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  To my Mum and Dad

  And to all the essential workers who gave their all for the common good during the COVID crisis

  1 Detective Emmaline Taylor

  A family was missing. They had been in the town and then they weren’t. What they were even doing there in the first place wasn’t yet known. No one should have been there. No one had for close to fifty years.

  It had been a short, choppy flight from Perth on a twin-prop plane into the blood red dirt and streak of tarmac that was Leonora Airport before driving south along Route 49. The Goldfields Highway. An indication of what was out here. Or at least what used to be out here. The good times had long gone.

  The relentless desert scrub drifted by the window as Detective Emmaline Taylor rested her arm atop the steering wheel. There was no need to move it. The road was as straight as an arrow. From here to the horizon. The kinds of roads driverless cars were built for. But she had insisted on driving herself rather than be picked up at the airport by one of the local cops. The hundred kilometres would give her time to think. Mainly about why she had been called out here. It was unusual for the Major Crime Squad to get involved in what was technically a misper case but as it involved three members of the same family, someone had classed it as a major case. Hence the need to come out here. Into the dust.

  From the file that she had scanned on a plane that seemed to flit up and down through the turbulent air like a hawk swooping for prey, the place that she was looking for was called Kallayee, a town on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert. A name suspected to be Indigenous in nature but as mysterious as the family’s disappearance.

  The names of the family had also been in the file. Lorcan Maguire, thirty-one years old, Naiyana (pronounced Nee-Ya-Na, according to the file) Maguire, twenty-eight years old, and Dylan Maguire, six years old. Last known address given as Cannington, Perth. Married for eight years. He had worked in the financial sector and she had been a housewife, charity worker and campaigner. Not the kind of people you would expect to be living in what was essentially a ghost town.

  The information she had on Kallayee was that it had been mainly deserted since the 1940s when the goldmines had run dry. The whole region had been briefly popular again in the 1970s when increasing gold prices led people to check out old sites but it was short-lived. Since then it had been abandoned and left to rot. Now it was another spot on the map, never to be returned to. But the Maguire family had returned to it. They had even been living there, according to Lorcan Maguire’s parents. She had skimmed through the facts to get a better idea of the timeline and environment. Surveying the entire pond before diving in. A moment’s peace before disturbing the calm surface.

  She nearly missed the turn-off. She had been warned that there was no sign for Kallayee anymore and that the GPS would not direct her to it, but she was still distracted by Seamus and Charlotte Maguire’s statement. They had called the disappearance in because Lorcan had failed to contact them since a Christmas Day phone call. This was apparently unusual as he gave them an update every couple of days. The family – at least on Lorcan’s side – was close knit. There had been less concern from Naiyana’s. Emmaline wondered why. Disappointment at her choice of husband? A past dispute? The file had mentioned nothing about it. She tucked it away for later. It would all mean nothing if she could locate the family. The reasons why Naiyana might not want to talk to her family or vice versa only became a concern if there was a crime. And right now there was no evidence of one.

  Just a family who had straight up disappeared. From a town that had itself disappeared long ago.

  2 Nowhere

  It doesn’t take long for eyes to adjust to absence of light. In fact after a while it just becomes the nature of things. But the craving for daylight remains. For the sun’s rays. For that vitamin D.

  What the darkness also brings is loneliness. Not that I am alone down here but right now I cannot hear or see anyone. I miss the sound of other people breathing. Even the wretched snoring, which was apparently all the bed’s fault. I’m going to buy earplugs. If I ever get out of here. At least I can smell and taste the rising smoke, even though the machines aren’t working. But what I miss most of all is the rumbling. The reverberations that signalled life, signalled progress, ingrained into me. Part of my life out here. I can see them for what they are now. Soothing. The white noise that dulled everything else. I’m left with only the clack that reverberates around the walls like time is ticking down. And running out.

  A reoccurrence of the victim mentality I’ve always fought against. I am not a victim. In fact it feels fitting, considering what I have done, to be buried underground for eternity. Or until business is complete. Even if part of me still thinks it was a mistake coming here. You can run, but you can’t hide. Even down here.

  3 Naiyana Maguire

  Hurton had been bad enough. A single street town that the white ute had flashed through in less than thirty seconds, but which at least boasted a general store/post office/bottle shop, a hardware store, a pub and something that resembled a cafe. It was a long way from Perth. Never again would Naiyana complain about living in a dead suburb. Nothing was as dead as this.

  Then the black tarmac began to fade, cracking apart, the slivers filling with dust, the black fading to brown then orange, seeming to open beneath the wheels as the road lost all form, the scenery encroaching from both sides welcoming them. By the time they reached Kallayee it had pretty much gone completely.

  Her sense of disappointment wasn’t shared by the others. In the back seat her son was giddy with glee, his cooing accompanied by the scurp of his sweaty fingers on the window. In the front seat, her husband was leaning forward, gazing out the window like his son.

  ‘Look at this place,’ said Lorcan. ‘Home.’

  She raised her eyebrows at this. Another thing she would have to do herself out here. An hour every week in front of her mum’s mirror with a thread. Plucking them, trying to keep them neat. Painful. She wondered again why she had agreed to this. It didn’t take long for her to remember. For safety. A temporary solution, but as ever Lorcan had jumped straight into it. He never learned. Act first, ask questions later. Or not at all. And lose all their money.

  ‘So which one, Dad?’

  ‘Yeah, which one?’ she said, turning to Lorcan.

  Every dwelling looked barely habitable, falling down around themselves as if they had given up the ghost after everyone first left. Forty years ago? Sixty years ago? He had told her but she had forgotten. It looked more like a hundred years ago. There were a few isolated brick structures but mostly the town was constructed of corrugated tin walls and roofs that had rusted to match the colour of the soil as if burying themselves in shame.

  Weeds clung to the foot of buildings seeking shelter and whatever moisture collected on the tin at night and rolled down the side like tears. She felt like crying. This was where she found herself.

  ‘Stop!’ said Naiyana.

  Lorcan hit the brakes. The furniture loaded on the flatbed behind – beds, pots, pans and a camping stove – crashed against the rear of the cab, as if jolted from slumber.

  ‘What is it?’

  With her eyes she signalled the crossroads ahead. It was guarded by the skeleton of a long-dead kangaroo, its ribs poking up proudly from the dust.

  ‘We should move it,’ she whispered.

  ‘What for?
’ said Lorcan.

  ‘So he doesn’t see it,’ she said, hoping that Dylan hadn’t noticed. Glancing in the rear-view she could see that his attention remained on the collapsed building they had just passed. Already exploring the ruins. Something she would have to watch for. For him this would be the best school holiday ever. Yesterday he had been in Clementine Primary surrounded by concrete, traffic-calming and cleanliness and now he was out here in the middle of a dangerous, unknown land.

  ‘He’s seen skeletons before, Nee,’ said Lorcan.

  ‘We don’t need him having nightmares.’

  ‘We can’t whitewash these things. We live here now. The sooner he gets used to it, the better.’

  Before she could say anything to stop him, Lorcan looked over his shoulder and called in back.

  ‘Heads up, Dylan. Take a look at our new neighbour,’ he said as he hit the accelerator.

  4 Lorcan Maguire

  Skeletons. A ruined town. The endless possibilities of emptiness. His son was lapping it up. This was what Lorcan wanted. He needed to sell this to Dylan as he was sure Nee was a lost cause. As soon as the Perth carnage had blown over, she would want to return. But he had plans. He had lost their first house but he would build another. Bigger and better. He would make a life out here for them. Until such a time they could return. She had given him six weeks, twelve at the most. He was banking on a lot longer.

  She still blamed him. And she was right. He had overstretched on their investments and paid for it, the mortgage on the five-bedroom house bought at the market’s zenith, crippling them. It had always been too big for them. Merely a statement of false affluence. When his career had peaked.

  Now they were on this adventure. He knew his parents – and especially hers – saw it as a selfish pursuit. Taking a huge risk with a young child. But they didn’t know the other factors. And Dylan wasn’t that small anymore. Give him a tablet and he could find anything he wanted at the touch of the few buttons. Which was riskier than anything they might meet out here. Plus they had taken plenty of medical supplies, bandages and ointments, an inhaler even though none of them suffered from asthma, numbers for emergency advice, coordinates and directions to the nearest doctor and hospital even if they were an hour away. Plus it was the school holidays. They had six weeks before Dylan was due back and he could teach his son a lot in that time. How to erect a shelter, how to source water, survival techniques he had studied online and built himself a little manual of. He felt prepared. Prepared to show Nee that he knew what he was doing.

  ‘Are we there yet?’

  This wasn’t Dylan of course, but Nee. Another jab for him to prove he was in control.

  He peered out the window. None of the buildings looked suitable. Sweat prickled at his hairline despite the air con blasting at full tilt. He had thought that having the choice of any building would be exhilarating, almost an out-of-body experience where he would float above the town and find this rough diamond in the midst of the rubble. It wasn’t proving to be the case. They were all extensive fixer-uppers.

  Turning at the far edge of town he drove back to the crossroads and followed the dead boomer’s nod to go right.

  ‘Have you got an address?’ asked Nee. She wasn’t looking out the window anymore but staring at him as if he could materialize their house from thin air.

  ‘Pick one,’ he replied.

  ‘Pick one?’

  Her dark eyes narrowed, the delicate Thai features contracting into something vicious. It gave the impression that she was in pain. But Lorcan knew that she was considering all the angles before committing to a response. She avoided long, drawn-out domestics, if possible. One wound, provided it was deep enough, was sufficient.

  ‘Any one?’

  Lorcan was glad of the interruption from the back seat, the childish fervour dispelling the growing mood in the vehicle.

  ‘Any,’ he replied, turning towards his son who was leaning into the front seat between them like a dog. And just as eager.

  ‘What do you mean, any?’ asked Naiyana. ‘Which one did you buy?’

  ‘I didn’t buy any of them.’

  ‘What—?’

  Lorcan jumped on the grenade before it exploded.

  ‘It’s called adverse possession.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘It’s an old common law right we inherited from the Poms.’ He could see on her face that she was lost so he continued. ‘If a house is abandoned, we can take it, make some improvements and if… when… we meet a series of requirements we gain title to it.’

  He smiled at her. It wasn’t returned, her lips drawn tight. Dylan was watching both of them.

  She waved her slender hand across the expanse of the front windscreen. ‘There isn’t much to hold onto.’

  ‘There will be.’

  A curl of her lip told him she doubted it very much.

  ‘So we move in and just take it over? Like an army?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lorcan. He kept quiet that they would need to hold onto the property for twelve years before they could claim title. That was a long way down the line. The main thing, according to the law, was to hold exclusive, uninterrupted and adverse possession, meaning that the owner had not given them permission to move in. Which they hadn’t. And there was no one around to dispute with.

  In the end the kangaroo gave them a bum steer. Turning around and passing the crossroads once again, he spotted it. The best of a bad bunch, the red brick slap-dashed with white lime or paint that had faded over time but still stood out from the rest. A bungalow with the roof caved in on one side. But there would be time to fix that. Out here it didn’t rain very much. Which, of course, presented a big problem in itself.

  5 Naiyana

  As he backed the ute close to a front door that was hanging off the bottom hinge and leaning precariously forward like a late-night drunk angling for support, she studied the place she was to call home. That she would be forced to call home. It was nothing like the expansive, five-bedroom, three-bathroom and one fucking great kitchen that she had left behind. One with an island in the middle that she literally couldn’t touch the centre of without standing on the step Dylan had for reaching the toilet when he was younger. The dilapidated state of the house felt intimidating, like it would crash around them at any point.

  Dylan, however, was unbound by such worries and rushed off to check it out.

  ‘Don’t go inside,’ she called out as an arm slid around her shoulder. Whether it was her edginess at the new place or at the dead surroundings, she tensed her shoulders against his grip, almost fighting to get away. She took it as a sign, trusting her body.

  ‘Well?’ asked Lorcan.

  ‘Well, you’ve got a lot of work to do,’ she replied.

  ‘It’ll be worth it.’

  ‘I’ll reserve judgement. First, check inside. Once I get the all-clear I’ll come in.’

  ‘Just keep an open mind.’

  ‘It’s been open since we left Perth. Believe me, if we didn’t have to lie low I wouldn’t be here.’

  There was a pause. She knew what Lorcan was thinking. This was punishment for what he had done and for what he had tried to do to rectify it. But she wasn’t entirely innocent herself. He had lost the house but she had made plenty of enemies too.

  She watched as he left her side and half-lifted, half-pushed the front door open, some of the blue paint crumbling onto the front step. He stepped inside and took what he had called adverse possession of the house. More adversity they didn’t need.

  Grasping Dylan’s hand to prevent him from following his father inside she waited for the assessment.

  Dylan fought her grip, pulling strongly against her. She had never been one for exercise. The intensity of the charity and campaigning work kept her naturally slim, working until she realized that she hadn’t eaten. Her genes helped too, her father and mother little pockets of dynamism. People who had suffered more adversity than she could ever dream of; who had survived a l
ong and torturous trip here only to be faced with a wrathful government and suspicious population. But even they wouldn’t speak to her now. Bloody-mindedness was obviously inherited too.

  Her mind returned to the present. As did a spark of fear. It entered her body through the right side of her gut where her appendix had been removed when she was eleven, the scar pale and raised against her skin.

  ‘Lorc?’ she called out at the house.

  There was no answer.

  ‘Shall I go in and get Daddy?’ offered Dylan but Naiyana retained her grip. The house had already taken one. She wasn’t going to lose another.

  She licked her lips. They were already beginning to crack in the dry heat. Another thing she missed about Perth. The air around here was like an oven, as if just waiting to reach critical temp, ignite and burn everything to cinders. She couldn’t wait to see a beach again, feel the sea lap at her ankles, dive in.

  ‘Daddy!’ called out Dylan.

  Again no answer.

  She began to wonder if he had fallen down a hole in the floor, or if silently some wall on the far side of the house had collapsed on top of him. But surely she would have heard that. Nothing fell in complete silence. The saying about trees falling in woods was bullshit. Everything solid made a sound. Especially if it fell and hit that block of wood Lorcan called his head.

  Letting Dylan drag her she approached the front door. Inside was dark, which was both fantastic and forbidding. It meant the roof was still intact, something that her husband could work with. Whenever she found him.

  He had carefully rested the door against the inner wall but the wide split in the wood looked like a drunken mouth laughing at her stupidity and growing terror. She would have to go inside.

  She pulled Dylan’s hand, yanking him back with all her strength. Another few years and he would be stronger than her. ‘Get into the ute.’