Private Sydney (Private 12)

ELIZA MOSS PULLED no punches in what she thought of my incompetence. I let her vent. In my experience, anger usually stemmed from fear or guilt.

‘Jack is not going to be happy,’ she said, scrolling down her phone contacts. ‘I need professionals to find him, not some two-bit amateur. He could have been in the fire for all you know.’

‘What fire?’

She looked exasperated. ‘You really have no idea?’

I’d been so caught up in the events of the day, I hadn’t seen any other news. ‘I’ve been working with the police on another urgent case.’

She pulled up a photo and held the phone so I could see. ‘It’s off Evans Road, between Katoomba and Blackheath. It made the news because firefighters were concerned it might take Jemby Rinjah with it. Luckily, it didn’t.’

I knew of the award-winning ecolodge that backed on to the national park. I took the phone. The cabin was a burnt-out shell.

‘They think it was arson.’

I scrolled through a series of photos. Surrounding bushland had been incinerated as well.

‘Who owns it?’

‘A friend of my father. Dad would go up there sometimes for the weekend, or take the occasional overseas visitor there. He loves all that area.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’ What I was really asking was if any bodies were found.

She shook her head. ‘Reports said no. I just don’t think it’s a coincidence. It’s as if everything he values is being destroyed. His job, his friend’s cabin.’

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I’m getting someone else.’

A TV news update caught my attention with the photo of a baby in pink. The commentary wasn’t necessary, given the Crimestoppers number scrolled on a loop across the screen.

Eliza looked up at the TV. ‘That poor baby and mother.’ She glanced back at me, and must have read the pain on my face. ‘How long’s she been missing?’

‘Eight hours,’ I answered, without looking at my watch.

Her tone was subdued. ‘That’s the other case you’re working on, isn’t it?’

I rubbed my neck again. ‘Let’s just say it’s been a full day and I can’t afford to be messed around. There’s no one with the name Eric Moss born anywhere near where you said, or when.’

She leant forward. ‘I don’t understand. That is Dad’s full name, date of birth. I even gave you his parents’ names, everything I knew.’

I watched her carefully for any hint of lies. ‘There’s no birth registered for Eliza Moss either.’

She threw her head back again. ‘You’ve investigated me? If you’d told me earlier, I could have saved you the trouble.’

Chapter 37

ELIZA MOSS TOOK a swig from the second bottle of beer before explaining that she was born to a teenage girl who worked in the canteen at Contigo’s rural base. The girl had no money or support and no skills to look after a child, let alone one that was – she used her fingers as quotation marks– ‘abnormal’.

‘In what way?’

‘I was born with an unusual neurological condition. My mother was pressured to put me in an institution. Eric didn’t want that to happen. He offered to pay for all my medical care, physiotherapy and even new trial therapies. Not long after, he adopted me and my mother left town. No one’s heard from her since, not that you can blame her. Unmarried mothers in rural areas were social outcasts back then.’

One of the women I’d seen earlier in Eliza’s office popped her head through the doorway.

‘Sorry, but I thought you’d want to know. After costs, the night raised …’

Eliza’s eyes widened. ‘Give it to me straight.’