Perfect Victim

by Megan Norris

  Chris was high spirited, and she renewed our fervour. She ran up to a police van stopped at traffic lights and handed the officer a poster through his half-open window.

  ‘Can you put this up at your station?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. The lights changed and they moved on.

  I still can’t believe it, but we walked into a sex shop to ask if we could display Rachel’s poster in the front window. A middle-aged man, with his beachball-sized beer belly sitting on the counter, looked up from his Age crossword. ‘Sure,’ he said as well.

  I’d never been in a sex shop before. I was amazed at the variety of sex toys; vibrators and dildos and unimaginables. What did people use those for? If Rachel would cringe at having a poster displayed in her old dance school, she’d pass out if she knew we were here.

  We drove through Elsternwick on the way home, mainly because we got lost leaving St Kilda. There was already a poster up at the station. We were getting reckless with posters now and were sticking them everywhere.

  We sat watching a large building for a while from our car. Young party-going men arrived. Maybe a bucks’ night? Everybody appeared to be screened at the door by bouncers. Most men went in together. A car stopped near us and a retirement-aged man and another, looking like his son, locked the car and walked across to the brothel. What night was it? Thursday night. Perhaps the women were at bingo, perhaps they were home with pots and pans and baby’s nappies. I’m sounding sexist. Perhaps the women were out with their toy boys or down at the local strip club. Perhaps they didn’t care, or didn’t know, where their men were going.

  Chris suggested we drive through Brighton in case Rachel had indeed caught the number 602 bus from the corner of Williams Road and High Street. We drove aimlessly through the suburban streets, just looking, and thinking we were wasting our time. Somehow we ended up on Kooyong Road and went home.

  There was a note from Mum when we got back. Carlo had rung to say that someone had contacted him through the website to report a girl answering Rachel’s description being seen in St Kilda a week before her disappearance. I remembered the girl Mike had chased on the bus down Orrong Road, and how like Rachel she appeared. I wondered how many other girls answering Rachel’s description must be out there.

  15

  ‘DO WE KNOW A CAROLINE ROBERTSON?’

  Day 11: Friday, 12 March

  Missing Persons called again on Friday morning to see how we were getting on with the sample of Rachel’s clothes for the new media release.

  There were so many clothing racks at the factory outlet that I thought we would be there for hours, but they had their system worked out.

  ‘This is all we have left in the range.’

  It’s surprising how, when faced with a rack of similar colours and designs, how confusing it could be. We offered to pay but they refused. Rachel would have been in a seventh heaven here.

  On our way to the police with our clothing samples we drove up to a set of lights that were changing to red and were confronted by the faces of two determined windscreen-washers.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t any small change,’ I said, as their squeegees hovered over our front and back windows.

  ‘No change at all?’ They sounded surprised.

  ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘Really. We’re on our way to police headquarters with …’ and on she went with our life story. The lights changed to green, back to red, to green and back to red again. Fortunately there were no other cars behind us.

  ‘Jeez, man,’ one of them said. ‘Have you got any spare posters and we’ll hand them out to the cars whose windows we wash.’

  ‘Thank you … so much,’ said Mike, sounding slightly overcome, and shaking their hands through the window. Even small offers of help meant a great deal.

  A short while later we received another call on the mobile from Missing Persons.

  ‘Do we know a Caroline Robertson?’ Mike asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  Mike asked. Apparently telephone records indicated that a Caroline Robertson had rung our house before Rachel went missing.

  ‘The only Caroline we know,’ said Mike, ‘is a Caroline Reid.’

  The police wanted to know where we were and what we were doing.

  Mike said we had samples of Rachel’s clothes and were on our way to meet them.

  I remembered that I had thought it wasn’t technically possible to get a list of incoming calls. But it must have been. Why had I got the impression that it wasn’t possible when I asked last week? Perhaps it wasn’t within the other detective’s jurisdiction or something.

  At the St Kilda Road complex the three of us waited a short while with our visitor passes pinned to our fronts, before David dePyle came through. I had thought the Richmond police station was like a stronghold, but this police complex was an acropolis by comparison. A haven of security. You needed a pass to get through every department door. I was amazed the toilets were not security-locked.

  We were so many floors up in the lift when David said he would just leave us here for a minute.

  I panicked. ‘What? Here? Locked in this lift?’

  Everybody laughed. ‘No,’ said David. ‘At the cafeteria.’ I had been so preoccupied with the security arrangements that I had not heard him say he was going to take us to the cafeteria while he delivered the clothes.

  ‘Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Waddell will be with us shortly. He is organising the media release. They will be dressing a mannequin and setting a caravan up at the corner of Williams Road and High Street.’

  He left us with coffee and a magnificent view across South Yarra and Richmond. The building looked into the green grounds of Melbourne Grammar School, our landmark for our first directions to the complex. We were so high that the windows appeared to ripple in the wind. I walked to the edge and thought, looking down at the concrete path, how desperate people must be to hurl themselves from rooftops.

  I went back to Chris and Mike. ‘It’s a beautiful green city,’ I said, ‘and yet somewhere beneath those rooftops, somewhere in those tree-lined streets Rachel is …’

  ‘Elizabeth, don’t,’ said Chris putting her arm around me.

  ‘No, no, it’s all right,’ I answered, looking at the expanse of sky. ‘You know, if the Missing Persons detectives don’t come up with anything, maybe our skywriting idea isn’t such a bad one after all. Can you imagine Rachel’s name spanning the breadth of Melbourne’s skyline?’

  Mike and Chris were smiling and their faces had the ‘oh, Elizabeth’s dreaming big again’ look.

  Shortly, David dePyle returned and brought us some sandwiches and more cups of tea and coffee.

  ‘Tell me about Caroline,’ he asked, and opened his notebook.

  ‘Caroline Robertson?’ said Mike. ‘You mean Caroline Reid.’

  David dePyle nodded in a laid-back manner. ‘We’re just making some inquiries.’

  Why didn’t we jump up and demand to know more? What inquiries, and why? What possible connection could Caroline Reid have with Rachel? But we didn’t ask. We sat casually and chatted, in a relaxed atmosphere, while he jotted down notes.

  ‘We haven’t seen her since December 1997,’ I said, ‘when we moved from Mont Albert.’

  ‘We were friends with her mother,’ said Mike.

  ‘And Ashleigh-Rose, our middle daughter, was friends with her youngest sister. Rachel was more a friend of the middle sister.’

  ‘Why Caroline?’ asked Mike. ‘She was always very much in the background. The eldest daughter … the older sister.’

  ‘Would you know why she rang your house on the 28th of February late in the afternoon?’

  ‘I didn’t know she had until today.’

  ‘She rang twice.’

  ‘I thought Rachel was on the phone to Emmanuel. She didn’t say.’

  ‘Caroline kept to herself,’ said Mike. ‘She struck me as an unhappy girl.’

  ‘What about their father?’

 
‘David. I didn’t really know him,’ I answered. ‘I only met him a couple of times, if that. We hadn’t been in Mont Albert long before David left Gail and applied for a divorce. We were a shoulder for Gail to cry on. Became good friends … I don’t see what any of this has to do with Rachel.’

  ‘I saw Caroline recently,’ said Mike, becoming animated. ‘I remember now! Ashleigh-Rose had been invited to her younger sister’s birthday at the Dunloe Avenue swimming pool. They’d gone ten pin bowling. It’s in the same centre.’

  ‘Would you like some more tea?’ asked Chris, taking our cups and, not waiting for our answer, she went to get some.

  ‘When I went to collect Ashleigh-Rose I was speaking to Gail, and Caroline was speaking to Rachel through the car window. Rachel didn’t get out. I didn’t hear what they were talking about … She’s got something to do with all this, hasn’t she?’

  ‘What else can you tell me about her?’

  ‘Gail told me she won a scholarship to Camberwell Girls Grammar,’ I said. ‘They were really disappointed because she had done so well, and then she became really unsettled. Always staying away from school. Didn’t seem to have any direction or friends.’

  ‘Caroline liked to think she dominated the household when her father left,’ said Mike. ‘If Gail came over to our place for a cup of tea Caroline would phone to check up on her.’

  ‘Caroline has epilepsy,’ I said. ‘She was really down. Gail was concerned because when she left school in Year 9 she would stay in her room for long periods. Gail used to say she stayed there for almost a year.’

  ‘But she went back to school,’ said Mike. ‘She did her last year of school at Box Hill Secondary Senior Campus. Her computer broke down when she was doing her final assessments, so we let her use ours. She stayed in the house all day while we were at work.’

  ‘She babysat a couple of times.’

  ‘So would you say Rachel and Caroline were friends?’

  ‘More like acquaintances,’ said Mike. ‘She was distant. Very much in the background,’ he repeated. ‘She was always polite to us, but we were told she was difficult at home.’

  I became anxious about the time. ‘It’s getting late. Where’s Steve? What about the media release?’

  David dePyle excused himself and used his mobile. ‘There’s been a delay,’ he said when he’d finished.

  We talked about other things for a while. What was it like to be a detective? The view. The weather. Books. He enjoyed reading crime novels. He recommended I read an American crime novel based on a mother whose daughter had gone missing.

  His mobile rang and he moved away from the table.

  When he returned he asked Mike if he knew if the Reids owned any other property.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ answered Mike, ‘I know her father has a place in the country somewhere.’ He paused. ‘And I suppose that could be quite a good place to hide someone.’

  ‘That’s right. A hobby farm in Kilmore,’ I said. ‘Gail was always upset that he bought this after they broke up because it was something they were always going to do together. Ashleigh-Rose was invited there, by Caroline and her youngest sister, on several occasions, but this never eventuated.’

  Mike expressed concern about the possibility that Rachel was being held captive by Caroline.

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  Mike said, later in the day, that he felt relieved with the developments because he had always believed that if a man had grabbed Rachel she would be dead. The possibility of Caroline’s involvement offered Rachel a chance of survival. But why would Caroline want to hold her hostage? There was no way Rachel would have worried us by just disappearing the way she had.

  David dePyle said they were following several leads in this direction, but warned us not to get our hopes up because in their business they could spend days following up leads only to have them come to nothing.

  We were there a long time. I had the feeling we were being gently detained. Perhaps they didn’t want us out on the streets. David asked us what we would be doing when we left him and we said we had planned to go back to the Prahran corner where Rachel was last seen.

  ‘And be the poster people?’ he reaffirmed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mike. ‘The poster people.’

  Chris was concerned it was getting late, too. She needed to go to the bank. There was a bank within walking distance, so Mike went with her.

  They had been gone some time when I jokingly said perhaps they had gone to Prahran. David dePyle stood up quickly. ‘Yes, they have been gone some time,’ and went over to a phone to make a call.

  He came back and asked me if I’d be okay for a minute if he left.

  When Mike and Chris returned they said there had been a long queue.

  Steve Waddell contacted David to tell him the media release was done.

  David asked us if we would go home rather than go to Prahran. We told him we would, but we had to go via Richmond to collect Manni who wanted to stay the night with us, and then take Chris home to her family.

  I didn’t question David dePyle’s request. I didn’t ask why he didn’t want us to go to Prahran. I thought that the police were actually getting somewhere with their investigations and I didn’t want to get in their way. We needed to leave them to it now. Our curiosity did not even allow us to drive down High Street to have a nosey at what the police were up to.

  At about 9.30 that evening we received a phone call from Missing Persons. A detective asked us if we could come down to the police complex immediately and identify some items.

  I felt really hopeful. We all did. Maybe Mike was right. Perhaps Caroline was holding Rachel captive at Kilmore.

  Mike, Manni and I left hurriedly. As we were passing through Heathmont another car honked. Its driver pointed to the posters plastered to the inside of our back windows, and did a thumbs-up. We smiled. We were nervous but positive.

  We had waited nearly two weeks for our prayers to be answered. Would Rachel be coming home?

  On Canterbury Road, crossing Elgar Road, we received another call from Missing Persons. They asked us who we had in the car. We told them Manni was with us. They were very sorry. But they had made a mistake. We could go home. ‘And please do go home.’

  We did not question them. We went home.

  I felt like a small child waking on Christmas morning and seeing a large colourful parcel with a big red bow on top, at the bottom of the bed. The child, having eagerly awaited Christmas Day, now crawls across her covers to the twitching present. Mum and Dad are peeking in at the door. The child unties the bow, lifts the lid and squeals with delight as she lifts into her arms a Labrador puppy with another big red bow around its neck.

  That is how it felt when we received that first phone call. But now, driving home without any prize, I imagined those parents again. I imagined their faces when their child eagerly unties the big red bow on the box, only to lift the lid and find a lifeless puppy, perhaps suffocated or strangled by the big red bow around its neck.

  That was how I felt after that second phone call telling us to go home. How would it end for us?

  Manni slept in Heather’s room that night, but he insisted on sleeping beneath Rachel’s favourite cow-print doona. He couldn’t be comforted by Rachel’s Christmas stocking present, her Humphrey Bear, because Rachel had Humphrey with her. So Manni sprayed his pillow with her favourite perfume. He did not sleep. He lay there breathing in the memories of his dear Rachel.

  16

  FINALLY FOUND

  Day 12: Saturday, 13 March

  We took our time on Saturday morning. Mum made us her tomato breakfast specialty, and we sat outside on the back veranda.

  Manni asked us if we would mind if he had a cigarette.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Yes, occasionally,’ he smiled, perhaps looking a little guilty. ‘Not when Rachel’s around. She doesn’t like me smoking.’

  We discussed taking Mann
i into dance class at 11 a.m. Mike thought it would be good for him to be with his friends, and I knew that Rosa was concerned for him. She would want him home tonight.

  We wondered why the police had not called. Why the sudden urgency last night?

  Our graphic artist friend David arrived in the morning with another thousand posters. The count so far – five thousand. I thought of that story about the little Japanese girl in Hiroshima and her one thousand paper cranes, and the dreamed-for hope of a life saved. I couldn’t bear to think that Rachel was dead.

  Mid-morning, somewhere down Riversdale Road on our way to the dance school, the mobile rang.

  It was Missing Persons. Where were we?

  We were taking Manni to dance class.

  What did we plan to do then?

  We were going to Prahran to deliver more posters.

  The detective told us to take Manni to class and then go home. Directly home. There was a tone in his voice that left no room for debate.

  We dropped a worried Manni off at the door. We were being told what to do. It was like there was nothing more we could do. We were told not to leave home. It was important we stayed there, and they would contact us later in the day.

  Mum was surprised to see us back so early. Concerned when we told her our message.

  But Mike encouraged me. ‘Elizabeth, the police could be driving up to Kilmore. Maybe they have discovered that Rachel’s being held captive.’

  ‘Then why don’t we drive there? Goodness knows what she’s been thinking these past two weeks. Rachel will need us.’

  ‘No, they asked us to stay at home. Let the police do their job.’ He put his arms around me, so tenderly. ‘Perhaps we may have Rachel home today.’

  Michele and Mum sat with me for much of the time in silence. The phone rang many times. Messages were taken. We could not speak.

  Rosa and Frank phoned. ‘We’ve heard from Emmanuel. Is there any news?’

  Rachel’s cousin Tamzin phoned, asking for more posters.