Ghost Child Read Online Free

picture, any picture of the kid, so people could look at it and say, “What a cute kid! How could anybody hurt a child like that? What’s the world coming to?”’
    When the Sun guy was done, I put the portrait back on the mantelpiece and went outside. The press was waiting for me, waiting for some kind of official comment to go with their stories. I stood in the forest of microphones and said, ‘As you have no doubt gathered, we have a serious incident on our hands here.’
    They nodded and waited.
    ‘We’ve got a five-year-old boy who was sent to the shops with his brother, and it appears that they’ve been set upon by a man who has bashed him, possibly for the change they were carrying.’
    I paused to give them time to write this down.
    ‘I think you’ll agree that’s a cowardly crime, to beat an innocent boy, a five-year-old boy,’ I continued.
    ‘We are appealing for witnesses to come forward. We ask anyone who might have seen anything suspicious to please call Crime Stoppers. I think you’ve all got the number.’
    One reporter said, ‘Can we speak to the parents?’ and I said no. Another reporter wanted to know what kind of injury the boy had suffered. I said, ‘That’s obviously a matter for the specialists. At this stage it’s unclear, but I think I’m safe in saying that the young lad is in quite a bad way.’
    They wanted to know the boy’s name and I told them: Jacob Cashman. They wanted to know how to spell Jacob – was it Jakob or Jacob or, who knows these days, Jaycub? – and I confirmed it: It was J-A-C-O-B, Jacob. Jacob John Cashman. Referring to notes taken by the new recruit, I added: ‘Born 1 August, 1977. He’s five.’
    ‘He’s what?’ The reporters hadn’t heard me. Daylight was fading and the cockatoos that made their nests in Barrett’s gum trees had taken flight. They were swooping and screaming, apparently furious.
    I repeated myself, louder this time. I said, ‘Five. The young boy, the victim, he’s five.’ And somehow, those words brought silence upon all of us.
    I turned and went back through the front door. The boyfriend, Peter, had turned on the TV and the children were watching, of all things, The Love Boat . They didn’t turn to look at me. There was a daycoming when they’d have to face up to what happened in that house on DeCastella Drive, but it wouldn’t be that day and, likely, not for years, so I let them go on watching.

Frank Postle, Reporter
    The minute I saw the photographs of Lauren Cameron in the newspaper, I thought to myself, ‘I know that girl.’ I couldn’t remember the details at first so I got onto my daughter, who’s a reporter herself these days, and asked her to have a bit of a search around the archives, and then I pulled out my own files to refresh my memory. I’ve still got a few of the old scrapbooks I used to keep, with my articles cut out and pasted in, from before the whole world went electronic.
    It was a bloody horrible story, and I suppose it’s reasonable to ask, ‘A story like that, how do you forget it?’ But, I mean, I’ve worked for newspapers for twenty-seven years and I can tell you now, I’ve seen plenty of bloody horrible stories. Kids getting beaten, kids getting dumped, kids getting raped , if you can believe that, andI learnt pretty quick that if you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll go out of your mind.
    The Cashman story, well, it wasn’t in the worst category of crimes I’ve had to cover for the papers. I know that sounds rotten, but as far as I could tell, it wasn’t a savage beating, and not systematic abuse, like you see these days, with kids starved to death and kids hog-tied face down on the bed with rags. This wasn’t one of those. There was barely a mark on the boy. I got a glimpse of him when they were putting him in the ambulance and he looked like he’d been knocked out. I remember thinking, ‘What’s happened here?’ Maybe it was an accident, or maybe they’d just gone