04-Mothers of the Disappeared by Russel D McLean Page B

lived with her husband and son in the country. Before her son was taken from her. Before her husband left to deal with their loss in his own way. Before her world was destroyed.
    As I pulled up outside the modest bungalow, I noticed a number of cars parked on the street outside. I had to pull in maybe fifteen, twenty metres away and walk back down. The air was cool, but not unpleasant, and the wind ruffled, caressing me.
    I thought about Susan. But only for a moment.
    As I got to the front door, I saw into the living room through the large windows at the front. There were people gathered in there. All of them sitting around, talking. Like a book group or a community meeting, perhaps.
    I wanted to turn and go. But someone had already seen me.
    Elizabeth Farnham was on her feet, looking out at me.
    We met at the front door, where she kept her distance from me.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know …’
    ‘Why are you here?’
    ‘I wanted to apologize. I just … what you asked me to do … I know that it wasn’t …’
    ‘You did everything you could.’
    ‘I didn’t do anything.’
    She didn’t reply.
    I said, ‘I should go.’ Wondering what impulse had made me come out here in the first place.
    ‘No,’ she said. Looking at me oddly, a hesitance and an uncertainty about her that I’d seen before, when she first asked for my help. ‘Come in,’ she said, finally. ‘I think you should meet the rest of us.’
    It was a room full of ghosts.
    When I walked in, everyone’s eyes fell on me. I was an intruder in their space. Their gaze was expectant; as though they expected me to bring answers they had been seeking all their life.
    And these women were seeking answers.
    The same answers Mrs Farnham wanted.
    As I looked around the room, I knew every face there. Had seen all of them in the past few days, staring from the walls of a police incident room. But in that room, they had been lifeless; frozen in a moment, rendered unreal by the magic of photography.
    Now they were in front of me, brought to life, and the sadness I felt looking at them only increased with their newfound reality.
    I wanted to tell them how sorry I was for what had happened, how I wished I could tell them the truth, finally let them come to terms with the deaths of their sons.
    But I couldn’t.
    All I could do was stand there.
    One of the women finally spoke out. I recognized her. Older than the image I had seen, but still with the same eyes and pointed chin that made her face seem severe up until the moment she smiled. Her name was Mary Warrington, and her son’s name had been Kyle. ‘You spoke to him. Alex Moorehead. Elizabeth says you were the last person to speak to him before …’
    ‘I wish he had told me something.’
    Another woman spoke. More hesitant, her words coming out in bursts, like she had to breathe between each syllable. She was older than the rest, had allowed her hair to grey and her skin to sag, accepting the inevitability of her years. No longer a mother, she could have been a grandmother. It took me a moment to place her face on the wall, to know her name. ‘You looked into his eyes. Tell me, did he do it? Did he kill our sons?’
    The question demanded an answer. A definitive one.
    I had avoided giving one up until now, even to myself.
    ‘I think …’ I hesitated. They were watching me, all of them. None of them moving. As frozen as their photographs. ‘I don’t know. But I want to find the answers.’
    I felt a ripple run through them. Like a crowd of lions who’d just realized how hungry they were.
    The woman whose voice had cracked spoke up again, stronger this time. ‘We’ve heard empty promises before, Mr McNee.’
    Someone else said, ‘You were the one who made them. You and your detective inspector.’
    ‘I’m not making promises,’ I said. ‘I’m not asking for money. But you deserve answers, and I think that Alex Moorehead’s death has opened up lines of inquiry that may have been