“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.