The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(19)

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 he 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.