Mystery of missing tax man

It was December 5, 1956, and Tauranga tax inspector Pat Fisk, driving the department's blue Vauxhall car, headed for timber milling community Murupara to investigate tax evasion.
He was never seen again.
His car was found parked on the roadside with its door wide open.
In the 50 years since, no one has been able to explain what happened to the former policeman.
His family suspected foul play, but police decided that he had simply walked out on his family and left the country.
Now, five decades after he went missing, family members hope a television show can finally uncover what happened in the  mystery that investigating officers at one time described as the most baffling case in New Zealand.
"I hope the programme might jog someone's memory. I know Pat is dead because if he wasn't he would have come back to us. It would be nice to find him and bury him and answer some of the questions we have," Mr Fisk's widow, Maureen Thomas, said of  The Missing, which screens on TV One on Monday.
Now living at  Whangaparaoa, she remarried some years after Pat's disappearance.
"I have always believed foul play was involved but the police at the time didn't," Mrs Thomas said.
Mr Fisk, who had been in the British  police force in India when the couple met and married, was working for the Inland Revenue Department in Tauranga when he disappeared.

 "It looked as if he had stopped to have a cup of tea, but we later came to think that whoever was responsible for Pat's disappearance had put the car there," said Mrs Thomas.
She was three months pregnant at the time but camped with friends at the site to search for her husband.

 No trace was ever discovered. Mrs Thomas said to add to her pain, police decided Mr Fisk was unhappy and had left his family and gone back to England.

 Coming to New Zealand was a dream the young couple had explored when they found post-war England too depressing.
 Frustrated at delays in getting a passage on a ship, Mr Fisk decided to buy his own boat.
"The Debonair was a former Cornish pilot boat, very sturdy and safe. Pat was so meticulous in everything he did. I trusted him to get us here safely, and he did."
The couple, both in their early 20s, had two children at the time, Robin, 4, and Caroline, 2.
"We sailed into Tauranga on a Sunday in 1950. It was a beautiful day and everyone was so kind. We thought New Zealand would be such a safe place."
Mr Fisk initially worked on the Tauranga wharf but when he and a Dutch colleague sparked a near port-wide strike by working too hard, he left and took the position with the IRD.

By then the couple had built a house and Linda and Tim had been added to the family. Trisha was born about six months after her father went missing.
"It was very hard times as I wasn't officially a widow for seven years after Pat went missing. However, I got a very good job working weekends at the Tauranga Hospital on the telephone exchange while the older children looked after the younger ones."
During filming for The Missing, the production company, Screentime, took Mrs Thomas and some of her family back to Murupara where she met volunteers from Whakatane Land Search and Rescue, who used modern search methods to attempt to find new evidence about Mr Fisk's disappearance.
Mrs Thomas  has written a book, Who Knows Where, about her life and  Pat's disappearance.
The Missing screens on Monday on TV1 at 8.30pm