by Harper,Jane
Ellie’s cousin. They had the same eyes, but Falk knew there was absolutely nothing of her in him. Dow stopped in front of their table, his flabby frame blocking their view. His T-shirt advertised a Balinese beer brand. His features were piggy small and cramped together in the middle of his face, while his beard straggled across a thick chin. He was wearing the same look of defiance he’d used to stare down the mourners at the wake. Dow raised his glass toward Falk in a mock salute and flashed a smile that went nowhere near his eyes.
“You’ve got balls turning up here,” he said. “I’ll give you that much. Don’t you reckon, Uncle Mal? Give him that much, eh?”
Dow turned. An older man hidden behind him took a shaky step forward, and Falk came face-to-face with Ellie’s father for the first time in twenty years. He felt something lodge in his chest and caught himself swallowing.
Mal Deacon had a curve to his spine now but was still a tall man, with ropy arms leading to large hands. His fingers were knotted and swollen with age and were almost white as he gripped the back of a chair for support. His forehead furrowed deep into a scowl, and his exposed scalp was angry pink between strands of gray hair.
Falk braced himself for an outburst, but instead a look of confusion flashed across Deacon’s face. He shook his head slightly, the loose chicken flesh on his neck rubbing against a dirty collar.
“Why are you back?” Deacon’s voice was slow and raspy. Deep grooves appeared on either side of his mouth as he spoke. Every single person in the pub was determinedly looking elsewhere, Falk noted. Only the barman was following the exchange with interest. He had put down his crossword.
“Eh?” Deacon slammed a gnarled hand against the back of the chair, and everyone jumped. “Why are you back? I thought you’d got the message clear enough. You brought the kid with you as well?”
It was Falk’s turn to look confused. “What?”
“That bloody son of yours. Don’t act dumb with me, dickhead. He back too? Your boy?”
Falk blinked. Deacon had mistaken him for his late father. He stared at the old man’s face. Deacon scowled back, but there was something sluggish about his anger.
Grant Dow stepped forward and put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. For a moment he appeared to consider explaining the mistake, then shook his head in frustration and gently forced his uncle into a chair.
“Nice one, you prick, you’ve gone and upset him now,” Dow said to Falk. “I’ve gotta ask you, mate. You think this is the best place for you to be?”
Raco pulled his Victoria Police badge out of his jeans pocket and slapped it faceup on the table.
“I could ask you the same thing, Grant. This the best place for you right now, you reckon?”
Dow held up his palms and twisted his face into a picture of innocence.
“Yeah, all right, no need for that. Me and my uncle are just out for a social drink. He’s not well; you can see that yourselves. We’re not the ones looking for any trouble. This one, though”—he looked straight at Falk—“he tracks it behind him like dog shit.”
An almost imperceptible murmur rolled through the room. Falk had known the story would resurface sooner rather than later. He shifted as he felt every eye in the place glance toward him.
The hikers were hot and bored. The mosquitoes were out in force, and the track by the Kiewarra River was proving slower going than they’d expected. The three of them trudged along in single file, bickering when they could be bothered to raise their voices over the sound of rushing water.
The second in line swore as he ran chest first into the group leader’s backpack, spilling his open water bottle down his front. A former investment banker, he’d moved to the country for his health and had spent each day since trying to convince himself he didn’t hate every minute of it. The leader held up his hand and cut short the grumbling. He pointed to the murky river water. They turned and stared.
“What the hell is that?”
“All right, we’ll have none of that, thanks,” the barman called out from behind the counter. He’d got to his feet and was resting his fingertips on the countertop. Beneath his orange beard, he was unsmiling. “This is a public bar. Anyone can drink here—him, you—and you can take it or leave it.”
“What’s the third option?” Dow flashed his yellow teeth at his mates, who dutifully laughed.
“Third option is you’re barred. So your choice.”
“Yeah. Always making those promises, though, aren’t you?” Dow stared at the barman. Raco cleared his throat, but Dow ignored him. The barman’s words came back to Falk. Out here, those badges mean less than they should.
“The problem’s not with him being in the bar.” The room was almost silent as Mal Deacon spoke. “It’s him being back in Kiewarra at all.”
He raised a finger thick with arthritis and pointed it between Falk’s eyes. “Understand this and tell your boy. There’s nothing here for you except a lot of people who remember what your son did to my daughter.”
The investment banker vomited his ham sandwiches into the bush. He and the other two were soaking wet, but he barely noticed.
The girl’s body now lay on the trail, a pool of water seeping out around her. She was slim, but it had taken all three of them to drag her to the bank. Her skin was unnaturally white, and a slick of hair had fallen into her mouth. The sight of it disappearing between her pale lips made the investment banker gag again. Her earlobes were red raw around her piercings. The fish had taken the opportunity. The same markings were visible around her nostrils and painted fingernails.
She was fully clothed and looked young where the water had washed her makeup away. Her white T-shirt was almost transparent as it clung to her skin, displaying her lace bra beneath. Her flat boots were still tangled with traces of the weeds that had tethered her body to the spot. Both boots and every pocket of her jeans had been packed tight with stones.
“Bullshit. I had nothing to do with what happened to Ellie.” Falk couldn’t help himself and instantly regretted it. He bit down on his tongue. Don’t engage.
“Who says?” Grant Dow stood behind his uncle. His cold grin was long gone. “Who says you had nothing to do with it? Luke Hadler?” As he said the name it felt like air had been sucked out of the bar. “The thing about that is Luke’s not here to say much of anything anymore.”
The fittest of the trio had run for help. The investment banker sat on the ground near his own pool of vomit. He felt safer there, engulfed in the acid stink, than near that horrific white being. The group leader paced, his feet squelching.
They could guess who she was. Her photo had been in the paper for three days. Eleanor Deacon, age sixteen. Missing since Friday night, when she’d failed to return home. Her father had given her a night to cool whatever teenage impulse might have been keeping her away. When she didn’t come home on Saturday, he’d raised the alarm.
It had seemed like an age before emergency workers arrived at the river. The girl’s body was taken to the hospital. The investment banker was sent home. Within a month he’d moved back to the city.
The doctor examining Ellie Deacon’s body reported the cause of death as drowning. Her lungs were soggy with the river. She appeared to have been in the water for several days, he noted, most likely since Friday. He reported some bruising on her breastbone and shoulders, and abrasions on her hands and arms. Not inconsistent with damage caused by debris rushing past in the water. There were some old scars on her forearms, possibly evidence of self-harm. She was not, he noted as an afterthought, a virgin.
At the mention of Luke’s name there was a ripple around the room, and even Dow seemed to sense he’d gone too far.
“Luke was my friend. Ellie was my friend.” Falk’s voice sounded strange to his own ears. “I cared about them both. So back off.”
Deacon stood up, his chair squealing against the floorboards.
“Don’t you talk to me about caring for Ellie. To me, she was blood!” He was shouting, his hands shaking as h
e thrust a finger at Falk in accusation. Out of the corner of his eye, Falk saw Raco and the barman exchange looks.
“You reckon you and your boy had nothing to do with it,” Deacon said. “What about the note, you lying bastard?”
He said it with a flourish, like a conversational trump card. Falk felt the air go out of him. He felt exhausted. Deacon’s mouth was twisted. Next to him, his nephew was laughing. He could smell blood.
“Not so quick with an answer to that, are you?” Dow said.
Falk forced himself not to shake his head. Jesus. That bloody note.
The cops spent two hours picking apart Ellie Deacon’s bedroom. Thick fingers awkwardly probed through underwear drawers and jewelry cases. The note was almost missed. Almost. It was written on a single page torn from an ordinary exercise book. It had been folded once and slipped into the pocket of a pair of jeans. On the page, written in pen in Ellie’s distinctive handwriting, was the date she had disappeared. Underneath that was a single name: Falk.
“Explain that. If you can,” Deacon said. The bar was silent.
Falk said nothing. He couldn’t. And Deacon knew he couldn’t.
The barman banged a glass down on the counter. “Enough.” He looked hard at Falk, considering. Raco, holding his police badge visibly in his palm, raised his eyebrows and gave a tiny shake of his head. The barman’s eyes instead settled on Dow.
“You and your uncle, leave. Don’t come back for two days, thanks. Everyone else, buy a drink or get out.”
The rumors started small and by the end of the day were big. Falk—sixteen and scared—holed up in his bedroom with a thousand thoughts clamoring. He jumped as a tap sounded against the window frame. Luke’s face appeared, ghostly white in the evening gloom.
“You’re in the shit, mate,” he whispered. “I heard my mum and dad say. People are talking. What were you really doing on Friday after school?”
“I told you. Fishing. Upriver, though. Miles away, I swear.” Falk crouched by the window. His legs felt like they wouldn’t hold him up.
“Anyone else asked you yet? Cops or anyone?”
“No. They’re going to, though. They think I was meeting her or something.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No! Course not. But what if they don’t believe me?”
“You didn’t meet anyone at all? No one saw you?”
“I was on my bloody own, wasn’t I?”
“Right, listen—Aaron, mate, are you listening? Right, anyone asks, you say we were shooting rabbits together. On the back fields.”
“Nowhere near the river.”
“No. The fields off Cooran Road. Nowhere near the river. All evening. OK? We were mucking around. Like usual. We only hit one or two. Two. Say two.”
“Yes, OK. Two.”
“Don’t forget. We were together.”
“Yes. I mean no. I won’t forget. Jesus, Ellie. I can’t—”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Say it now. What you were doing. Practice.”
“Luke and I were shooting rabbits together.”
“Again.”
“I was with Luke Hadler. Shooting rabbits. Out on the Cooran Road fields.”
“Say it until it sounds normal. And don’t get it wrong.”
“No.”
“You got all that, yeah?”
“Yes. Luke, mate. Thanks. Thank you.”
8
When Aaron Falk was eleven, he’d seen Mal Deacon turn his own flock into a staggering, bleeding mess using shearing clippers and a brutal hand. Aaron had felt an ache swell in his chest as he, Luke, and Ellie had watched one sheep after another brawled to the ground of the Deacons’ shed with a sharp twist and sliced too close to the skin.
Aaron was a farm kid, they all were, but this was something else. A pitiful cry from the smallest ewe made him open his mouth and draw breath, but he was cut short as Ellie pulled him away by his sleeve. She looked up at him and gave a single shake of her head.
She’d been a slight, intense child at that age, prone to long bouts of silence. Aaron, who leaned toward the quiet side himself, found that suited him fine. They usually let Luke do the talking.
Ellie had barely raised her head when the noises from the barn had floated over to where the three of them had been sitting on the sagging porch. Aaron had been curious, but it had been Luke who insisted they abandon their homework to investigate. Now, with the wails of the ewes in their ears and Ellie’s face fixed into an expression he hadn’t seen before, Aaron knew he wasn’t the only one wishing they hadn’t.
They turned to leave, and Aaron jumped as he saw Ellie’s mother watching silently from the barn’s doorway. She was jammed up against the frame, wearing an ill-fitting brown jumper with a single greasy stain on it. She took a sip of amber liquid from a glass without taking her eyes off the shearing. Her facial features were shared by her daughter. They had the same deep-set eyes, sallow skin, and wide mouth. But to Aaron, Ellie’s mother looked a hundred years old. It was years before he realized she would not even have been forty on that day.
As he watched, Ellie’s mother closed her eyes and tilted her head back sharply. She took a deep breath, her features creasing. When she opened her eyes again, they fixed on her husband, staring at him with a look so pure and undiluted Aaron was terrified Deacon would turn and see it for himself. Regret.
The weather that year had made the work harder for everyone, and a month later Deacon’s nephew Grant had moved into their farmhouse to lend a hand. Ellie’s mother left two days after that. Perhaps it had been the final straw. One man to resent was plenty enough for anyone.
Throwing two suitcases and a clinking bag of bottles into an old car, she had tried halfheartedly to stem her daughter’s tears with weightless vows that she would be back soon. Falk wasn’t sure how many years it had been until Ellie had stopped believing it. He wondered if part of her might have believed it until the day she died.
Falk now stood on the porch of the Fleece with Raco while the sergeant lit a cigarette. He offered the packet, and Falk shook his head. He’d spent enough time down memory lane for one night.
“Smart choice,” Raco said. “I’m trying to quit. For the baby.”
“Right. Good on you.”
Raco smoked slowly, blowing the vapor into the hot night sky. The pub noise had ratcheted up a notch. Deacon and Dow had taken their time leaving, and the hint of aggression still hung in the air.
“You should’ve told me earlier.” Raco took a drag. Suppressed a cough.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You have anything to do with it? That girl’s death?”
“No. But I wasn’t with Luke when it happened. Not like we said.”
Raco paused.
“So you lied about your alibi. Where was Luke?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“Of course I did, but he—” Falk paused, remembering. “He always insisted on sticking to our story. Always. Even when it was only the two of us. He said it was safer to be consistent. I didn’t push it. I was grateful to him, you know? I thought it was for my benefit.”
“Who else knew it was a lie?”
“A few people suspected. Mal Deacon, obviously. Some others. But no one knew for certain. At least that’s what I always thought. But now I’m not sure. It turns out Gerry Hadler knew all along. Maybe he’s not the only one.”
“Do you think Luke killed Ellie?”
“I don’t know.” He stared out at the empty street. “I want to know.”
“You think all this is connected?”
“I really hope not.”
Raco sighed. He stubbed the cigarette out carefully, then doused the butt with a splash of beer.
“All right, mate,” he said. “Your secret’s safe with me. For now. Unless it needs to come out, in which case you sing like a canary and I knew nothing about any of it, right?”
“Yes. Thank you.�
�
“Meet me at the station at nine tomorrow morning. We’ll go and have a chat to Luke’s mate Jamie Sullivan. The last person who admits seeing him alive.” He looked at Falk. “If you’re still in town.”
With a wave, he headed off into the night.
Back in his room, Falk lay on his bed and pulled out his cell phone. He held it in his palm but didn’t dial. The huntsman had disappeared from above the lamp. He tried not to think about where it was now.
If you’re still in town, Raco had said. Falk was all too aware he had the choice. His car was parked right outside. He could pack his bag, pay the bearded bartender, and be on the road to Melbourne inside fifteen minutes.
Raco might roll his eyes, and Gerry would try to call. But what could they do? They wouldn’t be pleased, but he could live with that. Barb, though—Falk could picture her face with unwelcome clarity—Barb would be dismayed. And he wasn’t entirely sure he could live with that. Falk shifted uncomfortably at the thought. The room felt airless in the heat.
He had never known his own mother. She had died in a seeping, hemorrhagic pool of her own blood less than an hour after he was born. His dad had tried—tried hard, even—to fill the gap. But any sense Falk had growing up of maternal tenderness, every warm cake from the oven, every over-perfumed cuddle, had come from Barb Hadler. She may have been Luke’s mother, but she had always made time for him.
He, Ellie, and Luke had spent more time at the Hadlers’ house than at any of the others’. Falk’s own home was often silent and empty, his father trapped for hours by the demands of the land. Ellie would shake her head at suggestions they go to her house. Not today, she’d say. When he and Luke had insisted for variety, Falk always found himself regretting it. Ellie’s house was messy, with a whiff of empty bottles.
The Hadlers’ place was sunlit and busy, with good things coming from the kitchen and clear instructions about homework and bedtime and orders to turn off that damn TV and get some fresh air. The Hadlers’ farm had always been a haven—until two weeks ago, when it had become a crime scene of the worst kind.