Snapshot

43

Scobie Sutton was getting ready to drive home when his phone chirped. ‘Front desk, Scobe. A woman to see you.’

‘Name?’

‘Heather Cobb.’

‘Okay, tell her I’ll be right down.’

When he got there, Heather was wringing her hands. She wore a bulky stained parka over a windcheater and stiff new jeans. ‘It’s Natalie, Mr Sutton. I haven’t seen her since she left for school yesterday morning.’

He took her to an interview room, gave her a cup of tea, and got the details. No, she hadn’t fought or argued with Natalie. She assumed that Nat had gone to school: she was supposed to, she’d put on her uniform, but who knew with kids these days? Had she rung the school? No-would you do that, please, Mr Sutton? They don’t like me down there. Friends? Well, Nat didn’t really have many. In fact, the kids at her school were a bit jealous of her. Had she ever run away before, stayed overnight with a relative or friend? Well, sometimes, but she didn’t make a habit of it. Boyfriend? You mean Andy? Heather hadn’t thought to call him. It’s not as if Nat had ever stayed over at his house.

‘I’ll ask around,’ Scobie said. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t be far away. Ring me if and when she shows up at home, okay?’

When Heather was gone, he rang his wife. ‘Sweetheart, can you ask around about Natalie Cobb? She’s gone missing. The kids at the youth centre or on the estate might know where she is.’

Next he contacted the collators. Andy Asche? They knew the name; he did odd jobs for the shire, but no record and no known criminal associates.

Scobie sighed and glanced at the clock. It was almost 6 p.m. and he was dying to go home, but Natalie Cobb had been missing for almost thirty-six hours now. He picked up the phone again, and dialled the missing persons unit.

Ellen gave Pam Murphy a lift to Penzance Beach, trying to get her to open up about Alan’s attitude yesterday, but the younger woman was very circumspect, so she didn’t push it.

She arrived home to find bales of insulation batts on the front verandah, glowing pink in the evening gloom, and a ladder in the hallway, the manhole open. Alan’s day off, and clearly he’d been busy. His muffled voice reached her from inside the ceiling: ‘That you, El?’

She shouted, ‘Yes,’ and walked through to the kitchen. There was paperwork on the table: three quotes to install ducted heating. She felt herself grow very still, very wary. Not triumphant, not grateful, not elated-not until she understood his motives. And where would the money come from?

It was 6.15 and she didn’t say anything. She showered, changed into the tracksuit she liked to unwind in, and poured herself a glass of wine. Meanwhile her husband bustled between the crawl space in the ceiling and the insulation batts heaped on the verandah. She tracked his movements overhead, beams creaking, faint dust and plaster sprinkles marking his progress.

At 7 p.m. she put the dinner on and retired to the sitting room while it cooked. She watched the ABC news, idly aware of Alan taking the ladder back to the shed, sweeping the hallway, dumping his dusty clothes in the laundry, and having a shower.

She’d said nothing beyond their initial greeting, and he’d said nothing.

Alan joined her halfway through ‘The 7.30 Report’. He sat beside her on the sofa and took her unresponsive hand. ‘Dinner ready soon? I’m starving.’

At once she felt hostile and tried to remove her hand. Hurt, he shifted away from her. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘What’s got into you?’

He shrugged. ‘I thought about what you said, that’s all.’

‘You said we couldn’t afford it.’

‘We’ll do it in stages. Plus I’ve saved an incredible amount of money by insulating the ceiling myself.’

Fishing for compliments. Ellen said nothing. She shrugged in a way that was almost a thank you.

He said casually, ‘How’s young Murphy?’

There it was: according to canteen gossip, he’d been unnecessarily harsh on Pam Murphy at the accident site yesterday, and now felt bad about it. Ellen wanted to tell him to atone to Pam, not her. And an insulated ceiling didn’t begin to heal a rift that was growing and probably permanent.

‘First rate,’ Ellen said.

In the Progress office in Waterloo, Tessa Kane was glancing at her watch. Rattled by the incident with Charlie Mead, and finding smashed lights on her car yesterday, she’d been taking a taxi to and from work. Tonight’s cab was five minutes late. Well, it was Friday.

She looked again at the photographs that had arrived in the post that morning. The anonymous sender wanted $5000 in exchange for names, addresses and other key information. He-or she-was confident that Tessa would be interested, given her recent article on sex parties.

She recognised the setting from the photos that Ellen Destry had shown her. Was someone on Challis’s team bent? Should she alert him? No-not before she got a good story out of it. Not before she got a statement from Robert McQuarrie.

Meanwhile, she could also smell a story in Raymond Lowry. According to one of her contacts, he’d been brought in for questioning, and later released. When she’d gone to his house and asked for an interview this afternoon, he’d slammed the door in her face.

Just when she was about to call the taxi firm again, Joseph Ovens stepped into the foyer, wearing neat dark trousers and a jacket. Aged in his sixties, he’d been retrenched by a bank and used his termination payout to purchase a taxi licence. She liked Joe, and generally asked for him. If work took her interstate, she’d always see if Joe was available to drive her to the airport. She’d give him the details of her return flight, and he’d always be there to collect her. She wasn’t stupid enough to take a cab from the airport rank, not after her first couple of experiences, the drivers nervous about leaving the city limits for open countryside, having never driven without traffic lights before, or on dirt roads, or on unlit roads at night, or experienced so many trees or so many absences of familiar things. Their speed would drop, and drop, and drop, they’d drive with white knuckles, hunched low in their seats, they’d sweat, look hunted and afraid. She’d even had to draw maps so they could get back to the city.

So Joe was her regular driver whenever she needed a cab. But he’d been away fishing since Tuesday, so she’d had other drivers yesterday and this morning. She watched him for a moment, unobserved: a good-looking older guy, grey, a bit of a paunch, always genial, and knowledgeable and interested in the world around him. He began to wander idly around the foyer, examining the clippings from past editions that she’d had framed and fastened to the walls out there, between the rubber plants and the visitors’ chairs. ‘Come on through,’ she called. ‘I won’t be long.’

He strolled in, glancing at the layout tables as she gathered her bag and coat and switched off her computer. Suddenly he went into a kind of shock, stepping back, his hand over his heart, his jaw dropping, white as a sheet. ‘Joe,’ she said, rushing to him. ‘What’s wrong?’

He pointed: the mock-up of next Tuesday’s front page. Eventually he managed to say, ‘I was there.’