‘I’m sure this town is no stranger to police,’ she said.
Matty tilted his head and pursed his lips suggesting that she was correct in that assumption.
‘You seen anyone new, Bill?’ asked Matty.
The barman answered without moving from the back counter, surveying his domain. ‘Some tourists, some farmhands. One insurance salesman. And one guy who was lost. All dressed up for an interview. He’d gotten Kallayee and Kalgoorlie mixed up. Poor bastard.’
Matty and Bill shared a laugh. But Emmaline had another question. ‘Did anyone pay the Maguires a visit? A getting-to-know-the-neighbours deal?’
‘Nothing I’ve heard,’ said Matty.
Emmaline glanced at Bill. His face was impassive, helped by the frozen nerves on one side of it.
‘But that’s not to say that someone couldn’t have,’ continued Matty as he made his excuses to go to the dunny. As he went to leave, Emmaline stared at his face, drawn again to his cool, blue eyes. His most redeeming feature. They exhibited a coldness, however, that suggested he might have been capable of meeting and threatening the family. But of shamefacedly bragging to the cops about it? Hard to tell. She couldn’t discount the possibility that someone in town had something to do with the family’s disappearance. But what would they have done with them? Kidnap them? Kill them?
A few punters started to file out of the pub behind her. Towards home she surmised as she doubted there was a nightclub worth its salt within a hundred kilometre radius.
As she kept her eye on the three men stubbornly hovering at the end of the bar there was a tap on her shoulder. The woman was in her sixties, with dishevelled grey hair. Her face beamed, her kindly demeanour supported by a night on the sauce.
‘You got a picture of them?’ she asked.
‘The family?’
‘Yeah, love.’
Emmaline pulled out her phone and brought up a picture. The three of them together, in a semi-formal pose. Dressed smartly but relaxed. Donated by Lorcan’s family.
She tapped the phone with one wavering finger. ‘I’ve seen him.’
Emmaline perked up. ‘The father? Where? When?’
‘Before New Year. Last Tuesday, I think.’
‘The twenty-eighth?’
‘Yeah, love. In Wisbech.’
‘Wisbech? What was he doing?’
The silver-haired woman shrugged. ‘Talking to someone.’
Emmaline scrolled through the photos and found one of Lorcan’s entire family. ‘Any of these people?’
The woman studied the photo closely, tongue poking through her lips in concentration. She shook her head. ‘I only saw the back of his head. Black hair. Neatly cut.’
‘Nothing else?’
She shook her head. ‘I only saw his face,’ she said, pointing at Lorcan. ‘But I recognized him from town. From Mallon’s. The hardware place.’
With that she left, aiming for the door and barely making it through. Given her state of inebriation she wasn’t an entirely reliable witness statement but it was something. Who had Lorcan Maguire been meeting in Wisbech last Tuesday? Not his family, so a friend? Or someone from INK Tech? Matty had said that he seemed defensive, always checking over his shoulder. Did they follow him back to Kallayee? Was this the cause of the panicked recording on the phone?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Matty’s return but her mind remained abuzz. She was suddenly desperate to reread the files, convinced she had missed something.
‘I have to head back,’ she said to Matty.
His raised eyebrows intimated that he had another suggestion. ‘You can stay at mine. I’m right around the corner.’
Emmaline smiled. Dismissed any flicker of temptation. She instigated her rule. ‘Not tonight.’
Matty grinned. ‘But another night?’
Finding her car keys in her pocket, Emmaline said, ‘Who knows? I could be around for a while. Until I talk to the Maguires anyway.’
She glanced at the three dropkicks at the end of the bar looking for a reaction. Failing to get one, she headed for the door.
‘Here’s my number,’ said Matty, passing her a thin matchbook, the name and number of the pub written in green on a grey background. Basic.
Emmaline looked inside. There was only a sliver of six grey-topped matches inside. ‘There’s no number.’
Matty took another sip and smiled. ‘Just call the pub. I’m usually here.’
Emmaline smiled and slipped the book into her pocket.
20 Naiyana
Naiyana searched from building to building, calling out for her son but finding the loneliest reply of all. Silence.
Desperation crept in. She checked her phone. Out of habit. She knew she had no signal to call Lorcan or the police.
Leaving one building, she caught a flash of something up ahead. Possibly a figure, possibly not. Ignoring the voices that warned her against following the mysterious figure, she did, stumbling over broken fences and rubble buried in the dirt.
Reaching the house, the figure had disappeared from sight, so she followed her instinct on where it had gone. Where Dylan had gone.
She kept calling out. Still Dylan didn’t return her pleas. He was punishing her and maybe she deserved it. She had been ignoring him while she played on her phone and now it was his turn for a game. A cruel game.
It was only a shortness of breath that made her pause, leaning on a fence that bent under her weight but resisted just enough to support her. She looked around again. The entire town seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for her next move, as if playing hide and seek too.
Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to block everything out. She took a deep, arid breath that almost choked her. It rebooted her senses. She flashed open her eyes. There had been no figure. And even if there was, it wasn’t Dylan. A six-year-old boy couldn’t outrun her.
Sucking in more air she decided to return to the house. Hopefully Lorcan had returned. They could search together. Plan and search. She felt so desperate she didn’t even care that she needed Lorcan. She was independent and strong but fear was fear. And fear was selfish. It was always better to wade through deep shit with a partner in tow.
Back at the house, there was no sign of their white Toyota. She fought the crush of disappointment as she stepped inside the front door. She pondered her next move. Walking across the scrub to Hurton to get a signal seemed like folly. But viable folly. Proactive folly.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the noise. Not the low rumbling that plagued them at night but something else. A rustling. Like an animal hunting for food. It was coming from inside the house. Maybe the figure in town was real. Not human but animal. Coming from the bedrooms. An insistent growl, angry or hungry. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen. To defend herself. To attack.
She crept down the hallway trying to keep quiet but the old floorboards made it impossible. The noise had switched from rustling growl to a squeak. A litany of all the savage animals it might be flashed through her head, but none of them squeaked. What squeaked in the desert?
Easing open their bedroom door she could immediately see that it was empty, the beds still a mess from this morning, the evening sun poking through the simple wooden shutters that Lorcan had erected to keep the light out.
There was one room left. As she approached Dylan’s door she prepared herself for anything. Four legs, two legs, hairy, scaly, wild.
She pushed the door open. What she found made her drop the knife, narrowly missing her foot as it embedded in the floorboards. Dylan was in bed, his eyes closed but thrashing around as if in the midst of a nightmare, the bed squeaking in pain as his weight shifted across the worn springs.
Naiyana sat on the edge of it and touched his forehead. He wasn’t feverish at least. Just a tired boy catching up on the sleep he wasn’t getting at night. She sat there until the darkness swamped them both, quick and oppressive. Lorcan still wasn’t back. Her sense of apprehension switched from her son to her husband. Where was he?<
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21 Lorcan
He hadn’t lasted long in the pub. The stares and the whispers that swirled around the musty air were too much. A few galoots had asked outright who he was and what he was doing but he had ignored them. An older woman with silver hair had even attempted to chat him up but it had all seemed like one big joke being played at his expense. So he had bought himself a few tinnies and found a remote spot between Kallayee and Hurton to drink them in peace, the ute looking out over a deep gorge, something he wanted to come out and explore in the full light of day.
As he chucked another empty into the scrub, his thoughts turned to his life and what he – they – were doing here. He had hoped it would bring them all together. Striving for a common goal. A surfeit of space and freedom without the unrelenting pressure of work. But as far as he had run, it was still on his mind. What he had done. Whether it had been right. Whether it had been necessary. It had burnt a lot of bridges and brought a lot of heat. He had torn up his career for the sake of some petty revenge. Destroying companies seemed ingrained in the family DNA, like one giant succubus, feeding off despair.
They would be looking for him. They had previous in hunting people down which he had only learned at the tribunal. These were not people to mess with. Crooks. Violent crooks. But what was done was done. No turning back. No contact. But that was a fallacy. There was always contact. While they still had their mobile phones there would always be contact. Earlier today, while in Hurton, Phil had texted that he wanted to come see him. What Lorcan wondered was why? As a concerned colleague? Out of curiosity? Or an ulterior motive? It was a long way to come for a catch-up. He believed he knew why Phil wanted to meet. To find out if he had the information. Or if he was selling it.
22 Naiyana
She eventually fell asleep beside Dylan, her unease over her husband’s whereabouts defeated by exhaustion. It didn’t last long. The all too familiar rumble returned like a woodpecker chipping at her skull. But this time it seemed different. The sound was not coming from deep inside the earth but through the air. The chug of an engine. Faint but definitely not her imagination at play. Lorcan was back. She felt relief but also anger. Where had he been? How dare he leave them out here alone for so long? The questions replaced the woodpecker by tapping at her brain. She waited for the engine to draw closer, followed by the creak of furtive footsteps in the hallway. But the sound didn’t get any closer. In fact, it disappeared.
Now she was wide awake. With Dylan sound asleep she ventured outside. The air had a chill but remained temperate. She found no sign of Lorcan or the ute.
But she was sure she had heard it. Using the light from the gibbous moon overhead she walked towards the crossroads, only the whisper of the wind in the air and the crackle of sand underneath her sandals accompanying her. She felt a strange peacefulness out here alone, looking for her husband as if looking for love once again.
As she approached the crossroads the peacefulness began to wane. What if it wasn’t Lorcan but someone else?
Maybe they could help her find Lorcan.
Or maybe they wouldn’t. She was out here all alone. Defenceless.
Reaching the crossroads she contemplated if she wanted to find the source of the noise or if it was best to conclude she was crazy. Crazy but alone. It was a close call. She had an aunt in Geelong who had been committed to an asylum, so madness may run in the family, if that kind of shit was hereditary.
She looked up and down the dirt thoroughfares leading from the crossroads but there was no movement and no noise. Her only company was the kangaroo skeleton. But even it had a role. As a local landmark. Her role was less clear. Mother, yes. Wife, sometimes. Cleaner, no thanks. Was this a sign that she needed to go back to Perth? Rediscover her purpose? At least there she had the Internet to fall back on for answers. Out here she was crippled into ignorance and isolation.
Her thoughts were disturbed by the familiar rumbling. The mysterious noise that was knocking Dylan – and all three of them, really – out of sorts. She wanted to return to the house and Dylan and bed but she needed answers. It was time to solve this mystery. Ignorance was not a state she enjoyed. Orientating herself towards the sound she made for a tin and brick dwelling by the side of the road.
23 Emmaline
The drive back had been precarious, with only a faint crescent moon to guide her.
And there wasn’t much to come back to, just a dour, empty caravan that seemed to reek even more, as if the previous tenant had snuck in after she’d left and helped themselves to a pack of twenty.
She regretted not asking Matty back. All that awaited her here was work. Fun, but not FUN.
While she had been in the pub a couple more files had arrived on her phone from HQ. Four YouTube vlogs posted by Naiyana Maguire under the username NeeM999. The report also noted a further one hundred and twenty-three relating to previous campaigns Naiyana had been a part of. They had all been banned and taken down. Emmaline would get to them another time. What happened while Naiyana was in Kallayee was her focus right now.
Rather than concentrate on house repairs like Lorcan’s amateur videos, they focused on the struggles of moving there. The first two were narrated only, but by the third she was on-screen. They had been given the title: Outback Motherhood. They were styled as a raw account but managed with an experienced and skilful touch, hiding the full story, the pep in her voice betrayed by a tiredness around her eyes that make-up couldn’t hide completely. Trying to force the narrative.
The vlogs were mementos of the family’s life there. Shots of the town, colourful skylines and abandoned shacks to go along with a commentary on the hardships, before in the third video Dylan made an appearance, playing with his toy trucks on a mound of dirt, not acknowledging the camera, his face unseen.
At the end of the same video, Lorcan could be heard, telling Naiyana to put the phone down and help him with something, irritation in his voice and in her answer. It hadn’t been edited out of the otherwise professional vlog, possibly on purpose. It gave a sense that all was not well, that nerves were frayed, mother and father – and even Dylan – perhaps withdrawing from each other.
In the final video, a more honest piece about the lack of showers and tips on how to wash using a bucket and cloth, the video captured a rising brown swirl in the background. A small dust devil, which would have been the most interesting thing in the wide shot but Emmaline had spotted something else. She paused the video and squinted at the screen. The paused shot showed a scene of the house for the first time, Lorcan on the roof hard at work laying bricks. But behind it all, deep in the background there was something else. A figure in the distance spying from around the side of a house, the dark shape of a head and shoulders that when she carried on the vlog slid around the corner and disappeared again. Rewinding and playing it again only made her more certain. Someone was there. Not Lorcan, and not Naiyana who was capturing it all on her phone. It might have been Dylan checking out the town, let loose by his parents. She had no one left to confirm it with. That was the problem.
24 Emmaline
The figure in the vlog and the question of who Lorcan Maguire might have met in Wisbech plagued Emmaline the whole night, her sleep intermittent before the yearning for answers forced her to drag the thin curtains open and let the morning light flood in.
She ordered Barker, Rispoli and Anand back in to search the town. There was something here that would explain the disappearance, she was sure of it. The ground couldn’t just have opened up and swallowed the family despite the many mines and the history. She wanted every inch searched.
So they returned to exploring buildings, slowed down only by the need to check that the structures wouldn’t fall on their heads. This was still Barker’s number one bet on what had happened to the family, even though from the videos Emmaline thought it unlikely that they had been big into group activities.
Once again she teamed up with Rispoli. Their first date had been scouring abandoned buildings, so why not repeat
it on the second.
Near the crossroads came the first building of interest. A tin and brick structure when it had been intact but the front wall had given out, the remaining walls unable to support the roof which lay at an angle, the rear desperately clawing the wall, the front biting into the dirt.
‘Over here,’ she called to Rispoli.
‘What is it?’
‘I want to check under this building.’
‘Why? It’s collapsed.’
‘Yeah, I think it collapsed recently.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘It isn’t covered in dust like it would be if it had been in this position for a long time.’
‘Maybe a gust of wind swept it clean.’
‘Maybe.’ Emmaline worried that although the family might not have been into group activities, they might have just got unlucky. Calling the other two over, Rispoli and Anand each grabbed the front of the tin roof and lifted it, jackets wrapped around their hands to counter the sizzling heat and sharp edges of the exposed metal. It came up intact. But barely.
Sliding onto her stomach, she peered under. Dark. And dusty. Lacking the unmistakable stench of decaying flesh. A positive sign.
‘You sure you want to go under there?’ asked Barker, perched on one knee beside her.
‘Not sure at all,’ said Emmaline. ‘But I have to.’
Reaching out she started to claw her way under, pushing chunks of destroyed brick and stone out of the way. As the light diminished the temperature rose. Thirty to a hundred in a second. It was like crawling into an oven.
‘I hope you’ve got your tetanus shots,’ shouted Barker after her. Helpful as ever.
Emmaline slid a little further in, moving as fast as she could. She didn’t want to be under here any longer than needed. No one had called out for help when it had been lifted and the air held no indication of death. She didn’t want to be the first to cause either.
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