The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(28)

“Oh, go on. Bugger off,” he said, lifting the counter hatch. “Have a good weekend. We’ll just have to hope the town doesn’t burn to the ground at one minute to five, won’t we?”

Deborah straightened her spine like a woman fortified by the knowledge she’d been in the right all along.

“Bye, then,” she said to Raco. She gave Falk a tiny curt nod, her gaze firmly on his forehead rather than his eyes.

Falk felt a cold bead of understanding drop somewhere in his chest. She knew. He wasn’t really surprised. Assuming Deborah was Kiewarra born and bred, she was the right age to remember Ellie Deacon. It had been the most dramatic thing ever to happen in Kiewarra, at least until the Hadlers’ deaths. She’d probably tutted over coffee as she’d read the newspaper articles under Ellie’s black-and-white photo. Traded nuggets of gossip with neighbors. Perhaps she’d known his dad. Before it happened, of course. She wouldn’t have admitted to knowing the Falk family afterward.

Hours after Luke’s face had disappeared from his bedroom window, Aaron lay awake. The events ran through his head on a loop. Ellie, the river, fishing, the note. Luke and I were shooting rabbits together.

He waited for it all night, but when the knock came at last, it wasn’t for him. Falk watched in mute horror as his father was forced to wash the fields from his hands and accompany the officers to the station. The name on the note did not specify which Falk, they said, and at sixteen, the younger one was technically still a child.

Erik Falk, a willowy and stoic man, was kept in the station for five hours.

Did he know Ellie Deacon? Yes, of course. She was a neighbor’s child. She was a friend of his son’s. She was the girl who was missing.

He was asked for an alibi for the day of her death. He’d been out much of the afternoon buying supplies. In the evening he had popped into the pub. Had been seen by a dozen people in a handful of locations. Tight enough, if not quite watertight. So the questions continued. Yes, he had spoken to the girl in the past. Several times? Yes. Many times? Probably. And no. He could not explain why Ellie Deacon had a note with his name on it and the date of her death.

But Falk wasn’t only his name, was it? the officers said pointedly. At that, Aaron’s father fell silent. He clamped down and refused to say another word.

They let him go, and then it was his son’s turn.

“Barnes is on temporary transfer from Melbourne,” Raco said as Falk followed him under the hatch to the office. Behind them, the station door slammed shut, and they were alone.

“Really?” Falk was surprised. Barnes had the wholesome milk-fed look of a homegrown country boy.

“Yeah, his parents are in farming, though. Not here; somewhere out west. I think that made him the obvious choice for the placement. I feel for the guy really; his backside barely touched the ground in the city before they sent him up here. Having said that—” Raco glanced toward the closed station door, then reconsidered. “Never mind.”

Falk could guess. It was a rare day when a city force sent its best officer on a country temporary transfer, especially to a place like Kiewarra. Barnes was unlikely to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Raco may have been too tactful to say it, but the message was clear. In this station, he was pretty much on his own.

They put the box of Karen’s and Billy’s belongings on a spare desk and opened it. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. At the window, a fly bashed itself repeatedly against the glass.

Aaron sat on a wooden chair, his bladder nervous and aching, and stuck to the plan. I was with Luke Hadler. Shooting rabbits. Two; we got two. Yes, Ellie is—was, I mean—my friend. Yes, I saw her at school that day. No! We didn’t fight. I didn’t even see her later. I didn’t attack her. I was with Luke Hadler. I was with Luke Hadler. We were shooting rabbits. I was with Luke Hadler.

They had to let him go.

Some of the whispers took on a new shape then. Not murder, perhaps, but suicide. A vulnerable girl led up the path by the Falk boy was a popular version. Pursued and used by his slightly odd father was another. Who was to say? Either way, between them they as good as killed her. The rumors were fed well by Ellie’s father, Mal Deacon, and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.

One night a brick was thrown through the Falks’ front window. Two days later, Aaron’s father was turned away from the corner shop. Forced to walk out empty-handed with burning eyes and his groceries piled on the counter. The following afternoon, Aaron was followed home from school by three men in a truck. They crept behind him as he pedaled his bike faster and faster, wobbling every time he dared look over his shoulder, his breath loud in his ears.

Raco reached into the box and laid out the contents in a line on the desk.

There was a coffee mug, a stapler with “Karen” written on in Wite-Out, a heavy-knit cardigan, a small bottle of perfume called Spring Fling, and a framed picture of Billy and Charlotte. It was a meager offering.

Falk opened up the frame and looked behind the photo. Nothing. He put it back together. Across the desk, Raco took the cap off the perfume and sprayed it. A light citrusy scent floated into the air. Falk liked it.

They moved on to Billy’s belongings: three paintings of cars, a small pair of gym shoes, a beginner’s reading book, and a pack of coloring pencils. Falk turned over the pages of the book, not at all sure what he was looking for.