Gone by Midnight

by Candice Fox

  ‘Probably the lunatic asylum, asking where you went,’ I said.

  ‘Probably you butt-dialling me while you were makin’ out with your girlfriend.’ She squinted at the sky. ‘That, or a ghost.’

  ‘Both equally likely explanations.’

  ‘I swear I heard someone knock on my door at about 3 am, too,’ she said. ‘Not even a knock so much as a thump. No one there again.’

  ‘Definitely a ghost.’

  ‘The ghost of Richie Farrow?’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ I paused with her before the automatic doors of the police station. ‘No mention of that in here, okay?’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘His ghost’s been talking to people all across the nation. I had five emails from psychics waiting for me when I got home last night. One of them was in Fremantle. They say Richie’s crossed over to the other side and he’s trying to let us know where he is. He’s near water, apparently. That’s the general consensus.’

  ‘I wonder why the kooks email you and not me,’ I said.

  Henry Farrow was sitting at the table in the interrogation room with his head in his hands when Amanda and I found him. We had to wander the building looking for him, as no one seemed willing to give us directions. Amanda slid into the seat across from him and lumped her arms onto the table like a kid sitting down to a school lunch.

  Richie’s father was the picture of sleepless grief. He smelled of sweat and his handshake was brief and bone-cracking.

  ‘Can Richie swim?’ Amanda asked, before I’d even settled in my seat. Henry Farrow frowned, and I kicked my partner under the table.

  ‘What?’ Amanda kicked me back.

  ‘Yes, he can.’ Henry looked at me. ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘We’re not,’ I sighed. ‘Mr Farrow, we’d like to start by saying we’re so sorry this is happening and we’re doing the best we can to find your boy.’

  ‘Yeah, that.’ Amanda waved at me. ‘All that stuff.’

  ‘Sara called me and told me she’d hired you,’ Henry said, pushing back his greasy hair. ‘I think it’s a good idea. You know what happened with our daughter?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Maybe you can tell us things the police can’t,’ Henry said. ‘All the officers have been very kind and considerate but no one’s telling me about any leads or sightings or anything. They say they’ve got to keep quiet about anything they get in case they alert a suspect.’

  I nodded, feeling helpless. I was well-versed in why the police were keeping Henry and his ex-wife in the dark, and that’s because they probably hadn’t been ruled out as suspects yet. Henry would have been placed under surveillance as soon as he arrived in Cairns, and Sara would have had a couple of officers watching her closely from the moment she raised the alarm about her son’s disappearance. The Farrows’ phones, hotel rooms and cars would be bugged, the vehicles fitted with GPS to see where the distraught parents went when police allowed them downtime.

  ‘I can be vague,’ I offered. ‘The police will be checking in on all known sex offenders in the area, taking DNA samples and doing searches of their properties. Amanda and I are attending to one of those after this. They’ll also be reinterviewing all staff who were in the hotel on the night of Richie’s disappearance, and any of the guests with criminal records.’

  ‘But have any of those things panned out?’ Henry fixed me with his desperate eyes. ‘Is there anyone on the table?’

  ‘I just can’t say, Mr Farrow.’

  He put his head in his hands. I could see the muscles of his jaw flexing. When he looked at me again, his eyes were wet.

  ‘You look tired,’ I said, trying to ease into the questioning. ‘Was your trip up all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Took you a while to get here. Why did you drive rather than flying?’

  ‘I can’t fly.’ Henry rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s just something I can’t do. I’ve never been able to handle it. And I had to organise my life. Borrow a mate’s car. Call work. Call my relatives. Pack my bags. The news reporters started calling me right away, heaps of them. People I didn’t even know. Everything was just a mess, I couldn’t think straight.’ He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumped.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he asked. ‘It’s a paedophile, isn’t it?’ He sobbed a couple of times.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘It has to be, doesn’t it?’ Henry grabbed his head.

  ‘Not necessarily. There’s still hope.’ My heart felt heavy at the uselessness of my words, their feeble sound as they hit the air. ‘Anything could have happened. We just don’t know until we know.’

  ‘Jesus, I can’t do this,’ Henry cried. ‘I can’t do this. I need a drink.’

  I looked at Amanda. She nodded vigorously and left the room.

  I went to the chair beside Mr Farrow and put an arm around his shoulders while he cried, and tried to tell him the things he needed to hear. That all hope was not lost. That we would get through this together. That he was not on his own. But in truth I’d never laid eyes upon a man so utterly alone in his life. His grief was untouchable, an electric pulse under the surface of his skin.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me a bit about Richie?’ I said.

  Richie was a comedian. As an only child he spent much of his time at Sara’s or Henry’s houses alone, so would explode into comic or acrobatic routines in social settings like a bored circus monkey kept in a trailer for weeks and then finally released on stage. He was wiry, thin but all muscle, so when he walked on his hands around the rim of Henry’s backyard trampoline his father would see the veins and sinew in his arms straining. Richie could walk upside down and hold a conversation at the same time, his face reddening and sandy hair cascading down while his father walked along beside him, trying to get gossip on the boy’s mother.

  Yes, the relationship wasn’t great. The break-up was fairly recent, and Sara and Henry had both been mourning the loud, boisterous child when he spent time with the other; resentful of the silence and cold, empty rooms he left behind. Richie was exciting to be around, not simply for his performances but for the drama he constantly created. He ‘accidentally’ bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of upgrades on the home gaming system, logging into the online account and purchasing the game packages without realising they weren’t free. He got in trouble at school for scaling the side of the toilet block to retrieve a ball that had gone onto the roof, standing up there like a victorious pirate raining treasure on the children from above, missing balls and hats and frisbees falling. He stuck his head through a wrought-iron railing in a shopping centre and had to be smeared in grease and washing detergent to be freed. Being around Richie was thrilling and unpredictable, like being the sidekick of a bumbling superhero.

  It had been difficult to decide who would be the one to back away from the friendship group. Henry and Sara had been together when Richie met the Sampson, Cho and Errett boys at Scouts – the group brought together by all being one-child families with rambunctious sons. The families had huddled at the coffee and biscuits station, commiserating about how impossible it was to raise boys, to keep them occupied without siblings in their age range. While the parents talked, the boys sat in a circle in the dusty hall, tying ropes and trying to lasso each other as a Scout Leader tried desperately to retain their attention. Henry got on particularly well with Michael Cho, who was also a quiet and reserved sort of guy. The two men couldn’t fathom where their kids’ confidence came from. They both hated to be the focus of anyone’s attention.

  His lack of confidence had perhaps been why Henry decided to take a back seat, to let their friends side with Sara after the divorce. She had said she wanted them – had arguments as to why she needed their Scouts friends more than he did, because he had friends of his own from his job in construction. Henry hadn’t wanted to fight, didn’t have Sara’s whip-quick comebacks. He still picked Richie up from Scouts if the boy was coming to stay with him, but he only waved to his former friends fro
m the car.

  He was fighting for custody now, though. That was something he wasn’t going to back down over. Sara had assumed primary custody but agreed to share their child, and in the beginning Henry had welcomed the boy into his new house almost every weekend. It was hard in the beginning. Henry couldn’t cry in front of the boy, because it made Richie cry in sympathy. But the very sight of him barrelling down the driveway towards his mother’s car after two days made Henry lose it every time. He got used to the distance, phone calls instead of hugs, and photos, lots of photos. Then, after a while, Sara began to require Richie at home on certain weekends for acting classes she had enrolled him in. And then the boy was sick, or off at a friend’s place, or at camp. Fortnightly visits turned into monthly visits. Then one day Richie came to visit and looked significantly older than he had the last time his father had seen him. Henry realised four months had slipped by since he had seen his child. Enough was enough. Henry wanted minimum custody times stipulated by the courts.

  I listened intently to Henry Farrow’s tales about his wife, thinking about Sara sitting on the bed at the White Caps Hotel, her makeup done and her watch on her wrist. Perhaps I was judging her too harshly. She’d had a difficult life, the loss of Anya and her separation from Henry, and now Richie’s disappearance, weighing on her. Maybe keeping her appearance and her composure together was all she could manage. Maybe, under the surface, turmoil was swirling.

  ‘So you aren’t going for full custody of Richie?’ I asked when Henry was done.

  ‘No, no.’ Henry sniffed, wiping tears that had been shed as he talked. ‘I could never take Richie away from his mum. Not completely. And she’s better at it than I am.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At raising a boy,’ he said. He took his phone and began tapping at the screen. ‘You’ve got to be tough. Consistent. You’ve got to refuse to give them what they want sometimes – what you want to give them – just because it’s better for them. Sometimes I’m so happy to see Richie I let him run wild, eat whatever he wants, go nuts. I just don’t have the discipline. Look.’

  He showed me a video on the phone. Richie had set up an obstacle course in a small living room, with pillows and chairs and objects scattered about on the floor. He was leaping from one object to another, trying to avoid touching the floor, giggling and flailing his arms madly to avoid losing his balance. His face was almost maniacal with joy and excitement. Hyperactive, a kid going wild. In his hand he clutched a fistful of red licorice strips.

  ‘Dad! Dad! Look! Double backflip, ten thousand points!’

  The boy on the screen tried to backflip off the couch, landed awkwardly and rolled into a pile of pillows.

  ‘He goes bonkers on those red things.’ Henry dragged the phone towards himself and watched the video like he was alone, his chin in his hands.

  ‘It can be hard being the bad cop in the relationship,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ Henry said. ‘I shouldn’t be the good cop as much as I am. Sara gets all the tough jobs.’

  ‘Does it ever bring her down?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell.’ Henry shook his head. ‘She’s usually pretty sour when I’m around at the best of times.’

  ‘What about after Anya’s birth?’ I asked. ‘Did ever anyone ask if she’d had postnatal depression, before or after Anya died?’

  ‘Sure, they asked us. But Sara was all the things she was supposed to be. They say you glow when you have a baby. You know? You glow while you’re pregnant and you glow afterwards. You’re happy and warm and filled with love. That’s exactly how it was. At least from what I saw.’

  ‘Everything she was supposed to be,’ I repeated to myself.

  Sara Farrow had acted exactly as was expected of her when she’d had her first child, and now, when her second was missing, she was not toeing the line of the grieving mother. She was flat, emotionless, cold. What did that mean? Had Sara been acting then – or now? Or was I, and perhaps Henry too, totally misinterpreting what I was seeing?

  ‘Jesus Christ, where is my kid? Where is he?’ Henry wiped his nose on the back of his hairy arm. ‘I can almost convince myself now that he’s just with his mother. But it’s different. When I try to think of where he is I just feel a hole in the pit of my guts. Like, when you try to step on a step and it isn’t there. You know?’

  ‘I know,’ I told him, patting his warm back.

  Silently, I felt a wave of gratitude that I didn’t, in fact, know.

  Amanda made a couple of phone calls to contacts in Melbourne as she walked to the bottle shop. The breeze had picked up – warm and damp from the swamps rather than a cool breeze off the ocean, bringing with it the smell of decay and primordial life. Tourists sat fanning themselves on benches in the shade along the Esplanade, and in the huge poinsettia trees flying foxes writhed, unfolding and rearranging their bat wings constantly in the shade.

  She stood in the air-conditioned bottle shop for some time, staring at the shelves of Scotch. Eventually the bored shop attendant came and stood by her.

  ‘Stuck?’ he asked. ‘What’s the occasion?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it.’ Amanda threw her hands up. ‘We don’t actually know.’

  The attendant, a young man with lazy, stoned eyes, gave a quarter-frown and looked at the scars on Amanda’s arms.

  ‘If I took a stab at it,’ Amanda said, ‘I’d probably say death. I mean, that’s the most likely scenario. We’re thirty-four hours in. But, you never know. The occasion might end up being a celebration. These things can turn on a dime.’

  The attendant stared at her. Amanda stared back.

  ‘Death,’ she said finally. ‘That’s where I’d put my money.’

  The attendant rubbed his eyes and looked at the bottles.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to go cheap for a death,’ he said, reaching up towards a higher shelf.

  On the way back to the police station, box of Scotch in hand, Amanda noticed a man in grey coveralls with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow standing and smoking at the gate to the back entrance of the police station. His ponytail of dark brown wavy hair was tucked against the back of his neck, tendrils of hair stuck to his skin with sweat. He plucked at a small goatee as though some of the hairs were tangled. Amanda stood beside him, waving at the security camera to be let in.

  ‘You’re one of the investigators,’ the man said.

  Amanda turned and saw that on the chest of his coveralls, the crest of the White Caps Hotel had been embroidered. She looked at the battered, sagging belt at his hips, covered in keys and tools, and guessed maintenance.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, still waving at the camera.

  ‘Are you, like, a detective?’ the man asked.

  ‘Private,’ Amanda replied.

  ‘Oh.’ The man nodded a little too hard, dropping his eyes to his feet. Amanda could see that the camera above the entrance was on. There was undoubtedly someone at the front desk of the police station watching her standing there like a cat meowing to be let in from the rain, their finger hovering above the button, fucking with her. It was something she would do, given the chance.

  ‘Are there any leads in the investigation?’ the maintenance man asked.

  Amanda stared at him, tried to get a read on his face. But it took her a long time to get to know faces, and this one was by turns distracted, downcast or squinting at the horizon. She shuffled the Scotch bottle under her arm.

  ‘Oh, there are some. There are always some. Good ones and bad ones. Sometimes there are too many. Can you imagine that? You’ve got to pick through them, pry them apart. Why, have you got any?’

  ‘No, no.’ The man lifted his belt. ‘I was just wondering if there were any suspects. Anyone you were focusing on.’

  ‘Could be there are no suspects at all.’ Amanda shrugged. ‘Maybe it was just an accident, and no one’s to blame. Who knows?’

  ‘I was shocked when I heard,’ the man said, fixing his eyes on Amanda. ‘It’s very sad. Very s
cary. I was really hungover that morning, too. I was pretty sick. Some people might have seen me being sick, you know, and they thought I was sick over the … um. You know, the situation.’

  Amanda nodded.

  ‘I really love my job at the hotel,’ the man said. He seemed to be struggling to find his words. ‘I don’t just love it. I need it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘That probably sounds … anyway. I’m just saying. When stuff like this happens …’

  Amanda started waving at the camera again, more frantically this time.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve gotta go.’ The man walked off.

  Amanda let a chest full of air leave her as the gate finally clicked and started to roll back.

  Amanda set the box on the table and plonked herself into the seat across from Henry and me, fanning her face with a brochure about domestic violence she must have snagged from the waiting area.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ I swiped the bottle and looked at the gold embossed label. ‘I think Mr Farrow was thinking more about taking the edge off, Amanda. How much was this?’

  ‘I’ll take anything.’ Henry reached for the box.

  ‘You can’t go cheap on a death, Ted.’ Amanda rolled her eyes. I felt my whole body stiffen.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ I kicked Amanda under the table as she opened her mouth to answer. ‘It’s an old Cairns saying.’

  Amanda and I watched as Henry poured a nip into his empty coffee cup with trembling hands. Some of the liquor splashed on the table.

  ‘So did you tell him about the life insurance policy?’ Amanda asked.

  Henry set the bottle down too hard. I didn’t know what Amanda was on about, but I tried to warn her with my eyes, since the kicking didn’t seem to be working.

  ‘What are you talking about, Amanda?’ I asked gently.

  ‘I have a mate who works in insurance fraud down in Melbourne,’ Amanda said. ‘Another private detective. He investigates claims. You know, bricklayers who have thrown their back out one week and the next week they’re lugging bags of gravel on their shoulder for a cash job. This one case, he had a woman claim she’d strained a ligament in her leg, wanted six months’ worth of lost wages. Bank manager. Pretty hefty claim. Next thing you know, my guy’s following her into the car park of an ice-skating rink, and –’