The Dry (11 page)

Whitlam made a little noise of disbelief.

“It seems absurd now. But she said she was sorry she'd been so distracted. Karen asked me not to tell Luke that she'd told me. Not that I would have, of course. But she said he'd be upset if he thought she'd been spreading it around town.”

Whitlam chewed his thumbnail.

“I think she needed to get it off her chest. I got her a glass of water, listened for a while. Reassured her that her job wasn't at risk, that sort of thing.”

“Did you know Luke Hadler well?” Falk said.

“Not well. I met him a few times, of course. Parents' night. I'd see him down the pub occasionally, but not really to chat to. He seemed nice enough, though. Active parent as well. I couldn't believe it when I got that call. It's bad enough to lose a member of staff, but to lose a student. It's a teacher's worst nightmare.”

Falk said, “Who told you what had happened?”

“Someone from Clyde police phoned the school. I suppose because Billy was a pupil. It was late-ish by then, close to seven. I'd been about to leave for the night, but I remember sitting here instead, trying to process it. Trying to work out how to tell the children the next day.”

He shrugged sadly.

“There is no good way. Billy and my daughter were quite good friends, you know? They were in the same class. That's why it was such a shock to hear Billy was caught up in it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Raco.

“Because he was supposed to be round at our place that afternoon,” Whitlam said as if it were obvious. He looked back and forth between Falk's and Raco's blank faces. He held out his hands, confused.

“Sorry, I thought you knew. I told the Clyde officers. Billy was supposed to come over and play that day, but Karen called my wife and canceled at the last minute. She said Billy had been under the weather.”

“He was well enough to come to school, though. Did you and your wife believe her?” Falk asked, leaning forward.

Whitlam nodded. “Yes. We still do, for the record. There'd been a mild bug going round. She might have decided he needed an early night. I think it was just one of those sad coincidences.”

He rubbed his hand over his eyes.

“But something like that,” he said. “Knowing how close he came to not being there. God, it leaves you with a lot of what-ifs.”

12

“We'd have known that if we were liaising with Clyde,” Falk said when they got outside. He tucked the box of Karen's and Billy's belongings under his arm. The cardboard stuck uncomfortably to his clammy skin.

“Yeah, well, no harm done. We found out, anyway.”

“Eventually. I don't know. It might be time to bring them in.”

Raco looked at him.

“You honestly feel confident that we've got enough to make that phone call? Bearing in mind how they'll react?”

Falk opened his mouth to reply when a voice rang out across the playground.

“Hey, Aaron! Wait.”

Falk turned to see Gretchen Schoner jogging over. He felt his mood lift fractionally. The funeral attire had been swapped for shorts and a fitted blue shirt, rolled up at the elbows. It suited her much better, Falk thought. Raco took the box from him.

“I'll meet you back at the car, mate,” he said tactfully, with a polite nod at Gretchen. She stopped in front of Falk and pushed her sunglasses up, catching her blond hair in a complicated bundle on top of her head. The blue of the shirt set off her eyes, he noticed.

“Hey, what are you still doing here? I thought you'd left.” She was frowning and smiling at the same time. She reached out as she spoke and touched his elbow. He felt a pang of guilt. He should have let her know.

“We were having a word with Scott Whitlam,” he said. “The principal.”

“Yeah, I know who Scott is. I'm on the school board. I mean, what are you doing in Kiewarra?”

Falk looked past her. A gaggle of mums had their heads turned toward them, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He took Gretchen's arm and turned slightly so their backs were to the group.

“It's a bit complicated. The Hadlers asked me to look into what happened with Luke.”

“You're kidding. Why? Has something come up?”

Falk had a powerful urge to blurt out the whole story. About Ellie, the alibi, the lies. The guilt. Gretchen was part of the original foursome. She was a balancing force. The light to Ellie's dark, the calm to Luke's craziness. She would understand. Over her shoulder, the mums were still watching.

“It's about the money,” Falk said with a sigh. He gave her a watered-down version of Barb Hadler's concerns. Bad debts gone wrong.

“Jesus.” She blinked, still for a moment as she processed the information. “You think there's anything in it?”

Falk just shrugged. The conversation with Whitlam had thrown some new light on the suggestion. “We'll see. But do me a favor and keep it to yourself for now.”

Gretchen frowned. “It might be too late for that. Word's gone round that some cops were at Jamie Sullivan's earlier.”

“Christ, how'd that get out already?” Falk asked, knowing the answer. Small town, fast gossip. Gretchen ignored the question.

“Just tread lightly.” She reached out and brushed away a fly that had settled on Falk's shoulder. “People are wound up pretty tight at the moment. It wouldn't take much to set them off.”

Falk nodded. “Thanks. Understood.”

“Anyway—” Gretchen paused as a swarm of small boys careered by in a chaotic game of football, the weight of the memorial service already lifting from their small shoulders as the weekend came into sight. She shaded her eyes and waved at the group. Falk tried to pick her son from the pack, but couldn't. When he looked back Gretchen was watching him.

“How long do you think you'll be around for?”

“A week.” Falk hesitated. “No more than that.”

“Good.” Her mouth turned up at the corners, and it could have been twenty years ago.

When she walked away a few minutes later, Falk was clutching a scrap of paper with her cell phone number and an arrangement to meet the following night on it, both scrawled in Gretchen's distinctive handwriting.

 

 

“You gone and made yourself a new friend, mate?” Raco said lightly as Falk climbed into the car.

“Old friend, thanks,” Falk said, but he couldn't help smiling.

“So what do you want to do?” Raco said, more serious now. He nodded at the cardboard box in the backseat. “You want to call Clyde and tie yourself up to the arse in red tape convincing them they might've stuffed up, or do you want to go to the station and check out what's in the box?”

Falk looked at him for a moment, imagining that phone call. “Yeah, all right. Station. Box.”

“Good decision.”

“Just drive.”

 

 

The police station was a low redbrick building at the far end of Kiewarra's main street. The shops on either side had closed for good, their windows empty. Across the road was a similar story. Only the convenience store and liquor shop seemed to be enjoying any real trade.

“Christ, it's dead around here,” Falk said.

“That's the thing about money problems. They're contagious. Farmers have no cash to spend in shops, the shops go under, and then you've got yourself more people with no money to spend in shops. Apparently they've been falling like dominoes.”

Raco pulled on the station door. It was locked. He swore and dug out his keys. On the door was a notice with station hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00
A.M.
to 5:00
P.M
. Out of hours, victims of crime had to try their luck with Clyde, according to the sign. Falk looked at his watch. 4:51
P.M
. A cell phone number for emergencies had been written in pen underneath. Falk bet it was Raco's.

“Knocking off early?” Raco called when they got inside, the annoyance evident in his tone.

The receptionist, in her sixties but with the improbable coal-colored hair of a young Elizabeth Taylor, raised her chin defiantly.

“I was in early,” she said, stiffening slightly in her position behind the counter. Handbag over her shoulder like a soldier's weapon. Raco introduced her as Deborah. She didn't shake hands.

In the office space behind her, Constable Evan Barnes looked up guiltily, clutching his car keys.

“Afternoon, boss,” Barnes said. “'Bout that time, isn't it?” His voice was overly casual, and he made a big show of checking his watch. “Oh. Yeah. Still a couple of minutes to go yet.”

A big man with a fresh-faced complexion and curly hair that stuck out in unfortunate tufts, he sat back down at his desk and started shuffling paper. Raco rolled his eyes.

“Oh, go on. Bugger off,” he said, lifting the counter hatch. “Have a good weekend. We'll just have to hope the town doesn't burn to the ground at one minute to five, won't we?”

Deborah straightened her spine like a woman fortified by the knowledge she'd been in the right all along.

“Bye, then,” she said to Raco. She gave Falk a tiny curt nod, her gaze firmly on his forehead rather than his eyes.

Falk felt a cold bead of understanding drop somewhere in his chest. She knew. He wasn't really surprised. Assuming Deborah was Kiewarra born and bred, she was the right age to remember Ellie Deacon. It had been the most dramatic thing ever to happen in Kiewarra, at least until the Hadlers' deaths. She'd probably tutted over coffee as she'd read the newspaper articles under Ellie's black-and-white photo. Traded nuggets of gossip with neighbors. Perhaps she'd known his dad. Before it happened, of course. She wouldn't have admitted to knowing the Falk family afterward.

Hours after Luke's face had disappeared from his bedroom window, Aaron lay awake. The events ran through his head on a loop. Ellie, the river, fishing, the note. Luke and I were shooting rabbits together.

He waited for it all night, but when the knock came at last, it wasn't for him. Falk watched in mute horror as his father was forced to wash the fields from his hands and accompany the officers to the station. The name on the note did not specify which Falk, they said, and at sixteen, the younger one was technically still a child.

Erik Falk, a willowy and stoic man, was kept in the station for five hours.

Did he know Ellie Deacon? Yes, of course. She was a neighbor's child. She was a friend of his son's. She was the girl who was missing.

He was asked for an alibi for the day of her death. He'd been out much of the afternoon buying supplies. In the evening he had popped into the pub. Had been seen by a dozen people in a handful of locations. Tight enough, if not quite watertight. So the questions continued. Yes, he had spoken to the girl in the past. Several times? Yes. Many times? Probably. And no. He could not explain why Ellie Deacon had a note with his name on it and the date of her death.

But Falk wasn't only his name, was it? the officers said pointedly. At that, Aaron's father fell silent. He clamped down and refused to say another word.

They let him go, and then it was his son's turn.

“Barnes is on temporary transfer from Melbourne,” Raco said as Falk followed him under the hatch to the office. Behind them, the station door slammed shut, and they were alone.

“Really?” Falk was surprised. Barnes had the wholesome milk-fed look of a homegrown country boy.

“Yeah, his parents are in farming, though. Not here; somewhere out west. I think that made him the obvious choice for the placement. I feel for the guy really; his backside barely touched the ground in the city before they sent him up here. Having said that—” Raco glanced toward the closed station door, then reconsidered. “Never mind.”

Falk could guess. It was a rare day when a city force sent its best officer on a country temporary transfer, especially to a place like Kiewarra. Barnes was unlikely to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Raco may have been too tactful to say it, but the message was clear. In this station, he was pretty much on his own.

They put the box of Karen's and Billy's belongings on a spare desk and opened it. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. At the window, a fly bashed itself repeatedly against the glass.

Aaron sat on a wooden chair, his bladder nervous and aching, and stuck to the plan. I was with Luke Hadler. Shooting rabbits. Two; we got two. Yes, Ellie is—was, I mean—my friend. Yes, I saw her at school that day. No! We didn't fight. I didn't even see her later. I didn't attack her. I was with Luke Hadler. I was with Luke Hadler. We were shooting rabbits. I was with Luke Hadler.

They had to let him go.

Some of the whispers took on a new shape then. Not murder, perhaps, but suicide. A vulnerable girl led up the path by the Falk boy was a popular version. Pursued and used by his slightly odd father was another. Who was to say? Either way, between them they as good as killed her. The rumors were fed well by Ellie's father, Mal Deacon, and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.

One night a brick was thrown through the Falks' front window. Two days later, Aaron's father was turned away from the corner shop. Forced to walk out empty-handed with burning eyes and his groceries piled on the counter. The following afternoon, Aaron was followed home from school by three men in a truck. They crept behind him as he pedaled his bike faster and faster, wobbling every time he dared look over his shoulder, his breath loud in his ears.

Raco reached into the box and laid out the contents in a line on the desk.

There was a coffee mug, a stapler with “Karen” written on in Wite-Out, a heavy-knit cardigan, a small bottle of perfume called Spring Fling, and a framed picture of Billy and Charlotte. It was a meager offering.