by Stephen Orr
‘What should I do?’ George asked.
‘What can you do?’
AN HOUR LATER, Moy and George were standing in the doorway of the toilet in the family home. Moy dared not venture in. The floor was flooded and the overflow, a mixture of pulped paper, shitty lumps and cigarette butts, had reached and soaked the hallway carpet.
‘What a stink,’ Moy said.
‘What did you expect?’ his father replied.
‘What have you been putting down there?’
‘Same’s been going down there for the last thirty years, with no problems.’
‘Well, you got one now. How much paper do you use?’
George looked annoyed. ‘What’s it matter?’
‘Well…’ He tried to think of how to say it.
‘I use what I need to use.’
‘What about the cigarettes?’
‘I’ve always flushed them down…never mattered.’
‘So, we call a plumber?’ Moy asked.
‘My arse. I know what the problem is.’
George led him outside, halfway up the driveway and stopped to point out a willow that grew on the other side of the fence. He showed him the roots that came onto his side and lifted the pavers he’d used as garden edging. ‘Look. Right across the drive,’ he said. ‘And here, this is where the sewer runs.’
‘Y’reckon?’
‘I know. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Ever since she planted that bastard thirty years ago.’ He raised his voice. ‘I told her not to. Not there. I said, why don’t you plant it in the middle? Wouldn’t listen.’
‘Dad, ssh.’
‘Won’t bloody ssh.’ He called louder. ‘Now who’s gotta pay three hundred dollars for a plumber?’ And he quietened. ‘Old cow.’
They stood together in the warm morning sun, Moy noticing the iron pulling away from the rotten fence posts. ‘That’ll need doing soon,’ he said, indicating.
George looked at it. ‘That’s your problem, when I’m gone. Good luck getting any money out of her.’
Moy knew who ‘her’ was: Thea Miller, ex-nurse, widow and treasurer of the Guilderton Country Women’s. She kept to herself, had a man in to do her garden and lawns, double-pegged her tunics, raked the gravel around her succulents and twice monthly vacuumed the carpet in her 1978 Premier. She generally ignored anyone she hadn’t met prior to her fortieth birthday.
George shook his head. ‘Only one thing for it.’
Five minutes later Moy was in the shed, wiping away spider webs as he moved through a jumble of old furniture, boxes and half-made cabinets George had lost interest in. He found the corner where the paints and chemicals were stored, lifted each tin and blew the dust from it.
‘Bingo.’
He made his way back to George who in the meantime had used a stick to take the lid off the sewer access.
‘There you go,’ said Moy. ‘Caustic soda.’
‘Bung it in.’
Moy pulled back the lid and looked at his father. ‘You want me to do it?’
‘That’s what you come home for, wasn’t it? To help your old man?’
‘Yes, that was the idea.’
‘Well, off you go. That stuff eats anything. You wanna murder someone, that’s what you use to get rid of the evidence.’
‘I know, Dad.’ He started emptying the powder into the hole.
‘Fella in East Hay did that.’ George sat down on a planter, remembering. ‘His wife…and I think there was a kiddy. He thought she’d been on with another fella. You heard of that one, son?’
‘No, Dad.’ He emptied the last of the powder and replaced the lid.
‘This fella at the pub had been bragging to his mates—I’ve had so-and-so’s wife. But he never had. He was just a big mouth. So one of these blokes at the pub tells the husband and the stupid bugger believes him.’
Moy sat beside his father. ‘I don’t think that’s gonna solve the problem,’ he said, indicating the empty container.
‘He strangled them. East Hay, yes. 1949…then, they say’—and he turned to his son again, smiling, as if he’d reached the punchline—‘he sawed them into small pieces, so they’d dissolve quicker. You ever heard of anything like that, son?’
‘Yes, there was a case—’
George wasn’t interested. ‘There was a bathtub in the back shed and when they found it, it was full of jelly.’
‘What about the bones and hair?’ Moy asked.
‘Some things persist.’ George closed his eyes and smiled.
‘Should we call a plumber?’ Moy said.
‘Suppose so,’ came the whispered reply.
13
MOY DROVE TO Dempsey’s Takeaway and bought three dim sims, bleeding oil into a bag that boasted Proud Sponsors of the Guilderton Maulers. As he ate he cruised along Creek Street, holding one of the dim sims with his fingertips. Minced meat emerging from what looked like an old war wound.
The radio nagged in his ear—slide guitar, nasal drone—and then the news update. It was the same voice that reported the fodder store specials, the demise of the Methodist tennis team and a fire at the impregnation plant, as if all these things could go together. Service times—Uniting, Anglican and Catholic, and then: ‘Police media have just released details of a body washed up at Mangrove Point, south of Port Louis.’ Moy held the dim sim between his teeth as he turned up the volume. ‘The body, a tall, solidly built fella in his thirties, hasn’t been identified. But, I suppose he will be…when someone misses him.’
These words rang in Moy’s ears. When someone misses him. As if ultimately, everyone belonged somewhere. When, he knew very well, some people were never missed at all.
The low voice moved on to the more important business of lost rams.
Moy wondered what a dead body was doing in a swamp at Port Louis. The town was twice the size of Guilderton but half as interesting. Neat streets, all finished with diosma, leading down to a kelpy beach that kept going out for two hundred metres. Everyone agreed: not worth the drive. A Catholic town with seven churches, three Freemason halls and a 1950s feel. It had a Community Prayer Week every year when the locals shut up shop early to pray for the welfare of the town and its people.
When Moy arrived at the burnt-out house he noticed a Major Crime Investigation four-wheel-drive parked on the side of the road. Its back door was open and someone had unloaded cameras, bags and tackle boxes. There was a card table loaded with evidence bags, each holding small black objects: a remote control, sunglasses, knives, forks and jewellery.
He got out of his car, did up his top button and tightened his tie. Then he turned and noticed a farmer, sitting on an idling tractor in an adjacent paddock, watching him through a shelter-belt of sheoak.
‘Got a minute?’ he called to him, walking over to the fence between the shelter belt and the paddock.
The farmer got down off his tractor. ‘Jo Humphris,’ he said, extending his hand.
‘Detective Sergeant Bart Moy, Guilderton police.’
‘What’s going on?’ Humphris looked over to what was left of the house.
‘You didn’t notice the fire?’
‘No, my place is a couple of clicks down the track.’ He gestured to a hill that rose and dropped towards the horizon.
‘But this is your land?’
‘Yes.’
The farmer wasn’t tall, and it seemed to Moy that he might be shrinking as he talked to him. His breasts had formed udders that rested on a stomach straining to escape his flannelette shirt. He wore jeans, bare and white down the front where he’d wipe diesel and molasses from his hands. His boots had calcified, the brown leather worn thin and split beneath a layer of cow shit.
‘You didn’t notice anything?’ Moy said. ‘Yesterday?’
‘No. Why you fellas so interested?’
‘There was a woman inside.’
‘Shit.’ He raised his eyebrows and the white of his eyes caught the afternoon light. ‘Who was she?’
‘That
’s what we’re trying to find out. You ever seen anyone in there?’
‘No. Christ, no one’s lived there for years. It’s just a big rat trap…a ruin. We, I mean me and some of the other farmers around here, we’ve been trying to get the council to knock it down for years.’
‘Right…so you don’t think someone lost patience?’
Humphris stared at him, taking a moment. ‘Na…these are sensible fellas. They wouldn’t do that.’
‘And you think they’d know someone was squatting?’
‘Squatting?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘No, that’s a bit of a mystery, Detective…Moy, was it?’
‘Bart.’
‘Good-o.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Just lucky it wasn’t earlier, before we got the crop in.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You ever seen twenty thousand acres burn?’
Moy didn’t really know how big that was. To the fence line? The horizon, the next town? ‘So whoever was harvesting didn’t notice anyone?’
Humphris squinted to see the house hidden in the scrub. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’
‘I suppose not,’ Moy agreed, looking. ‘Thanks for your help.’ He took out his notepad and a pen. ‘Jo, was it?’
‘Yes. Jo Humphris. This is my road here, and this is where it ends, on Creek Street.’ He pointed. ‘You got any problems you come see me. Galbally, that’s my place. We’ve had it for a hundred and twenty years.’
‘Really?’ Moy said, as he scribbled. ‘The Moys used to have land, out past Cambrai. You heard of the Moys?’
‘No.’
Moy turned to go, but stopped. ‘By the way, what sort of car have you got?’
‘Eh?’ Humphris looked at him strangely.
‘We’re just trying to rule people out.’
‘White ute, Toyota.’
‘Good, that takes care of you.’
He started back through the scrub, jumped an irrigation ditch and passed through the gate of an old fence that surrounded the burnt-out house.
‘Moy,’ he said, greeting a sergeant in blue overalls, unbuttoned down to his breastbone, revealing a rug of curly hair.
‘Tim Monaghan,’ the towering figure replied. ‘I was expecting you earlier, Detective Moy.’
‘Detective Sergeant.’ He looked at the sergeant’s carefully trimmed moustache. ‘My father’s ill, I had to stop by. I assumed the firies were still going.’
‘Gone. They’re gonna send you a report. They came for the body, too. She’s on her way to town.’
‘That was quick.’ He made the mistake of smiling.
‘You’ll need these.’ The sergeant handed him a pair of feet covers. ‘Looks like no one much has bothered.’
‘Perhaps it was the CFS,’ Moy said, pulling on the covers. ‘They had two units, and they were all over the place.’
‘None of your fellas?’
‘Well, I’d hope not.’ He wondered whether Monaghan’s lips ever moved from the horizontal.
‘We’ve got stuff crushed up everywhere in here.’ The sergeant led Moy back into the house. ‘It’s like the Keystone Cops.’
Another investigator was taking photos of the floor in the lounge room. He’d set up markers and Moy was surprised to see that there were at least thirty points of interest around the room. ‘What have you found?’ he asked Monaghan.
‘A few footprints, but fuck knows who they belong to.’
‘Right, but nothing that might tell us who she was?’
‘No.’ The sergeant glared at Moy. ‘We’re still interviewing the possums. What about you?’
You prick, he thought. ‘The closest homes are down the end of Creek Street. Nothing of much help. The fella that called it in was driving past with his kids, going into town for some bread and milk.’
‘You’ve done the door-knocks?’
‘Yes. I had a couple of constables work their way right along.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Doesn’t leave you with much.’ Monaghan knelt down where the body had been. ‘The fire investigator reckons she was covered in diesel. Don’t know much else until the coroner’s done. No stab marks, no strangulation.’ He looked up at Moy. ‘You finished your initial report?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Yeah.’ He stood up. ‘This way.’
Monaghan led him into the kitchen. They walked on a raised aluminium walkway that had been laid throughout most of the house. ‘More prints here,’ Monaghan said, indicating unburnt boards. ‘Then there’s ash, and more prints.’
They arrived in the kitchen and Monaghan indicated the sink, full of broken dishes, and a chicken carcass on a burnt chopping board.
‘I could be wrong, but that’s a lot of dishes for one person,’ the sergeant continued.
‘Maybe she wasn’t houseproud.’
‘Maybe.’ He walked over to the sink and ran his index finger across some of the plates. ‘All greasy,’ he said, looking at Moy.
Moy shrugged. ‘So, perhaps, whoever did it had tea with her first?’
‘Maybe. That’s what you gotta find out, DS Moy.’
‘Right.’
‘That’s what the statistics show, isn’t it? People getting knocked off by someone they know? So, if these were squatters…itinerant, probably. Unlikely to be local. You work it out. You get paid more than me.’
‘Eat the chook, then have an argument?’ Moy said.
‘What about the diesel?’
Moy stared at the broken plates. ‘I suppose I could start with the chicken shop?’
‘Don’t bother.’ The sergeant held up a plastic wrapper. ‘They roasted their own.’
And so the tour continued, with more suggestions about what he might want to consider next time, how there was a manual about securing crime scenes, easily downloadable.
‘I’ll do my report,’ Monaghan concluded, as they returned to the front porch. ‘You may be the only detective on this, at least for a while. But that’s good, eh? You know all the locals, that’s how you’re gonna solve it. People don’t just appear from nowhere and then disappear into thin air.’
MOY HEADED BACK to town. Light rain had fallen and dried. As he slowed for the intersection of Creek Street and Peyser Avenue his car skidded on a slew of loose gravel and ended up stalled in the middle of the intersection. He sat looking both ways but there was nothing coming. His heart slowed and he took a deep breath, pressing his foot to the brake before realising it was too late.
Then he heard the shriek of tyres from further along Peyser Avenue. He started the car and headed towards the tennis club where, it turned out, a pair of cockies’ sons in a hot ute were busy with circle work on the newly resurfaced courts.
The ute had fat tyres and big rims, metallic paint and a pair of spotlights welded to a roll-bar. The driver, a peach-fuzzed teenager in a black singlet, was laughing, leaning into an ever-tightening circle as he called to his mate. There were a dozen or so skid marks covering all four of the courts. Moy could smell the rubber.
He pulled up on the side of the road and punched the number on the clubhouse into his phone. The club secretary answered and Moy asked him to come straight away. Then he got out and sat on the bonnet of his car with his arms crossed. Eventually the driver noticed him. Stopped; said, ‘Fuck it,’ and went back to circling. Moy stood up, and held his warrant card against the fence.
The ute stopped.
Moy walked over to them. ‘Morning, lads.’
The driver turned off his engine and got out. ‘Just a bit of fun.’
‘Assuming you had some sort of intelligence, wouldn’t you do this at night?’
The driver shrugged; his mate was trying not to laugh.
Moy took the keys from the boy in the black singlet. ‘It’s a very nice ute,’ he said.
‘Y’reckon?’
‘Of course, those tyres are illegal, and the rims.’
A few neighbours, from
homes across the road, had gathered to watch.
‘I just don’t get it,’ Moy said. ‘If you robbed a bank, you’d wear a mask, wouldn’t you?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You would. Got a licence?’
‘Yeah.’
‘P-plates?’
‘Yeah…’ He looked. ‘Must’ve fallen off.’
Moy couldn’t understand why each new generation of farmers’ sons just kept getting dumber. Supposedly they were better educated. The water, the food, the air didn’t change. The schools didn’t change, the shops. Nothing…nothing ever changed. So why?
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said.
‘What, that’s it?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re not gonna do anything?’
‘No.’
‘Well…okay, thanks.’ He held his hands out for the keys.
‘No, I’ll take these. Mr Allen, he runs this place, he’ll be here in a minute. He said he’s happy to sort it out. Okay?’
They looked stunned. The boy kicked the tyre.
‘Mr Allen, he’s not a happy man at the best of times.’ He got in his car and started it. ‘I’ll hold on to these,’ he said, as he drove across the gravel.
There was policing and there was policing; he’d learned that in the early days. Gary had told him stories—about when he was a boy, growing up the son of a country copper in Mount Wilson. How back then the government didn’t supply police cars, and how he remembered holding onto his seat as his dad chased crooks through the backblocks in the family car, mum holding her hat, his sister and him, still in his Sunday suit after a morning in the Baptist church. How, when one fella ran his car off the road, his dad got out, took him by the collar and punched him in the face. Said, ‘Maybe you’ll think twice next time.’ Before getting back in the family car, straightening his tie and heading home for the Sunday roast.
The sun came out as he headed back through town. He passed George’s house and saw him out with the plumber, talking.
He stopped. ‘You okay, Dad?’
George stared at him, squinting. ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s me, your son.’