiting to talk to Lisa’s boyfriend, waiting for Captain William Daws to arrive, and filling time spinning through security videos, sifting that ocean of mud for a grain of gold, his eyes and mind disconnected.
Or maybe not. A neuron sparked on something. The tape had moved on before he got his sight and brain connected. He spun it back, seeking the place where that neuron had sparked. He was playing it forward on slow speed when he caught the edge of a schoolgirl who could have been Danni, in a car park, carrying a shopping bag.
He stilled the shot, demanding it say more than it did. He moved it forward, and he lost her, moved it back and she disappeared, but not before he glimpsed the swish of that overly long white-blonde ponytail.
He was about to call someone over to verify what he was seeing when a kid constable with a baby face and an unpronounceable name approached.
‘The boyfriend’s here, sir, with his parents and a lawyer.’
‘Take a squiz at the girl,’ Ross said. ‘Danni?’
‘Could be. Got any more of her?’
‘That’s it,’ Ross said.
It wasn’t much, an edge of uniform, a bunch of hair, slim neck, slim leg and an environmentally friendly shopping bag. That bag wasn’t right. Danni had been carrying a schoolbag in the upstairs shots.
‘Meeting her father down there maybe?’ the kid said.
It was possible. The brother could have sailed alone with his tourists. Martin Lane could have flown down and flown her back before her mother reported her missing. Captain William Daws could have been wrong, but, according to Johnson, he wouldn’t like being told so.
They spun the video forward and back, looking for Martin Lane but seeing little more than an elderly couple walking hand in hand towards the entrance and an elderly female toddling away from the entrance, not far behind the schoolgirl.
‘Has Martin Lane got a mother?’ the kid asked.
‘Dead,’ Ross said. ‘That woman’s carrying a similar shopping bag.’
‘They’re two a penny, sir. Mum’s got dozens of them – forgets to take them with her and buys another one.’
The security camera had picked up a good shot of the elderly woman and her walking stick; she wasn’t dressed for Friday’s weather, was wearing a pleated plaid skirt and a long dark cardigan.
‘Friday was as hot as hell,’ Ross said.
‘That storm was forecast. If she’d taken her cardi off she’d have had to carry it, sir, and she looks as if she’s having trouble enough carrying herself,’ the kid said, then stared at Ross who’d grabbed a bunch of tissues to sneeze into. He followed it with two more explosions before blowing the irritation from his sinuses and looking back to the screen, where that girl was beginning to look more like Danni.
If it was her, she’d got that bag from someone. They had a clear shot of her at the supermarket checkout loading items into her schoolbag. In the upstairs shot, she had that bag over her shoulder. Could have been carrying it over the shoulder that was out of frame. The time on the tape told them that shot was taken nine minutes after the upstairs shot, and in the western underground car park, which was at the opposite end of that centre. A man could walk a long way in nine minutes. A kid in a hurry would do it faster.
‘Her mother will know if it’s her or not. Get her in here,’ Ross said.
‘She doesn’t like our decor, sir.’
Ross didn’t like Barbara Lane’s decor. It had got up his sinuses, or her air freshener had – or she had. She’d told him he stank of cigarettes, that she was allergic to the smell of stale nicotine and would prefer to speak to a non-smoking of
ficer.
Ross’s youngest sister didn’t like his smell.
‘Johnson’s waiting, sir – and the boyfriend,’ the kid reminded.
Ross killed the video and got to his feet, staring for a moment at the controlled chaos of desks, computers, whiteboard, filing cabinets and bodies, sitting, leaning, walking, talking. A dog’s breakfast, his sister would have named it. She kept a tidy, sweet-scented house. He had dinner there once a month – usually – was supposed to have eaten there last Sunday – hadn’t.
He sneezed Barbara Lane out of his system before entering the interview room where the boyfriend, an eighteen-year-old kid looking scared, sat beside his lawyer.
He talked. They couldn’t shut him up.
‘She’s been cheating on me for weeks. I found out who she was cheating with on Friday night. Liam someone. She got a message from him. I snatched her phone to read it and she hauled off, belted me in the eye, then took off. I pitched her phone and went to bed, and Mum knows I was in bed and knows where that phone was. She found it when she came in to get my washing. It was flat, so I put it on my charger, then her boss rang.’
Before that Tuesday ended, Daws had arrived in Melbourne, the Lane brother’s boat had been accompanied into port and the Townsville police had been over it with a fine-toothed comb. Martin Lane was currently flying south, or would be shortly. Ross had spoken to him. He claimed that his ex-wife had pulled this stunt because he was going after full custody of their daughter.
It was looking bad for pretty Danni Lane, though her mother refused to admit it. She’d confirmed that the schoolgirl in the car park shot was Danni, but was convinced that her ex had sent someone there to pick her up. She’d had an explanation for the shopping bag too.
‘Her father would have got money to her to buy what she needed. That’s why she didn’t take anything from home.’
No use trying to tell her that nine minutes wouldn’t have given Danni enough time to go shopping, and if she had she would have shown up in the shops’ security videos. No use telling her that nine minutes wouldn’t have been enough for her to buy the shopping bag, though wasted breath or not, he told her.
‘Then whoever she was meeting bought it – and he was carrying her schoolbag,’ Barbara said.
She’d glanced at a shot they’d found of full-faced Granny Plaid Skirt standing behind Danni in the supermarket queue, and had waved a manicured hand at the image she didn’t recognise and had no desire to.
Granny Plaid Skirt had been pushing a shopping trolley at the checkout. If she’d had a walking stick, it had been in the trolley.
Why ditch that trolley? The car park was on the same level as the supermarket. There was something not quite right about Granny Plaid Skirt, something very not right about her winter skirt and cardigan on a day like last Friday. There was something wrong about Danni’s environmentally friendly shopping bag too – and something more wrong about her mother.
She’d come in here today wearing an ice-blue frock and looking fragile enough for a breeze to sweep her off her feet. A gale wouldn’t move that woman. To date Ross hadn’t seen her shed a tear, or look capable of shedding one.
He’d watched her Sunday night interview. She’d looked as if she’d been interrupted on her way to a modelling assignment. He’d become obsessed by her hair, by the way it moved as she’d moved, as if each hair had been trained to know its place. He’d thought wig. Today he’d taken particular note of her parting. Her colour may not have been natural but her hair was her own.
She had the complexion, the delicacy, of a porcelain doll, a collector’s item, to be handled only by those wearing white gloves. The Sunday night interviewer, one tough lady, had taken her gloves off. She’d chipped away at Barbara Lane for fifteen minutes, determined to squeeze out a tear. They were good for ratings. She’d failed. Delicate Mrs Lane was more vitreous enamel than porcelain.
He’d learnt a lot about her in the days since Danni had disappeared. He’d spoken to her boyfriend, who’d denied any personal relationship with Mrs Lane – which was not so according to a couple of his undervalued employees and young Samantha Smith had seen Danni’s mother’s boyfriend come out of the downstairs bedroom wearing only a short dressing-gown.
‘She used to live with him at Docklands, in his penthouse, until she brought Danni down from her grandfather’s place and he moved them into the Barbie’s doll house. That’s what Danni used to call their house,’ Samantha had said.
Crow didn’t own a penthouse at Docklands. He rented a classy two-bedroom unit there. He owned, or he and his wife owned, a ten-acre property at Pakenham and a beach house at Mount Martha – a beach house Johnson’s team had searched. Crow was the right age to fit the killer’s profile, was a lying, cheating bastard of a man, and Danni would have got into his car willingly.
Ross hated admitting it, but Crow was innocent of abduction. At the time Danni had gone missing, he’d been with his wife and kids, preparing to leave for a weekend in Echuca, which he’d spent at his in-laws’ place. His wife and their seventeen-year-old daughter backed up that part of his story. His wife, who owned half of the business, had refused to discuss their payroll/accounts officer.
Ross looked at his watch. A direct flight from Townsville to Melbourne took around three hours, so he went outside to pollute Melbourne’s evening air.
He knew who had Danni. He’d known on Friday night. She was the killer’s type. A pretty immature kid, as fair as her mother, blue eyed like her mother but very different. Danni’s eyes had warmth behind them, laughter, the hint of a rebel.
March now, mid-March. Given a warm autumn, unless they found that murdering bastard, they’d find Danni’s body in May, beside a freeway, double-bagged, her long pale hair shampooed and tied high with pink satin bows.
‘Fight him, Danni. Stay strong and give me time.’
BLIND
Pitch dark. Airless. Everything hot, metal bars and floor beneath straw which stank of wee and vomit, and because she couldn’t see where she’d vomited, she smelled the same as the straw. Couldn’t see anything. Like a blind mole locked in a cage.
Didn’t know who had put her in it, or how. She’d woken up in it, had screamed until she’d had no more voice to scream. Didn’t know how long. Seemed like weeks, except it couldn’t have been weeks or she would have died of thirst before she’d found the water. Two big Coke bottles full of water, on the floor outside the bars, on normal floorboards. She’d felt the grooves between those boards.
They were the only things that were normal. The wall behind the bottles wasn’t a wall but spongy, like the walls of padded cells in old movies about insane asylums. The mad people they’d put in them could stand up. She couldn’t even sit up, not straight up, or her head hit the top bars.
She’d thought she’d been blind when she’d woken up. She wasn’t blind, because opposite to where she’d found the water she could see a slit of grey, like light seeping through the gap between two floorboards. And there was something else that came and went, near where she’d found the water bottles. It looked like a smudged circle with a tail like a comet.
Nothing to see now, only a dead blackness like there’d been a storm and they’d all had to go down to Nan and Pop Lane’s basement, then the powerlines had blown down and they’d waited in that solid black for hours. There’d been air and space down there. She’d heard things, heard the wind roaring, things banging against the outside of the house. Couldn’t hear anything in here, except her own noises. It was as if even the sound of her breathing was trapped in that cage, her swallowing sounds, her growling belly.
She’d drunk too much water too fast when she’d found those bottles and it had come up just as fast and gone everywhere, in her hair, the straw, on the bars. She sipped water now, had sipped all of one bottle and started on the other one.
And thoughts were coming back, and they made her panic, and when she panicked, she couldn’t breathe. Better to pretend she was in Nan and Pop’s basement and when
the storm was over she could get out.
They’d sold it. Sold the house, the land and the horses—
Didn’t want to think about that either, but if she didn’t fill her head with something, then the words from the television came at her.
Psychopath.
Paedophile.
Monica Rowan.
Emaciated.
She knew, knew, knew.
Body found beside the Hume Freeway … identified as that of Monica Rowan …
‘Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t scream.’
Heard that, like a husky whisper.
If Samantha had agreed to go home when she’d wanted to go home—
‘Stop!’
Apples spilling everywhere, big pink lady apples. Grapes, falling out of their plastic bag—
Monica Rowan had been found dead in a garbage bag beside the Hume Freeway, and there’d been three more before her. Penny. She remembered Penny because of Grandpa’s pennies. In Sydney. He had an album full of the old money from before her mother had been born and he’d shown her a penny and a half penny and a tiny silver threepenny bit, and old paper money.
Good times in Sydney. Her father had been there … then they’d gone to court and he’d gone to Townsville and Grandma had died and everything changed.
Like in America after Nan and Pop Lane’s funerals. It was as if funerals were some sort of catalyst.
Her back was aching and her stomach was starving.
Emaciated.
Psychopath.
Paedophile.
If people had water they could stay alive in the Australian desert for days. She had water. If people who were lost had water, if they kept their heads, they stayed alive until someone found them. Panic made people do stupid things, and it was doing the stupid things that killed them. She had water. She had to pretend she was lost in the desert, and if she kept her head, her father and Grandpa would find her. She had to stop herself from screaming so her vocal cords could recover, then wait until she heard someone out there.