interview. Vick had to. I couldn’t . . . you know that parents are the first suspects. Especially if they’ve had one die on them before.’
‘I’m sorry, mate.’
‘It’s like she was just picked up and taken away. It makes sense that you did something.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Why take your machete with you? Why leave without telling anyone, why leave in such a rush? You know, after you left we realised we don’t know a thing about you – we didn’t know how to find anyone who knows you. All I do know is you used to beat up your girlfriend.’
Despite everything, the words still made Frank’s face go numb. ‘You don’t have to explain yourself, mate. It’s understandable. You’re upset.’
‘I’m not explaining myself, Frank. I’m convincing myself that you didn’t do it, so that I don’t come over there and tear your throat out.’ Outside someone coughed and it occurred to Frank that they might be listening in. Bob sniffed hard. ‘But I do. I believe you. It doesn’t help me, doesn’t make the slightest difference to my situation. But I believe you.’ He turned round and rested his head on the door.
‘I didn’t take the knife with me.’ Frank’s voice was sandy. ‘It was right outside in the stump when I left.’
Bob lifted his head. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means someone else has taken it.’
‘Who?’ Bob’s eyes opened a fraction wider.
‘Maybe Sal took it with her?’
Bob looked blank.
‘There’s no reason to think that something bad has happened to her. She might have just run off. She’s into all this survival stuff. How to make a fire, catch food, bivouacs. It’s all she talks about.’
Bob was silent; as though he hadn’t heard, then he inhaled deeply again through his nose, keeping his eyes on the fluorescent light with all the shapes of dead flies in it. ‘I don’t know her very well.’
‘Sal?’
‘After Emmy died. I’ve just been shit.’
‘Well, a bloke could understand that.’
‘A seven-year-old can’t. Why should she understand it? Christ, if anything’s happened to her. If some bastard’s touched her . . . I had this idea you’d buried her in the vegetables. I dug in there looking for her, while the police were off somewhere. Every time I hit a bloody potato I thought, Jesus, there she is.’ Bob looked at him and shook his head.
‘Let me help you look.’
In the car Frank was put through the trauma of having to smell Bob next to him. A mix of sweat, rum and sick, but then he didn’t reckon he’d be smelling that much better. Through Bob’s gaping shirt he could see dark lines on the skin of his chest, like he’d pressed himself to a large griddle pan.
‘Where’s Vicky?’
‘She’s scared Sal’ll come home while we’re out. She’s scared she won’t. She’s been doing circuits round the house, then she gets scared she won’t hear the phone ring an’ she goes back in.’
There was nothing Frank could say, so he stayed quiet until they arrived at the shack.
‘We’ve been all around here. Hundred times. We’ve trawled the bush, the cane. We’ve shouted our throats bloody. Nothing. What can we do?’
‘Look some more.’
Bob looked tired and Frank wished he had something better to say.
Parts of the bush were familiar, but he wasn’t sure if they were real memories or if he just wanted to feel that he knew where he was going. Trees of a certain shape, their branches low and thick, made his pulse quicken. It was unthinkable that they wouldn’t find her. Unthinkable.
He could see that Bob hadn’t slept or sat down for days, his face was dust when it tilted up at the sun, and when he cupped a hand round his mouth and closed his eyes, Frank was surprised at the volume of his call. He looked as if he wouldn’t be able to raise a whimper, but when he coo-eeed it was a howl. Birds echoed back, but there was no reply.
As it turned to evening they stood side by side, peering into the dense scrub that lay ahead of them. It was like a wall, or a net. It was the marker that said, ‘No one has passed through here in a hundred years.’ They stood and looked at it.
‘She’s not here,’ said Bob in the voice Frank’d first expected him to have. Something between a wheeze and a murmur.
‘Yup,’ he said. That was it, then, was it? Sal was little more than a shard of bone now, waiting to be dug up or