Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

what they knew about the family, all except for the drunk woman and Matty. And that was no reason to rule either out.

‘It adds weight to the message on his phone,’ said Rispoli.

She nodded. ‘Someone came after them. And in the recording, he said that Naiyana was already gone.’

‘So her body is out here?’ asked Anand, joining Barker in looking around as if Naiyana’s body would suddenly rise from the sand.

‘Or somewhere,’ said Emmaline. ‘All we know is that whoever was after Lorcan Maguire caught him. And maybe Dylan too.’

According to the message Lorcan had been escaping with his son. But he was nowhere to be found.

37

Lorcan

It had been a long drive back. With a stop-off in Wisbech for ice cream. All in all it had been a delightful road trip. Father and son together. He had picked up everything he needed – a cupboard, chairs and a second-hand sofa. He felt like he had achieved something significant. It was time to build on that. Literally. He had even managed to find a play park for Dylan to tire himself out and sleep in the cab while he nipped off to run an errand.

On returning to Kallayee, Dylan immediately resumed operations in his thriving mine. Naiyana though had seemed distracted, acknowledging the successful haul of goods but when he had suggested getting started with constructing the cupboards she had waved it off for another day. As if she wanted the house to herself. Maybe she was nesting. He was sure that was a thing he had read somewhere. Getting used to a place. Making it your own. Feeling safe and secure. Whatever the reason he was happy to oblige. The well was waiting for him.

While Dylan had slept he had stopped by an outdoor store and picked up a climbing harness. Securing it and strapping himself in, he lowered himself into the well. He continued to dig, filling buckets that he winched out using the old pulley that he had found, the harness making digging somewhat awkward but a damn sight safer than his weight collapsing the cap and plunging to his death.

An hour in, the earth began to rumble, low but insistent, dust crumbling from the stone sides, choking the air. His first thought was that the well was collapsing but aside from the shower of dust the old blocks remained intact. His second thought was a low-flying plane overhead, so he looked up and searched for it. This was something he found himself doing on occasion, casually following the planes across the sky until the horizon or his vision gave out. But there was no plane in view. This rumbling was coming from underground again, but during the day this time instead of at night.

From his time at school, he knew that West Australia as a whole was not known for major earthquakes apart from a large one in Meckering in 1968 and a smaller one in Kalgoorlie in 2010. There were also a lot of active volcanoes stretching from Melbourne to Mount Gambier but no eruptions in five thousand years. So he was pretty confident that he wasn’t digging down into a magma chamber.

Ignoring the rumble for the moment he continued to fill another couple of buckets, but the rumbling failed to cease. Levering himself out of the well awkwardly – something that would get better with practice – he took the harness off and went hunting.

Putting his ear to the ground he felt the reverberations through it. He walked towards the other side of the road and put his ear to the sand once again. He might have been mistaken but it felt stronger.

Moving another few metres away from the well, further from their house, he tried again. This time the reverberations were accompanied by laughter.

‘What are you doing, Daddy?’

He turned to find Dylan staring at him, the yellow dumper truck clasped in his hand.

‘Searching for something,’ he said.

‘Can I help?’

Lorcan nodded. He continued to move and check, Dylan doing the same behind him, moving past the crossroads. The noise was definitely stronger in this quarter of town but where was the source? He had checked out most of these buildings before – even the recently collapsed one – when he’d gone scavenging for anything useful.

A fruitless hour later he gave up. As he turned to go back home, a foil wrapper floated past him sparkling in the sun. He trapped it with his foot and picked it up. It hadn’t been faded with the sun. Recent. He wondered if it was one of Dylan’s. At that age kids had little or no concept of littering, leaving things behind like a marker to reassure them that they had been there before and that the path was safe. But the wrapper was for a Chunky Peanut Butter KitKat. A type Dylan detested.

Resuming the hunt, he entered the nearest house. It was a solid wooden structure, one that he might have considered as their base but for the inner wall that had collapsed turning two bedrooms into one and causing irreparable damage to a hallway wall that a strong puff of breath could knock over.

The rumbling was powerful here, shaking the wooden slatted floor as if he was standing on one of those massage plates at the gym. The cupboards rattled as if the town was being shelled, shaking the house to its foundations. Then he noticed something. A cupboard that was out of place, the skid marks in the dust showing that it had been moved. Had Dylan done this? And why? But even empty it was a sturdy piece of furniture, too much for a scrawny six-year-old to move on his own. Had Naiyana moved it? She had taken to walking around town to film her vlog, sometimes even at night, according to Dylan. Had she been here checking out furniture to take? Possible. But scavenging wasn’t his wife’s MO.

38

Lorcan

He put his hand on the cupboard. It was