“I think everyone does now.”
“You still live round this way, do you?” The farmer shifted his large body slightly and fixed Falk properly in his gaze for the first time.
“No. Not for a long time.”
“Right. Feels like I’ve seen you, though.” The farmer frowned, trying to place him. “Hey, you’re not one of them bloody TV journos, are you?”
“No. Police. In Melbourne.”
“That right? You lot should be investigating the bloody government for letting things get this bad.” The man nodded to where Luke’s body lay alongside those of his wife and six-year-old son. “We’re out here trying to feed this country, worst weather in a hundred years, and they’re crapping on about scrapping the subsidies. In some ways you can hardly blame the poor bastard. It’s a fu—”
He stopped. Looked around the church. “It’s an effing scandal, that’s what it is.”
Falk said nothing as they both reflected on the incompetencies of Canberra. The potential sources of blame for the dead Hadler family had been thrashed out at length over broadsheet pages.
“You looking into this, then?” The man nodded toward the coffins.
“No. Just here as a friend,” Falk said. “I’m not sure there’s anything still to look into.”
He knew only what he’d heard on the news along with everyone else. But it was straightforward according to the commentary. The shotgun had belonged to Luke. It was the same one later found clamped into what had been left of his mouth.
“No. I suppose not,” the farmer said. “I just thought, with him being your friend and all.”
“I’m not that kind of officer, anyway. Federal. With the financial intelligence unit.”
“Means nothing to me, mate.”
“Just means I chase the money. Anything ending with a few zeros that’s not where it should be. Laundered, embezzled, that sort of thing.”
The man said something in reply, but Falk didn’t hear him. His gaze had shifted from the three coffins to the mourners in the front pew. The space reserved for family. So they could sit in front of all their friends and neighbors, who could in turn stare at the backs of their heads and thank God it wasn’t them.
It had been twenty years, but Falk recognized Luke’s father straight away. Gerry Hadler’s face was gray. His eyes appeared sunken into his head. He was sitting dutifully in his spot in the front row, but his head was turned. He was ignoring his wife sobbing by his side and the three wooden boxes holding the remains of his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. Instead, he was staring directly at Falk.
Somewhere up the back, a few notes of music piped out from speakers. The funeral was starting. Gerry inclined his head in a tiny nod, and Falk unconsciously put his hand in his pocket. He felt the letter that had landed on his desk two days ago. From Gerry Hadler, eight words written with a heavy hand:
Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.
It was Falk who looked away first.
It was hard to watch the photographs. They flashed up on a screen at the front of the church in a relentless montage. Luke celebrating as an under-tens footballer; a young Karen jumping a pony over a fence. There was something grotesque now about the frozen grins, and Falk saw he wasn’t the only one averting his gaze.
The photo changed again, and Falk was surprised to recognize himself. A fuzzy image of his eleven-year-old face looked out at him. He and Luke were side by side, bare-chested and open-mouthed as they displayed a small fish on a line. They seemed happy. Falk tried to remember the picture being taken. He couldn’t.
The slideshow continued. Pictures of Luke, then Karen, each smiling like they’d never stop, and then there was Falk again. This time, he felt his lungs squeeze. From the low murmur that rippled through the crowd, he knew he wasn’t the only one shaken by the image.
A younger version of himself stood with Luke, now both long-limbed and freckled with acne. Still smiling, but this time part of a foursome. Luke’s arm was slung around the slim teenage waist of a girl with baby-blond hair. Falk’s hand hovered more cautiously over the shoulder of a second girl with long black hair and darker eyes.
Falk could not believe that photo was being shown. He shot a look at Gerry Hadler, who was staring straight ahead, his jaw set. Falk felt the farmer next to him shift his weight and move a calculated half step away. The penny had dropped for him, Falk thought.
He forced himself to look back at the image. At the foursome. At the girl by his side. He watched those eyes until they faded from the screen. Falk remembered that picture being taken. One afternoon near the end of a long summer. It had been a good day. And it had been one of the last photos of the four of them together. Two months later the dark-eyed girl was dead.
Luke lied. You lied.
Falk stared down at the floor for a full minute. When he looked back, time had moved on, and Luke and Karen were smiling with stiff formality on their wedding day. Falk had been invited. He tried to remember what excuse he’d offered for not attending. Work, almost certainly.
The first pictures of Billy began to appear. Red-faced as a baby, then with a full head of hair as a toddler. Already looking a bit like his dad. Standing in shorts by a Christmas tree. The family dressed up as a trio of monsters, their face paint cracking around their smiles. Fast-forward a few years, and an older Karen was cradling another newborn to her breast.
Charlotte. The lucky one. No name spelled out in flowers for her. As if on cue, Charlotte, now thirteen months old, began to wail from her front-row spot on her grandmother’s lap. Barb Hadler clutched the girl tighter to her chest with one arm, jiggling with a nervous rhythm. With her other hand she pressed a tissue to her face.
Falk, no expert on babies, wasn’t sure if Charlotte recognized her mother on the screen. Or perhaps she was just pissed off at being included in the memorial when she was still very much alive. She’d get used to it, he realized. She didn’t have much choice. Not many places to hide for a kid destined to grow up with the label “lone survivor.”
The last strains of music faded away, and the final photos flashed up to an awkward silence. There was a feeling of collective relief when someone turned on the lights. As an overweight chaplain struggled up the two steps to the lectern, Falk stared again at those dreadful coffins. He thought about the dark-eyed girl, and a lie forged and agreed on twenty years ago as fear and teenage hormones pounded through his veins.
Luke lied. You lied.
How short was the road from that decision to this moment? The question ached like a bruise.
As an older woman in the crowd turned her gaze away from the front, her eyes landed on Falk. He didn’t know her, but she gave an automatic nod of polite recognition. Falk looked away. When he glanced back, she was still staring. Her eyebrows suddenly puckered into a frown, and she turned to the elderly woman next to her. Falk didn’t need to be able to lip-read to know what she whispered.