Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(14)

“Thanks, we should, I suppose.”

Falk walked over to the nearest box, waiting his turn as other volunteers reached in. Nearby, he could hear Rohan being accosted by a couple of older men who were asking about his dad’s health.

“—thank you, yeah, so far he’s still ignoring pretty much everything the doctors want him to do,” Rohan was saying. “But Mum’s keeping him in line, lots of veggies, no booze. So, fingers crossed.”

Over by the stall, Falk could see the large, broad-shouldered employee had come out from behind the table and was now standing with Charlie. They had been joined by a petite blond woman who was wearing a crisp white shirt that opened low at the neckline and was tucked at her waist into dark skinny jeans. The three of them talked softly while pretending not to watch Zara as she thanked the reporter and photographer, then extracted herself neatly from the crowd and headed directly over to the teenage boy.

The boy straightened as she approached, and she reached up and they hugged briefly. Zara handed him some leaflets and said something Falk couldn’t hear but could guess from the body language.

Was that okay?

The boy nodded. Yeah. Good.

Neither smiled. Zara pointed somewhere toward the east of the festival site, and the boy gave a small shrug of agreement.

Falk reached the front of the line and grabbed a stack of paper from the box, then headed back to Raco, whom he could tell had also had his eye on Zara’s exchange.

“Here.” Falk passed him a handful of flyers.

“Thanks, mate,” Raco said, without glancing at them. “Listen—” He was still watching as Zara and the boy walked off together. “I reckon there are enough people covering the grounds. Let’s head down to the reservoir. See what we see.”

“Yeah, okay,” Falk said, a little surprised. He shuffled the flyers straight in his hands, looked once more at Kim’s face gazing out, and took half a step toward Raco. He angled his head, so Charlie and the others couldn’t see what he was saying, and lowered his voice. “Mate, is something about all this bothering you?”

Raco was still looking past him, his eyes following Zara as she and the boy weaved their way through the festivalgoers. “It’s bothering her.”

Not answering the question was sometimes the same as answering it, Falk thought, but he didn’t push it.

“All right.” He turned in time to see Zara disappear into the crowd, and nodded to Raco. “Then let’s go and take a look.”





5


“She reckons she’s spotted her mum a couple of times this past year,” Raco said to Falk as they headed deeper into the festival grounds. The meandering nature of the foot traffic made it difficult to lift their pace much beyond a leisurely stroll. The warm evening air was heavy with the aromas of deep-fried batter and cinnamon.

“Zara has?” Falk took a quick step to one side to dodge a small child on a scooter.

“Yeah.” Up ahead, Raco’s niece bobbed in and out of view as she and the boy moved through the crowd. “Every now and again she gets one of these false glimpses.”

“That’s a pretty common response, though,” Falk said. “Especially when a body isn’t found. I suppose they don’t feel false at the time.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told her.”

“She wasn’t convinced?”

“Not really. She doesn’t want to be convinced, that’s part of the prob—No, thanks, not for me,” Raco said politely as a tray bearing free samples of homemade blue cheese was thrust in front of him. “One was at the supermarket here in town. Zara said she saw Kim pass by the end of an aisle. Would not let it drop. In the end, the manager let her and Dwyer take the security footage to the station.”

“Did she find who she’d seen?”

“Kind of. It was no one, just some woman. Apparently she didn’t even look much like Kim. No one you’d normally confuse her with. Then another time, Zara and Charlie were in Adelaide, and Zara made him turn the car around and follow a bus because she thought she’d seen Kim getting on. She hadn’t, obviously. After that, Charlie was—” Raco sighed. “I dunno. More worried. He doesn’t know what to do, either.”

“Rita said you’d been back here a few times to talk to Zara?”

“Three. Not counting this trip.” Raco looked down at the flyer in his hand. “Charlie thought maybe going through things from a police perspective might help. Talking her through the evidence and statements and things. Doesn’t feel like it has, though.”

Raco suddenly slowed on the path, apologizing as a distracted couple wandering arm in arm close behind bumped into him. Falk glanced over his own shoulder then stopped, too, following Raco’s gaze. Zara and the boy had positioned themselves near the beer tent. The same spot where a woman—drunk, emotional, and loosely matching the physical description of Kim Gillespie—had been cut off by the bartender toward the end of the evening.

Falk and Raco watched as Zara engaged a young family who were clearly reluctant to stop. Whatever Zara said was good enough to slow the parents’ stride and, in a movement swift enough to be choreographed, the boy had stepped out and presented a flyer in a way that gave them very little choice but to take it. Zara continued speaking, everything about her manner earnest and urgent, and by the time the family was allowed to walk away, they were all looking at the flyer, and the man was pointing to it as his partner nodded. A few more people now aware of the appeal, Falk thought, as Zara and the boy quickly homed in on their next targets. The kids were doing a very thorough job. Falk glanced over at Raco, who seemed to be thinking the same.