Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

answer. Naiyana Maguire’s phone placed her in Wisbech on the thirtieth too. Did they meet to discuss what happened next? Or was it an attempt to get her to keep quiet that went south? Or a trap. Maybe he’d found out her location and sent people to silence her.

Whatever had happened on that same day Naiyana Maguire had vanished. Tomorrow she would talk to Chester again. And get some answers.

63

Mike Andrews

Even for an involuntary bachelor like himself, it was weird to spend Christmas Eve stuck down a baking hot tunnel digging for gold. It was like a story from a children’s book. But what would the moral be? With hard work you get what’s coming to you? Nah, not that. Fuck the system? Better but not great. There is no greater reward than cheating the system? More like it.

Mike appeared into the light, swapping the flavourless gum in his mouth for a new piece. Ian and Stevie were out there already, enjoying the breeze and the shade.

From the back of one of the nearby houses the father, Lorcan, emerged, as if he had been lying in wait all this time. His phone was up, either recording himself or them. What was up with this family and their need to record everything? What was so special about doing fuck all?

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, with a clack of gum, stepping towards Lorcan, ready to take the phone by force if it pointed towards him. He felt much more at ease disarming him than his wife. Not that he wouldn’t mind getting his hands on her…

‘Just recording the town. The sights and sounds.’

Ian intervened before Mike could. One step ahead. This was his job. Smoothing things over. The people person, him and Stevie the scientists.

‘What for?’ asked Ian.

‘A book.’

Horripilation caused the mass of hair on his back to rise. Stevie looked as tense, the tendons in his wiry arms twitching. Words implicated. Videos too.

‘About?’

‘About life out here.’

There was a pause. Mike waited for Ian to grab the phone and chuck it. Finally Ian spoke. ‘Just keep away from here.’

Lorcan glanced at them all as if about to defy the order, before he walked on, his movements stiff. He seemed to be as tense as they were.

‘Are you going to allow that?’

‘I don’t like all these videos,’ added Stevie.

‘It’s under control,’ said Ian, trying to exert that insufferably calm authority.

‘How can it be?’

‘We have to learn to live together.’

‘I didn’t agree to become part of some sexless orgy,’ said Stevie, looking at Mike.

‘We have to keep it together, guys,’ said Ian. Another of his all-inclusive but condescending phrases. As if he was some cult leader. Drink the Kool-Aid and shut up.

With Lorcan gone Ian dragged the burner phone from his shorts. One of many he had insisted on picking up in Brissy before they came here. For emergencies. ‘I have to go to town now.’

‘What is it?’

‘A sale. A good price. You two get back down there.’

‘And what do we do about him?’ asked Mike, watching Lorcan stand in the middle of the crossroads and spin in a circle, the phone thankfully pointed at the ground.

‘Forget about him. I’ll deal with it.’

64

Emmaline

Emmaline hit the road early, racing against the sunrise to catch a flight back to Perth. The darkness kept its grip this morning. As if it knew something bad was going to happen.

From Leonora Airport she called Chester Grant’s office to arrange an urgent meeting. It was a Saturday so she had hoped to encounter a clear diary but his secretary informed her that the Honourable MLC for Curtin was busy all day, visiting a local factory.

‘At Brightside Foods by any chance?’ asked Emmaline.

‘I am not at liberty to divulge that,’ said the secretary, delivering a practised line to fob off nosy reporters.

‘I’m flying to Perth now, so tell him to free up some time.’

‘He is busy all day, Detective.’

‘Tell him I want to talk to him about Wisbech. That should free up some time.’

On the plane she browsed a report stating that the search for Naiyana and Dylan Maguire had widened to all states. It had been ten days since their likely disappearance. Their photos were now spread across the country. It wasn’t one of Naiyana’s best in Emmaline’s opinion, dressed elegantly as if for some social event but with a smidge of tiredness around her eyes. A photograph that had highlighted the stress of the Brightside Foods battle.

On landing, she was picked up by Neil. And received a call from Zhao.

It was as Emmaline had suspected. Mike Andrews and Stevie Amaranga had accessed data both for the Murchison Goldfields north of Gwalia and the Great Vic Desert as a whole. A lot of data. Enough according to Skyline to keep a dozen analysers busy for six months. But Mike and Stevie had obviously found something in the data to convince them that Kallayee was worth the money and effort to explore.

Zhao also noted that Skyline themselves were making moves to return to the region because of the find. Once the murder investigation had concluded. Move the bodies out and the machinery in. Breathing life back into the dead town.

Mike and Stevie’s bank accounts had been checked too. Both were a few cents in credit, the redundancy money long gone. Indeed their lives seemed to follow much the same path as the Maguires, the town drawing them in, bleeding them dry and spitting them out the other end. Dead in Lorcan Maguire’s case.

The accounts had been abandoned since the start of December. Their phone records had been accessed as well, a warrant granted given the positive identification of Mike’s voice on a dead man’s phone, but the records stopped at the start of December too. Last location: Brisbane.

From there Emmaline guessed they had driven across country to here. A pair of desperate men with a crazy idea. A crazy idea fuelled by data that had proved to be correct but