Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

the new mine and shipped in a load of Italian labourers who were hired cheap and laid off just as cheaply. As the Italian immigrants filtered south looking for work, they had eventually crept into Kallayee and for a time the official language became an Italian–Australian mix that was incomprehensible outside the town. It explained the long-dead store with the name ‘The Italian Press’ in fading writing above the door.

She stuck with Rispoli as she scoured the town. Her opinion of it remained the same: no place for a young family to live. The tin shacks that hadn’t fallen over were close to doing so, the wood dwellings frayed and split, all uninhabitable. The few brick constructions had been gutted a long time ago. Around every corner, she expected to fine a lone, wizened stockman resting on a barrel, his feet up watching all the action unfold in his long undisturbed town, waiting to tell his tale to someone. But rarely in this business was everything laid out in one neat polished script. Everything had a dog-ear somewhere, a wrinkle that needed to be smoothed out.

Emmaline had a question to ask. And not about the case.

‘Rispoli. Sounds Italian.’

The young constable turned to her. ‘I can see how you made rank.’

The accompanying smile lifted his cheekbones and involved his whole face. Even his ears seemed to rise. A handsome face, pleasing to her eye. Set free from Barker’s rigid deportment, he was emerging from his shell.

‘Related to anyone who used to live here?’

‘My mum did one of those ancestry trees once.’

‘And?’

‘We came from Leichhardt in New South Wales. And before that Abruzzo in Southern Italy. My great-grandfather moved the family out here to Kalgoorlie. Never made it up to Kallayee. Not officially anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It means that he might have worked the mines. But not according to any government records. Near impossible to tax his kind of iterant working back then.’

He nodded his head towards her. ‘I guess your family weren’t originally Aussie.’

Emmaline stopped in her tracks and turned to him, sharply at the waist, flicking her head. Her recently shorn locks prevented the whip she desired.

‘Why do you say that?’

The young officer stopped. His lips moved, no words came out. A dash of colour came to his tanned cheeks.

‘I didn’t mean… I… It was…’

He was backtracking rapidly. His eyes flicked this way and that. Trying to get out of the snare he had triggered.

Emmaline tried to hold her glare but failed. A smile eased across her face, basking in the endorphin rush, essential to keep her going through this strung-out day.

‘It’s okay.’

‘I wasn’t saying…’

Emmaline put him out of his misery. ‘My dad’s from Cape Town and my mum’s from London. They moved out here when I was two. She got offered a good job and Dad was happy to try somewhere warmer. Simple as that. No drama. No running away. Just a better job and a better life. Like your great-grandparents.’

‘No,’ chortled Rispoli, shaking his head. ‘They were running away.’

‘From?’

‘A story for later.’

They shared a smile. Emmaline wondered if this could go somewhere, a primal urge taking over. Something that society suggested she should be ashamed of. But she wasn’t. There was nothing wrong with fishing; hunting, catching and letting go.

As they entered yet another shed, the sun poking holes through the tin, allowing dust motes to dance in the brilliant bursts of energy, she asked him what he knew about the town.

‘Dead goldmining town. A few good shoots but mostly famous for the mine collapse in 1921. Killed around twenty people. Then another two in the riot against the mining company after. The government even cordoned off a few houses, in case they sank into the collapsed mine.’

To Emmaline it sounded a lot like what had happened in the family home. Had there been a collapse? Did that explain the roof and wall? Scaring them into leaving in a hurry? But why not collect their valuables? Why not get in contact?

‘There is, of course, also the legend that the town is cursed,’ said Rispoli.

‘Is that your official opinion?’ she asked as they left the shack.

He smiled. ‘Soon it might be our only line of enquiry.’

She smiled back but hoped it didn’t come to that. As a rule she steered away from superstition. Her mother was a superstitious woman, the house decorated with feathers and trinkets, abiding customs that her father obeyed in public and had always encouraged Emmaline to disobey in private.

Indeed, the town itself seemed to exist in some kind of limbo, between what it had once been and vanishing back into dust. Her mother might even have relished the almost spiritual silence. It wasn’t on any map and there were no road signs directing traffic to it. The government had done everything it could to prevent anyone living here. But it was an easy edict to defy. Emmaline looked at the scrub beyond the town, sand dunes and gibber plains, a hard, closely packed surface of pebbles, populated by a few weary eucalyptus trees, mulga shrubs and deep-rooted spinifex grass all adapted to low rainfall and high temperatures. There was nothing but barren land, no government or police keeping watch. And nature abhorred a vacuum.

The first discovery was made by Anand, his energetic cries dragging the four of them behind a house with a roofless coal shed. There they found a quad bike with its tyres slashed. Petrol in the tank. In poor condition, the seat worn, the throttle grip and gear bar rubbed smooth from excessive use and sparkling in the sun, clean unlike the sandy, oily engine.

As Barker issued a request for a check on its origin, a second, more significant discovery was made close by. A patch of reddened earth. Likely blood. In larger quantities than was found in the house. It reminded her of the aftermath of a western. A duel at high noon.

It meant three things.

That Forensics needed to be called. To test if the blood samples matched.

That something had