34. Sam
Sam
H ey, Mum. Can’t stop by tonight, got a lead. Tell the kids I love them and will see them tomorrow.
I shoot the text off to Mum.
Iris spends a lot of time at her computer, telling me about the various free online courses she’s taking or the jobs she might apply for.
I never doubted her, but now, as I open up the documents icon on her desktop, I realise she’s been collecting information for a very long time.
I can’t think about her deceit now though, or how she got this information.
What’s happened has happened. I need to use her research to find her.
The folders are labelled clearly with ‘Court Transcripts’, ‘Police Transcripts’, ‘Tina Files’, ‘Ryan Files’, among others. The cop in me wants to look at all of it, lose myself in all the research but there’s no time.
I click into the police transcripts and there are hundreds of documents. She must have every single transcript from two years ago.
Before she’d been cut off, she yelled out something about a farm, and that’s all I have to go on.
One at a time, I open each file and use the ‘Find’ function to search for the word farm. On the twelfth file, it works. The word farmhouse is mentioned multiple times by the man who was being questioned.
DETECTIVE JACOBSON: You kidnapped and transported children from all over Victoria, is this correct?
MCDONALD, B: I’ve told you, I had no choice.
DETECTIVE JACOBSON: Is that a yes?
MCDONALD, B: Yes. Sometimes from across the border too. Rural New South Wales or South Australia. Although, they also had people working in the other states.
DETECTIVE JACOBSON: When you transported the children to Melbourne, did you stop off anywhere?
MCDONALD, B: Yes. There were two locations where I could stop for the night to rest.
DETECTIVE JACOBSON: And they were?
MCDONALD, B: Both were rundown old farmhouses in the High Country.
I flick back to Iris’ files. I remember the farmhouses. Police had searched both of them and found evidence children had been kept there but nothing to indicate who was running the organisation. My guys had kept an eye on those places periodically over the past two years and no one ever went there.
I find the police reports detailing the search of the farmhouses and try to find anything that would indicate which one they were at but it’s no use. Carlisle Hill and Orlando Estate were both equally rundown and abandoned.
I needed to speak to the Inspector. Iris is at one of those houses.