‘We thank everyone for their hard work in trying to find our little girl. If you live around Merrigang, please check your backyards. We miss you so much, Bella—please come home quickly.’

The Parkers refused to comment on the Weekend Wrap television program in which a playgroup mother implied that Mrs Parker had left the gate open, enabling Bella to leave the grounds.

Little Bella Parker will turn four years old on Friday. A family friend has started a campaign to ‘bring Bella home for her birthday’.

42 CARUSO

42

CARUSO

SUZE SLOWED THE CAR OUTSIDE A DOUBLE-STOREYED WHITE HOUSE facing south towards the Brindabellas. Caruso could see the red hatchback parked in the driveway. They’d tracked it down to Mrs Ramos, a cleaner who’d been working at a place in Fig Street.

Mrs Ramos was a similar age to his mum but with a lot less wrinkles. Plump like his mum, too. Black hair in a bun, black pants and top. She lived with her son and his family in Canberra’s southernmost suburb. Caruso suddenly pictured his own mum widowed. Would she expect him to move back home?

‘I clean four houses in Merrigang,’ Mrs Ramos explained. ‘I do Merrigang on a Thursday, Red Hill and Forrest on a Friday, Yarralumla on a Monday, O’Malley on a Tuesday. And on Wednesdays, I take my grandchildren to school and clean our house.’

‘Did you know that a little girl went missing in Merrigang on Thursday?’ Caruso asked Mrs Ramos.

‘Yes, the poor dear.’ The woman clutched her hands to her heart.

‘Were you driving in Boronia Place that morning?’

‘Oh, I turn around there. I’m not very good at backing out of driveways. So I always park on the street and then turn around in the laneway. It’s much easier.’

‘Did you see a little girl?’

‘Lord, no.’ Mrs Ramos raised her eyebrows. ‘I would have rung the police straight away.’

At last, they had located the red hatchback and could cross it off their list. But Mrs Ramos hadn’t finished.

‘Oh my Lord, I should have called. I remember …’

‘What?’

‘When I was turning around, I saw a man in the laneway. A young man. Long fringe over his eyes.’

Caruso resisted the urge to jump out of his seat and kiss the grandmother.

‘Do you think you would recognise this man again?’ Suze asked, her voice calm.

‘Yes, of course.’

Would she identify the schoolteacher, Brendan Parrish, or the husband, Josh Murphy? But Josh said he’d parked up near the shops. There was no reason for him to be in the laneway behind the playgroup. Unless it was someone else: a tradesman working nearby; a devoted son visiting his mother at the nursing home; a doctor from the surgery at the shops. An unknown abductor …