by Harper,Jane
“And if it wasn’t Luke behind the wheel, where the hell was he while his family was being murdered? Sitting in the passenger seat watching it happen?” Falk said.
Raco shrugged. “Maybe he was. I mean, it’s a possible scenario. Depending on who the other person was, what kind of hold they might have had over him.” They looked at each other, and Falk knew Raco was also thinking about Sullivan.
“Or the killer could have physically overpowered him,” Raco said. “Might have taken a bit of effort, but some people could do it. You saw Sullivan’s arms. Like walnuts packed into a sock.”
Falk nodded and thought back to the report on Luke’s body. He was a decent-sized bloke. A healthy male, other than the gunshot wound. No defensive marks on his hands. No sign of ligature marks or other restraints. He pictured Luke’s corpse lying flat on its back in the truck’s cargo tray. The blood pooled around him and the four unexplained streaks on the side of the metal tray.
“‘Bloody women,’” Falk said out loud. “What do you think he meant by that?”
“I dunno,” Raco said, glancing at his watch. “But we’re set to meet someone who might later this afternoon. I thought it could be worth seeing what Karen Hadler kept in her desk drawer.”
11
The wattle sapling looked a little less sickly once it was in the ground, but not much. Uniformed schoolchildren looked on in bewilderment as mulch was shoveled around its base. Teachers and parents stood in loose groups, some crying openly.
A handful of the wattle’s fuzzy yellow buds gave up the fight immediately and fluttered to the ground. They settled near a plaque with the fresh engraving:
In memory of Billy Hadler and Karen Hadler.
Much loved and missed by our school family.
The sapling didn’t stand a chance, Falk thought. He could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes.
Back on the grounds of his old primary school, Falk was again struck by the feeling that he could be thirty years in the past. The asphalt playground was a miniature version of the one he remembered, and the water fountains seemed absurdly low. But it was instantly familiar, sparking half-remembered flashes of faces and events he’d long forgotten.
Luke had been a good ally to have back then. He was one of those kids with an easy smile and a sharp wit who could navigate the jungle law of the playground effortlessly. Charismatic would have been the word, if they’d known it at that age. He was generous with his time, his jokes, his belongings. His parents. Everyone was welcome at the Hadler household. He was loyal almost to a fault. When Falk had once taken a stray football in the face, he’d had to drag Luke off the kid who’d kicked it. Falk, tall and awkward then, was always aware he was lucky to have Luke on his side.
Falk shifted uncomfortably as the ceremony came to a close.
“Scott Whitlam, principal,” Raco said, nodding as a fit-looking man in a tie politely extracted himself from a crowd of parents.
Whitlam came over, one hand extended. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said after Raco introduced Falk. “Everyone wants to talk at a time like this.”
Whitlam was in his early forties and moved with the easy energy of a retired athlete. He had a broad chest and a wide smile. Half an inch of clean brown hair was visible under the bottom of his hat.
“It was a nice service,” Falk said, and Whitlam glanced back at the sapling.
“It’s what we needed.” He lowered his voice. “Tree hasn’t got a hope in hell, though. God knows what we’re supposed to tell the kids when it dies. Anyway.” He nodded toward the blond-brick building. “We’ve gathered together anything belonging to Karen and Billy, like you asked. There’s not a lot, I’m afraid, but it’s in the office.”
They followed him across the grounds. A bell rang somewhere in the distance. End of the school day. Up close, the buildings and play equipment made a depressing sight. Paint had chipped from every surface and the exposed metal was red with rust. There were cracks in the plastic slide, and only one end of the basketball court had a hoop. The signs of a community in poverty were everywhere.
“Funding,” Whitlam said when he saw them looking around. “There’s never enough.”
Around the back of the school building a few sad sheep stood in brown paddocks. Beyond, the land rose sharply to a chain of hills covered with bushland.
The principal stopped to fish a handful of leaves out of the sheep’s water trough.
“Do you still teach farm skills these days?” Falk remembered checking a similar water trough once upon a time.
“Some. We try to keep it light, though. Have some fun. The kids get enough of the gritty realities at home,” Whitlam said.
“You teach it?”
“God, no, I’m a humble city slicker. We moved up from Melbourne eighteen months ago, and I’ve just about learned to tell one end of a cow from the other. My wife fancied a change of scenery from the city.” He paused. “We got one, all right.”
He pushed open a heavy door to a hallway that smelled like sandwiches. Along the walls, kids’ paintings and drawings were pinned up.
“Jesus, some of these are depressing,” Raco murmured.
Falk could see what he meant. There were stick-figure families in which every face had a crayon mouth turned downward. A painting of a cow with angel wings. “Toffee My Cow in Heaven,” the shaky caption read. In every attempt at landscape, the fields were colored brown.
“You should see the ones we didn’t put up,” Whitlam said, stopping at the office door. “The drought. It’s going to kill this town.”
He took an enormous bunch of keys from his pocket and let them into his office. Pointing them to a couple of chairs that had seen better days, he disappeared into a store cupboard. He emerged a moment later carrying a sealed cardboard box.
“Everything’s in here. Bits and pieces from Karen’s desk, some of Billy’s schoolwork. Mostly paintings and worksheets, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks.” Raco took it from him.
“They’re missed.” Whitlam leaned against his desk. “Both of them. We’re all still reeling.”
“How closely did you work with Karen?” Falk asked.
“Reasonably so. We’ve only got a small staff. She was excellent. She looked after the finances and accounts. Good at it too. Too smart for this job really, but I think it suited her with child care and things.”
The window was open a crack, and the sounds from the playground drifted through. “Look, can I ask why you’re here?” Whitlam said. “I thought this was resolved.”
“It involved three members of the same family,” Raco said. “Unfortunately, something like that’s never clear-cut.”
“Right. Of course.” Whitlam sounded unconvinced. “The thing is, I’ve got an obligation to make sure students and staff are safe, so if—”
“We’re not suggesting there’s anything to worry about, Scott,” Raco said. “If there’s something you need to know, we’ll make sure you know it.”
“All right, message received,” Whitlam said. “What can I do to help you?”
“Tell us about Karen.”
The knock was quiet but firm. Whitlam looked up from his desk as the door opened. A blond head poked around.
“Scott, have you got a minute?”
Karen Hadler stepped into his office. She wasn’t smiling.
“She stopped by to speak to me, the day before she and Billy were killed,” Whitlam said. “She was worried, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” Raco asked.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound facetious. But you saw those kids’ pictures on the wall. I meant everyone’s scared. The adults are no different.”
He thought for a moment.
“Karen was a really valued team member. But she’d become quite stressed in those last couple of weeks. She was snappy, which was unusual. Definitely distracted. And she’d been making one or two errors in the accounts. Nothing serious; we caught them. But again, it was unlike her. It b
othered her. She was normally so precise. So she came to see me about it.”
Karen shut the door behind her. She chose the seat closest to Whitlam’s desk. She sat straight-backed and crossed her legs neatly at the ankles. Her wraparound dress was flattering but modest, with a subtle print of white apples against a red background. Karen was the kind of woman whose youthful good looks had been softened by age and childbirth into something less defined but just as appealing in their own way. She could easily be cast as a how-does-she-do-it mum in a supermarket ad. Anyone could have confidence in a brand of detergent or cereal Karen Hadler recommended.
Now she was clutching a small stack of papers on her lap.
“Scott,” she began, then stopped. He waited. She took a deep breath. “Scott, to be honest, I wasn’t sure about coming to you with this. My husband—” Karen held his gaze, but Whitlam felt she was forcing herself. “Luke, well. Look, he wouldn’t be happy.”
Raco leaned forward. “Did she sound scared of her husband?”
“I didn’t think so at the time.” Whitlam pinched the bridge of his nose. “But knowing what happened the next day makes me realize I probably wasn’t listening closely enough. I worry that I missed the signs. I’ve asked myself that every day. But I want to be clear that if I’d suspected for a minute they were in danger, I’d obviously never have let her and Billy go home.” Whitlam’s words unconsciously echoed Jamie Sullivan’s.
Karen fiddled with her wedding ring.
“You and I have worked together for a while—worked together well, I would say—” She looked up, and Whitlam nodded. “I feel I have to say something.”
She paused again and took a deep breath.
“I know there have been some issues lately. With me and my work. A few mistakes here and there.”
“One or two perhaps, but there’s no harm done, Karen. You’re a good worker. Everyone can see that.”
She nodded once, dropping her eyes. When she looked up, her face was set.
“Thank you. But there is a problem. And I can’t turn a blind eye to it.”
“She said the farm was going under,” Whitlam said. “Karen thought they had six months, maybe less. She said Luke didn’t believe it. Apparently he was sure things would turn around, but she said she could see it coming. She was worried. She actually apologized to me.”
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.