Missing You, Love Sara

by Jackie French

  His face had gone quite white. Or rather, not white, more no colour at all.

  ‘No!’ said Elaine. ‘If she’d hit her head or something he’d have helped her. He’d have called an ambulance.’

  ‘Maybe he panicked.’

  ‘Even if she was dead he’d have called an ambulance!’ cried Elaine. ‘He wouldn’t have believed she was dead! He’d have called for help, kept on trying. Mr Marr, you know what Johnnie’s like.’

  Dad’s voice was flat. ‘It all boils down to the fact he lied,’ he said. ‘That he thought he needed to lie.’

  Elaine shook her head, as though she couldn’t speak, had nothing more to say.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dad at last. ‘I’ll have to call the police, Elaine. You’ll have to tell them what you told us. They’ll have to know.’

  Elaine still said nothing as he lifted himself heavily from the chair and went inside to phone.

  I said two things happened that weekend, didn’t I?

  The second one was that someone found Reenie’s handbag.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Handbag

  Reenie’s handbag was found by this guy called Billygoat. I don’t suppose any other town has someone like Billygoat, so if you’ve never been here you won’t know what he’s like.

  Billygoat is around Dad’s age, but taller and fatter, the sort of fat that looks like someone has stuffed an extra pair of sagging buttocks down their front, and hair like a sheep that’s been caught in a bath with a hair dryer but survived the electric shock.

  The only part of him that isn’t woolly is his face. His face is always perfectly shaved, baby’s bum sort of smooth, and even if his knees hang out of his jeans he always wears a very white shirt, ironed and rolled up neatly at the sleeves.

  Dad says he wears white shirts because he found a whole garbage bag of them back in the seventies when men stopped wearing bright white shirts to work; but if so they must have come in lots of sizes, because Billygoat’s spare pair of sagging buttocks gets bigger every year.

  I think he is called Billygoat because he keeps goats and not for the reason Steve at the garage is called Ram, or Phil Jamieson at the milk bar used to be called The Bull—before he lost his hair and gained a beer belly—though it’s hard to believe that about Phil Jamieson. I mean who would ever go out with him?

  When I say Billygoat keeps goats I mean he … it’s hard to describe … I mean Billygoat really LIKES his goats like other people like their pet corgi or their goldfish. If you asked Billygoat what the most perfect pet in the world was, he’d say a goat. Or maybe he thinks goats are just more intelligent humans in disguise. Billygoat takes his goats for walks and he brought one in the back of his ute to the last Christmas picnic, and there’s a story around (but Dad says it isn’t true) that one year he took one of the goats down to the Adelaide Arts Festival with him—in the back of his ute, of course. (Did I tell you that Billygoat also likes opera? The more tragic and melodramatic the better.)

  Billygoat looks after the town tip. He’s got the title of ‘Recycling Contractor’, which means that he takes stuff people drop in the recycling bins and sells it. He also fossicks through the dump for other good stuff that he can sell or repair, or not-so-good stuff that he turns into these weird sculptures he makes for the Heritage Day Fair that no one ever buys.

  So it was Billygoat who found the handbag at ten past five on Saturday afternoon, after the dump had closed for the day.

  He was rummaging hopefully amongst the dead washing machines and tangled fencing wire and cardboard boxes and torn black garbage bags, when he found an armchair in good shape, and not even wet because it hadn’t rained for two weeks, and not even marked by the dew because it was mostly covered by garbage bags and a cardboard box of newspapers that someone had been too lazy to put in the recycling section.

  So he hauled it out and there underneath the chair was a handbag, also in good shape, not tatty or stained.

  Billygoat hung the handbag around his neck while he hauled out the armchair. It wasn’t until he dragged the armchair into his shed and had dusted it down and checked there were no rats in the cushions or the stuffing that he hauled the handbag off his neck and sat down in the armchair to look at it.

  It was a newish handbag, but damp, like it had been washed, or rained on, though like I said it hadn’t rained for quite a while.

  There was a purse inside when he opened it. Inside the purse there was a ten dollar note, a five dollar note and some change, a credit card and driver’s license. And when Billygoat saw the driver’s license he drove straight in to Constable Severn.

  Constable Severn didn’t ring us (Mum got really bitter about that). He rang the detectives in Sydney instead, and they drove out to look at it, and to look at the tip where it had been found, so it was Monday lunchtime before they called in at the school to ask Mum to identify it. The first I heard of it was when Georgia Harrison came back from the toilets and whispered to someone who whispered to me that the detectives had come and they had called Mum out of class.

  And then I had to wait until school was over before I could find out what was happening.

  CHAPTER 21

  Searching

  The police searched the dump, of course. They barricaded it off all Tuesday and Wednesday, and no one was allowed in to dump rubbish, or even allowed in to watch what the police were doing. Not even me or Dad or Mum.

  The police thought that because Reenie’s handbag was there, her body might be too. That whoever killed her … that someone must have killed her, murdered her, because why would Reenie go anywhere without her handbag? And if someone had stolen it, why had they left the money? They thought that whoever killed her had left her in the dump and covered her with rubbish, and had flung her handbag away.

  I was sick when I heard that. I mean I really was sick.

  I went and vomited down the toilet, except nothing came up, so I just sat there on my knees with my head over the bowl, trying to and trying to, because maybe if I could vomit it all up I wouldn’t feel sick any more.

  I don’t know what Mum felt or Dad felt, thinking about Reenie’s body all covered with rotten pumpkin peel and dog food cans and yellowed newspapers. I didn’t want to know. What I felt was bad enough, and it must have been a hundred times worse for them.

  I had thought the police would just go straight out and arrest Johnnie, but they didn’t of course. There was no proof that he had killed Reenie. There wasn’t even any proof that she was dead.

  Did you know that you don’t actually need a body to charge someone with murder?

  Mostly the police wait till they do have a body, because if they say someone killed someone else, then that person can say, but where’s the body? How do you know they are really dead? Prove it.

  They didn’t arrest Johnnie. They only wanted to interview him.

  Bob Munn … I couldn’t think of him as Detective Sergeant, because he never called himself that. He would just say, ‘Bob Munn here’, and he wore ordinary clothes—even his car was ordinary. Anyway, Bob Munn drove down to our place to tell us about it.

  We sat in the living room, as we had before—it didn’t seem right to take him into the kitchen—and he ate one of my sultana walnut slices and had a cup of tea. He didn’t even start to speak about Reenie and Johnnie and everything till he’d had at least half his tea, as though he didn’t know how to begin.

  It should have made Dad and me nervous, waiting, but for some reason it didn’t. It sort of brought everything into perspective, so we knew the police were human too, and had feelings just like ours, which meant they could understand how we felt. well, sort of, anyway, because you can’t really understand what it’s like until it happens to you.

  And besides, we pretty much knew what he was going to tell us.

  Bob Munn put his cup of tea down on the side table I had made in woodwork in Year Six.

  ‘We’ve spoken to Johnnie Blackstone,’ he said.

  Neither Dad nor I said a
nything. We knew they had. Sylvia from the café had rung us up to say that Jim from the Royal had seen Johnnie being driven up the main street in a police car, and being taken into the station for questioning. Not under arrest or anything—just to be questioned. That’s what Johnnie’s parents told Jim when he rang up to see if they were okay.

  Johnnie was there for hours and then they let him go home. (His dad drove in to pick him up.) And then they made him come in the next day and questioned him again.

  ‘What did he say?’ said Dad, though it was obvious Johnnie hadn’t confessed. If he had confessed they would have rung us up straightaway.

  ‘He denies everything,’ said Bob Munn.

  He glanced at me and then at Dad, as though to say, ‘Are you sure you want your daughter to hear this?’ Dad gave a sort of nod that meant, ‘She has a right to hear—and it saves me having to tell her myself later.’

  ‘He claims the last time he saw Maureen was on the Wednesday night. He has no knowledge of anything that happened to her after that night.’

  ‘But what about him saying that he was the one who broke it off with her?’ I demanded.

  ‘He still claims that it was his decision to end the relationship. He says that while she may have told her friend that she intended to break it off, it was probably because she suspected Johnnie was unhappy with the way things were going.’

  ‘Then why was she supposed to be so upset if she knew the break-up was coming?’ I insisted.

  Bob Munn shrugged.

  ‘I suppose any break-up can be traumatic,’ he said.

  It was a funny word, traumatic. I knew what it meant, but it seemed so cold …

  ‘Why did he ring her up then? The morning she … she vanished?’

  ‘He still says it was because he was concerned for her. She’d been upset and he wanted to see that she was all right.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’ asked Dad quietly.

  Bob Munn shrugged without replying.

  ‘But where was he when she disappeared?’ I argued. ‘Have you checked that? Did anyone see him in town.’

  ‘He claims he was fencing. His parents were away all day, so they can’t substantiate it. No one appears to have seen him in town either.’

  ‘But maybe they just didn’t notice him! I mean, his ute looks like any other ute in the district. Maybe he rang Reenie and asked her to meet him. Maybe he drove her—’

  ‘Sara, love, could you put the kettle on again?’ said Dad softly. ‘I think Mr Munn would like another cup of tea.’

  It was an excuse to get me away. I would have argued, but there’s no point when Dad uses that tone. Mum yells; Dad gets quieter and softer when he’s serious.

  And I could see his point. I had been yelling … well, almost screaming really. And I knew it wouldn’t take much to make me start crying.

  I was sort of sniffling in the kitchen anyway. But I made a fresh pot of tea and carried it in. They must have heard me coming, because neither of them were saying anything.

  ‘Just half a cup, please,’ said Bob Munn, as I poured it out. ‘Thank you. That’s lovely, Sara. Your father said you made the biscuits too.’

  I nodded.

  ‘He must be very proud of you,’ said Bob Munn gently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘Sara’s always near the top of the class.’

  Reenie’s the pretty one and Sara’s the clever one … had anyone actually said that? Or was it just what people thought?

  ‘What’s your favourite subject?’ asked Bob Munn, and I realised he was talking about me now, instead of Reenie, just in case I felt left out with all this talk about my sister. As though he’d been given lessons in ‘how to look after the upset relatives of people who had been murdered.’ I mean, it was so obvious, but it still made me feel better because he was trying to be kind.

  ‘Biology,’ I said.

  ‘How about maths?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s okay. Useful sometimes.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a good way to look at it,’ said Bob Munn.

  He finished the tea and ate another sultana and walnut slice, which was good because they always go stale before Dad and I can finish them. Often recipes don’t work properly if you just make half—you can’t divide an egg in two—but every recipe always makes a bit too much for just the two of us.

  Then he got up to leave.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch,’ he said. ‘Let you know as soon as anything happens.’ He hesitated. ‘We will sort this thing out. It might take a while, but we’ll get there in the end.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Dad, even more quietly than before. ‘Thank you for all your help.’

  And then he drove off.

  I collected the teacups. Dad followed me into the kitchen.

  ‘The police hope that if they find Reenie’s body Johnnie’ll confess,’ said Dad abruptly. I suppose that’s what they’d been talking about while I was making more tea, which meant the police thought Johnnie had lied about breaking up with Reenie too.

  Then Dad clammed up and wouldn’t tell me any more, like he thought maybe it would hurt too much, but it was hurting as much as it could already. Or maybe he just couldn’t make his mouth say more (I didn’t think of that till later).

  The road near the dump was closed for two days while they searched all along the verges of it in case there was anything that might give them a clue.

  I wanted to be there, to watch, not because I wanted to be there when Reenie’s body was found, but so I could be doing SOMETHING, and be sure that the police were really doing something too. There was no way I could concentrate at school or read or anything.

  But they wouldn’t let me. Actually, I didn’t ask, because it was obvious they wouldn’t let me. I tried watching TV but after about two minutes I’d turn it off and wander around the house.

  Dad was the same, except he tried to work. Well, he did work; he sowed the bottom paddock with oats, but I bet it didn’t stop him from thinking while he went round and round with the tractor, a plume of dust behind him.

  They didn’t find anything in the dump.

  They dragged the dams too. There are seven dams on Johnnie’s family’s place and six on ours. Dragging means sending divers down, though I don’t understand how they can see much in muddy water. I sort of saw the divers, because you can see one of the dams from the verandah.

  They brought dogs down. Great big German shepherds (I wish we could have a dog, but dad isn’t a dog person), and lots more men and women, almost all of them in police uniform this time. They hunted all along the road to Johnnie’s, and I suppose on his farm too, but we weren’t allowed to be there.

  Dad kept ringing the police, but each time they just said they’d keep us informed if they found anything. I didn’t realise until later that there might be things they wouldn’t tell us, because it was just possible I might have hurt Reenie, or Dad had. Or that we would tell Johnnie something, either because we were angry with the police or because we’d known Johnnie most of his life.

  We were Reenie’s family, but there were things they might not tell us.

  Everything was happening for about two weeks, then suddenly, nothing was happening, because they hadn’t found anything and Johnnie was still saying he knew nothing and there was nothing else they could think of to do.

  CHAPTER 22

  Incident at the Supermarket

  The whole town was talking about it. Did Johnnie Blackstone kill Reenie Marr? Or had she run off with some bloke she’d never told anyone about?

  Everyone expected me to know more than they did, but all I knew was what the police said, what they told Dad and Mum.

  Monday I was supposed to go to Mum’s for dinner as usual.

  I didn’t like leaving Dad—at least Mum had people around her all day. Dad only had the cattle and the tractor, and the phone to sit next to and the answering machine that kept staring at us with a red upwinking eye, as if to say: You don’t really expect me to give you any NEWS do you?
r />   But when Mum had rung the night before—she rang every night now—she’d said, ‘Thank goodness you’re coming up to dinner tomorrow night,’ so I couldn’t say I wasn’t.

  School finishes at 3.20 p.m., but Mum always has to stay a bit later, like all the other teachers, so I called in to the supermarket on the way to her place, to pick up some stuff for home like I always do on Mondays.

  I didn’t have to get much … milk, which I stick in Mum’s fridge till Dad picks me up (I’d like to get the extra calcium stuff for women, but Dad will only drink what he calls ‘normal’ milk, though any milk which is that long out of a cow, not to mention homogenised and pasteurised and all the rest of it, is hardly normal), and fresh bread (Dad lets me choose that, as long as it doesn’t have seeds in it), and any fruit that doesn’t have fruit fly buzzing round it. Our supermarket only gets fruit in on Wednesdays so it can look a bit fuzzy by the time I get to it.

  So there I was, pushing my trolley up the aisle with the butter and marg and frozen cheesecakes on one side, and the meat and bread on the other.

  It felt odd going into the supermarket now, knowing Reenie disappeared from there, though of course she can’t have literally disappeared in the supermarket.

  But she somehow left the supermarket without anyone noticing. There are no windows, or a back door or side door, only the main door where people come in, and the loading bay which leads out to the same street as the front door so she wouldn’t go out that way.

  It would be easier to go out the front, the way she came in, and often there’s no one at the checkout during the day when it’s not busy. They’re stacking shelves or stuff like that so maybe she did go out the front and no one noticed her …

  But if she went out the front door, why didn’t she pay for the bread and stuff she had come to buy? What happened in the supermarket that was so important she put the bread and the milk back on the shelves? And even if they were all busy, why didn’t SOMEONE see her go?

  Anyway, I was thinking all this stuff for about the hundredth time when Mrs Blackstone, Johnnie’s mum, starts pushing her trolley down the aisle towards me.