Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(35)

Falk brushed his teeth and sat on the bed. He settled back against the headboard, his hand reaching toward the light on the bedside table but his eyes on Raco’s file. Five minutes, he decided. He was ready for sleep, but also curious what exactly his mate had found to fill a folder quite so thick.

The answer, Falk could see immediately when he opened the cover, was a robust and practical job typical of Raco’s policing style these days. Maps—of the town, the festival site, the reservoir, the bushland—had been cataloged and annotated with notes and times and helpful lists of key points. Raco had summarized some witness statements, including Falk’s own, and had managed to get his hands on photocopies of the originals of others. The bartender in the ale tent. The couple who had seen a woman arguing with a man in the parking lot.

—she had on dark jeans or pants. I could not see her top clearly because she was leaning into the car on the driver’s side, but it was white or light colored. The woman sounded annoyed and said to the driver something like: “If you are lying to me, I will find out.” I did not hear his response because we were walking away and—



Falk turned the page. Another one, this time from a woman in the ladies’ toilets.

—waiting in line and I could hear crying from inside a cubicle. It was the second or third cubicle on the left. It was a woman and she was upset and I considered asking if she was okay, but there were a lot of people in the line and I felt like it wasn’t any of my business. I go to the festival every year and you do get people who have overdone it and are emotional. I heard a mobile phone ring from inside the cubicle and the woman stopped crying. She answered it and she said: “Hello.” And then: “I’m still here. Where are you?” I was at the front of the line by then so went to use the toilet myself and did not hear any more. I knew Kim Gillespie between the ages of approximately sixteen and twenty. I was friends with her mother, Deborah, before she and her husband moved to Canada and since then I have run into Kim from time to time when she came back to Marralee to visit. I believe it was Kim’s voice I heard—



Falk moved on, marking spots to return to when he felt more alert. It was an interesting collection of material. Raco had said he’d compiled this to help Zara’s understanding, but there was information in there that Falk highly doubted he’d ever show her. Studies of body decomposition rates in South Australian waters, for one. Several times, Falk found himself staring blankly at a page for several minutes, trying to work out its significance. An algae report, or the minutes of the previous year’s festival committee’s annual meeting.

Falk yawned and half-heartedly opened a worn envelope to find a packet of grainy nighttime photos. They had the familiar blurred quality that instantly dated them as having been taken before smartphones and instant edits. He recognized Kim in the first photo, no more than sixteen or seventeen at the time, but a beer bottle in her hand. It was dark, and her face was lit by something out of shot. A campfire, Falk guessed from the glow. She was sitting on a blanket with her legs tucked under her and was making a face at the camera.

Falk could feel exhaustion creeping over him, and he’d seen plenty of photos of Kim that evening. He started to replace them in the envelope, then stopped as something on the back of a picture caught his eye. He turned it over. It was a number in Raco’s handwriting: 11. Falk flicked through the rest of the shots. Each had been numbered, from one to thirty-six. Recently, too, he guessed. The ink looked far fresher than the photos.

Falk checked inside the envelope again and found what he’d been hoping for: a folded sheet of paper, also with the numbers one through thirty-six in Raco’s writing. Falk scanned the list.

3. Kim.

4. Kim, Naomi,??

Falk searched through the photos until he found the ones numbered three and four. Number three showed Kim sitting alone on the picnic blanket with her beer. In four, Kim was in the same spot but had been joined by Naomi, along with an unnamed teenage boy with cropped hair and a bottle in each hand. He was leaning over the girls, his arms heavy on their shoulders. Both girls’ faces were fixed in tight, dutiful smiles, but neither looked particularly happy about it.

Falk shuffled through the rest of the pictures. From the clothes, he could tell they’d all been taken on the same evening. A party around a campfire, almost everyone holding drinks. He didn’t recognize most of the faces, and flicked back and forth to the list.

15. Me and?? Maybe Wade’s cousin? Raco had written against a photo of himself, laughing like best friends with a tall bloke whose name he obviously could no longer recall.

16. Shane, Jen C., Charlie,?? Shane, huge next to Jen C., was bending down to plant a drunken kiss on her cheek. Her eyes were bright, and she was pink-cheeked with what looked like pure delight. Charlie was grinning at the camera, his arm snug around the waist of an unnamed girl who was decidedly not Kim.

Falk paused. Raco may not know the girl in the photo, but anyone could recognize the flirtatious energy in the shot. How had Kim felt about that, Falk wondered, if she’d even been aware? He worked through the images again, more slowly this time. He could find none of Charlie and Kim together.

He paused at shot number nineteen, though, labeled in Raco’s neat handwriting: Dean, Rohan, Gemma.

The scene was badly lit and Falk had not recognized her immediately, but he could see it now. She looked softer and very young, but so did everyone. He looked from her to Dean. If there had been any hint of the romance that would blossom, it was derailed quite neatly by Rohan, bang in the middle of the pair and tipping a beer to the photographer, his face flushed. He wasn’t alone in that. Every one of them looked worse for wear.