The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(14)

Falk shook his head. “You?”

“One on the way. A little girl.”

“Congratulations.”

“We’ve got an army of nieces and nephews, though. Not here; back home in South Australia. A few around Billy’s age. Couple a bit younger,” Raco said, taking back the tablet and scrolling through the photos. “And the thing is, my brothers know every one of their kids’ hiding places. You send them blindfolded into their kids’ bedrooms, and they could find them in two seconds.”

He tapped the screen.

“Every possible way I look at these photos, it looks like a search,” Raco said. “Someone who didn’t know Billy’s hiding spots methodically working his way through. Is he in the cupboard? No. Under the bed? No. It’s like the kid was hunted down.”

Falk stared hard at the dark smudge that had once been Billy Hadler.

“Show me where you found Charlotte.”

The nursery across the hall was decorated in yellow. A musical mobile dangled from the ceiling above an empty space.

“Gerry and Barb took the cot,” Raco explained.

Falk looked around the room. It felt so different from the others. Furniture and carpet still intact. No acrid bleach stink in there. It had the feel of a sanctuary, untouched by the horror that had unfolded outside the door.

“Why didn’t Luke kill Charlotte?” Falk said.

“The popular money’s on conscience and guilt kicking in.”

Falk walked out, back across the hall to Billy’s bedroom. He stood at the bloodstain in the corner, turned 180 degrees, and strode back across the hall into Charlotte’s room.

“Eight steps,” Falk said. “But I’m pretty tall. So we’ll call it nine for most people. Nine steps from Billy’s body to where Charlotte was lying like a sitting duck. And Luke would’ve had the adrenaline going, blood pumping, red mist, the works. So nine steps. The question is, is that enough time for a total change of heart?”

“Doesn’t sound like enough to me.”

Falk thought about the man he’d known. What had once been a clear picture was now distorted and fuzzy.

“Did you ever meet Luke?” he said.

“No.”

“He could change his mood like flipping a coin. Nine steps could be eight more than he needed.”

But for the first time since he’d returned to Kiewarra, Falk felt a pinprick of genuine doubt.

“It’s supposed to be a statement, though, isn’t it? Something like this. It’s personal. He murdered his entire family. That’s what you want people to say. Luke’s wife of seven years is bleeding out on the hall floor and he’s spent—what, two minutes? Three?—turning the bedroom upside down to murder his own son. He’s planning to kill himself when he’s finished. So if it was Luke”—he hesitated slightly on the word if—“why does his daughter get to live?”

They stood for a moment, both looking at the mobile hanging still and silent above the empty cot space. Why slaughter a whole family bar the baby? Falk turned it back and forth in his mind until he could think of a few reasons, but only one good one.

“Maybe whoever was here that day didn’t kill the baby because they just didn’t need to kill the baby,” Falk said finally. “Nothing personal about it. Doesn’t matter who you are, thirteen-month-olds don’t make good witnesses.”





6


“They’re not crash hot about me coming in here generally,” Raco said with a note of regret as he put two beers on the table at the Fleece. The table lurched lopsidedly under the weight, slopping a centimeter of liquid over the scratched surface. He had been home to change out of his uniform and had returned with a thick file labeled Hadler under his arm. “I’m not great for business. Everyone always has to make a big show of putting their car keys away.”

They glanced over at the barman. It was the same large, bearded bloke from the night before. He was watching them over the top of a newspaper.

“Policeman’s lot. Cheers.” Falk raised his glass and took a long swallow. He’d always been able to take or leave the booze, but at that moment he was glad of it. It was early evening quiet in the pub, and they were holed up alone in a corner. On the far side of the room three men stared with bovine blankness at greyhound racing on the TV. Falk didn’t recognize them, and they ignored him in turn. In the back room, the slot machines blinked and whistled. The air-conditioning was blowing Arctic cold.

Raco took a sip. “So what now?”

“Now you tell Clyde you’ve got concerns,” Falk said.

If I’m guilty, so are you.

“I go to the Clyde cops now, it’ll send them straight into arse-covering mode.” Raco frowned. “You know what’ll be going through their heads if they think they’ve stuffed this up. They’ll make a gymnastics team, bending over backward to prove their investigation was sound. I know I would.”

“I’m not sure you’ve got a choice. Something like this. It’s not a one-man job.”

“We’ve got Barnes.”

“Who?”

“My constable at the station. So that’s three of us.”

“That’s only two of you, mate,” Falk said. “I can’t stay.”