by Megan Norris
On Wednesday afternoon we visited Cathy, the mother of Ellen, one of Rachel’s closest friends. Although Rachel and Ellen had not visited each other for a number of months, they were like soul mates and no doubt still in telephone contact. Perhaps Ellen knew something.
Rachel was in the fortunate position of having a number of friends who thought they were Rachel’s best friends. The truth is, she did have a number of best friends from her different interests in life. Best friend at church. Best friend from primary school. Best friend from secondary school. Best friend at dance school and so on. The Baptist minister described Rachel as a butterfly, flittering from one group of friends to another, in her different interests, but always making people feel special.
Ellen had not heard from Rachel. Ellen was very concerned. It was not like Rachel to let people worry. She said she would ring up the radio station her age group listened to and get word out. Ellen became upset and Cathy went to collect her from school.
Cathy also contacted one of her friends, John, who was a pharmacist who owned printing equipment. He offered free access to this equipment with an unlimited quantity of paper to produce as many posters as we would need. David, a friend of ours and graphic artist, had already offered to design another poster for us and gave his time to go and produce these posters, which he did after a full day’s work and long into the small hours of the night.
A phone call came through asking us to contact the woman detective at Richmond police. Someone had rung in response to one of the posters. A girl answering Rachel’s description was seen with two other girls getting on at East Richmond railway station. It was now about 5 p.m., and the police said they would contact Camberwell station because surveillance videos for this region were stored at Camberwell. We assumed we would be contacted when they were going so we could accompany them.
The dance school was also informed by Richmond police that they would interview teachers and students on Thursday morning regarding Rachel’s disappearance.
At last.
5
DESCENT OF LOSS
Wednesday Evening, 3 March
We returned home at about 5.30 p.m., for a short while, to see our younger girls and give them some loving. They must surely be feeling insecure as well.
The house seemed to be full of caring family and friends, who listened to the events of the day. Robbie, my sister, had arrived from Wonthaggi. She would take Heather back. Nine-year-old Heather was happy to have an unscheduled holiday from school.
David, our graphic artist friend, arrived not long after us, and he was happy to pick up a number of photographs of Rachel to design the new poster. We could collect it tomorrow morning from his work.
I remembered David had called into the house last Saturday, when Rachel had been by herself for a while, and I asked him how she had seemed.
He told us she was fine. She had shown him the heart-shaped cushion she was making for Manni, and had spoken of how much she loved Manni. She had also wanted to make a cake but discovered there were no eggs and asked David if he would go and buy her some. He wanted to know why she hadn’t just walked to the corner store. She replied that she was too scared to go to the local shops because sometimes men followed her.
Someone suggested I ring Telstra and find out the details of incoming and outgoing phone calls for the weekend. I thought this an excellent idea but I could only obtain the outgoing calls because to access incoming calls would be breaking the privacy act. The Telstra lady was extremely helpful though and gave us a list of all the phone calls made from our house over the weekend. The only mystery phone-calling that weekend had been from Heather and Ashleigh-Rose, who had rung some new friends whose numbers we were not yet familiar with.
When I informed the detective senior sergeant that I had rung Telstra and obtained a list of outgoing calls he told me I had saved them the job because they were just about to do that. I asked him if he could get a list of incoming calls because I felt the so-called female friend may have tried to contact her over the past weekend. He told me this wasn’t possible. I thought – not technically possible.
I was given the impression that the following morning a press statement was going to be released, possibly with ‘Crime Stoppers’.
It was as if there had already been a death in the family. It wasn’t that I believed Rachel was dead. It was the chasm of the not knowing which felt – like death. Rachel was now approaching her third night out. She had spent three nights away from home before, but then we knew where she was. Either at Manni’s, or a girlfriend’s, on holiday, or with a grandparent. It was the helplessness of it all. A family is a unit with a sense of belonging, even when separated by distance, even when separated by divorce, because everyone is aware of another’s being and location, somewhere on earth. Our unit suddenly found a piece of the jigsaw missing. Even second and third cousins and great-great-aunts and uncles in England, the Shetland Isles and America were feeling anxious about Rachel. Manni’s family in Italy was feeling anxious about Manni’s girl, the girl they’d seen dancing on birthday and Christmas videos.
What must it feel like for the parents of children sent to fight or nurse in wars?
My father said, ‘The not knowing. This is what wartime is like. Imagine five years of it, every person, in every household.’
Mike stood up. ‘It’s dark under the house. I’ll grab a torch,’ he said and left the room.
‘What’s he on about?’ asked Michele, my cousin.
‘He’s looking for Rachel … under the house.’
Everybody stopped talking. I realised my mistake.
‘She’s under the house!’ yelled Heather and ran, but I grabbed her.
My mother stood up, ashen-faced.
‘No, Heather. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’ I wrapped my arms around her, giving her a comforting cuddle. ‘The detective senior sergeant asked us to look under the house, just in case she had run away and was hiding there.’
My mother was appalled.
My Aunt Babe said, ‘Now, Joy, he’s just doing his job. He had to ask Michael.’
We heard the door to the area under the house open. We heard Mike say, ‘Rachel, Rachel, are you here?’ We heard him walking right underneath. ‘Rachel … Rachel … Didn’t think you’d be here.’
Emmanuel Carella’s mum, Rosa, met us at about 7.00 o’clock in Richmond. She came with Tony, Manni’s dad, who had brought more photocopied posters. We told them we were having a new poster designed which would hopefully be available tomorrow. During the day the Carella brothers had thought Rachel’s disappearance may have had something to do with the Grand Prix, as did my father. They thought it possible Rachel may have been hoodwinked into believing some clever story about part-time dancing for the Grand Prix, because the older dance students were rehearsing for something connected to the Grand Prix. Could Rachel have naively gone to some tabletop dance club and be held up somewhere for the week? Could she have realised her mistake and now just be biding time? My father hoped she might appear at the end of the week.
The Carella brothers and cousins and their friends decided they would frequent clubs and tabletop dancing venues, just in case. Tony said he would walk around the city gardens with Robert, the eldest Carella brother.
Rosa, Mike and I walked the streets behind East Richmond railway station. I couldn’t imagine why Rachel would be here but we all felt the need to do something. We stuck posters up and called … Rachel, Rachel, RACHEL.
If it was at all possible she was behind one of these walls, even if she couldn’t answer us, she would at least know we were continuing to search for her.
We were walking back across the bridge over East Richmond railway line when a car pulled up. A door opened. It was the detectives. They asked us if we’d had any luck. No. Had they?
They had been to Camberwell station and viewed the videos for the hour of 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. on Monday, and said they couldn’t see Rachel. I thought it odd that they hadn’t asked us b
ecause I felt, as Rachel’s parents, we would have had a better chance of identifying her on a video surveillance than the detectives.
We talked to them for a little while before they were called away to do another job. They were genuinely concerned for Rachel.
By the time we returned to the dance school, classes had finished. It was then I realised I hadn’t eaten all day. I can’t remember exactly what we did for food but I have an idea Vicki ordered pizza. We ate, only because we needed to keep up our strength. We knew we would not be going home.
Instead we did the hospital walk. We had phoned the hospitals on Tuesday only to be met with this damned privacy act. If Rachel had been admitted under ‘Rachel Barber’ she had the right for her parents not to know, if she didn’t wish them to. So we soon learned we had to ask if a girl, answering Rachel’s description, had been admitted, named or unnamed. But there had been no injured or deceased girls answering her description admitted to any of the hospitals over this period.
We drove back to Richmond, drove slowly around the streets, over and over again. The words ‘a person who doesn’t want to be found won’t be found’ stirred and challenged our thoughts. As Rachel’s parents we had considered this an insult. But what were the alternatives? Would we rather our daughter be missing of her own free will or would we prefer the alternative? To be proven right and find a decomposing body or a badly beaten and raped shadow of the Rachel we’d last seen?
‘You do realise that when we find her she won’t be in any condition to dance,’ I said. ‘She may have to take a year off. I think she’ll need special counselling.’
‘Don’t underestimate Rachel,’ Mike answered. ‘She’ll be back dancing within the month. Dancing will heal her.’
The detective senior sergeant had warned us not to stay out all night. Trying to find her would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Another cliché, but a true one. He told us we could drive down one road only to turn into another just as she might walk into the road we’d just left. Futile, it seemed. It was. We were now approaching the third night without any further leads. In all honesty we could not expect the police to take us seriously in the search if we did not consider what they thought, too – that Rachel may have run away. The search for Rachel should be a two-way partnership, family and police working together. So we decided to search for her as if she really was a runaway, so we would have credibility with the police, not because for any one moment we thought she was.
Exhausted, at about 2.00 a.m., we drove into the city.
6
NO FOUL PLAY
Day 3: Early hours of Thursday, 4 March
I would not recommend making a tour of Melbourne at two in the morning. It is a different city then.
We drove around but soon realised we needed to be on foot. We parked the car somewhere near the corner of Lonsdale and Russell Streets, grabbed a handful of posters, an exercise book and pen, and made our way towards Swanston Walk and Flinders Street. The heart of Melbourne. This was scary stuff. There were clusters of people. Smoking, drinking, sleeping. No one appeared aggressive but there was a belligerent undercurrent. The city felt as if a haze had slipped over it like a pillow case.
We spoke to a few people and handed them posters. They wished us luck. We spoke to a flower-seller outside the Town Hall. Still selling flowers. Selling flowers, I thought, at this hour?
There were teenagers asleep, huddled against the columns of St Paul’s Cathedral. Teenagers standing in groups, shifting from one foot to the other foot, drawing on cigarettes, downing Coke. Staring. Staring at us. Two crazy parents with posters in hand. We walked up to some of these young people, just children really, and asked them if they had seen any new girl answering Rachel’s description. They shook their heads but one boy said, ‘She’s lucky.’ We paused and looked at him. He drew on his cigarette and added, ‘She’s lucky to have parents like you … who care. You’ll find her.’
I felt like we were stepping over bodies beneath the clocks of Flinders Street station. Not all these people were homeless, but a lot of them looked as if they should have been tucked up in bed with a teddy bear, the dregs of a hot chocolate dried out in a mug beside them.
Our posters were already taped to notice boards. Someone mentioned a public notice board somewhere in Swanston Walk. There were posters there as well. It seemed as though every available spot to place posters already had posters. The Carellas had done well.
I distinctly remember one poster where Rachel’s eyes had been burnt out with a cigarette. I felt as if a dagger had sliced through my heart. Mike took down the eyeless poster and replaced it with another. He took my hand and led me away. It felt like an omen.
An alcoholic, destitute man kept following us. Three or four times he spoke to Mike. He followed us for several blocks. I found this unnerving, but Mike was courteous to him. It was as if Mike had collected a stray while going for a walk.
We quickened our step as we made our zigzagging way through the streets. We spoke to several security guards outside Timezone fun parlours and similar places, finally being convinced by one guard that this was not the right place for us to be.
‘We’re not going to find her, Mike,’ I said, nervously squeezing his hand, and agreeing with the guard. ‘It’s not going to do anyone any good if we both end up dead.’
Mike nodded.
When the car was in sight we ran the last few metres and locked ourselves in quickly. I felt ashamed.
Mike said, ‘Did you notice the police presence?’
‘What police presence?’
We had been in the city for close on two hours, maybe longer, and had seen one patrol car.
‘Shall we drive to Rose Street?’ I can’t remember whether it was Mike or me who said it, but we couldn’t go home. So we ‘cased out’ our first brothel, the one that was the focus of that story in Monday’s Age. By day eight we had noted the goings-in and the goings-out of five brothels and one escort agency. And why? Imagined fear coupled with exhaustion. This was the phenomenon the detective senior sergeant was probably trying to save us from.
We drove slowly down Rose Street, not even sure what a brothel looked like, and into the back streets of Fitzroy. Mike was driving now because I couldn’t trust my concentration. We were stopped at one of the back street corners when a group of colourful, and young, dreadlocked adults surrounded the car. Oranges and reds, purple stripes and blue stripes marked their fashion statement.
Mike wound the window down. I couldn’t believe it. We could have been mugged!
To my surprise we found that they were worried about us driving around the streets so slowly. They thought we were lost. Mike told them our story and they asked for some posters, offering to put them up. I was ashamed, again, at my preconception. They were warm and caring, and I had grossly misjudged them.
About 4.30 a.m. we found ourselves outside a pink, illuminated ‘house of ill repute’ in Richmond.
‘She wouldn’t be here,’ I said. ‘It looks too legal.’
‘Right district though,’ said Mike.
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s not here.’
Mike drove over the bridge and on until we stopped the car near a small park. We watched a man walking two Great Danes on leashes while we sipped lukewarm coffee which tasted of vacuum flask. We walked around the park, looking under shrubs and in children’s play equipment. Mike checked more dump bins.
‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’
We did not sleep. We did not talk. We mulled over our unfolding tragedy, independently, for the two hours rest we allowed ourselves.
There was a gentle knock on the bedroom door. ‘Are you awake?’ came a whisper.
‘Yes,’ answered Mike.
My mother opened the door with tea and toast. ‘Don’t get up,’ she said. ‘I heard you come in.’
She sat down beside us. ‘Robbie rang last night and Heather’s fine. She’ll go to the nursery with her today.’
We sipped our tea in
silence. No words, just pain.
‘Your parents rang, Mike,’ said Mum. ‘They’ve asked the Major at Inala if the Salvation Army can help.’
‘Good idea,’ answered Mike. Mike’s parents lived at Inala, a retirement village not far away.
‘We walked through the city last night.’
‘Elizabeth,’ said Mum, with her concerned mother’s voice from my childhood.
‘It’s so sad,’ added Mike. ‘The city at night. It was terrible. There was this drunk …’
‘Is Ashleigh-Rose okay?’ I asked, breaking yet another silence.
‘She settled late after letting me read to her in bed,’ answered Mum.
The phone rang. It was Ted, our old friend. Mum left the room to refill our cups. She took the plate of cold toast with her.
‘I don’t know,’ Ted told Mike, ‘but I don’t sense she’s come to any harm. I feel she will turn up at the end of the week.’ Mike passed this news to me. I felt relieved.
‘Ted wants to know if you know of an old woman who lived in Mont Albert,’ Mike asked me. ‘Someone who has died.’
‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Someone who is perhaps blind,’ added Mike. ‘Ted says he’s had a message that the blind see. And this blind person is watching over Rachel.’
‘Old Grandma,’ I said. ‘She was blind. But lived in Surrey Hills. Same postcode as Mont Albert, though.’ Grandma died when Rachel was about five. Rachel was her namesake, Rachel Elizabeth, although Grandma hated both names and always called herself Bessie. She told me when she found out I had named Rachel after her that she couldn’t think why. But I think she thought the idea of having a grandchild named after her was appealing.
‘That’s it, then,’ said Mike. ‘The blind see.’ He paused. ‘There’s another call coming through. Ted, can you hold on? … Okay then … Bye, we’ll see you later in the day … Hello … Oh, Mum … no, we haven’t found her yet.’
I relaxed and leant back onto the bed. Some moments later Mike said goodbye to his mother, but dropped the phone. I reached across him, and put it back. Mike stayed where he was, his body over the bed, his arm dropped loosely to the floor, with his fingers flailing.