perfect weekend coming up.
‘The mother and the boyfriend told you she’s run away before?’ van Alphen asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then she’s run away again.’
‘Leaving her favourite toy behind?’
He shrugged as if the whole thing was beneath him.
‘Kees,’ Ellen said exasperatedly, ‘tell us what you really think.’
He pushed away the ruins of his cup and looked at her finally. ‘She has a history of running away, right? And she’s a kid-kids have short attention spans. She dropped her stupid toy and forgot about it. As for running away, maybe she’s reacting to tensions at home; maybe she’s trying to throw a scare into her mother. Note she didn’t leave the bike behind, a bike’s too precious for that. She’ll turn up. They always do.’
‘We’ve tried all of her friends,’ Ellen said, feeling defensive.
‘Yeah, but have you tried her enemies? Her friends are bound to lie, to protect her.’
‘And her enemies are bound to tell us the truth?’ said Ellen, cocking her head at him, even though she knew his idea was sound: an enemy will lie to hurt, just as a friend will lie to protect, but an enemy might also reveal those things a friend will want to conceal-not that she thought little girls of that age had confirmed enemies.
Van Alphen shrugged. ‘It’s just a thought,’ he said, meaning that she hadn’t covered all of the bases yet.
‘Prints on the Tamagotchi?’ Scobie asked.
Ellen turned to him with relief. ‘Too soon. It’s being tested.’
They watched her, and waited. ‘I’ve had a few hundred flyers printed,’ she said, her voice sharp. ‘Van, I’d like you to muster up some uniforms and start distributing them tonight and tomorrow, all around town, especially along her bike route and at the showgrounds. I want a thorough canvass: flyers in shop windows, on bus shelters and light poles, etcetera, a saturation doorknock. The main Melbourne newspapers will run stories tomorrow, and TV and radio this evening. But we do not make public anything about an abduction or a paedophile ring. It’s too alarmist. It’s also too soon.’
Senior Sergeant Kellock hadn’t said a word as yet. He’d sat there, a massive, brooding presence, signifying disapproval, as though she’d gone too far. She sighed inwardly. ‘Senior Sergeant?’
He stirred, his huge head lifting and turning to take in Ellen, the room and the men and women around him. ‘This is a kid, just remember that,’ he growled, and Ellen could have embraced him.
That’s what she wanted them all to remember. This was a kid. A kid was missing. ‘Scobie, you can be incident room manager. If this gets any bigger we’ll want data inputters, a receiver and an analyst, so plenty of computers and phones, please.’
‘Okay.’
The briefing had taken ninety minutes. Before Ellen could wrap it up, her mobile phone rang. She took the call, tried not to show how thoroughly it disturbed her, and crossed to the TV set in the corner. ‘Behold,’ she said sourly, ‘the mother and the boyfriend.’
‘Evening Update’, Channel 5, five days a week from 7.30 until 8 pm. As Ellen watched, it occurred to her that grief, stress and anxiety have many faces: numb, teary, expressionless, defeated. But sometimes-awfully-grief wears a smiling face. The voices coming from the TV were a little hoarse and broken, but Katie’s mother and her boyfriend were smiling for the cameras.
The segment was live, the reporter in Donna’s sitting room. ‘The police fear that little Katie’s been abducted,’ he said. ‘Have you a message for her abductors?’
‘We hope you’ll return Katie to us unharmed,’ said Justin Pedder, showing his teeth. Reptilian teeth, thought Pam.
Ellen Destry whirled around. ‘I never said a word to those two idiots about abduction. How did the media get onto this?’
They looked at her blankly.
‘If I find that anyone in this investigation has been leaking information, I’ll come down on them like a ton of bricks. Understood?’
‘Sarge.’
Ellen scowled and turned to the TV again, where the question of victims-of-crime compensation was being raised. ‘Yes, we think we should be compensated for our suffering,’ Pedder was saying.
‘How do you put a dollar amount on that?’ the reporter asked rhetorically.
‘Katie is priceless to us.’
The reporter nodded, full of feeling, and said gravely, ‘Tell us how you’re feeling right now.’
‘Like I want to rip your wig off,’ snarled Ellen.
‘We feel just devastated,’ said Katie Blasko’s mother.
‘Afraid?’
‘Yes.’
Gently now: ‘You fear the worst?’
‘Yes,’ the mother and the boyfriend said with their blinding smiles.
‘How would you deal with the monster or monsters who have taken little Katie from you?’
Justin Pedder showed his teeth and gums and mimed hanging from a tree.
‘Where’s the public interest in this?’ Kellock demanded.
Ellen was angry, but a part of her was also thinking that the public interest would quickly move on, leaving behind Justin Pedder and Donna Blasko, who surely felt ravaged to the core, even if they hadn’t the means to express it.
She closed the briefing and returned to the paperwork in her office. Thirty minutes later, she had an inkling of what Challis often went through.
‘I understand we have an abduction, Sergeant,’ said Superintendent McQuarrie from her doorway.
‘Sir, I-’
‘I have that on good authority, of course. The media, no less.’
‘Sir, someone must have-’
‘This station has always leaked like a sieve,’ McQuarrie said.
He began strutting back and forth before her desk. She didn’t know what the protocol was. Should she come out from behind the desk? Should she be standing while he bawled her out? She decided to stand. That made her taller than McQuarrie, who was slight, dapper, a bloodless little man. Was it correct protocol to be taller than your boss?
He scowled at her resentfully. ‘I’ve called a press conference. What do you suggest I tell them? That “Evening Update” got it wrong?’
Ellen sat again. Headlights flickered outside. Waterloo was bopping tonight. She could see all the way down High Street to the waterfront and the showgrounds, the Ferris wheel and the wilder rides lit up like Christmas trees. ‘It’s beginning to look like an abduction, sir.’
‘Beginning to look like,’ said McQuarrie flatly.
A snide little turd. She wondered what he was overcompensating for. His size? His total lack of coppers’ instincts? His years of administering rather than policing? The fact that his Rotary pals were company CEOs while his occupation was largely blue collar? She badly needed to go home, pour a gin-and-tonic, soak in a bath.
‘I realise we’re talking about a small child, for God’s sake, but it’s surely too soon to state categorically that it is an abduction, and too soon for teary parents to be making a public appeal. Do you have compelling evidence one way or the other?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then you see my dilemma.’
‘Sir.’
‘Are you up to this, Ellen?’
So now she was Ellen, his best pal? What a prick. ‘I am, sir.’
‘Because Inspector Challis is only a phone call and a plane ride away.’
