Prologue

Tuesday, 19 August 1986

The volume of traffic rumbling down Bondi Road had been steadily building since late afternoon and was now peaking as dusk settled and light rain drifted in off the Pacific Ocean.

Rosemary Kinna flicked her wipers on. She was going nowhere fast in the stop-start queue, and as she rolled to another halt just beyond Watson Street a girl set off in front of her from the right-hand kerb. Weaving between the stationary cars, she was just tall enough to see from the shoulder up as she scampered past the front bumper, through the beams cast by Kinna’s headlights in the inky wet air.

With a six-year-old of her own, Kinna was struck by how small the child was. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, she thought. Her honey blonde hair was tied in a little-girl ponytail with a pink ribbon and the arrangement bobbed and fluttered as she scooted towards the opposite footpath. In the gloom, Kinna thought that the girl may have just come from an after-school ballet lesson or drama class. Judging from her body language, she was also upset about something.

As the line of cars in Bondi Road again nudged forward, Kinna glanced back and forth between the vehicle in front and the child, who was now to her left and skirting along the perimeter of St Patrick’s Church towards the T-intersection at Wellington Street, the same direction in which she was driving. Until now, Kinna had only been able to observe the top of the child’s ensemble, a dark-coloured sloppy joe over a T-shirt. But as she moved further along, she could see the oversized bright pink tube skirt that the girl had tucked up under her top but which still came down past her knees. Someone would later say the outfit looked kind of borrowed.

A little beyond the corner of Bondi and Wellington, a group of adults milled about the bus stop in front of a small row of shops. As she approached them, the girl hesitated. With a visible prickle of anxiety, she began pacing towards the edge of the road and back, straining to see past everyone. Kinna realised she was looking for someone, perhaps coming to meet her from further up the street.

Kinna herself was now being forced beyond the curious scene by the barely flowing traffic. At the same time, though, her attention was drawn to a man striding along the windswept footpath towards the girl from the direction of the beach.

Although fleetingly, Kinna looked directly into his face and was disturbed by it. There was nothing physically menacing about the guy. He was clean-shaven, tidily dressed, sort of medium- sized and in his late 20s or early 30s, with neat brown hair. Yet there was something that betrayed agitation in the way his gaze was so pointedly fixed on the child. It was obvious to her that one or perhaps both were late for a rendezvous and it occurred to her that it was well beyond an hour when the child might still feel okay about being alone on the street, but this is where Kinna’s speculation ended.

Stopped once more, she stole a final glimpse at the pair over her left shoulder, through the rear passenger-side window. She could tell they were standing together among the small gathering at the bus stop but could see nothing more.

Minutes later, after Kinna’s brake lights dipped below the evening horizon and she swung left onto Australia’s most famous promenade, the man and girl crossed back over Bondi Road and headed up two blocks, towards the corner of Imperial Avenue. They were now side by side and apparently at ease with each other.

As if prompted by an afterthought, the little girl turned and went back a dozen doors or so to the Soul Pattinson chemist at number 165, where she walked inside and purchased a tooth­brush. On her way back to meet the man, she returned a smile and a wave from one of her neighbours, Mrs Rena Kilbride, who assumed in the late winter twilight that the girl was on her way home.

She was never seen again.1