The Ones You Trust

by Caroline Overington

  ‘The woman knew her name?’

  ‘A hundred per cent. She goes, this is Fox. I go, Fox? She goes, yep, Fox-Piper. I go, Fox-Paper. Only when I heard it on the TV I realised, Fox-Piper.’

  ‘And did she say: “That’s my mum?” Anything like that? Mummy, nanny, auntie?’ said Franklin.

  ‘Nope. But the lady picked her up, and carried her off.’

  ‘And do you know where she went?’ said Franklin.

  ‘I showed them which way,’ said Mehmet, pointing towards the room with police gathered around the bank of screens. ‘She went off to the left sort of, as you look at the escalator.’

  Franklin turned towards Pascoe. ‘Do we have any footage of where they went?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s a matter of piecing it together,’ he said. ‘Your team pulled the tapes from all the surrounding stores, the ATMs. It won’t be seamless. There will be gaps. Whether we can work out where she goes if she goes into a car park, if she gets into a car . . .’

  ‘Got it,’ said Franklin. ‘But this is excellent. We need to get this to air, see if anyone recognises this woman. Mehmet, you’ve done a brilliant job.’

  He looked pleased. ‘I just wanted to help, you know? When I seen it this morning, I go to myself, I should have tackled them, man. I’m kicking myself.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. You’re a first-class witness.’ Turning back to Pascoe, Franklin said, ‘I need a copy of this footage. There must have been thousands of people in here yesterday. Somebody else is going to have seen her.’

  ‘I can get as many copies as you want,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Mehmet, I’m going to need you to give a formal statement,’ said Franklin. ‘Can I get one of my officers to take you to the station? And I want to see that footage again.’

  He stepped back into the room with the nine screens, and stared deep into the images of Emma’s little girl. He leaned forward, and pressed a forward arrow, then the back arrow.

  Forward, back.

  Why?

  That was the word that kept coming to mind as he watched. Why had Fox been standing there alone?

  Also, who?

  Who was the woman who had come for her? Was it the same woman who had taken her from Crayon and Clay? And again, why? Why had she, or they, taken her? To where? But also, again, why?

  Tuesday 13 October

  8:30 am

  ‘Here is where you, the viewer, can really help. The police, and all of us here, we are asking for your help to identify the woman in these images . . .’

  The Stellar Network was reporting a ‘significant development’ in the case involving the disappearance of ‘Emma Cardwell’s gorgeous little girl, Fox’ before Franklin even got back to Emma’s house.

  ‘That Maven is a piece of work,’ he told Panton.

  ‘You think she leaked it?’

  ‘Of course. Have we had any calls?’

  ‘Not the kind we want.’

  Franklin’s expression turned grim. Still no demands. Just silence. Frustrating bloody silence. He motioned Emma to follow him back to Brandon’s office, where he inserted Pascoe’s thumb drive into a laptop.

  ‘This is a slightly better copy. Have you had any more thoughts on who the woman might be? Think hard,’ urged Franklin, as it began to play again.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s crying,’ said Emma as the images of her daughter came back into focus. Clearly distraught, she said, ‘She’s upset. Why is she alone? I just don’t understand.’

  Franklin glanced at Brandon. His jaw was set, and his fists clenched.

  ‘Come on. What about you? Are you sure you don’t recognise her?’

  ‘I’ve been racking my brain. I don’t recognise her. Neither of us do.’

  ‘It’s not Freya?’

  ‘No, I mean . . . just no,’ said Emma. She had been holding up so well, but she was exhausted. She began weeping.

  ‘It’s nobody from Crayon and Clay?’

  ‘It’s nobody I recognise,’ said Brandon, also distraught. ‘But it’s not great footage. It’s blurry as heck. Do we know where she goes from here?’

  ‘We’re figuring that out,’ said Franklin. He was watching Brandon carefully. ‘She carries your daughter away, but she’s not a fit woman. I don’t think she can carry her for long. I’m guessing she put her in a car to get her out of there. Can you see the time-stamp? 1:16 pm.’

  Brandon glanced in his direction. He knew what Franklin was thinking.

  ‘Okay, so that’s when I would have been there,’ he said. ‘I would have been right fucking there, in that shopping centre, when she was carrying my daughter out.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Franklin. ‘And I’m not going to bullshit you, Brandon. We’ve got a team of people looking at all the CCTV footage from all over Gallery Main Street. I’m expecting to see you down near the butcher at around this time. Far from here. Unless you went somewhere else?’

  Brandon rose to full height. His hands again tightened into fists. It was the movement that Franklin had noticed before, the thing that Brandon did when he was pent-up, furious, about to explode.

  ‘I already told you,’ said Brandon. ‘I went to the butcher. I came home. I went nowhere else. I didn’t see Fox.’

  ‘Can I email that to PJ?’

  Franklin turned to find Maven standing in her now familiar pose – feet flat to the floor, and as wide apart as the door jambs.

  ‘That’s a big development,’ she said. ‘A sighting. The sooner we get it on air, the better.’

  Franklin turned to look at Brandon.

  ‘It’s not like everyone doesn’t know there’s been a development,’ said Maven.

  Franklin went to say, And how do they know that? But what would have been the point? Police Media had to get the CCTV footage out to as wide as possible an audience. He wanted people to see it. Surely somebody would recognise the woman in the vision?

  ‘Do it,’ said Franklin. ‘But we want it on every network, not just yours.’

  Brew got it up first.

  How they managed that, Maven didn’t know, but she was livid. She had assumed the minion to whom she’d passed the USB would have known to send the footage to PJ first, and to everyone else in the world second. Apparently not. Apparently she’d given it to Police Media, who had given it to all the networks at the same time, and Brew – being younger, more agile – had got it up first, and there was Cassie Clay walking her viewers through the various scenes.

  ‘And here we have it, folks. This is the first confirmed sighting of Emma Cardwell’s daughter, Fox-Piper, following her disappearance yesterday. This footage has been taken from CCTV at Gallery Main Street . . . We believe she’s on the second floor here, not the third floor, where the childcare centre is, but on the second floor . . .’

  ‘Fuck this,’ said Maven, flicking angrily between Brew and Cuppa. ‘Why don’t we have it yet?’ With her spare hand, she tried calling Matty.

  ‘We’ve been told that this footage was taken at 1:16 pm yesterday,’ Cassie continued. ‘Previously we had been told that Fox was taken from Crayon and Clay at around 1 pm, and you can see here, she’s now in the shopping centre. So we’re asking you, our viewers, did anyone see Fox at Gallery Main Street yesterday? On the second floor or the third floor? We have a special line that you can call, right here at Brew. Now, keep looking closely . . .’

  As she spoke, a neon circle was being drawn around the woman in the three-quarter pants.

  ‘Previously we’ve talked about Fox being taken by a woman from Crayon and Clay, and we’ve shown you a sketch, and now we’ve got some footage of somebody who may well be that woman,’ said Cassie. ‘As you can see, she’s carrying Fox away. So if you recognise this woman, you must contact police. Just repeating, this is the latest footage of Emma Cardwell’s missing daughter, Fox-Piper. This was taken after she was taken from Crayon and Clay. And we don’t know for certain but this could well be the woman who took her from the childcare centre. And look . . .’

  Cassie’
s team zoomed in to focus on the backpack in the woman’s hand.

  ‘See now, this is very interesting,’ said Cassie. ‘That must be Fox’s backpack. There are a lot of possible clues here. This could be a real breakthrough. Just repeating, this is exclusive footage. I understand that we here at Brew are the only ones who have this footage. And we have some other exclusive news for you: apparently, Emma Cardwell has a stalker. She’s had a stalker for some time is our information. And her stalker is this man . . .’

  The screen switched to a shot of Lindt Ball Man, with the faded recycling bag dangling from one hand, standing eerily close to reporters at the dawn press conference.

  ‘You’ll remember that Emma was going to give a press conference, and she shrieked, and pointed, and they pushed her back inside, and it was all very confusing. Now we know why – a man who had been stalking Emma turned up at the press conference. And here he is, on your screen. We are in the process of confirming his name, which we hope to share with you soon, after we have cleared it with the police, because this man is currently in police custody.

  ‘Just repeating, we have a sighting of Fox-Piper, from yesterday. And also, for those who are curious, if we could just zoom in . . .’

  The camera zoomed in on a press conference shot.

  ‘This man here, the one we’re drawing a loop around, that is Emma’s husband, Brandon Cardwell. No, sorry, not Brandon Cardwell. He has another name. Cole! That’s right. He’s Brandon Cole, and we don’t often see him. Emma is the famous one in this family, obviously. Brandon is from Texas. I think we all remember that, how she dragged him over here from Texas. And if you look here, you can see Emma reacting to the stalker . . . See now, she’s just picked him out of the crowd, and Brandon . . . well, he doesn’t speak! He doesn’t do anything. There he goes, he’s going back inside. I suppose that’s fair enough, but I would have thought in a situation like this . . . I mean, I’d want my husband to step up. It would have been nice to see him do some of the talking.’

  ‘My God,’ said Maven, clicking the remote. ‘She is so fucking good at this.’

  Tuesday 13 October

  8:35 am

  ‘Do you recognise this woman? Have a good look, everybody. Really think hard, this really could be the crucial breakthrough police are looking for . . .’

  ‘Everyone is going to know that’s me.’

  The middle-aged woman from the CCTV footage was sitting at a pine table in a faded kitchen at the back of a weatherboard house in a down-at-heel suburb about twenty-seven minutes from where Emma had made her glamorous home. There was a portable TV atop her fridge, and like millions of her fellow Australians she was glued to the Cuppa special.

  #FindFox.

  The reporters kept talking about how the footage of Fox standing alone at Gallery Main Street was trending. The woman from the CCTV wasn’t completely comfortable with social media. She had a Facebook page but not Twitter and those things, but she still understood what a hashtag was. It meant everyone was talking about how Fox had disappeared and needed to be found.

  But Fox wasn’t missing. She was in the woman’s lounge room watching SpongeBob on the other TV.

  The woman switched off the TV atop the fridge, and heaved herself out of her cottage-style chair. She didn’t go out much, but she wasn’t a recluse and being on the TV bothered her. She padded down flattened carpet in pink slippers, and poked her head around the lounge room door. Fox was sitting on the couch, with the damp remains of a chewed-up toast soldier in her fist. She wasn’t wearing her purple tights or her tutu skirt, just her Elsa underpants and the ruffled top.

  ‘You okay, honey?’

  Fox didn’t answer. She was mesmerised by the cartoon antics on the TV. The woman went to shuffle away again, but Fox turned in her direction, saying, ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Mummy’s at work, honey.’

  Fox returned her attention to the TV. The woman was pretty sure she understood, and maybe she was used to that. Her mum worked hard. She was never there in the morning.

  ‘Don’t worry. You watch the cartoons,’ she said. ‘Your mummy will be coming soon.’

  Tuesday 13 October

  8:40 am

  ‘We’d like to welcome to our panel this morning an expert in child psychology, who can perhaps tell us how the little girl, Fox, will be reacting to waking up in what I guess we can assume is a strange environment?’

  ‘How can it be that we still haven’t located Airlie? She’s a teenage girl. What kind of teenager isn’t glued to their phone?’

  Franklin was pacing the living room of Emma’s house. The investigation was moving slowly. They had leads and sightings but no suspects. They hadn’t located Freya. They hadn’t located Airlie. They had found a share house at which Denim had, according to a local tattoo artist, been known to crash. They had knocked on the door, which had been opened by a young man both lean, and hung over. They had followed him down the hall, where they had found another three young men sleeping on mattresses amid the overflowing ashtrays and the frypans with dried egg on the stove, but no Denim, and no Airlie.

  ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree,’ said Margaret. ‘We’ve all seen the footage. That’s not Airlie. It looks absolutely nothing like her. That woman is ten times Airlie’s size.’

  ‘It could be somebody connected to Airlie,’ said Franklin.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Margaret.

  Emma gasped. ‘Don’t be like that, Mum.’

  ‘Be like what? I don’t see why people are snapping at me for pointing out the obvious. That is not Airlie.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘All right, I see you don’t want my help,’ said Margaret. She closed her mouth, very deliberately, and ever so slightly lifted her nose. She turned away from Emma, and hit the red button on the kettle, then reached up into the cabinet for mugs.

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m sorry,’ said Emma. ‘This is a very stressful situation. I’m desperate. We have to find Fox. This is our best lead.’

  Margaret closed the cupboard doors. ‘It’s hardly your best lead,’ she said.

  ‘Mum, I’m out of my mind with worry,’ said Emma. She had stopped short of vomiting could feel bile rising in her mouth, and her head was spinning. She could hear the strain in her own voice. She was beside herself with panic and fear. ‘I just want to know what’s happened. I need to know. I can’t take much more of this. I feel like I’m drowning. I can’t stop thinking about what might have happened to her. What is happening to her.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Brandon. ‘Don’t do that, Emma. Nothing is happening to her. This will be about money. I know you don’t want to believe it but it could be about Airlie. Detective Franklin is right: what kind of teenager doesn’t have their phone on? Isn’t in constant contact? It must be her, and when I find her . . .’

  ‘Or else the people at Crayon and Clay?’ suggested Emma. ‘Have they been ruled out?’

  ‘Nobody has been ruled out,’ said Franklin.

  ‘And the creep with the Lindt Balls? What’s happening with him?’ said Brandon.

  ‘We have him in custody. He is one peculiar bloke, I will give you that. But he lives with his mum. From what we can tell, he’s been on disability for years. Not for mental illness. He’s got an intellectual disability. He’s had it since he was a child. Does he have the ability to pull something like this off?’

  ‘But who else could it be?’ said Emma.

  ‘I have some theories,’ said Margaret. ‘What about the woman whose job you took? The one who was there for years. Bunny.’

  ‘Bunny Tasker?’ said Emma.

  Emma couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Bunny Tasker. Was it before Fox was born? No, now she remembered: she had run into Bunny at Gallery Main Street shortly after Fox was born. She’d had Fox in the sling and she hadn’t seen Bunny looming into view, because she’d been trying to get a dummy into Fox’s mouth, and then suddenly, there they were, centimetres from each other. Bunny had been hired to stand betwe
en a cardboard cut-out of herself and a display stand filled with vitamins designed to keep osteoporosis at bay. She looked exactly like she had on the Cuppa couch: big smile, tight face, yellow beehive.

  Emma had said, ‘Oh, wow. Hello.’

  Both were media professionals and both were conscious of people looking at them, and of the fact that everyone has a phone camera, and so, in that sense, they were always on Candid Camera. They both put their TV smiles on.

  Bunny peeked in at Fox-Piper’s face – the baby had taken the dummy and was snuggled against Emma’s breasts. ‘Goodness, there’s no stopping you, is there? Is that number three?’

  ‘Yes. But believe me, I’m done,’ said Emma.

  ‘Well, be glad you have them. Because when they flick you – and they will – at least you’ll have your children. I gave all that up for Stellar. For Cuppa. Now what have I got? A couple of old magazine clippings and a job flogging this shit.’

  Emma hadn’t known how to respond. Standing there next to Bunny and a life-size, cardboard Bunny cut-out, she’d finally said, ‘It’s a cut-throat industry. I know that.’

  ‘Oh, you have no idea,’ Bunny continued. ‘But you’ll see. You’ve seen the new girl they’ve got on Brew? She’s you ten years ago. Like you were me, ten years ago. We all have our use-by date, believe me, and yours will come. You’re talent. You’re there to be exploited. I was twenty-five years at Stellar. I can’t even tell you how much butt I kissed, and who do I hear from these days? Nobody. Not even Maven, who used to tell people I was her friend.’

  Emma had been startled by the ferocity in Bunny’s voice, but some of what she’d said Emma already knew to be true: Maven was not her friend. Maven was loyal to one person – Jock Nelson – and she was loyal to one organisation: Stellar.

  ‘She’d die in a ditch for Cuppa,’ was how PJ had once put it.