by Sarah Bailey
‘Bingo,’ I mutter. I make my way around the girls, Grange still trailing behind. ‘William Mayne?’ I call out as the cricket ball smacks the ground near my foot.
‘Argh!’ The batsman collapses to the ground. Thick lines of white zinc cover his nose and cheeks. ‘You’re such a dickhead,’ he calls to his friend.
I toss the ball to him. ‘Are you William Mayne?’
‘Nope, sorry. Will’s over there.’ He points to two guys wrestling a few metres away. Their muscled backs are glowing red with sunburn, and I wince as one of them is thrown hard against the rough sand.
‘And you are?’ I ask.
He smirks, then notices Grange in his uniform and falters, turning even whiter. ‘Oh. Right. Will got that message yesterday. Fuck, sorry—we were supposed to meet, weren’t we?’
‘Your name, please,’ I snap as he stands up.
‘I’m James.’
‘James Peacock?’ I ask, recalling one of the highlighted names on the sheet.
‘Yeah,’ he says warily. ‘What’s going on?’
Another young man ambles over. ‘Sorry we bailed on our meeting with you this morning.’ He slaps Grange on the back. ‘We thought it was at eight, but no one showed and everyone said the surf was brilliant today. But it was nine, wasn’t it? I should have double-checked my messages earlier.’ He’s either drunk or stoned.
‘And you are?’
‘Oh sorry, how rude of me. I’m William Mayne.’
Beads of sweat have erupted all over Grange’s bald scalp. I feel moisture collecting in the small of my back.
‘Grab your other mate, then let’s get out of the sun,’ I say, walking off toward a picnic table under the trees at the top of the beach. A subdued James rushes to fetch Miles Procter.
The three of them sit opposite us, looking ridiculous with their zinc stripes and sunburned shoulders. William bites his lip; I can tell he’s trying not to laugh.
I hold out my phone with the image pulled from the town’s security footage. ‘Do you know who this is?’
‘It’s Robbie!’ exclaims William, laughing. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘Robbie who?’ I press.
‘Robert Weston,’ says James. ‘One of our mates.’
‘Where is Robert now?’
‘In Sydney,’ replies James, but he sounds uncertain.
‘He left on Monday, is that right?’
William grunts and rolls his eyes. ‘I hate how coppers do this, ask questions even though they know the answers.’
‘Shut up, Will,’ says James, elbowing him in the ribs.
‘Why did Robert leave?’ Grange asks.
‘He’s a whiny bitch,’ says William, giggling.
I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. ‘What do you mean?’
James gives William another scathing look. ‘He hurt himself surfing so he figured there was no point being here. He reckoned he’d go get a job in a call centre or something.’
‘Oh, come off it, he’d cocked up with the birds around here,’ adds William. ‘And he kept whingeing about it.’
‘Which “birds”?’ I say, failing to hold back the sarcasm.
‘All of them,’ William quips. He adjusts his fluorescent visor and water from his drink bottle sloshes over his head. ‘Whoops,’ he says, then giggles again.
The little patience I have is rapidly diminishing. ‘Mr Mayne, this is really important. Do you need to come to the station and sober up?’
‘Nah, nah. I’m alright. Sorry.’ He closes his eyes, inhales deeply through his nose and slowly releases the air via his mouth. I can tell he’s fighting another bout of giggles.
I look at James. ‘When did Robert hurt himself?’
‘Last week. Wednesday, I think.’
‘Are you sure?’
James looks slightly bewildered. ‘Yes. He went to hospital on Wednesday night. He got some painkillers, and the doctor said his wrist was sprained and he shouldn’t put any pressure on it for at least a month.’
‘And what about Saturday night? What did you guys do?’
‘Partied,’ says William obnoxiously.
‘Where?’ I say.
‘It was a house party,’ says James. ‘Two sisters.’
‘Robert came?’
They all nod.
‘How did you end up there?’ I say. ‘You’re not in high school.’
‘We heard it on the grapevine,’ sings William to the tune of the popular song.
‘We got chatting to some birds at the pub, and they said we should come,’ adds James.
‘Do you know a girl called Abbey Clark?’
‘The missing one,’ says Miles.
‘Did you speak to her on Saturday night?’ I say.
‘I’m sorry she’s missing, but she was a stuck-up cow,’ says William, the lightness in his voice gone. ‘Robbie was just trying to chat to her—he does have a habit of coming on a bit strong, but he doesn’t mean any harm. She was a real cock-tease though. I think she was having a tiff with her boyfriend or something. Whatever.’
‘You do realise she is only fifteen?’ Grange interjects, sounding outraged.
William doesn’t miss a beat. ‘No way! She looked way older. Robbie’ll be disappointed.’
‘What do you mean?’ Grange says.
‘He fell for her pretty hard. We had to walk past the supermarket all the time just so he could look at her. That’s Robbie though, he tends to get a bit obsessed.’
‘Did Robert speak to her at the party?’
James nods, while William guffaws. ‘He tried to. She told him where to go.’
‘Alright,’ I say, keen to get to the point so I don’t have to talk to William anymore, ‘how late did you all stay at the party?’
He smothers another chuckle. ‘Well, Robert was trying his luck with some other bird after that Abbey bird burned him, so we left his bitch-slapped arse at the house.’
‘Around what time was that?’
For the first time, William looks thoughtful. ‘I have no idea.’
‘It was just before midnight,’ says Miles. ‘I remember thinking the pub would definitely be closed.’
‘Where did you go?’
William kicks at the sand under the table and hooks his arms around the others’ necks. ‘We went back to the caravan park to drink beers in the pool until some old bat went off at us for making too much noise. Apparently you’re not supposed to swim after 10 pm, which seems kind of stupid.’
‘Did Robert come back there too?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, but later,’ says James.
‘What time?’ I press.
‘Around one in the morning, I think, but I was half asleep.’
‘Was he alone?’
William slaps his thighs at this, completely losing it. ‘He was beyond alone. He was all depressed the next day.’
I look at James. ‘What do you mean?’
James shrugs and looks uncomfortable. ‘Will’s right. He was acting weird. We were giving him shit about having a bad run with girls—you know, just mucking around—but he cracked it. We figured he’d cool off, but on Monday he said he was leaving.’ James’s thick eyebrows knit together. ‘We thought he was joking till he grabbed his stuff and cleared out.’
Thursday, 14 April
2.51 pm
I assemble the team in the stuffy meeting room and stand at the head of the table, leaning forward on my hands. ‘Grange, get onto that footage from Sheffield, okay? If that goes nowhere, follow up his alibi. And the financial info for the hospital too.’
‘Um, yes, sure.’ Grange presses the tip of a pen into his notebook. ‘Who do I speak to about that?’
‘I don’t know but find out,’ I say sharply.
‘You’re talking about Eric Sheffield?’ says Lane, looking puzzled.
I nod. ‘I’m still concerned there’s illegal drug activity running through the hospital.’
De Luca raises an eyebrow but simply says, ‘I followed up with the a
irline company about Weston. He flew from Byron to Sydney on Monday. He withdrew a few hundred dollars from the airport ATM and hasn’t used his bank cards since.’
‘Good work.’
She shrugs, her gaze stony. ‘Doesn’t really help if we can’t find him.’
‘We will. Let’s get in touch with backpacker hostels and other accomm around the beach areas. Even if he’s injured I bet he’ll still stay near the sea, and most places will demand to sight a passport. I’ll put you in touch with some of my old colleagues.’
‘Okay,’ she says flatly, her fingers flying across her laptop.
I frown. Her ice queen routine is so maddening.
‘The thing with Weston,’ I say, ‘is that his mates confirmed he was at the caravan park on Monday morning, so it seems he had nothing to do with Rick’s murder. Which takes us back to the question around whether or not Abbey’s disappearance and Rick’s death are linked.’
We sink into silence, the puzzle pieces shifting around us.
‘We need to follow up a few other people on the council footage,’ says Lane. ‘I don’t think it will go anywhere, I know them all by sight. It’s mostly families and couples. Oh, and Meg Jarvis was in the church for two hours and left just after eleven.’
‘Meg Jarvis?’
‘Yeah. My mum used to say she spends half her life in there lighting candles and praying.’
‘Let me know how you get on with her,’ I say. ‘She tried to talk to me the other morning, but I couldn’t work out exactly what she was trying to say. She might know something.’
‘That’s just Meg,’ says Lane. ‘She’s always hassling Tommy about random stuff but never actually knows anything useful. She’s not exactly the most stable person.’
‘I understand she has health issues, but I want you to take her seriously. That goes for all the people on your list, whether you know them or not. That footage is so patchy, they might have seen something really relevant and just not realise it. I want their alibis confirmed too.’
Lane opens his mouth as if to protest, then snaps it shut.
‘How did you go with your interviews?’ I ask him and de Luca, moving over to the whiteboard.
‘It was like pulling teeth,’ de Luca says, ‘and the kids are all pretty shell-shocked, which isn’t helping. But a few of them admitted that drugs were at the party, so that’s further than we got on Sunday.’
‘What kind of drugs?’
‘Non-specific pills,’ she says drily. ‘They seem to be all the rage these days.’
‘Where were they getting them from?’
‘The backpackers, of course,’ says Lane. ‘It’s always the mysterious backpackers around here.’
‘What about pot?’ I say, thinking of the Fletchers.
‘No one really mentioned it.’
‘Yeah,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Apparently most of Georgina and Ian’s customers are from up north. They wanted to keep their business away from Fairhaven, which makes sense. That was one of the main reasons they wanted to avoid a memorial for Rick—they were worried about the media attention and being recognised.’
We’re all quiet for a minute. Right or wrong, I think we feel a degree of sympathy in regard to the catastrophic way Georgina and Ian’s world has fallen apart over the past few days.
‘Did anyone mention if Robert Weston or his mates were selling drugs?’ I ask.
‘They weren’t specific with names,’ says de Luca. ‘We asked about male attendees with accents or identifying tattoos but got nowhere with that.’
‘Did anyone say Abbey was taking drugs?’
De Luca shakes her head. ‘The general consensus seems to be that she was pretty straight. She wasn’t much of a drinker and didn’t smoke.’
‘What about Rick?’ I ask.
‘It seems it’s a bit easier to throw the definitely dead under the bus,’ says de Luca. ‘Rick was known as someone you could go to for drugs. One girl mentioned he sold her ex-boyfriend some Stilnox tablets last year.’
‘But we found nothing at his house,’ I say, frustrated.
‘I know.’ She sits back in her chair. ‘Maybe that was a one-off. It doesn’t seem like he had a rep for being the town’s drug dealer or anything, just that he knew the people you could go to. He was definitely rougher than his girlfriend—boozing and smoking weed, that kind of thing.’
Just like Gregory Ng.
‘I wonder if that’s part of the reason they broke up,’ I say. ‘Wasn’t there a text Abbey sent him about not stopping something?’
‘Yeah.’ De Luca flicks through the papers in her folder. ‘Here it is. About a month ago Abbey wrote a message to Rick that said: This is really important to me. I don’t like it, especially not after what I told you.’
‘That could have been in reference to drugs, but it also could have been a sex thing,’ I say. ‘Or just a certain kind of behaviour? Working at the pub?’ I reach across the table. ‘Show me.’
She hands me the transcript and I scan the rows of words, the mostly inane back and forth between two teenagers who were oblivious to the fact that one day their communication would be analysed by a roomful of police officers.
Abbey’s texts to Rick since the start of the year are increasingly vague and disinterested; when I read them, I could almost see her slipping away. I scan the messages again, flipping the pages. Rick suspected she was seeing someone else, but nothing on her phone suggests that was the case. However, if even I can see the distance growing between them, this shows something was going on. And if the suspicion only existed in his head, it wasn’t any less powerful.
I say, ‘No one mentioned Rick being violent at the party?’
‘No, not violent,’ says Lane. ‘His fight with Abbey was heated but everyone who witnessed it seems to agree she was just as angry as him. All his mates say he adored her. I get the feeling it kind of annoyed them, you know, that he’d found someone he was so into when they just wanted to have a good time.’
‘Yeah.’ I think back to my high school romance with Jacob. It had been completely consuming; it certainly felt as real as anything I’ve experienced since. Some of our peers were irritated by our interest in each other. They had the sudden realisation there was a binary developmental milestone no one had told us about: those teenagers who experienced this intoxicating madness of love versus those who didn’t. I remember how I felt when Jacob started to slip away. I lost my mind. Had it made Rick crazy too? Crazy enough to destroy it?
‘A lot of the kids reckon Abbey’s run away,’ says Lane, interrupting my trip down memory lane.
I frown. ‘Why?’
‘Because of her dad, mainly, and breaking up with Rick.’
‘It was mostly the boys we spoke to saying that,’ de Luca corrects. ‘The girls are all pretty worried—they don’t think she would have left in the middle of the night.’
‘Me neither,’ I say, ‘but maybe she was desperate. The fact she lied to you about the bike being a gift from her dad is strange,’ I say to Lane. ‘I just can’t work out what that was all about. I wonder if she reported the bike stolen so we’d be less likely to assume she ran away, but then why bring her dad into it?’
Lane makes a frustrated noise. ‘I don’t know.’
I think about Abbey arguing with her dad before the party. Maybe she figured going home after that was akin to a death sentence, and she just freaked out and fled.
‘Did anyone you spoke to say anything about Abbey being violent? Threatening Rick?’
‘No,’ says de Luca. ‘A few of the guys said there were rumours that maybe Abbey killed Rick, but none of them believed it.’
I squeeze my eyes shut; when I open them, little white dots are scattered across the scene in front of me. ‘Any luck with our theory about Aiden and Abbey being involved with each other? Or Aiden’s alibi.’
De Luca shakes her head. ‘None of Aiden’s friends reckoned he was seeing anyone. They all said he’s a bit of a loner and that his brother was his c
losest mate.’
Lane says, ‘I’m still tracking down CCTV of Aiden in Sydney on Monday morning. I spoke to the servo where his credit card pinged, and I’m waiting for the manager to call me back.’
‘Okay.’ I lean against the table again. ‘We’ve got lots to follow up. Let’s keep pushing.’ I give them a pointed look. ‘I’m just going to stay in here while I make a phone call.’ Once they’re gone, I sink into a chair and rest my head on the table.
My call to Mac goes straight to voicemail.
I slam my phone on the table and start shaking. Things feel like they’re slipping further and further out of my control.
I get to my feet. I’m so thirsty.
There’s a knock at the door, and Grange sticks his bald head in. ‘Lab on the phone for you.’
Forgetting about getting a drink, I walk slowly to my desk and take the call.
When I hang up, I turn to find the others all looking at me expectantly.
‘The blood from the ground is Abbey’s,’ I tell them.
Thursday, 14 April
6.32 pm
The confirmation on the blood changes everything and nothing. We go over the possible scenarios for a few minutes, but we’re only slightly less in the dark than we were before. I call the Clarks and endure a ten-minute rant from Daniel about my incompetence while Dot cries in the background.
As I leave the station, I realise I didn’t try to contact Janet Rixon again and decide I’ll call her from the car. But when I hit the bottom of the ramp I see Simon Charleston waiting for me. He looks like a uni student in faded jeans and a T-shirt that reads, OUT OF OFFICE. LEAVE A MESSAGE. A pen sticks out of his unruly hair and there’s a smudge of blue ink on his face.
‘I can’t talk now, Simon,’ I say wearily.
‘Did you speak to Vanessa about the accident?’
‘It all checks out.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it. Something stinks and it all comes back to Tommy.’ Lowering his voice, he steps closer. ‘I know you’ve just landed here but I’ve been sniffing around for a long time. I think something happened with the suspected homicides from years ago. Witnesses were dropping like flies, retracting their statements left, right and centre, and refusing interviews with me. And then suddenly Tommy was promoted and no one could explain it to me. And now there’s the bizarre behaviour at the car accident scene.’ He tenses his jaw and grips it with his hand. ‘Come on, Gemma. I need your help with this. I know you don’t just toe the standard line. Don’t let me down.’