Chapter 2

It was two weeks before he was missed. The fact that he didn’t turn up to the warehouse and his office was not seen as irregular at all. The man travelled a lot, presumably securing contracts for the merchandise that kept coming in and going out at regular intervals. Huge semis would unload and fill the warehouse and stock numbers would slowly dwindle as smaller trucks took deliveries out to businesses. As long as invoices, packing slips and accounts all matched up, then the office staff and the person in charge of the warehouse floor coped with everything before them. What alerted them was the fact that a small section of the warehouse had remained unchanged. This was the boss’s special stock. Only he would check invoices and packing slips. He had to authorise any movement of that stock. Because he wasn’t around, it remained untouched despite some frantic calls made to the office. The deputy manager had no authority to release it and knew his job was as good as gone if he let it go, so he took the brunt of the anger on the end of the line from those customers wanting to know what was happening. After two weeks, enough was enough. Calls had been made to the manager’s mobile and his home. His deputy had been around to his house. The man’s car wasn’t there, nor was there any sign of life. Frustrated, at last the police were called late one evening.

A lot can happen in a fortnight and it seemed that in the far distant place of Inverness in Scotland, action had taken place a little sooner. The owner and manager of an important export company had too gone missing. It wasn’t a big company at all. It dealt with local produce and sent it mainly to its overseas office. That overseas office happened to be in Cairns, Australia. Because the enquiry was from overseas, it was passed directly to the head of CID in Cairns. Chief Inspector Bernard Wilfred Downs shifted uncomfortably in his seat for three reasons. Firstly, because his one hundred and ninety centimetre frame had been tied to the chair just a little bit too long already. Secondly, because although the receptionist had said that the call was from Scotland, he assumed that they spoke English over there. To his untuned ear, he wondered whether he would need an interpreter to gain any idea of what was being said. Finally, no-one dared call him Bernard between Cape York and Canberra if they knew him. He was “Sarge” to everyone and had a glare that would shrivel anyone who dared call him otherwise. He found that his glare didn’t work down a phone line. He asked the speaker to wait a minute and called in his two most trusted colleagues to help him.

Nothing much was really happening in Cairns as far as major crime was concerned and Detective Sergeants, Nat Johns and Liz Rhodes were at a bit of a loose end. Sarge thought that they could at least earn some of their wages by trying to help him fathom what was being said. As they entered his office, he signalled for them to sit down and to listen. He informed the voice on the other end of the line that he was going to put him on speaker. The voice was clear, but to Nat and Sarge very few words were easily discernible. It was Liz who cottoned on quickly and began to take notes. With a quick nod of approval from Sarge, she spoke to the man. She asked him to email details and gave him both Sarge’s and her email addresses. Finally, she hung up.

“Before you ask what that was all about, the police officer from Inverness was talking English, just like my Gran from Invergordon used to do. It seems they have a missing person over there whose brother and only relative lives in Cairns. They have tried contacting the Cairns brother, but with no success. The brothers are linked because they own a family business, McAllister and Sons Imports. He wants to know if we could hunt the brother up for them. I said that we would. I hope that you don’t mind. I asked him to email the details,” Liz explained.

Sarge again nodded but deep down wondered whether the contents of the email would be in English.

The emails were in English and quite well written. Full details of Ewan McAllister were given and the last known whereabouts. Sarge wished that some of his men in uniform took such extensive notes. McAllister was not a big wig in Inverness, but he did employ some people. Wages couldn’t be signed off, so he was important from that aspect alone. There was an accompanying photo, but that meant little to the three police officers in Cairns. Nat had already made contact with the man’s brother’s place of work and had been told by the receptionist that Camden McAllister was unavailable as he was out of the office. Nat asked for the mobile contact and it was hesitatingly given. He dialled that and was put through to a message bank. Liz was chosen as the person to respond back to Inverness. She did a swift calculation and decided to ring in the morning, there being a nine-hour time differential and it didn’t seem all that urgent.

It was in that intervening period that the deputy manager of McAllister and Sons Imports based in Cairns decided to call the police, totally unaware of what his office manager had been involved in. Missing persons don’t usually hit CID straight away but there was one alert officer at reception who’d had a sudden shift swap. He had fielded the call from Inverness earlier in the day at the end of a shift and, when he had been called back in suddenly to fill a vacancy caused by an ill colleague, by chance he took the concerned call from the Cairn’s deputy manager. He put two and two together and thought that the name match was a bit of a coincidence and caught Sarge just as he was leaving quite late that night. Sarge’s partner Sarah and their two girls were having a short break up on his family’s farm hundreds of kilometres away. There wasn’t even his faithful dog to go home to. Tom was probably having a ball chasing rabbits out in the dusty paddocks just east of Croydon in North Central Queensland. Sarge had been killing time in the office not wanting to go home to his empty house.

When he heard the news, he put his jacket back down on the back of his chair. He too didn’t like coincidences and this one was too far fetched not to be real. Two brothers, both working for the same company, each on two different sides of the planet, go missing at the same time. It had been quiet, but this was something that couldn’t wait. He sensed foul play and made two calls. Some overtime was going to be worked tonight. Nat had intimated that it was his date night with Jess, his wife, tonight and for a millisecond Sarge felt a fraction of guilt as he dialled. Liz, was far more bright, bubbly and chirpy. She could do with the extra cash and if Sarge was going to ring Inverness, then to stop an invasion of angry Scots heading for Cairns, she knew she should be the one to smooth things over.

Sarge had no idea what Liz’s private life involved. She never talked about it and he never pried. She came to work, was outstanding at it, and then disappeared into the night. She was in her thirties, around one hundred and seventy centimetres and quite attractive, but Sarge was never one to assess people on their physical make-up. She had a quick incisive mind and one that thought quite laterally, and that he admired. His own was quite narrow and very methodical and between the two of them, they had most bases covered. Nat, the third member of Sarge’s preferred team on major investigations, was good at the shoe leather approach, with the occasional insights. Sometimes Nat’s insights were a revelation, but often his lack of understanding helped far more, in that he asked basic questions that forced both Sarge and Nat to hone in on specifics. Sarge thought that Nat would be the first to come up the idea that perhaps the two brothers had decided to meet up and have a holiday together, but then Nat would also quickly check local airports to see if any flights had either man on board. That was the nature of Nat’s thinking. Sarge had seen this originally skinny, young blond-haired surfer type officer grow up very quickly over the past ten years. Theirs was a friendship that extended far beyond work. Their two extremely well-educated partners had also become close friends and confidantes. It would take more than a missed date night to see that friendship lost. Although given Nat’s dark looks when he walked back into Sarge’s office, he wasn’t that sure.

“So, is the budget going to pay for the wasted babysitter? The hotel suite? The chocolates and champagne? It took three months for me to get a table at that restaurant…….” Nat ran out of words, his face now so apoplectic that nothing came out of his mouth.

“Imagine thirty years from now and you get a message that your two boys have suddenly mysteriously disappeared at the same time, even though they were living thousands of kilometres apart. Ewan and Camden McAllister are twins, just like your boys are. You would want the police to find them safe and sound as soon as possible, wouldn’t you? Both of the McAllister boys’ parents are dead. They have no wives or families. All they have is each other,” Sarge paused letting the words sink into Nat’s mind, “I think that they may be in trouble and, if so, all they have is us.”