I looked up from my notes and considered the question.
‘Well, he didn’t have a phone on him when he . . . when we found him. He probably left it in his flat. I’m sure it’ll turn up.’
‘Fair enough.’
He opened the folder, read out the number and I copied it down next to the address.
‘One final thing,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to trace Boyd’s final steps. When did you last see him?’
‘A couple of days ago. We had lunch, actually.’
‘And how was he?’
‘Fine. I mean, he was a bit worked up.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Well, he was in contact with Child Protection again, trying to have his sister removed so that she could live with him. The Child Protection Unit assigned to the case had been out to the flat. They were investigating the stepfather, but, as I’m sure you’re aware, the removal of a child from the family unit is a last resort. They don’t make those decisions lightly and the wait was causing him a bit of stress.’
‘Okay, so that was the last time you spoke to him?’
‘Yes.’
I thought about how removing the girl might have resulted in charges against the stepfather, possibly even prison time. It would be enough to make anyone angry.
‘The stepfather, what’s his name?’
‘Vincent Rowe. Look him up on your system. I’m sure he’ll have a thousand hits.’
I scrawled the name down and underlined it as Novak slid two business cards across the desk, one his own and the other belonging to a woman named Sarah Harrigan from the Department of Human Services.
‘It’s past five on a Friday,’ Novak said, ‘so you won’t get any joy at DHS now, but she’s the Child Protection Unit manager for the southern metro region. I’ll tell her you’re a good guy, get her to call you.’
I thanked him and passed my own card over. ‘Just for the record, where were you around midnight last night?’
‘Ah, you’re asking me for an alibi?’
‘For elimination.’
Novak looked out the window and exhaled slowly. ‘I was helping out at the soup kitchen on Fitzroy Street.’
‘At midnight?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Shit, I went into the 7-Eleven on the corner of Grey Street at one point and bought a packet of smokes to give out to the homeless. That’s the only time I was away from the van.’
Glad the awkward moment was out of the way, I held out my hand. ‘Sorry, Will. Part of the process.’
‘Just let me know if you hear anything,’ he said as we shook hands. ‘Dall was a popular kid. If something happened to him, you’ll have a lot of angry people around here. Could get ugly.’
I thought of the boy I’d seen outside and knew Novak wasn’t exaggerating. Street kids were a tight bunch.
‘Thanks, Will,’ I said, sliding the keys to Dallas Boyd’s apartment into my pocket. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
6
MAJESTIC VIEWS WAS THE NAME of the apartment block where Dallas Boyd had lived. It was squashed between two near-identical 1960s blocks on a narrow cul-de-sac and I wondered if it had been named as such because it had once been possible to glimpse water from the upper floors. If so, the growth of trees and urban development had put a stop to that. I drove past Majestic Views and parked a hundred metres down, watching the street through my rear-view mirror.
A prostitute leant against a telephone pole in the shade of a nearby tree. She was dressed in a pink bikini top and hotpants. I’d never seen her before and figured she was new to the stroll. She wasn’t scrawny and undernourished like most of the girls I knew in St Kilda. Looking around for her spotter, I found him hidden behind a sun visor in a nearby Valiant.
Within minutes, a white HiAce van slowed and the girl bent to the driver-side window. A quick glance over her shoulder, a flash of headlights from her eyes in the Valiant, and she was gone. Before I started working St Kilda I’d never understood the male desire to pick up street girls, risking arrest, robbery or disease when you could easily go to any legal brothel and get a better service with virtually no risk. I’d since come to suspect it was the risk itself, as much as the sex, that was the attraction for many men.
From the back seat I grabbed the white polo T-shirt I’d been wearing earlier and changed into it. It was too hot for a shirt and tie, and