Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

crept back out of town with its lights off, the driver clearly confident of the way. Kallayee returned to how it had been. Empty.

46

Naiyana

Her head was pounding. Her bloody husband wasn’t helping, pacing around the bedroom as excited as Dylan after a sugar-rush. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

‘There’s three of them.’

‘Three of who?’

‘Three guys. Miners. Or spies.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ she said, as much for her benefit as Dylan’s. ‘What three guys?’

‘In the tunnel.’

Naiyana frowned. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘I saw them with my own eyes, Nee. They drove in with the lights off and headed down the tunnel. Ten minutes later that bloody rumbling started. The leader seems to be a tall guy with a beard. There’s a short, stocky one and a dark-skinned one. Maybe Aboriginal.’

‘You can’t say that,’ she said, rebuking him.

Her husband seemed to ignore her. ‘I don’t think they are spies but they did nuclear tests out here in the fifties and sixties. At Maralinga and…’ He stopped there. Even he must have recognized how crazy it sounded. ‘I think they are mining for gold, diamonds or opals.’

Naiyana took a moment to take it in. ‘How does it affect us?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They aren’t disturbing us, are they?’

‘No, but we don’t know anything about them. Plus they have gone out of their way not to interact with us. There must be a reason for that.’

‘They’ve obviously met you before,’ said Naiyana.

Lorcan ignored her. ‘We should leave,’ he said.

‘I thought we’d been over this. We weren’t going to run.’

‘That was before we knew we weren’t alone.’

‘I’m sick of running, Lorcan. Where do we run to next? The moon?’

She stared at her husband for an answer. She didn’t want to be dragged around the country like some under-supported witness protection stooge. If it was a choice of fight or flight, she was choosing fight.

‘I’ll watch them again, tonight.’

Naiyana shook her head. ‘They don’t want us to know they are there, so we pretend we don’t know.’

Her husband’s eyes darted to the doorway. She could tell that he was looking to escape this conversation without replying. If he said nothing, it wasn’t a lie.

‘Lorcan?’

‘What?’

‘We don’t disturb them, they won’t disturb us.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I don’t. But they haven’t bothered us so far, so why would they now?’

47

Emmaline

The autopsy report on Lorcan Maguire’s body was ready the next morning. Emmaline drove to Hurton to get some breakfast and make the call. Again the local population – plus a few reporters – were out in force to watch the new arrivals. Partly curiosity and partly a desire to get them into the shops to spend money. It was a hard fact that many of these towns relied on the tourist dollar and right now she counted as a working tourist.

She called Oily. He was in Kalgoorlie with the pathologist, Dr Arthur Collins, who greeted her over the phone as if meeting a new friend.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Miss, Mrs or Dr Taylor. Whatever it may be.’

‘It’s Detective,’ said Emmaline. ‘What did you find?’

‘I take it you want to skip the obvious.’

‘Which is?’

‘That Lorcan Maguire was murdered. Gunshot wound to the chest.’

‘Have you got a make and calibre of the weapon?’

‘Point 22 Winchester shell. Likely fired from a hunting rifle. A quite common combo around these parts for killing animals and pests.’

‘And people.’

‘Yes. But fortunately rarely people. It was fired from a distance of about four metres, which rules out suicide, despite the gunpowder residue on the victim’s remaining fingers.’

‘On that. Have you a time frame for when the victim might have fired a gun?’

‘Given the continued presence of residue, I’d say recently.’

‘And he’d been dead for about a week when we found him?’

‘The results indicate so. Though we have to account for accelerated decomposition due to exposure to high temperatures which allow the bacteria to thrive.’ This information was delivered in a friendly but cold fashion, like a priest giving last rites, the ritual to be respected but the edges lightly smoothed. The results matched Dr Patel’s initial observations. Emmaline would have to remind her next time that sometimes facts could be immediately known. She wouldn’t like that at all.

‘And the fractured bone?’

‘A radius bone. Forearm. Nasty fracture suggesting blunt force trauma from a large object.’

‘Like a crowbar? Sledgehammer?’

‘Bigger. Most likely a vehicle. Possibly bull bars as a culprit. A lifesaver if you hit an animal, a killer if you hit a human, but I digress,’ said Dr Collins.

‘So a ute?’ asked Emmaline, thinking of the family’s vehicle.

‘Or any 4x4 or off-road vehicle,’ said Dr Collins. ‘If you can locate the vehicle and it hasn’t been thoroughly scrubbed you might even find evidence of human material, blood, skin or hair, still present.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The toxicological report brought up nothing unusual in his system, no drugs, no alcohol, though of course the dingoes contaminated some of that too.’

Emmaline didn’t need that visual circling her head again. Not this early in the morning.

Dr Collins continued. ‘Blood that matches Dylan Maguire’s registered blood group was found on the shirt at the scene.’

‘Enough to suggest death?’

‘Any amount of blood loss could suggest death, Detective. But it’s not in worrisome quantities if that’s what you are getting at. Naiyana Maguire’s blood type was present too. Again not enough to necessarily suggest death, but enough to indicate injury.’

Emmaline thought back to the house and the broken mirror. A family raided, maybe even burgled. Things get out of hand, Naiyana is killed and the father grabs the son and runs before being chased down in the desert by the burglars. Or Naiyana and Dylan taken as hostages. Maybe by the voice in the tunnel. But Lorcan had recorded the video eight days before the final frantic message, so the presence of whoever this voice belonged to hadn’t immediately frightened the family off.

48

Emmaline

Her next call was to Perth. ZZ and the others were looking into Lorcan Maguire’s dealings, pre- and post-redundancy, and a team led