Shooting Star by Peter Temple

deep sea diver’s instrument, the sort of thing you wouldn’t be scared to wear in the Prince Philip shower cage. ‘He went off for a coffee just before you came in. Be back any minute.’
    I went for a walk down the street, around the corner, in the glass side door of TRIPLE ZERO!, the record store. I was in a small vestibule, pulsating music audible, facing another door. I opened it and the sound was like a blow to the whole upper body. It hit you, then it invaded you, stuck probes up your nose, into your mouth. My fillings seemed to be transmitting sound and I could taste them. I subdued the impulse to flee, stood my ground. When my brain accepted that it could function in these conditions, I went around the bend into the long leg of the store. It didn’t look like a place that sold recorded music. It looked like a series of minimalist lounges separated by Art Deco pillars, teenagers sitting around, standing, in groups, in pairs, alone. Near the entrance was what looked like a bar from some fifties film. It was all so casual, not a store, a hangout. But when you walked around, you could see there were clear lines of sight from the bar and from a glass window in a partition wall and there were camera pinholes everywhere. Management didn’t want their radical store to also serve as a shootin and rootin gallery.
    I walked around. No one paid any attention to me. With a bigger crowd, you could lose sight of another person in here, no doubt about that. But Carmen hadn’t lost sight of Anne because on Thursday she wasn’t with Anne. She was waiting for Anne to arrive from trucking with Craig. Then they would step out the front entrance and into Whitton’s double-parked car and get home at the expected sports day time. Conspirators all.
    There was no point in looking for Anne on Thursday’s security video because she was never in the store. Anne didn’t get to the end of the laneway, to the delivery door into TRIPLE ZERO! There was a vehicle in the lane. To reach the door, she had to pass between it and the wall. Perhaps the vehicle’s sliding side door was open. Perhaps someone came around the back as she was abreast of the door. Perhaps the person took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the vehicle. Perhaps there was someone else inside, someone who dragged her in, put something over her face, prevented her screaming…
    I went back to Hayes & Cherry. Malcolm introduced me to James, a fair-haired teenager so clean and so dapper that he appeared to be genetically destined to sell aids to cleanliness and grooming.
    ‘Tall,’ he said. ‘And thin. Wearing a beanie and dark glasses.’
    ‘Beard? Moustache?’
    ‘Moustache, quite a big moustache. Dark.’
    I said to Malcolm, ‘You said the driver had a beard, didn’t you?’
    ‘The one on the other days did. On Thursday, I didn’t get a good look at him. I was too enraged at the sight of the other one coming out of the vehicle.’
    ‘Moustache, definitely,’ said James. ‘Not a beard. He had a weak chin. It sloped back.’
    ‘How old?’
    ‘Thirty, perhaps a bit older.’
    In the car, driving back to the Carsons’, I said to Orlovsky, ‘We may have to rethink this. They may have smart technology but these people are not A-list kidnappers, they would be lucky to get onto any list. Not without expanding the alphabet.’
    ‘Is that good or bad?’
    ‘Bad, very bad. The stupid are capable of anything.’
    ‘Unlike the clever, who are generally capable of nothing.’
    ‘Nothing this clumsy,’ I said.
    ‘On the other hand,’ Orlovsky said, ‘they may not be stupid. Perhaps they just don’t care very much.’
    I didn’t want to hear that. I said, ‘Don’t say that. Not caring is much worse than stupid.’
    The Express Post envelope arrived just after 10 a.m. the next morning, addressed to Tom Carson. The writing had been done with a ruler and the sender was a B. Ellis, who lived at 11 Cromie Street, North Melbourne.
    There was nothing in the