by Harper,Jane
“Pinning what on you, Grant?” Raco’s voice was determinedly neutral.
“That bloody family. If Luke goes and shoots up his wife and kid, that’s his business.” He pointed a thick finger at them both. “But that has got bugger all to do with me, you hear me?”
“Where were you the afternoon they were shot?” Falk asked.
Dow shook his head, his eyes never leaving Falk’s. His shirt collar was ripe with sweat. “Mate, you can get stuffed. You did enough damage with Ellie. You’re not going to take down me and my uncle as well. This is a witch hunt.”
Raco cleared his throat before Falk could answer.
“All right, Grant.” His voice was calm. “We’re just trying to get some answers. So let’s make it as easy as we can. You’ve told officers from Clyde you were ditch digging out along Eastway with your two workmates you’ve listed here. You stand by that?”
“Yeah. I was. All day.”
“And they’ll back that up, will they?”
“They’d better. Seeing as it’s the truth.” Dow managed to look them in the eyes as he said it. A fly droned in frantic circles around their heads as the silence stretched out.
“Tell me, Grant, what will you do with the farm when your uncle dies?” Falk said.
Dow looked confused at the change of subject. “Eh?”
“You’re all set to inherit, I heard.”
“So what? I’ve earned it,” he snapped.
“For what, letting your uncle live in his own property while he’s old and sick? That takes a big man.” Truthfully, Falk didn’t see any reason why Dow shouldn’t inherit, but the comment seemed to have hit a sore spot.
“Little bit more than that, smart-arse.” Dow opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. He closed it before speaking again. “Anyway, why not? I’m his family.”
“All that’s left of it since Ellie died, eh?” Falk plowed on as Dow sucked in a breath in outrage. “So you’ll sell the property when you can?”
“Too right I will. I’m not about to try to farm it, am I? I’m not a fool. Not when there’s all those Chinese jumping out of their little yellow skins to buy land out here. Even shit land like ours.”
“And like the Hadlers’?”
Dow paused. “I suppose.”
“Baby Charlotte’s probably even less keen to lug around bags of fertilizer than you. I hear it’ll come up for sale sooner or later. Two properties side by side.” Falk shrugged. “That’s a lot more attractive to overseas investors. Which is interesting in itself. But especially when the owner of one ended up shot in the head.”
For once Dow didn’t open his mouth to reply, and Falk knew he’d come to the same conclusion.
“Let’s get back to Karen.” Falk seized the advantage to change tack. “You ever try it on with her?”
“What?”
“Romantically? Sexually?”
Dow snorted. “Do me a favor. Right ice queen, that one. I wouldn’t waste me breath.”
“You think she’d have knocked you back,” Falk said. “That must have been annoying.”
“I get plenty, thanks, mate. Don’t you worry about me. The way you’re panting round town after Gretchen, you’ve got enough on your plate worrying about yourself.”
Falk ignored the comment. “Did Karen dent your ego? You argue with her about something? Things get a bit messy?”
“What? No.” Dow’s eyes flicked left and right.
“But you fell out with her husband. Frequently, from what we’ve heard,” Raco said.
“So what? That was always about nothing. Just Luke being a prick. It had bugger all to do with his missus.”
There was a pause. When Falk spoke again, his voice was quiet.
“Grant, we’re going to check your movements that day, and maybe your mates are going to back you up. The point is that some alibis are a bit like that plasterboard you work with. They hold up initially, but put them under pressure and they crumble pretty damn swiftly.”
Dow looked down for a moment. When he raised his head his attitude had shifted. He smiled. A calculating, full-bodied grin that hit his eyes.
“What, like your alibi, you mean? For why my cousin wrote your bloody name before she died?”
The silence stretched taut as three pairs of eyes looked at the photocopied receipt on the table. Falk had been far more shaken when his own name was discovered among Ellie’s possessions than Dow seemed about this. He was wondering what to make of that when Dow barked a laugh.
“Good thing my yarn is built of solid brick, isn’t it? You test it, mate. Be my guest. Don’t get me wrong, I had no time for the Hadlers. And yeah, I’ll be selling my uncle’s farm the first chance I get. But I didn’t kill them, I wasn’t at that farm, and if you want to put me there, you’re going to have to stitch me up. And you know what?” He banged the table with his fist. The sound was like a shot. “I’m not sure you’ve got the balls.”
“If you were there, Grant, we’ll prove it.”
He smirked. “See you bloody try.”
24
“You’re lucky we still have the footage. It usually gets deleted after a month.”
Scott Whitlam scrolled through the files on his computer until he found what he was looking for. The principal leaned back so Falk and Raco could see the screen. They were in his office, the sounds of the Monday afternoon school bustle drifting through the door.
“OK, here we are. This is the view from the camera at the main entrance,” Whitlam said. He clicked the mouse, and CCTV footage started to play on-screen. The camera appeared to be mounted above the large school doors, trained down on the steps to capture any approaching visitor. “Sorry, it’s not great quality.”
“No worries. It’s better than what we got from the Hadlers’ place,” Raco said.
“Cameras are only as much use as what they capture, anyway,” Falk said. “What else have you got here?”
Whitlam clicked again, and the view changed. “The other camera’s over the staff parking lot.” Again taken from a high vantage point, this footage showed a fuzzy row of cars.
“Those are the only two cameras in the school?” Raco asked.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Whitlam rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the universal symbol for money. “We’d have more if we could afford more.”
“Can we find Karen on her last day?” Falk said, although it wasn’t primarily Karen they were looking for. It was Grant Dow. True to their word, Falk and Raco had spent several hours grilling Dow’s mates over his alibi. They had backed him up to the hilt. It was nothing less than Falk expected, but it still pissed him off.
Whitlam enlarged the parking lot image so it filled the screen. “Karen usually drove in, so she’d probably be on this camera.”
He found the right recording and jumped through the timeline to the end of the school day. They watched the silent footage as pupils walked by in twos and threes, giggling and gossiping, set free for another day. A slim bald man walked into the frame. He went to one of the cars and opened the trunk. He rummaged for a moment before retrieving a bulky bag. He heaved it over his shoulder and walked back off screen in the direction he’d come.
“The caretaker,” Whitlam said.
“What’s in the bag?”
Whitlam shook his head. “I know he has his own set of tools. I’d say it was that, at a guess.”
“He worked here long?” Falk asked.
“About five years, I think. For what it’s worth, he seems like a good guy.”
Falk didn’t reply. They watched for another ten minutes until the trickle of pupils had all but dried up and the parking lot was quiet. Just as Falk was losing hope, Karen appeared.
Falk’s breath caught in his throat. She had been beautiful in life, this dead woman. He watched as she strode across the screen, her pale hair blowing back off her face. The low-quality recording made it impossible to read her expression. She wasn’t tall but had the posture of a dance
r as she walked briskly through the parking lot, pushing Charlotte in a stroller from the direction of the day care.
Three steps behind her, Billy came into view. Falk felt a chill at the sight of the stocky dark-haired child who looked so much like his father. Next to him, Raco shifted his weight and cleared his throat. Raco had seen firsthand what horror was waiting for the boy.
Billy was pottering, fully engrossed in some toy clutched in his hand. Karen turned and silently called to him over her shoulder, and he ran to catch up. She bundled both children into her car, fastening them in, shutting the door. She moved fast, efficiently. Was she rushing? Falk wasn’t sure.
On-screen, Karen straightened and stood completely still for a moment, one hand on the car roof, her back to the camera. Her head tilted forward a fraction, and she brought a hand to her face. Made one small movement with her fingers. Then another.
“Jesus, is she crying?” Falk said. “Rewind that bit, quick.”
No one spoke as they watched it again. Then a third time, and a fourth. Head down, two small flicks of her hand.
“I can’t tell,” Raco said. “It looks a bit like she could be. But she could as easily be scratching her nose.”
They let the tape run on this time. Karen lifted her head, took what could have been a deep breath, then opened the driver’s door and climbed in. She reversed out of the space and was gone. The parking lot was empty again. The time stamp on the tape showed she and her son had less than eighty minutes to live.
They stared at the footage, skipping over long stretches during which no one came or went. The school receptionist emerged ten minutes after Karen, then nothing happened for about forty minutes. Eventually, the teachers started heading to their cars one by one. Whitlam identified each as they appeared. The caretaker returned, put his bag back in the trunk, and drove away just after 4:30 P.M.
Eventually, Whitlam’s car was the only one left in the lot. They sped ahead on the tape. Shortly after 7:00 P.M., Whitlam himself appeared on-screen. He was walking slowly, his head down and his broad shoulders slumped forward. In the seat next to Falk, the principal exhaled. His jaw was clenched tight as he watched the footage.
“It’s hard to look at this,” he said. “By then, the Clyde cops had called to tell me Billy and Karen were dead.”
They watched on as Whitlam slowly got into his car and, after a couple of false starts, successfully reversed out and drove away. They let the tape run for another ten minutes. Grant Dow was nowhere to be seen.
“I’ll be off, then,” Deborah called from reception, handbag clutched over her shoulder. She waited a moment but received only a vague grunt in response. Falk looked up and gave her a smile. Her manner toward him had thawed in the past few days, and he felt they’d had a breakthrough when she’d brought him a coffee as she fetched one for the others. He suspected Raco had had a word.
Raco and Constable Barnes barely reacted as the station door slammed behind her. The three of them were each at a desk, staring at their computer screens as grainy images played out. They had taken all the available footage from both cameras at the school, then headed into town.
There were three CCTV cameras in Kiewarra’s main street, Raco had told Falk. One beside the pub, one near the council offices, and one over the door of the pharmacy storeroom. They’d collected the footage from each.
Barnes yawned and stretched, his bulky arms reaching toward the ceiling. Falk was poised for the grumbling to start, but Barnes simply turned back to his screen without complaint. Barnes hadn’t known Luke or Karen, he’d confided to Falk earlier, but he’d given Billy Hadler’s class a talk on road safety a couple of weeks before his death. He still had the thank-you card from the class, including Billy’s crayon signature, on his desk.
Falk stifled a yawn himself. They’d been at it for four hours. Falk was concentrating on the recordings taken from the school. He’d seen one or two interesting things over the hours. A pupil taking a secret piss against the principal’s front wheels. A teacher scraping a colleague’s car with her own, then hastily driving away. But no sign of Grant Dow.
Instead Falk found himself repeatedly watching the footage of Karen. She had arrived and left three times that week—every day but Tuesday, which was her day off, and Friday, by which time she was dead. Each day was much the same. At about 8:30 A.M. her car would pull up. She would get the children out, gather backpacks and sun hats, and disappear off camera in the direction of the school. Shortly after 3:30 P.M. the process would be reversed.
Falk studied her movements. The way she bent over to talk to Billy, one hand on the little boy’s shoulder. He couldn’t make out her face, but he imagined her smiling at her son. He watched the way she cradled Charlotte as she transferred her baby daughter from car seat to stroller. Karen Hadler had been a nice woman before she was shot in the stomach. Good both with children and finances. Falk felt certain Barb was right. He would have liked her.
He obsessively rewound the footage from the Thursday, the day Karen and her son had been murdered. He played and replayed the tape constantly, analyzing every frame. Was that a slight hesitation in her step as she approached the car? Had something in the bushland caught her eye? Was she squeezing her child’s hand tighter than usual? Falk suspected he was jumping at shadows, but he continued to watch over and over. He stared at the image of his dead friend’s blond wife and silently willed her to pick up her cell phone and call the number she had scribbled on the receipt. He willed his past self to answer. Neither event happened. The script remained unchanged.
Falk was debating whether to call it a day when Barnes dropped the pen he’d been twirling and sat up in his chair.
“Hey, check this out.” Barnes clicked his mouse, winding back the grainy film. He had been combing through the material from the pharmacy camera, which was trained on nothing more exciting than a quiet back alley and the door leading to their supply room.
“What is it? Dow?” Falk said. He and Raco crowded around the screen.
“Not exactly,” Barnes said as he set the footage running. The time stamp showed 4:41 P.M. on Thursday. Just over an hour before Karen and Billy Hadler were found dead.
For a few seconds the video looked like a still image, showing nothing but the empty alley. Suddenly a four-wheel drive flashed past. It was there and gone in less than a second.
Barnes rewound the footage and slowed it down. He froze the image as the car reappeared. It was blurry and at an awkward angle, but it didn’t matter. The driver’s face was clear. Through the windshield, Jamie Sullivan stared back at them.
The light was fading by the time Falk and Raco got to the alley, but there wasn’t much to see. They’d let Barnes call it a day after a job well done. Falk stood under the pharmacy’s CCTV camera and looked around. The small road was narrow and ran parallel to Kiewarra’s main street. On one side it backed on to the real estate agent, a hairdresser’s, the doctors’ office, and the pharmacy. On the other, parcels of scrubland had been turned into makeshift parking lots. It was completely deserted.
Falk and Raco walked the full length of the lane. It didn’t take long. It was accessible by car at both ends and connected with the roads leading east and west out of town. In rush hour it would offer a perfect rat-run to cut through town without hitting the main drag. But this was Kiewarra, Falk thought, and it didn’t have a rush hour.
“So why did our friend Jamie Sullivan want to avoid being seen in town twenty minutes before the Hadlers were killed?” Falk’s voice echoed off the brickwork.
“A few reasons come to mind. None of them good,” Raco answered.
Falk peered up at the camera’s lens.
“At least we have some idea where he was now,” Falk said. “He could have gotten from here to the Hadlers’ place in the time frame, couldn’t he?”
“Yeah, no problem at all.”
Falk leaned against the wall and tilted his head back. The bricks had soaked in the heat of the day. He felt exhausted. His eyes w
ere gritty when he closed them.
“So we’ve got Jamie Sullivan, who claims to be Luke’s great mate, lying about where he was and caught sneaking around on camera an hour before his friend was shot dead,” Raco said. “Then we’ve got Grant Dow, who admits he couldn’t stand Luke, alibied to the back teeth while at the same time his name is in a dead woman’s handwriting.”
Falk opened an eye and looked at Raco.
“Don’t forget the driver of the mysterious white truck who may or may not have seen Luke Hadler cycling away from the river at the crossroads twenty years ago,” he said.
“And that.”
They stood in silence for a long while, staring up the alleyway as though the answer might be graffitied there.
“Stuff it,” Falk said, pushing himself away from the wall and standing straight. It was an effort. “Let’s work through methodically. First we drag Sullivan in again and ask him what the hell he was doing on camera in a back alleyway. I’ve had it up to here with that bloke messing us around.”
“Now?” Raco’s eyes were red-rimmed. He looked as tired as Falk felt.
“Tomorrow.”
As they cut through a narrow passageway back to the main road, Raco’s phone rang. He paused on the pavement and dug it out.
“It’s my wife. Sorry, I’d better take it.” He put it to his ear. “Hello, my beauty.” They’d stopped outside the convenience store. Falk jerked his head toward the shop and mimed a drinking gesture. Raco nodded gratefully.
Inside, the shop was cool and quiet. It was technically the same store Ellie had worked in, spending her evenings punching the price of milk and cigarettes into the register. They’d put up posters of her face in the window after her body was found, collecting for a funeral wreath.
The layout had changed so much since then it was almost unrecognizable. But Falk still remembered coming to chat with her behind the counter, as often as he could find an excuse to. Spending his money on things he didn’t want or need.
The shop’s ancient fridges had been replaced at some point by open chillers, and Falk now lingered beside them, feeling some of the fieriness evaporate from his skin. His core remained uncomfortably high, like the hint of a lingering fever. Eventually, he picked up two bottles of water and selected a slightly curled ham-and-cheese sandwich and a plastic-sealed muffin for dinner.