Swifty Taylor and the Missing Child – Episode 10

A Bayonet. A Bouquet. A Bride?

It was a showery mid-morning, and outside my office window the wintry Williamstown shopfronts shimmered in greasy reflections of themselves. I was comfortable. Hands clasped behind my head, leaning back on my old timber chair, feet on my old wooden desk. I had expectantly poured two generous fingers of Jameson into a dirty tumbler that sat on the desktop blotter. And then Jimbo’s podcast dropped. My dad told many jokes, but one of his very favourites ended with the words “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?” It was a punchline that did not begin to describe adequately the chaos which the broadcast unleashed.

 

 

Jimbo’s voice had the timbre of a rusty bayonet. But even the most rusty of bayonets can cut deep. The episode was called The Rogers Files. I held my phone close to my ear and listened as Jimbo fearlessly laid it all out. The intimidation. The payoffs. The shell companies both here and abroad. The unnamed politicians whose corruption would ensure that their resignations would be tendered before the sun rose tomorrow. And then there was the dossier. The dossier which I had passed on to Jimbo after Isabella Harris had passed it on to me. Bank statements, emails, photographs. As impassively as if it were a traffic report, Jimbo read through it all.

By lunchtime, every newspaper and news website in the country had taken up the running. Radio stations were replaying soundbites. Any politician or public figure who was brave or stupid enough to stick their head up over the parapet had suddenly been afflicted by forgetfulness. Regardless of whether they had ever been pictured smiling beside Rogers. Talkback radio was exploding with public outrage, one of the few things that makes a government sit up and pay attention. By evening, there came a knock. Not on my office door, but on the front door of Mick Rogers’ headquarters. A special task force arrived bearing warrants thick enough to stop a blunderbuss. Offices were searched, computers disappeared into evidence bags, television helicopters buzzed like vultures overhead. With the look of a man who was about to face a firing squad, Rogers was led away. He made no comment, but I reckoned that the handcuffs said plenty.

 

 

After dinner, my phone rang. “Have you seen the news?” Jimbo asked. “I might have seen snatches here and there,” I answered nonchalantly. He cackled down the line at what was an obvious lie. “Your pal Rogers has had a rough day. But there will be plenty rougher laying ahead for him,” Jimbo said. I was quick with a response: “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.” There was an uncomfortable silence. “Do you think that’s the end of it?” Jimbo asked. We both knew the answer. “It might be the end of Rogers, but there will be plenty more just like him. Or worse.”

As I poured myself another celebratory Jameson, I again reached for my phone. Isabella Harris answered. My mind painted a picture of her sunning herself on Scarborough Beach, a thought more pleasant than most I’d had today. Down the line, in the background, three thousand kilometres of desert and lies away, was the unmistakable sound of a child at play. “What do you want, Swifty?” she asked, irritably. “I thought you’d be happy that destiny had caught up with Mick Rogers! Or maybe I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.” I paused. “Or maybe I just wanted to make sure that your son was safe and happy.” The silence between us stretched longer than those three thousand kilometres. “How did you know that he wasn’t dead?” she whispered. I drew a breath. “Isabella, I’m a private detective. Not a very good one. But a detective just the same.” Those last words sounded good when I said them aloud.

Over the next fifteen minutes I explained how I knew right from the start that her son had not passed away. No death certificate. No burial. How she said that he was a baby when he died, but that the toys and playthings in her house belonged to a child much older than an infant. “But it doesn’t matter now,” I concluded. “Rogers will be put away. Will you eventually tell your son who his dad is?” She responded quickly, “I haven’t decided.” Like the midday Perth light, her mood was brightening, a weight lifting from her shoulders. Before she ended the call she offered me an olive branch: “The invitation is still open for you to visit me, err, us, over here. Think about it.” I smiled to myself. The offer was tempting, but for me there were more pressing matters at hand. I called Laura. “Do you feel like catching up? The usual place?” I pictured us sitting side by side on the Williamstown seafront, perhaps enjoying a tepid coffee and watching the world pass us by. She didn’t hesitate to acquiesce.

 

 

I stood to leave my house. I looked at myself in the mirror and straightened my hat. I felt my pocket for the engagement ring that I had purchased yesterday with the last of the money that Rogers had paid me. In for a penny, in for a pound. Having made a career out of asking questions, I suspected that the next question I asked would be the most important of my life. And, hopefully, of hers. But I guess that would all depend on her answer.