Miro Kusak.

Stella balled her fist and bit into her wrist. Shuddered. ‘Oh, that, I’d forgotten about that.’

‘Where was it taken?’ Stevie asked.

‘Bianca was desperate to do some modelling. I let her audition for a modelling agency a year or so ago, had seven hundred bucks worth of photos taken. But she was turned down, told to come back when she’d lost some weight.’ Stella’s face crumpled and her voice broke. ‘She was nine years old and that stuck up bitch told her to lose some weight—can you imagine what that can do to a young girl? She wasn’t fat at all, just a bit of puppy fat, but after that she felt like a real freak.’

Yes, Stevie could imagine what something like that could do to a child and felt the rage flare. She wondered what had induced Stella to let Bianca go to a photo shoot in the first place and put it down to mother’s guilt again. Let the kid do more or less what she wants to make up for all the hours she’d been left alone.

The other pictures on Mason’s computer may have come from the same modelling school, downloaded by someone with access to the collection—the photographer perhaps? It fitted with Clarissa’s theory anyway. The modelling agency was the key, she was sure of it.

‘Can you remember the name of the agency?’ Stevie asked, sitting on the edge of her seat, trying her best to make the question sound routine. She crossed her fingers, hoping she’d get the information she wanted without having to confuse Stella with too many questions.

Stella shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It must’ve gone in one ear and out the other.’

‘It’s really important that you try to remember, Stella. I think the man who killed Bianca might have had access to the agency’s files. The photo we found on Kusak’s computer came with personal details of Bianca, including her email address. We think these files may have been distributed to a paedophile ring operating around Perth, which in turn sold them to private individuals. They’ve sold other pictures too, meaning that other children might be in danger. Please, Stella, try and remember.’

Stella shook her head in the manner of one who doesn’t expect success, but stopped as some memory slowly dawned. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I might have a receipt or something, I’m not sure where but, it was over a year ago.’

‘Would you mind having a search while I have another look in Bianca’s room?’ Stevie asked.

Stella seemed to deflate, as if the task were too much for her, as if the last mental exercise had dried up all her reserves. She glanced at the couch. Stevie could tell that all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and try to forget. She understood that, but she also understood how important it was to keep Stella busy, to put a stop to the despondency that threatened to overwhelm her. The woman needed to feel that in some small way she was helping to find justice for her daughter.

She took Stella’s hand and gently pulled her from the couch. ‘I think the kitchen drawers might be a good place to start. I have a drawer at home where I dump all my odds and ends of paperwork, maybe you do too?’

Gail needed no prompting. She moved into the lounge from the kitchen area and took her sister’s arm. ‘We used to keep our stuff in an old shoe box when we were kids, remember?’

Stella sniffed, gave a strained smile. ‘Yeah, old habits die hard, it’s on top of the pantry cupboard.’

The sisters moved arm in arm into the kitchen and Stevie took herself off to Bianca’s bedroom.

‘Enter on pain of death,’ the sign on the door read. Izzy had scrawled something similar on her bedroom door—a less sophisticated ‘Keep Out!’ with a wobbly skull and crossbones.

There were other stickers and signs in Bianca’s room that she didn’t remember seeing before. ‘Fuck, I think I’m turning into my mother.’ How did Stella feel about that? And, ‘Jim Beam lives here’ slapped onto the wardrobe. Both seemed strangely precocious for a ten year old and Stevie wondered if she was still trying to play the part of the muslin-swathed woman-child in the photo.

Her mind wandered to Emma Breightling. Like Bianca, she also seemed to be in a hurry to grow up, but Emma had made much more of a success of it. She remembered Emma’s emotional reaction to the newspaper headline about the death of what presumably was a stranger—it had left Stevie wondering if the girls might have known one another. Now there was a modelling agency, and Emma’s mother ran a modelling agency. Somehow it would not surprise her if it was the very one that Bianca had auditioned for.

Stevie twirled the hair in her ponytail through her fingers as she thought. There had to be something else in this room. If she could find a way to free up her thinking, she might find it. There was a thread, she was sure of it, a connection between the two girls floating about in this room, something she’d overlooked the first time. She released her hair from the confining ponytail, as if her thoughts too might be unleashed.

The room was arranged exactly as before, Stella would probably keep it as a shrine to her daughter, never rearranging it or cleaning it again. Every night she would come in here and lie upon the bed, absorb memories from the scent on the pillow, try to ready herself for the day when they would disappear into the air like smoke.

Mindful of this, Stevie didn’t touch the pillow. Sitting on the bed she leaned her back against the wall and faced the desk, allowing her gaze to trace the contents of the bookshelves. Left to right, left to right she trawled while the fluorescent pink iPod stared down at her like the eye of God. She blinked and tried to ignore the distraction of its glowing image, tried to focus on whatever was prodding at her subconscious.

‘I want more stories!’ It was something she’d heard Izzy say. No, it wasn’t that, but she was getting close, it was something similar. She closed her eyes: Because they don’t have magic powers like Katy Enigma.

Katy Enigma, the story Emma had been telling Izzy during that first babysitting session. Stevie snapped up straight on the bed and slammed her fist into her hand, ‘Yesssssss!’

Springing from the bed she moved over to Bianca’s desk and the jumble of half written stories she’d dismissed during her earlier search.

One title immediately caught her eye: ‘Katy Enigma and the case of the missing puppy.’ There were other Katy Enigma downloads, sandwiched amongst the mess of papers. Katy Enigma must be some new kind of new kids’ fad, perhaps a series like Harry Potter, she thought. The stories were important, Stevie was sure of it. Perhaps both girls had belonged to an Internet message board or chat room devoted to the character, they might have written fan fiction together.

The eye continued to stare down at her as she leafed through the sheaf of stories. Ridiculous that a gimmicky music machine could make her feel so uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because it reminded her of a strange little poem her Gran used to recite, about the green eye of the little yellow god. Was this white-eyed pink iPod god trying to tell her something? Giving in to its implacable stare, she picked it up from the shelf and took it with the pile of stories into the kitchen.

‘Stella, do you know anything about these Katy Enigma stories on Bianca’s desk?’

Stella shook her head. She had not heard of Katy Enigma, she had no idea about Katy Enigma, and she didn’t care if Stevie took the stories with her, or the iPod, she just wanted to go to bed.

It was the sister, Gail, who proffered the piece of paper, a receipt from Tall Poppies, signed by the owner, Miranda Breightling.

22

The sound of tea pouring into the cup reminded Wayne how badly he needed to use the bathroom. But he’d only just got the boy calm enough to sit at the table in the back room and he knew now wouldn’t be the time to excuse himself. The bolted front door might not keep the kid from running a bunk, or something even crazier. He took comfort in the feel of the machete lying by his feet under the table. Although the boy had handed it over without too much persuasion, the flitting dark eyes told Wayne he was still about as predictable as a spark in a fireworks factory.