Whispering Death

36

Ian Galt had been trying since Monday to make sense of the CCTV images he’d scared out of Steve Finch. Anita had a child. Was it his? And elderly parents? Back when he’d known her, she’d had no apparent history at all.

But meanwhile he’d had to fly back to Sydney, word coming through on the grapevine about a body fished out of the harbour. He watched the investigation for a couple of days, standing well behind the scenes, the murdered man on the periphery of his old life.

And now it was Wednesday morning and he was back in Melbourne to begin the hunt.

He started at the childcare centre in Hurstbridge. Huddled under gumtrees on a minor road leading into the town, it looked threadbare, understaffed and underfunded. Meaning it was probably operated by a millionaire type peculiar to Australia, discredited, overextended and obscurely attracted to childcare centres and nursing homes. First flashing his fake Federal Police ID, he showed the administrator a still from Steven Finch’s security camera, a toddler and a young woman standing side by side outside the front gate of the centre. A photograph of a photograph, in fact, with a messy blur in the bottom right that was Anita’s hand in the act of displaying the photo to Finch.

The administrator, round and motherly, would only concede that the photograph had been taken in front of the centre.

‘But the kid did attend?’

‘I’m sorry, Inspector Towne, I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Is she still here?’

‘Perhaps if you tell me what this is about?’

Galt cast around for a story that might tug at the heartstrings and involve the Australian Federal Police. ‘We fear that an attempt might be made by a family member to kidnap her.’

‘Really.’

Sensing that he was on thin ground, Galt said, ‘This is a routine inquiry. We have not been able to track down all members of her extended family and-’

‘This child did attend here, yes, but has since moved on.’

‘You mean she’s attending primary school now?’

There was a long pause. ‘No, I don’t mean that.’

‘Look, this is a preliminary inquiry,’ Galt said. ‘We were alerted anonymously that the child might be at risk.’

Another silence that lasted for a few centuries. ‘The family moved back to England, that’s all I know.’

‘Back to England?’

‘Both parents took her.’

The sun had passed the midpoint of the sky, and the light, filtered by the dense tree canopy, fell to the ground in a pattern of interlocking circles. But Galt was in no mood for spring or beauty of any kind. ‘Madam, are you sure you can’t tell me more about this child?’ He tapped the photo. ‘Or her mother?’

‘The thing is, that isn’t her mother. I don’t know who that is.’

‘They’re standing next to each other.’

‘And so are other children, and if I’m not mistaken, the photo has been cropped, that’s the arm and shoulder of another parent.’

The woman was correct, of course. Galt kicked himself. He said, ‘So a stranger insinuates herself into a group of parents and children.’

‘She could be anybody. An aunt. A friend.’

Or a red herring, Galt thought.