Underground

Chapter 8

I woke up as Grant was getting out of bed. He kissed me and got dressed.

"I've got an early shift."

"Do you want some breakfast?" I asked, hoping I had something in the cupboard.

"No. I'll grab something from home. Thanks."

I grabbed a jumper and track pants off the floor and pulled them on. I followed Grant to the door. He kissed me goodbye and smiled. I watched him walk around the side of the house. An engine started up. As his car appeared at the front of the house, the smile dropped from my face. It was a white Ford Laser. Grant waved. I raised a hand and tried to smile. I watched the car until it was lost behind the trees. My heart raced. There are hundreds of those cars around the Coast. Sam said so. I locked the front door and jumped into a steaming hot shower, trying to put the car out of my mind.

After learning a few more names associated with Rebecca Kaber, I decided to re-read the files that Gordon had emailed. I found Gordon's notes on the last case that he and my father had worked on and printed them out.

In 1999, five teenage girls in the northern suburbs of Brisbane were reported missing and were never found. There did not appear to be any links between the girls or similarities other than age group. By the early 2000's, the number had risen to twelve. Then an English working-holiday maker disappeared. Twenty-two-year-old Alicia Haston had been working as a switchboard operator, in Brisbane, for six months. Her parents had received monthly phone calls from her during that period but were not overly concerned when she hadn't rung after a gap of six weeks.

Alicia and her boyfriend at the time, John Paisley, had come to Australia together but had broken up. John returned to England immediately after the break-up, which he put down to being constantly together. Alicia had told her parents the same story.

Alicia had put in for holidays at her place of employment in Brisbane. When she did not turn up for work after her holidays, her supervisor called her mother to see if she had returned to England. When informed that she hadn't heard from her and didn't know that Alicia had been on a holiday, the supervisor contacted the Brisbane police.

No one from the block of units where Alicia had rented knew who she was or that she'd been away. Some said they had never seen her, and the occupants of the units either side of Alicia's stated that she had been very quiet, and they rarely saw her.

The last people to admit seeing her were staff at a local Women's Help Centre, where she was headed on an errand for her boss when she went missing. They had seen her earlier that day. The phone number for the Women's Help Centre and the name of some of the volunteers that were working there at the time were scribbled on the bottom.

I set the notes down beside me on the lounge chair. No names jumped out at me. I poured another glass of wine and moved to the back verandah. The cold air stung my face. My mother would have Dad's boxes of notes. He would wake in the middle of the night with thoughts on cases and scribble them down on notepads. He would decipher his scribble the next morning and write it on his work notepad. Sometimes re-writing them would jog his memory and he'd come up with something else. He had kept these books as a quick reference at home. It drove Mum crazy. He would remind her that she did the same thing as a solicitor. She would grumble and finally admit it. I had to see those notepads.

My mother met me at her place for lunch. I had stopped on the way and bought pasta to butter her up. I wanted to pick her brain. I had to ease into it.

"So, has your friend turned up?" I asked, casually.

"Janet?" Mum asked.

"Yeah." I shovelled pasta into my mouth.