by Megan Norris
This man had progressively made me feel more and more uncomfortable. It wasn’t all his fault. Mike tells me I have an infectious and sometimes flirtatious smile. I enjoyed his company and assumed we could be friends, like girlfriends.
Rachel knew he made me feel uncomfortable. She didn’t like him. She had seen him turn up at the dance school, looking for me in the pizza shop, where I would sometimes eat and read a book, while I waited for night classes to finish.
He would turn up at my workplace. He would sit in his car waiting for me to leave work. Sometimes I would get to the car and discover his business card on the windscreen. Once I found a card sitting on the steering wheel when I had forgotten to lock the car.
Two weeks before Rachel’s disappearance I was home alone and so nervous that I closed all the curtains and would not answer the phone. Sure enough, he arrived. Mike’s car was not in the drive. He rang the front doorbell as he dialled his mobile. Our phone rang. I went into Heather’s bedroom. He walked around to my bedroom window, trying to look in, and dialled once more. Our phone rang again. He went back to the front door and pushed the bell again. I sat where I was, hiding. Eventually he left. I rang Mike.
Later in the day the phone rang. I decided to pick it up and not talk. If it was Mike or my mother, or someone from work, they’d speak. No one spoke, for a long time. Then, ‘Elizabeth … Elizabeth.’ It was him. I hung up, waited a minute and picked the phone up. He had not replaced the receiver. I pulled the plug from the wall. This was a game I didn’t like.
It was such a hot day this Monday. After school Ashleigh-Rose, Heather and I had had a swim. I had been showering, and came out dressed to discover him in the kitchen. Heather had let him in. He said, ‘Your phone appears to have a problem.’ Enough is enough, and this was enough. Ashleigh-Rose and Heather stood looking at him.
‘My phone is not out of order. I just didn’t want to speak to you. In fact I am fed up with you following me around and I think I should ask you to leave the house. Right now.’ Silence. His body language was awkward. I do believe he was genuinely surprised. He said goodbye and left the house.
This was two weeks to the day that Rachel went missing. I had not heard from him since.
‘Elizabeth, you must report him,’ Alex said.
‘It’s only a game to him,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t hurt Rachel. You know that, Mike.’
Mike didn’t answer me.
‘Mike.’
Alex stood up with his friends. ‘Look, we’ll go to Church Street now, and then report our findings to the police. Elizabeth, think very carefully about this man. I think you’re acting very naively.’
We sat on the couch. Mike’s silent mood disturbed me. ‘We must tell the police,’ he said.
‘Mike, you know he wouldn’t hurt Rachel. It’s not in his nature.’
‘But going after other men’s wives is?’ he answered. ‘You shamed him in front of the other children. You haven’t heard from him in two weeks. And what does he give you every birthday, Christmas, or even Mother’s Day … a small present?’
‘So?’ I said.
‘So what if he told Rachel his business needed a model or dancer for the night? What if he said they would provide the clothing? If he told her it was okay with us, she’d probably believe him. What if he thought you would phone him to say Rachel is missing? Then he could miraculously find her and bring her home on your fortieth birthday, tomorrow.’
‘Michael.’
‘Listen,’ said Mike. ‘We don’t know that by not ringing and asking him for help we haven’t backed him into a corner. Now he can’t come to your rescue. He can’t be your knight in shining armour …’
‘Oh, Michael,’ I interrupted, thinking how melodramatic he was sounding.
‘How do you know he just won’t decide to give her back to you, dead. A present for your fortieth.’
I started to sob. ‘You can’t be serious. He wouldn’t do that. Rachel’s not dead.’
Mike shrugged his shoulders.
‘Don’t you give up on her. Don’t you!’
My mother interrupted. ‘Elizabeth, it does sound feasible.’
‘It’s a game to him. Just an annoying game.’
‘Dulcie didn’t think so,’ said Mike. ‘We’re telling the police. I think he would too, in similar circumstances.’
This just couldn’t be possible, but Mike was creating such a strong image of what could have been. Even so, the story didn’t seem to agree with Rachel’s account to Manni. This man was not an old female friend. Rachel would recognise him. How could he possibly get away with holding her for a week?
Mike reminded me that this man’s family owned a holiday house. Perhaps the house was empty. And what about the memory-loss drugs we had learnt of?
By midday I was convinced we needed to inform the police. Rachel’s survival could depend on us discovering her today.
My cousin Michele arrived and offered to drive us into Richmond. Before we left, Alex returned. He and his friends had doorknocked Church Street and had not received a warm welcome at Richmond police when they reported their results. The police were annoyed that we were still carrying out our own investigations.
Michele drove us to the Richmond police station. We asked Mum to continue ringing shoe shops and Mike suggested she try some shops in Moonee Ponds, where Manni lived.
We received a phone call from Mum at about 2 p.m. A shoe shop in Moonee Ponds sold a range of cross-trainers called Runaways. They cost from $50 to $100 and there had been a display of them for some months in their window.
We walked into the Richmond police station feeling that we had exonerated Rachel of the runaway note theory. It reaffirmed our sense of urgency.
But we were told by a policewoman that no detectives were available. I explained that the detective senior sergeant had said there would be detectives. She said they left at 2 p.m. and ‘like everyone else were entitled to time off. You have already had a lot of police hours this week and you’re not the only parents of missing persons.’
A lot of police hours. You’ve got to be kidding.
I tried to explain that we had new information. She didn’t appear to want to deal with us. We were a nuisance. We were parents of a ‘runaway’ who wanted the police to find their naughty child. This was not their job any more. Go home … seek special counselling. This was the feeling, the perception.
The knot of anger and despair gripped my chest. A single atom multiplied in a second. I ran from the police station and, standing on the steps, wrenched my handbag from my shoulder, aiming it at a stationary police car window. Then I stopped suddenly and ran into the street.
I screamed, ‘They’re going to let our little girl die! They’re going to let our little girl die!’
I was cheap entertainment for the Saturday afternoon coffee minglers, sitting outside cafés at tables for two. Street fumes mixed with inhaled smoke. Cigarette ash flicked into the dusty, grimy gutters. Chairs appearing to teeter on the edge.
Michele followed me. Wrapped her arms around me. ‘Elizabeth,’ she pleaded, ‘come back. She said she’ll listen.’
I looked to the upstairs window of the detective’s office. Were you up there looking down at me?
Mike and the policewoman met me on the step. She asked me what this new information was, insisting that I could tell her on the street.
‘There’s this man,’ I began and stopped. How could I tell her on the street? I tried to explain about one of our best friends betraying us. It sounded so ridiculous. I felt invaded, as if I had committed a crime. Could she think we were trying to come up with just any reason to keep the police investigation open?
We left, dissatisfied. Michele drove us to Dulcie’s.
Dulcie rang Neil Paterson of the Missing Persons Unit to tell him we were not happy with the response from Richmond.
‘Look, even if Rachel hated her parents, she’d still come to dance,’ I heard her say.
Whether our fear was justified
or not we now believed one hundred per cent that my fortieth birthday was crucial to Rachel’s survival. We had to find her tonight.
Dulcie was told we could contact the Ethical Standards Department, or the Ombudsman, or the inspector at the Victoria Police Centre, Duty Office Region One. We rang the number for the inspector. Labour Day long weekend. No one there. I left a detailed message. It was impossible to give up. We just couldn’t say, ‘Oh what the heck, let’s go home. See if Mike’s wrong or right.’ What if we did receive a large package, sent by courier? What would the policewoman say then?
We all decided to go back to the police station. Maybe the policewoman would be off duty.
The policewoman was still there. We repeated our request for a detective. No, no detective available. So, crime didn’t happen on long weekends. My suppressed anger tried to speak to her in a controlled but loudening voice. I told her we’d left a message on the inspector’s phone. We were taking matters higher. I told her I had nearly thrown my handbag through the police car window in frustration. I was emotional. Extremely noisy. I was becoming one of her worst nightmares.
The policewoman cautioned me: she could put me on a charge if I continued in this manner.
‘Go ahead then!’ I yelled, baiting her. ‘It’d be a very good idea.’ How good would it look to jail the mother of a missing girl. The press would love it. ‘YOU FUCKHEAD!’ I screeched. I can still remember the shock of hearing my own voice.
I was delirious. Crying and swirling in circles. Michele tried to hold me tightly. I have little recollection of Mike and Dulcie during this, only enough to know they witnessed the sad scene.
When I calmed down, the policewoman said she would take a handwritten statement at the front desk but if the phone rang she would need to answer it because she was the only one there. And then she would offer her opinion. I agreed.
For the first time, I now realise how fortunate I was not to have been charged. If I had been a police officer I wonder how I would have responded.
I spoke very slowly and deliberately. I needed to be careful with the story because now, under the circumstances, this male friend of mine, with his silly game, had incriminated himself. I remember saying we weren’t having an affair, because I thought it could have appeared so. Mike had never been threatened by our friendship. This man and I were best friends, that’s all, until his hide-and-seek game started. A bit of harmless fun for him, I’m sure. He had told me once that he was steadfastly stubborn and always got what he wanted.
The policewoman looked several times at the clock.
Finally, after a long half-hour at the watchhouse counter, I finished the statement.
‘I’ll run a check on him.’ And she disappeared.
‘They won’t find anything,’ I said.
‘His name is clear,’ said the policewoman when she returned. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
We were stumped. I thought the police should come up with the ideas.
‘Maybe you could contact his local police station. An officer could make general inquiries at his house, like … Rachel Barber went missing this week and we’re just asking people who knew her whether they’ve seen her.’
We were told this was not possible.
She said, ‘I feel you are making a quantum leap. You are not just talking about a missing person here, you are talking about an abduction and murder.’
9
GROWING FEAR
It was Saturday evening. We dropped Dulcie home and Michele drove us to St Hilary’s. This was Rachel’s church, where I had seen ourselves as Rachel’s guests. She had been a member of the Balwyn Baptist Church, but when she started at Canterbury Girls Secondary College, her friends introduced her to the St Hilary’s youth group, Wipe Out. I thought the church needed to know about Rachel’s disappearance. Since we moved to Heathmont, a forty minute drive away, she had only attended spasmodically. She had made me promise I would still drive her to Wipe Out and the Sunday evening youth service, where she was also a member of the choir. Work-tired, I had broken my promise.
The minister was out for the evening, but I left a message with their babysitter, so her youth group friends could pray for her. The church immediately became supportive, as did Balwyn Baptist. Rachel went down on many prayer lists, in many churches. Not only Christians responded. We have Jewish and Buddhist friends, too. There was quite a prayer network on the go.
An hour later we drove slowly past the house of the man we had reported, in Michele’s car. Mike and I slid down the back seat. His car was not in the driveway.
At home I rang a mutual friend and asked if she had seen this man during the week. If she had not seen him I would have been concerned. She had seen him twice and his behaviour was the same as always.
My nephew Shaun and his girlfriend Renée arrived. We had not slept since the few hours on Monday night, and though we had found strength in our diet of adrenalin and coffee we had become incompetent drivers. Shaun was to be our wheels.
Around seven o’clock Shaun decided to go with Mike and place the man’s house under surveillance. If his car was not there they would drive to his family’s holiday house.
Michele, David, Renée and I drove to a supermarket and bought the largest torches we could find. Perhaps we should not ignore what police felt – that Rachel was a runaway. We certainly couldn’t sit at home, and with no new leads we were running out of options. Maybe if the police could see we weren’t closing down on their options they would not close down on ours, and keep searching.
But if Rachel had run away, where would she go?
We decided to walk around Mont Albert, where we had lived for five years, renting my stepmother’s house. We walked through the grounds of the local primary school. I felt ridiculous searching under shrubs, walking behind shelter sheds, and sussing out the play equipment, calling Rachel, Rachel, RACHEL. I checked in the shadowy brick corners of the old school building. Would I find a sleeping child like the children we saw by St Paul’s? I knew she would not be there.
We split up. David and Renée, Michele and I.
‘Tape the posters to all the light poles,’ I said. ‘We’ll put posters in the letter boxes of our old friends.’
I hesitated outside a two-storey house, pausing at the letter box. ‘Gail Reid lives here,’ I said.
Michele said, ‘Go and knock on the door.’
I put one foot inside the front fence, stepped back and pushed the poster through the letter box.
‘Elizabeth?’ said Michele.
‘I can’t.’
It was a large sombre-looking house in the night light.
We walked hurriedly around the corner. ‘Do you think anyone saw us?’
‘No,’ she said, looking back.
A few moments later she said, ‘Look at that gargoyle. Makes you want to shudder.’
‘Part of Gail’s house,’ I said. ‘It’s not a happy house.’
I remember, one afternoon, a few years before, Gail sitting at our dining-room table. We were enjoying a cup of tea and a chat. She had been to see a clairvoyant whom she hadn’t seen in a long while. I recall Gail saying she was feeling a little cheated. The clairvoyant was talking more about her Barber friends. We were a family Gail should not lose touch with, she said. We would remain lifetime friends.
A phone call came through from Mike. They had driven past the man’s house several times. His car was in the driveway. Everything seemed okay. They had sat for an hour at the entrance to the no-through road. They decided not to check his family’s holiday house, so they drove to Wattle Park.
Mike considered it possible that Rachel might have arrived at the Wattle Park tram stop after he left on Monday night. Perhaps she had gone to buy those two tops she had been interested in, forgotten the time, and on arriving late and finding no Mike, waited at the tram shelter, only to have been coaxed or dragged across into the park.
A week had gone by. Mike went into the park looking for a body.
Mike an
d Shaun split up and covered the whole grounds, checking the old trams, checking beneath tree canopies and around the creek. They half expected to find some kids shooting up or evidence of recently used bongs, but he knew she wouldn’t be there. We knew she hated drugs, intensely. ‘Mum,’ she said to me, on at least one occasion while on the phone, ‘are we doing anything this Saturday? I’ve been invited to a party.’ All the while shaking her head. She later said she’d recently discovered the girl smoked dope and didn’t want to go to the party.
Mike walked along the boundary of the golf course and around to the back, discovering walkways and footbridges he didn’t know existed. It was eerie in the dark.
There was a party up at the café near the tennis courts. People were out and about, glasses in hand, laughing. What would these people think of the torchlights searching the grounds? Nobody noticed, or if they did – what was it to them?
The creek was densely overgrown, dirty-looking. Mike searched the undergrowth and along the edges – looking for Rachel lying beneath a film of murk, green algae braiding her hair. What did this father imagine now? What of his living grief? It wasn’t an imagined fear: it was a real fear that he would come across the distorted body of his first-born.
I can still see the pride in his face when he first saw her. He was thirty-seven. He had called her Rachel from the moment we knew of her conception. We had not found out through ultrasound that we were having a girl. He instinctively knew. He desperately wanted a daughter. We had always agreed our first girl would be named after my grandmother. I remember saying early on in the pregnancy, ‘Don’t keep calling the baby Rachel! What if it’s a boy? You’ll be disappointed.’
‘I won’t be disappointed,’ was his reply. ‘The baby is Rachel.’
And as my stomach bloated with new life Mike would rest his hand there, feeling his daughter’s movement. The unborn Rachel and I would relax together, daily, on the couch. Headphones brimming with classical music held to my naked stomach. Chopin, Grieg, Mozart, Liszt. Her favourite, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. We knew this by her body movement. Is it any wonder she was born to dance?