Perfect Victim (5 page)

We were then introduced to a woman detective and another male detective who were to investigate Rachel’s disappearance. We handed them a copy of our poster and, I think, some photographs. Could we find some more photographs and bring them in the next day? Could we make up a list of Rachel’s friends, not just recent friends, but names from old school photos, kindergarten friends …?

After looking at our first poster the detective senior sergeant was concerned we had included our phone number on it, because of the risk of prank callers. We agreed we would whiteout our phone number, but a lot of posters had already been distributed so we decided not to worry about it. The possibility of contact with prank callers in contrast to the possibility of one call that might help us find Rachel seemed acceptable. In reality we didn’t receive one prank phone call. But the detective senior sergeant’s advice was well-intentioned. His advice for us not to stay out all night was too – searching for her and wearing ourselves out, when we had no idea where she was. If we went home and slept we would be refreshed for the next day. But we were parents faced with a lost daughter and this seemed an impossibility.

He also asked us to check under the house with a torch at night. We thought this preposterous. Didn’t he realise our daughter was afraid of the dark? He qualified his request by saying that quite often young adults who go missing still feel the need to be close. It was just possible she could be hiding there. If she was not, well, he reiterated, get some rest because ‘a person who doesn’t want to be found won’t be found’.

We left the station feeling disturbed. Had he really listened? Maybe I had been too objective. Perhaps I should have been crying. Perhaps ranting and raving. But Mike and I had agreed that we would hold off the tears, hold off the collapsing, because if we did either of those things we would not be in a position to help our dearly loved daughter.

I returned to the dance school and shared our experiences. Vicki was distressed by her treatment at the station because as a concerned member of the public she had willingly visited the police to provide information. But police opinion appeared to be that Rachel was a runaway. Why weren’t the police asking
why
Rachel would
want
to run away?

We discovered in the next few days that they would. They would question Manni in front of his dance teacher because, at sixteen, he was under-age. Is she pregnant? Even here they were apparently making false assumptions that Rachel would feel unable to come to us. Were they assuming we would be parents unwilling to give their daughter support? Mike’s first wife, when I was only seven, was a pregnant teenage bride. She miscarried on their wedding night and three years later their marriage ended. So yes, we
would
have been there for Rachel. And yes, Rachel would have known we would have been there for her.

The police read her school workbooks where she wrote of a sore back. Perhaps she was running away because dance was becoming too strenuous? The previous year Rachel suffered from shin splints caused by trying to out-do her best. She visited the physiotherapist twice weekly, for five weeks, and although unable to dance she still attended class every day so she could learn the new dances in her head.

Meanwhile, Mike once again searched the back streets of Richmond, checking every dump bin. He also decided to have a chat with the photographer who had taken the pictures of Rachel for the magazine
Women’s Fitness Australia
. Considering she was the most recent contact Rachel had had with a photographer we wondered if there was a connection. Not because she was guilty of wrong doing, but maybe she had given Rachel another contact.

When Mike returned to the dance school he was full of these ideas so I rang the modelling school for, I suppose, a character reference for this photographer. As far as they were concerned she was completely up-front and trustworthy. They were worried Rachel could have become involved with some dodgy photographer – they warn their students not to go anywhere unless it is verified through them. Could Rachel please contact them on her return so they could make this safety issue clear to her.

On Wednesday afternoon we visited Cathy, the mother of Ellen, one of Rachel’s closest friends. Although Rachel and Ellen had not visited each other for a number of months, they were like soul mates and no doubt still in telephone contact. Perhaps Ellen knew something.

Rachel was in the fortunate position of having a number of friends who thought they were Rachel’s best friends. The truth is, she did have a number of best friends from her different interests in life. Best friend at church. Best friend from primary school. Best friend from secondary school. Best friend at dance school and so on. The Baptist minister described Rachel as a butterfly, flittering from one group of friends to another, in her different interests, but always making people feel special.

Ellen had not heard from Rachel. Ellen was very concerned. It was not like Rachel to let people worry. She said she would ring up the radio station her age group listened to and get word out. Ellen became upset and Cathy went to collect her from school.

Cathy also contacted one of her friends, John, who was a pharmacist who owned printing equipment. He offered free access to this equipment with an unlimited quantity of paper to produce as many posters as we would need. David, a friend of ours and graphic artist, had already offered to design another poster for us and gave his time to go and produce these posters, which he did after a full day’s work and long into the small hours of the night.

A phone call came through asking us to contact the woman detective at Richmond police. Someone had rung in response to one of the posters. A girl answering Rachel’s description was seen with two other girls getting on at East Richmond railway station. It was now about 5 p.m., and the police said they would contact Camberwell station because surveillance videos for this region were stored at Camberwell. We assumed we would be contacted when they were going so we could accompany them.

The dance school was also informed by Richmond police that they would interview teachers and students on Thursday morning regarding Rachel’s disappearance.

At last.

5

D
ESCENT OF
L
OSS

Wednesday Evening, 3 March

We returned home at about 5.30 p.m., for a short while, to see our younger girls and give them some loving. They must surely be feeling insecure as well.

The house seemed to be full of caring family and friends, who listened to the events of the day. Robbie, my sister, had arrived from Wonthaggi. She would take Heather back. Nine-year-old Heather was happy to have an unscheduled holiday from school.

David, our graphic artist friend, arrived not long after us, and he was happy to pick up a number of photographs of Rachel to design the new poster. We could collect it tomorrow morning from his work.

I remembered David had called into the house last Saturday, when Rachel had been by herself for a while, and I asked him how she had seemed.

He told us she was fine. She had shown him the heart-shaped cushion she was making for Manni, and had spoken of how much she loved Manni. She had also wanted to make a cake but discovered there were no eggs and asked David if he would go and buy her some. He wanted to know why she hadn’t just walked to the corner store. She replied that she was too scared to go to the local shops because sometimes men followed her.

Someone suggested I ring Telstra and find out the details of incoming and outgoing phone calls for the weekend. I thought this an excellent idea but I could only obtain the outgoing calls because to access incoming calls would be breaking the privacy act. The Telstra lady was extremely helpful though and gave us a list of all the phone calls made from our house over the weekend. The only mystery phone-calling that weekend had been from Heather and Ashleigh-Rose, who had rung some new friends whose numbers we were not yet familiar with.

When I informed the detective senior sergeant that I had rung Telstra and obtained a list of outgoing calls he told me I had saved them the job because they were just about to do that. I asked him if he could get a list of incoming calls because I felt the so-called female friend may have tried to contact her over the past weekend. He told me this wasn’t possible. I thought – not
technically
possible.

I was given the impression that the following morning a press statement was going to be released, possibly with ‘Crime Stoppers’.

It was as if there had already been a death in the family. It wasn’t that I believed Rachel was dead. It was the chasm of the not knowing which felt – like death. Rachel was now approaching her third night out. She had spent three nights away from home before, but then we knew where she was. Either at Manni’s, or a girlfriend’s, on holiday, or with a grandparent. It was the helplessness of it all. A family is a unit with a sense of belonging, even when separated by distance, even when separated by divorce, because everyone is aware of another’s being and location, somewhere on earth. Our unit suddenly found a piece of the jigsaw missing. Even second and third cousins and great-great-aunts and uncles in England, the Shetland Isles and America were feeling anxious about Rachel. Manni’s family in Italy was feeling anxious about Manni’s girl, the girl they’d seen dancing on birthday and Christmas videos.

What must it feel like for the parents of children sent to fight or nurse in wars?

My father said, ‘The not knowing. This is what wartime is like. Imagine five years of it, every person, in every household.’

Mike stood up. ‘It’s dark under the house. I’ll grab a torch,’ he said and left the room.

‘What’s he on about?’ asked Michele, my cousin.

‘He’s looking for Rachel … under the house.’

Everybody stopped talking. I realised my mistake.

‘She’s under the house!’ yelled Heather and ran, but I grabbed her.

My mother stood up, ashen-faced.

‘No, Heather. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’ I wrapped my arms around her, giving her a comforting cuddle. ‘The detective senior sergeant asked us to look under the house, just in case she had run away and was hiding there.’

My mother was appalled.

My Aunt Babe said, ‘Now, Joy, he’s just doing his job. He had to ask Michael.’

We heard the door to the area under the house open. We heard Mike say, ‘Rachel, Rachel, are you here?’ We heard him walking right underneath. ‘Rachel … Rachel … Didn’t think you’d be here.’

Emmanuel Carella’s mum, Rosa, met us at about 7.00 o’clock in Richmond. She came with Tony, Manni’s dad, who had brought more photocopied posters. We told them we were having a new poster designed which would hopefully be available tomorrow. During the day the Carella brothers had thought Rachel’s disappearance may have had something to do with the Grand Prix, as did my father. They thought it possible Rachel may have been hoodwinked into believing some clever story about part-time dancing for the Grand Prix, because the older dance students were rehearsing for something connected to the Grand Prix. Could Rachel have naively gone to some tabletop dance club and be held up somewhere for the week? Could she have realised her mistake and now just be biding time? My father hoped she might appear at the end of the week.

The Carella brothers and cousins and their friends decided they would frequent clubs and tabletop dancing venues, just in case. Tony said he would walk around the city gardens with Robert, the eldest Carella brother.

Rosa, Mike and I walked the streets behind East Richmond railway station. I couldn’t imagine why Rachel would be here but we all felt the need to do something. We stuck posters up and called … Rachel, Rachel, RACHEL.

If it was at all possible she was behind one of these walls, even if she couldn’t answer us, she would at least know we were continuing to search for her.

We were walking back across the bridge over East Richmond railway line when a car pulled up. A door opened. It was the detectives. They asked us if we’d had any luck. No. Had they?

They had been to Camberwell station and viewed the videos for the hour of 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. on Monday, and said they couldn’t see Rachel. I thought it odd that they hadn’t asked us because I felt, as Rachel’s parents, we would have had a better chance of identifying her on a video surveillance than the detectives.

We talked to them for a little while before they were called away to do another job. They were genuinely concerned for Rachel.

By the time we returned to the dance school, classes had finished. It was then I realised I hadn’t eaten all day. I can’t remember exactly what we did for food but I have an idea Vicki ordered pizza. We ate, only because we needed to keep up our strength. We knew we would not be going home.

Instead we did the hospital walk. We had phoned the hospitals on Tuesday only to be met with this damned privacy act. If Rachel had been admitted under ‘Rachel Barber’ she had the right for her parents not to know, if she didn’t wish them to. So we soon learned we had to ask if a girl, answering Rachel’s description, had been admitted, named or unnamed. But there had been no injured or deceased girls answering her description admitted to any of the hospitals over this period.

We drove back to Richmond, drove slowly around the streets, over and over again. The words ‘
a person who doesn’t want to be found won’t be found
’ stirred and challenged our thoughts. As Rachel’s parents we had considered this an insult. But what were the alternatives? Would we rather our daughter be missing of her own free will or would we prefer the alternative? To be proven right and find a decomposing body or a badly beaten and raped shadow of the Rachel we’d last seen?

‘You do realise that when we find her she won’t be in any condition to dance,’ I said. ‘She may have to take a year off. I think she’ll need special counselling.’

‘Don’t underestimate Rachel,’ Mike answered. ‘She’ll be back dancing within the month. Dancing will heal her.’