Chapter Twenty-Three
The Theft
LEA SAT ON the patio and smelled smoke. She went to the end of the garden.
‘Rachel, I know you’re there.’
‘God, is it that obvious? I’m halfway inside a fucking hyacinth bush. I thought Colette wouldn’t be able to see me from in here. I’m always so careful to pick up my butts.’ Rachel’s false eyelashes fluttered up at her between the fence staves and the leaves. She jetted smoke into the still air and batted it away, stepping closer. ‘Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘No, I’m really not okay—I ran out of petrol near the underpass. The men were taking turns with a girl.’
Rachel took a long drag at her Virginia Slim and exhaled. ‘Oh honey, I thought you knew. That was why everyone wants to close the road. It’s why they made such a fuss when you said they threw rocks at you.’
‘Do you know about the missing girls?’
‘Oh.’ The figure beyond the fence was still.
‘So you do?’
‘I’ve heard all kinds of things.’
‘Guess how many have disappeared since the construction started on Dream World? Forty-six. That includes Tom Chalmers’ daughter.’
‘Lea, they’re mostly migrants, and there are millions of those here. So many people come and go. Disappearances don’t make the news.’
‘What about the girl who was found in the creek?’
‘She was the only one I read about. But nobody notices, nobody cares.’
‘Some people care. They set up a website but it’s been shut down. It could be why the mishaps occur.’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘The parents who make a fuss, the ones who won’t go away. Some of the fathers who filed official complaints died in work-related accidents.’
‘Jesus, really? How did you find that out?’
‘The information’s publically available if you know where to look.’
‘You’re not going to mention this to anyone other than me, are you? You could really screw things up for us all.’
‘No. I love my husband too much to do that.’
‘You’re not the first person to go looking for big bad wolves. Even if you were right and found out that someone here had a taste for little girls, what could you do?’
‘I guess that’s what Tom Chalmers wondered.’
The cigarette smoke drifted, slowly dissipating. ‘Did you stop to think it might be the workers?’
‘No, I’ve seen where they take their women. That’s how they cope with their sexual issues. Rachel, you have two granddaughters. I have a daughter. What if something was to happen to them? How would we ever find out the truth?’
‘I know one way.’ She looked up and saw Colette leaning from the bedroom window. ‘Shit, I’ve been busted. Are you around tomorrow?’
‘Sure, I’m not doing anything.’
‘I’ll be back late afternoon. Let’s grab a bite together. Promise?’ The leaves rustled and she was gone.
Lea walked back into the lounge and saw that her phone’s voicemail light was blinking. Mr Qasim from the police station had left his number, asking her to call immediately. As she waited for the call to go through, she wondered if he had discovered any leads in his search for Milo’s killers.
‘Mrs Brook? Thank you for getting back to me. I’m afraid this is rather a delicate matter, and I wanted to contact you directly.’
She waited for him to continue.
‘We have five young people from the Dream Ranches estate here with us. One of them is your daughter.’
‘Why are they there?’ Lea asked. ‘Have they done something wrong?’
‘They were caught on camera at a clothing store in the Mall Of The Emirates. Abercrombie & Fitch, I believe. They had been trying on clothes and left the shop without paying.’
‘You’re saying Cara stole something? Is she under arrest?’
‘It was a silver neck-chain. It triggered the store’s alarm. Your daughter told the security guard that it was a mistake, that she had put it on earlier and had forgotten she was still wearing it, and her friends backed her up. The store has a policy of reporting every suspicion of theft to the authorities, so we brought them all in to make statements.’
‘I can’t believe they meant to steal. Cara has an allowance, she can afford to buy what she likes, within reason. You’re not going to charge her, are you?’
‘Probably not. This time we’re going to let them off with a warning, but the store has insisted on barring them from the premises, and the mall may no longer grant them entry.’
‘Thank you for telling me. I’ll drive over and collect her.’
‘No, you needn’t come here. They just have to sign releases and they’ll be free to go. However, we suspect one of the boys has been drinking and he’s underage, so we’ll be keeping him here for his father to collect.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A Korean boy, Kim Lo. He goes to your daughter’s school. We’re sending Cara home now. When things like this occur, we try to take an enlightened view and allow the parents discuss the problem directly with their children.’
I won’t fly off the handle at her, she told herself. I have to treat this in exactly the same manner as if it had occurred in London with her school friends. But at the same time she was furious over the betrayal of her trust.
Her final approach, she later realised, satisfied no-one. ‘Your father will be very disappointed in you,’ she warned, watching Cara as she focussed her concentration on unpacking her bag on the kitchen table.
‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ Cara mumbled. ‘I forgot I still had mine on. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like that. It was dumb.’
‘And what about Norah? She was with you. Had she forgotten too?’
‘We were all trying stuff on.’ The rest of Cara’s answer was lost below sound level.
‘What was that?’
‘I said she isn’t responsible for me. I can look after myself. I made a mistake, that’s all.’
‘What about the boy they kept behind for drinking? Who was he?’
‘Kim’s just some kid who was hanging out with us. He’s in the year below. I hardly know him.’
There was something different about her that Lea couldn’t put her finger on. Despite her shamefacedness, Cara seemed more sure of herself, more adult somehow.
‘Cara, I’m not going to go on about it after tonight, I just want this to be clear between us. You’re younger than most of the kids in your class. The girls have more experience than you. They’ve been here longer, they’re not like the ones you hung out with in London. I’m not sure that Norah and Dean are a good influence.’
‘Dean wasn’t there.’
‘That’s not the point. They know just how much they can get away with, but you have to be more careful. Answer me truthfully. You didn’t steal the chain, did you?
‘No, of course not!’ Cara was indignant.
‘You can’t just think about yourself. If you’d been arrested and charged, imagine what it would have done to your father. You could have put his career at risk.’
‘And what about me?’ Cara turned to her, flushing red. ‘What about my future? You pulled me out of my old school, then after a couple of years you’re going to shift me around again. For what? So that Dad can help build a fucking amusement park for the super-rich! Did you ever think what I had to tell my friends when I left, how humiliating that was?’
‘Go to your room,’ Lea warned. ‘Roy can deal with you when he gets home. I will not be sworn at in my own home.’
‘This isn’t even your house, it goes back to the corporation on the day you leave and a month later some other stooge family will be in here.’ Cara stamped off to her quarters.
What made her so angry was feeling that at some level Cara was right.
Roy was late home, having dealt with the fallout from a narrowly averted strike after new shifts were announced to workers. Lea listened patiently, commenting where she could. She wanted to tell Roy about Cara’s arrest, but was wary of opening up subjects that would not be shut away so easily.
Roy refused dinner, explaining that he’d ordered a takeout earlier, and fell asleep fully dressed on the couch, where it felt kinder to leave him dozing before ancient CSI reruns rather than rouse him for bed.
Lea sat in the upstairs window overlooking the deserted street, and read for a while, but she had drunk the best part of a bottle of Vivanco, and could no longer concentrate.
She awoke in her chair with the Persian book in her lap, trying to recall the retreating tendrils of a dream. It scurried away, vanishing beneath the warm streets, behind the artificial hedges. Within it was something dank and malignant, an impassive rock-grey monster. And now that she had found a connection between the accidents, Lea knew it was the enemy she’d have to face.