Into the Fog

by Sandi Wallace

  When he walked away from Ness, he was struggling with her disintegration and racked with guilt.

  ‘Franklin.’ Manthorp gestured.

  He eyed her, sensing a rap over the knuckles.

  ‘You’re overstepping.’ With a hard look, she added, ‘You’ve done the handover, now stay away from the parents.’

  What the fuck?

  ‘But Ness –’

  ‘Her story—their stories—are tight, but the kiddies are still missing. Protocol – you know what that is?’

  He shrugged, too pissed to answer. When protocol meant a copper couldn’t support a friend and her partner who were going through hell, he shelved it with other bureaucratic bullshit.

  Manthorp glared at him. ‘I’m only looking after your arse. Your DI has been in touch with mine after your boss at Ballarat dropped you in it.’

  Bull Jenkins – should’ve expected it.

  ‘I smoothed it over, best I could. I’ve given you a role in the search and back home. Now, leave.’ She shook her head. ‘And stay away from the parents and our central inquiry or you will find yourself in a world of pain.’

  He gave a nod and swivelled on his heel. Georgie trailed him as he collected his kit and headed to the door.

  She said, ‘Jack, I need to tell –’ just as Bernie walked by and hissed, ‘Hang fire. You’ll want to hear this.’

  As Georgie and Franklin snuck to the periphery of the briefing, Manthorp called out, ‘It’s been a couple of hours since our last update. Somebody, talk to me. How’re we going on the sex offenders? Links to Zena Betka?’

  A uniformed cop rose and gave a rundown. Georgie only heard his final two words: nothing yet.

  ‘Bernie,’ the detective shouted. ‘What have you been up to?’

  He stepped up, along with the two cops who had followed him in. One had a beanie pulled over his head. Both had the lived-in countrified look that Bernie wore and Georgie took them to be his crew – the ones previously caught up with duties at Belgrave.

  ‘Between us and Vikki,’ Bernie swept a hand over the cluster around him, ‘we’ve rechecked medical centres and hospitals, buses and taxis. Luckily, the media’s doing us a favour keeping the Savage disappearance high-vis, even if half of what they’re saying is BS. Kids go missing all the time but just about every Victorian knows about our three by now. We stirred the pot anyway. And we caught up with locals who are about regularly around the time the kids nicked off.’

  ‘But it was atrocious weather that afternoon.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop our diehards,’ Bernie replied. ‘First stops were no help, I’m afraid.’ He smiled. ‘But, we have some push-bikers and joggers who are dedicated to their routines…and one of those joggers took the Dandenong Creek Track on Wednesday arvo.’

  Manthorp’s eyebrows snapped up. ‘Where’s Dandenong Creek Track and what’s the relevance?’

  Bernie pointed in an upward curving motion to the rear boundary of the property. ‘Behind us. The jogger—Terri—believes she saw our three, at close to 4.00pm on Wednesday.’

  Over the clapping, Manthorp said, ‘And I’m only hearing this now because –?’

  ‘Because she was out when I dropped by earlier. Left a message with her son. Terri contacted me as soon as he remembered to pass it on. I’m just back from seeing her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They were alone at the time and seemed fine, though Terri didn’t get a clear look.’

  ‘She’s credible?’

  Bernie nodded.

  ‘Why the hell didn’t she come forward sooner?’

  ‘She didn’t connect the dots.’ He referred to his notepad. ‘She said, “When I’m zoned into exercise, everything else is on the periphery, like a blurry photo. I was so busy watching where I was going, making sure I didn’t slip, that I saw them but didn’t see them.”’ His face was grim when he looked up. ‘She’s torturing herself over the delay, as a mum herself.’

  I bloody hate it when people say thing like that – unless you’re in the parent club, you can’t get it.

  Georgie calmed down: Bernie wouldn’t have meant it that way. Anxiety was pushing her buttons. She knuckled a pressure point in her jaw to release tension.

  The local cop continued. ‘They were virtually silhouettes in the fog, but she judged that one was about this tall.’ Bernie held a hand under his chest, then lowered the palm by two feet. ‘The next this.’ Hand further down, he added, ‘The littlest one about here.’

  The heights tallied and Georgie banged her shoulder against Franklin’s.

  ‘Map,’ Manthorp requested.

  A step ahead, Ty had rolled forward a whiteboard that contained the large aerial photo of the area, including the Upalong property and adjoining National Park, and the topographic map of the bushland.

  She said, ‘Show me.’

  Bernie edged in and pointed to the topographic map. ‘Here’s where we are.’ He traced a couple of lines. ‘There are several ways onto Dandenong Creek Track. But,’ he pointed to near the caretaker’s cottage, ‘the little kid’s toy put them there. So my guess is that the kids exited about here.’ He tapped the boundary beyond the Agterops’ home. ‘They would’ve cut across somewhere here,’ he ran his finger over Upalong’s fence line, ‘to later be in the vicinity of Dandenong Creek Track. And where Terri saw them is maybe half a K from Doongalla and its toilet block – though not easy for three kids to navigate, especially the small boys, in view of the weather and terrain.’

  Manthorp asked, ‘Where did Terri see them?’

  ‘About here.’ Bernie pointed.

  Georgie and Franklin leaned in together, careful to be inconspicuous. She estimated it was about 600 metres south-west of the kids’ apparent escape route.

  Manthorp slapped her palms together. ‘We’re finally building a picture.’

  She faced the assembly. ‘But, the search in the park is almost complete, so it’s fairly safe to assume the kids are no longer there and we have a cold trail after Doongalla.’

  Georgie followed Franklin to his Ninja, which was almost parked in by a marked blue-and-white. He slipped between the sedan and bike, threw his leg over as he fitted his helmet, then remembered her starting to say something earlier.

  ‘What was on your mind – just as Bernie came in?’

  Georgie let out an odd noise, then said, ‘AJ.’

  Franklin’s stomach went into free-fall.

  ‘He’s in Melbourne and wants to see me.’

  He drew a breath but it didn’t quell the sick feeling in his stomach. Somehow, he managed to sound composed when he said, ‘Do you want to see him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Franklin had been staring at the police logo on the car next to him. The blue letters pixelated and blurred into the white duco. He couldn’t speak – sandpaper had replaced his tongue.

  She talked rapidly and in monotone. ‘He’s in Melbourne, not sure if he’s going to stay, he says that depends on us, but there is no us any more, not as in me and AJ…’

  He roused himself. ‘So, you’re going to say no?’ He hated the begging note.

  She didn’t answer immediately and he filled the gap by kicking the bike’s motor over.

  ‘No. I’m catching up with him tonight.’

  Franklin couldn’t cope with the idea of losing Georgie to her old boyfriend. Those fears had disappeared over the past months, but he couldn’t deal with this while he was trying to find the missing kids.

  ‘Let me know how it goes.’

  He snapped down the helmet shield, tapped the throttle and took off without looking back.

  Chapter 40

  Hannah

  Hannah thought about the other girl constantly – who she was and how her parents and friends were coping. She knew that a girl just a bit older than her had gone missing a few months ago. Maybe it was her. Maybe she was still alive in the mineshaft.

  Hannah hated to think she was lying there, hurt, waiting for someone to come, slowly dyin
g. She also didn’t want to end up like that. It would break Mum’s heart. And Riley and Coops would be stuffed up – that’s if they’d gotten home safely. Duane would be sad too, probably. He wasn’t a bad person, not compared with Ealdy. If she got out of this, she’d try to cut him some slack. Maybe they could get along okay.

  She sighed, knowing she had to turn her mood around. She wasn’t going to get out by feeling black or waiting for someone to come.

  She kept on alert for Ealdy or Dicko and flexed her hands and wrists. The movement was small, but painful and tiring. She used the pain to make her feel angry and strong. Carefully, she started to air-punch. The bed creaked; she cringed and went still.

  She thought about Josh. He was her favourite boxing coach—not because he was a hottie—he was a good teacher and had showed her stuff from other martial arts, like kickboxing. He’d also given her some self-defence training and he’d stressed one thing heaps of times: Take your best shot, then bolt – don’t hang around because they’ll be bigger and stronger.

  He’d never told her what to do if two people attacked her. Or if she was as sick as a dog. But he had said she’d have to improvise and surprise.

  Hannah rolled to the side of the bed and swung her legs over. She went all dizzy and wanted to vomit. She breathed through it, then tested her legs.

  Dicko had been helping her to use the bucket. It was embarrassing to go in front of him but better than doing it in the bed. Now, she tried standing on her own, fought another wave of dizziness, then stood there shadow boxing.

  After a minute, she was breathing so hard her chest was caving in. She perched on the side of the bed. Too dark to see anything but she’d memorised the room’s layout and pictured it now. What could she use against them?

  She could throw the bucket of wee at them. But it’d be no good if they were both there. And it wouldn’t buy her enough time to get away. As weak as she was, she’d be working hard to walk, let alone run.

  Hannah dropped her head into her hands.

  Although crammed with cops in uniform and plain clothes, Upalong felt hollow after Franklin departed. Georgie realised it came from within her. She regretted telling him about AJ, but it would’ve been wrong to sneak around behind his back. Still, her timing sucked.

  She stretched, trying to loosen the band of guilt that constricted her chest. It didn’t work. So she switched to distraction, hoping to reach a momentum of busyness that disqualified thoughts of Franklin…or AJ.

  Georgie checked in with Kat and Josh. They were still at the hospital in Upper Ferntree Gully in a queue for her x-ray.

  She spoke to Willem Agterop. He and Elke had made it to the nearby hospital—the same one as Kat—and Elke had been admitted. Contractions were continuing, but the midwife warned them to prepare for a long wait. Their baby wasn’t ready to enter the world yet.

  Next, she caught up with little Tom and his mum. They’d been inseparable since Robyn arrived and had spent each day working with locals, flooding neighbourhoods with posters, doorknocking, and talking to anybody they could corral to jog memories. Franklin had commented that perhaps the greatest upside to all this was that Robyn had become more of her old self, the woman she’d been prior to the family’s double tragedy. Georgie didn’t know them as well as he did, but she’d seen a definite lift in their mood over the past few days and wished it would continue when they returned home.

  Much as she tried to block thoughts of Franklin, she couldn’t.

  Georgie stared unseeingly at her computer, notepad and phone, weighed by her cluelessness at relationships, overwhelmed by the stakes and personal connection to the missing kids.

  She literally shook off the funk. She had a knack for inquiries, and if she could treat this as a more abstract scenario, say a cold case she was investigating for a special feature for Champagne Musings, she could throw all her energy into it.

  She flipped to a clean sheet on her pad and started a fresh list. She liked to write freehand lists; it helped her think.

  She processed what she knew of the police investigation based on eavesdropping, tipoffs from Matty and clandestine talks with Bernie, Ando and Ty, making notes.

  Hundreds of calls to the local station and Crime Stoppers were still being sifted through. A further canvass of the Mount Dandenong–Olinda area was currently underway. Bernie and his team continued to target locals who used the National Park or surrounds, hoping for a clue as to where the kids went after Doongalla. Two of the crew back at Daylesford were doorknocking there today on the off-chance that someone might remember something that would assist the case, if given a personal prompt.

  Highly likely, all these would bomb.

  The thought of Daylesford led her back to Franklin. Georgie considered what he might uncover from the kids’ friends that their phone calls hadn’t.

  She turned her mind to Zena Betka.

  ‘Watch it!’ Franklin swerved, avoiding collision with a small truck by inches. ‘Moron.’

  A second later, his face heated. He’d caused the near cock-up, not the truckie. He wasn’t concentrating, too busy stewing over Georgie and her ex.

  If that’s what he is.

  In this traffic, he couldn’t afford another lapse. Franklin steered the bike into the centre of his lane. He shifted his elbows and knees, releasing pent-up pressure. He only allowed himself to think about the rhythm of the bike, the sounds of traffic around him, the variances in the smell of smog.

  Sam trudged back to the house. Her lower back and feet ached, and she guessed she had colossal blisters on both her big toes. She hated that they had failed to find anything useful in the National Park, aside from what Franklin and Ando had discovered.

  The information had dripped down the line and she questioned its credibility. Toilet paper blobs didn’t sound like much of a lead. But she’d soon be able to prise more information from Georgie or Ty. That was about the only positive she could think of right now.

  Georgie opened multiple tabs on her computer and bookmarked articles on Marzena Betka, the Australian missing person register, pages on Facebook and Twitter about missing and endangered children, the section of Zena’s school website dedicated to the girl with messages from her friends and teachers, and a private blog purportedly by her best friend, Kylie Twitchett.

  She stared at so many photos of the missing teenager that they blurred together.

  A female yelled, ‘News time,’ and someone turned on Belfrage’s stereo system, loud. From the study, Georgie heard six pips clearly, followed by an old-movie style instrumental introduction.

  A dry male announcer kicked off. ‘ABC News, good afternoon. The time is 1.00pm and I’m Peter Oglington. Police hold grave fears for the safety of three children missing from Mount Dandenong since Wednesday afternoon. The children are twelve-year-old Hannah Savage and her brothers Riley, seven, and Cooper, aged just five, who had been visiting with a group from Daylesford.’

  The guy didn’t mince words.

  ‘Police have asked the public to keep a lookout for the children and report any sightings to Crime Stoppers. They are all fair-haired with fair complexions and of slim build. Hannah was last seen wearing black leggings, a plain black hoodie-style windcheater and black runners. Riley wore blue jeans, a Geelong Football Club windcheater and white runners. His younger brother was also in blue jeans and white runners, and a brown T-shirt under a yellow windcheater. Both brothers were believed to be wearing navy jackets at the time of their disappearance.’

  A vein in Georgie’s temple throbbed and the newsreader’s next words underlined her fears.

  ‘The children were not equipped for the glacial onslaught Victoria is currently experiencing. Extensive searches of the local area and National Park yesterday and this morning, including helicopters and the canine unit, were unsuccessful and police are desperate for leads.’

  Harsh but true.

  ‘Meanwhile, police are investigating a potential connection to the unsolved disappearance of schoolgirl,
Marzena Betka. Thirteen-year-old Zena vanished on her way to school four months ago in the neighbouring suburb of The Basin.’

  The newsreader swapped to other subjects and Georgie drove harder at her research into Zena. She didn’t stop for the coffee and pizza Ty brought her and she had a phone conversation with her mum that she couldn’t remember later.

  Although Franklin commiserated with the people involved and hoped there were no serious injuries or fatalities, the multi-car on the Western Freeway had meant taking a detour to the Calder, then the back roads from Woodend – a slightly longer though far nicer route.

  After the turnoff at Woodend, Franklin focused on navigating the snaking road. Past floods had buckled and eroded sections of bitumen, and although he knew the course well and was an adept rider, having mounted his first trail bike thirty years ago, he didn’t fancy ending up in traction because of another cock-up in concentration.

  One near miss is enough.

  Soon, the Ninja glided in the shadows of the tall gums around Bullarto. Franklin’s gloved hands juddered as the bike’s tyres bumped over ruts and sticks. Eucalyptus wafted inside the cocoon of his helmet with the whiff of smoke from someone’s fireplace or a burn off. Wood fires and gum leaves were two of his favourite smells—smells of the country, of home—and he smiled behind the visor.

  Mount Dandenong had surprised him with virtually the same scents: smoke curling from most of the chimney flues and foliage dampened and bruised by persistent rain. Pockets on the hill had an urbanised look but mostly, if you didn’t know better, you’d think Mount Dandenong was a few hours from Melbourne, same as Daylesford, instead of under an hour from the CBD and fifteen minutes in most directions from suburbia.