Vanished

by James Delargy

  ‘They also checked Internet history,’ said Oily, opening another document on the laptop.

  ‘Never a good thing,’ said Rispoli, shrugging his shoulders in a ‘You know how it is’ kind of way that made Emmaline smile.

  Oily continued regardless. ‘Mainly “how to build” stuff, but also something more disturbing – a number of “how to kill” searches.’

  ‘Are we talking termites, cockroaches, spiders?’ asked Emmaline.

  ‘Probably, but the research centred on what poisons to use to get rid of them.’

  ‘Anything that could kill a human?’

  ‘Any poison could kill a human with the right dosage.’

  ‘Let’s canvas places from Kalgoorlie to Hurton to enquire if they sold poison to anyone fitting Lorcan Maguire’s description.’

  ‘That will take a while.’

  ‘Has to be done,’ said Emmaline. If someone sold Lorcan poison it would give them a lead on Naiyana’s demise. If not her location.

  ‘There were also various searches on mining and digging for gold.’

  ‘So he was using the mines,’ said Emmaline. ‘Was that the reason they moved here specifically? Did he know something?’

  ‘There is also the question as to where he sourced the equipment,’ said Rispoli.

  ‘I’ve looked it up. Plenty of sources for small-time gold mining. If you hit the right seam.’

  ‘If you got lucky.’

  ‘Could Naiyana be in one of the mines? Poisoned?’ asked Rispoli.

  ‘We searched them pretty thoroughly,’ noted Oily.

  ‘But not all mines.’

  Emmaline piped up. ‘Get me the most thorough list you can. Find out if we missed any. Include Hurton and beyond.’

  At this rate she would need to sequester the entire MCS to help. Lorcan Maguire could have poisoned his wife and stashed her in one of the mines. It might explain the ‘she’s gone’ comment. But knowing or suspecting this did nothing to narrow down the expanse of the search. And it certainly didn’t explain why Lorcan was shot in the desert and Dylan was missing.

  ‘They found another video recording too. Dated twenty-second December. Badly corrupted but Tech worked their magic on it. Here.’

  Oily cranked the volume and tapped play. The screen remained pitch black. Emmaline was about to joke that Tech’s magic was nothing to write home about when the sound of careful footsteps and rasped breathing filled the caravan. Though the blackness of the screen remained undiminished the footsteps halted, breath held. Another sound arose. A distant voice, maybe two voices, unclear but present. There and gone. The rustling of movement and breathing returned as if the person holding the phone was moving rapidly. Then the recording ended abruptly.

  ‘Nothing else?’ asked Emmaline.

  ‘No, they passed the recording through modulation to try and clean it up. This is the best we have. According to them the voice is almost certainly male and Australian. From Brisbane-Gold Coast direction they determine. A long way from home.’

  ‘There is also a subtle tick in his speech,’ noted Rispoli. ‘Like he’s chewing gum.’

  ‘The echoes indicate it was recorded in an enclosed space.’

  ‘The same tunnel the mining equipment was in?’

  ‘That might explain the darkness. Either that or the phone was kept in his pocket. Out of sight,’ said Emmaline.

  ‘What if they were trapped somewhere down a mine? Maybe Lorcan got out with his son and tried to escape. They had to leave Naiyana behind. Or she was already dead.’

  ‘Have they played it to Lorcan’s family?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Oily. ‘No one recognized the voice.’

  ‘But we do know that the phone was out of signal range at the time of the recording,’ said Emmaline. ‘The question is whether someone had come out to visit the family. And if that visitor was welcome or not.’

  ‘Someone from INK Tech or Brightside?’

  Or Chester Grant, thought Emmaline but kept him out of the equation as yet. She recognized the growing desperation within the caravan. They had found Lorcan’s body but the overall sense was that they were already too late. This was the overriding emotion of being a police officer in her experience – arriving too late to prevent bad things from happening. Only there to piece together the aftermath and create one final snapshot of a person’s life. But once a mirror was broken it couldn’t be put back the same way it had been. The cracks were always there.

  ‘Do we put the recording out nationally?’ asked Rispoli. ‘See if anyone recognizes it?’

  ‘Or keep it to ourselves for now in case these people killed Lorcan Maguire and took Naiyana and Dylan hostage,’ said Emmaline.

  ‘We haven’t received a ransom request though, have we? Which would be odd for a kidnapping.’

  She couldn’t fault the logic. She was glad to have Rispoli on her team. Given the rapidly increasing workload she needed about twenty competent officers like him. But she was left with four. Plus Barker.

  She noted, ‘Plus we have Naiyana’s blood in the house. And Dylan’s on his dad’s shirt.’

  ‘And more near the quad bike with the slashed tyres,’ said Anand.

  ‘Which, according to Forensics, doesn’t match Naiyana’s,’ said Oily. ‘Or Lorcan’s or Dylan’s.’

  ‘But it matches someone’s. Just nobody in the system.’

  ‘So do we go public with the recording?’ asked Rispoli, looking to Emmaline.

  The risks remained. What if someone was holding Naiyana and Dylan? What if going public forced them to kill both? But minus a ransom demand and given Lorcan Maguire’s murder, the blood found in the house and the blood found in town, they needed a solid lead. Identifying this unknown voice on a dead man’s phone was a solid lead.

  Emmaline took a deep breath, almost tasting the years of Papa Webster’s cigarettes on her tongue. ‘Send it out. We’ll hope for the best.’

  Not a situation any investigator wanted to be in, she thought.

  44 Lorcan

  Naiyana cooked dinner on the camping stove. They could make the rest of the house a mansion but until there was a working cooker it would always look temporary. He had never appreciated before how the kitchen was the most essential part of a house. You could sleep on the floor, sit on beanbags, even shit in an outside dunny and manage, but minus a cooker it all felt transitory.

  Eggs and beans. Breakfast for dinner. Naiyana said she was going into town tomorrow for more groceries. He knew that she hated this cooking, cleaning bullshit. So did he. They had employed a cleaner in Perth. Once a week for fifty bucks. Worth it to not have to worry about it. Affluent times.

  She was on her third glass of wine, her hand not quivering yet but not far off. Normally he would say something about taking it easy with the booze but not tonight. Her falling asleep was part of the plan.

  ‘What was the school like?’ he asked, trying to instigate a non-fractious conversation.

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ she said, mumbling. ‘Nothing like Clementine. Old, dusty and decayed – but fine.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound good for Dylan.’

  ‘He’ll manage. He’ll make new friends and…’ The sentence drifted away. The wine was taking effect. Suddenly she was reanimated, a new topic broached. ‘Are you sure that no one knows we are here?’ she said, taking a large gulp.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Lorcan. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just… wanted to know.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘No one,’ she said, followed by another gulp.

  Lorcan narrowed his eyes, trying to drill into her skull. ‘Nee?’

  ‘I was just wondering.’

  ‘You didn’t reveal anything to your friend? Or in one of your vlogs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did someone reply to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe you should be more worried about who might already be with us.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked, with an overexaggerated
frown.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lorcan.

  ‘You want to go back to that tunnel, don’t you?’ she said, the glass finding wine-stained lips that had turned a glorious red.

  He said nothing. Which said plenty.

  ‘Don’t leave us here.’

  ‘I’ll just take a look.’

  The rest of the dinner passed in silence. As did the half-hour before she passed out on the sun lounger in the living room. Lorcan put a sleepy Dylan to bed and left. He would be back before she awoke.

  45 Lorcan

  He took up his previous spot in the tin shack opposite the tunnel house. The air was a little colder than previous nights but his nerves kept him warm, hands pressed to his legs to stop them from jerking up and down.

  Just before midnight he heard it. The rumble of an engine, coasting slowly into town. A minute later, the moonlit shadow of a dark coloured ute came into view, its headlights off. A stealthy approach. Experienced. It backed up to the door of the wooden structure and three figures emerged. All male given their height and breadth. Working in the darkness they began to unload items from the back, carrying them inside, sometimes needing two of them to heft whatever it was.

  Lorcan didn’t interrupt them. He had seen spy movies before. It was best to gather information before deciding upon any action. Find out who they were and what they were doing. Determine if they were friend or foe. Caution swayed him more towards the latter than the former. His immediate concern was that these people were working for Nikos and were here to do something bad to him. But if they were they would have no need for the tunnel and the equipment. From what he had read Nikos and his brother exercised concise not convoluted punishments. This dash of common sense relaxed him. That and the Browning .22-250 rifle sat by his side. He had been offered it at a good price by a guy outside Mallon’s yesterday. He had been suspicious at the start as the guy, who introduced himself as Matty, knew that he was living out at Kallayee – word had obviously spread – and said he might need it to shoot dingoes or anything else threatening his property. At the time, Lorcan had wondered if it was a subtle warning but the guy took $200 and gave him the rifle and a few shells. He had yet to fire it and as he sat there staring at the rifle he wondered if he had been taken for a ride. He had only fired a gun once in his life. At a clay pigeon shoot organized by INK Tech. Maybe that training would come back to haunt Nikos Iannis. But first things first. He had to find out who these people were and what they wanted. He turned his focus back to the house across the road.

  * * *

  The unloading was completed in fifteen minutes and the three men disappeared inside the building. The focused glare of headlamps erupted from the window holes, darting around as if they were making sure the room was clear before eventually disappearing.

  Lorcan waited for five minutes before following. Sneaking inside, he immediately saw that the cupboard covering the hole had been moved. For a moment a chill passed through him. What if they had spotted anything out of place? Had he touched anything? Would they be able to tell? What if they were actual spies, their mission secret and illegal? The British government had used some places out here for nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Maybe there was something down there that had been left behind. Uranium or plutonium. Fanciful but possible.

  He stood at the tunnel entrance. Murmured speech echoed through it, faint and distorted. In no language he could identify. He wondered if they were foreign spies. The thought scared him even more.

  It was time to make a decision. Should he go down after them? In the narrow tunnel the rifle would be constrictive and he wasn’t sure how well prepared they might be. It appeared a slick operation so he had to assume they had rigged defences of some sort.

  His deliberation paid off. Suddenly a faint light appeared, growing stronger by the second. One of the three men was returning.

  Lorcan panicked. He looked around the room. The contrast of its sheer darkness was all-encompassing. He lost all sense of thought and direction. Where was the door again? How far? Was there anything in the way? The light drew closer. He had about twenty seconds. Remembering the way, he made for the door and darted around the side of the building. He pressed himself against the wall, hoping that the clouds continued to swallow up the moon. For ever would be long enough right now. A stranger passed him on the way to the ute; tall, bearded and slim, almost ghoulish, his limbs seeming to grow as if absorbing the darkness. The figure freewheeled the truck across the road into an old shed that Lorcan had never thought of checking. Even if he had, the truck looked battered enough to pass for having been left there for fifty years. Throwing a cover over it the figure walked by him again and disappeared back down the tunnel.

  This time it didn’t take Lorcan long to consider whether to follow or not. There was no fucking way he was going in. He would retreat to his viewing spot. Take up sentry duty. With his rifle.

  He pressed his phone to his ear and listened to the recording he’d made. The rasps of breaths, the echo of the walls. And the voice. Confirmation that they weren’t alone in town.

  After ten minutes the low rumbling began in earnest, vibrating under his feet. The noise that had plagued them since arriving. Confirmation that these men had been here since his family came to town. Without breaking cover. Meaning that they were determined. Meaning that it was a major operation of some kind. Machines carted in and rock broken. All for what? Gold? Diamonds? Opals? And persisting in this heat and with this level of secrecy indicated success of some kind. Lorcan wanted to know. So he kept watch.

  An hour before dawn the three men re-emerged, breaking up to silently perform prescribed tasks. Well-drilled.

  As well as the tall, bearded figure from earlier, the gathering dawn allowed him to ascribe details to the other two, the shortest one packing fat under a shirt that was glued to his body with sweat and a bald head that caught the fading moonlight. The other one had darker skin than the others, a little younger and in better shape, sporting a full head of sweeping, unkempt hair.

  The bearded one – who seemed to be in nominal charge – retrieved the ute from under the cover and backed it to the door. Loading took half the time of unloading, a dusty blanket covering the flatbed dulling any stray thud or clang.

  The other two climbed in and the ute crept back out of town with its lights off, the driver clearly confident of the way. Kallayee returned to how it had been. Empty.

  46 Naiyana

  Her head was pounding. Her bloody husband wasn’t helping, pacing around the bedroom as excited as Dylan after a sugar-rush. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

  ‘There’s three of them.’

  ‘Three of who?’

  ‘Three guys. Miners. Or spies.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she said, as much for her benefit as Dylan’s. ‘What three guys?’

  ‘In the tunnel.’

  Naiyana frowned. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘I saw them with my own eyes, Nee. They drove in with the lights off and headed down the tunnel. Ten minutes later that bloody rumbling started. The leader seems to be a tall guy with a beard. There’s a short, stocky one and a dark-skinned one. Maybe Aboriginal.’

  ‘You can’t say that,’ she said, rebuking him.

  Her husband seemed to ignore her. ‘I don’t think they are spies but they did nuclear tests out here in the fifties and sixties. At Maralinga and…’ He stopped there. Even he must have recognized how crazy it sounded. ‘I think they are mining for gold, diamonds or opals.’

  Naiyana took a moment to take it in. ‘How does it affect us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They aren’t disturbing us, are they?’

  ‘No, but we don’t know anything about them. Plus they have gone out of their way not to interact with us. There must be a reason for that.’

  ‘They’ve obviously met you before,’ said Naiyana.

  Lorcan ignored her. ‘We should leave,’ he said.

  ‘I thought we’d been o
ver this. We weren’t going to run.’

  ‘That was before we knew we weren’t alone.’

  ‘I’m sick of running, Lorcan. Where do we run to next? The moon?’

  She stared at her husband for an answer. She didn’t want to be dragged around the country like some under-supported witness protection stooge. If it was a choice of fight or flight, she was choosing fight.

  ‘I’ll watch them again, tonight.’

  Naiyana shook her head. ‘They don’t want us to know they are there, so we pretend we don’t know.’

  Her husband’s eyes darted to the doorway. She could tell that he was looking to escape this conversation without replying. If he said nothing, it wasn’t a lie.

  ‘Lorcan?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t disturb them, they won’t disturb us.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t. But they haven’t bothered us so far, so why would they now?’

  47 Emmaline

  The autopsy report on Lorcan Maguire’s body was ready the next morning. Emmaline drove to Hurton to get some breakfast and make the call. Again the local population – plus a few reporters – were out in force to watch the new arrivals. Partly curiosity and partly a desire to get them into the shops to spend money. It was a hard fact that many of these towns relied on the tourist dollar and right now she counted as a working tourist.

  She called Oily. He was in Kalgoorlie with the pathologist, Dr Arthur Collins, who greeted her over the phone as if meeting a new friend.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Miss, Mrs or Dr Taylor. Whatever it may be.’

  ‘It’s Detective,’ said Emmaline. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘I take it you want to skip the obvious.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That Lorcan Maguire was murdered. Gunshot wound to the chest.’

  ‘Have you got a make and calibre of the weapon?’

  ‘Point 22 Winchester shell. Likely fired from a hunting rifle. A quite common combo around these parts for killing animals and pests.’