Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(88)

Dwyer didn’t reply straightaway. Outside in the hall, Falk could hear the sounds of a photocopier firing up. “You ever meet Dean?” the officer said finally.

Falk shook his head.

“Good guy. Well liked around here. Just a normal bloke, accountant, worked locally, so most people knew him. It was a real shock. Walking his dog, wrong place, wrong time. And I’m well aware that boy of his thinks I haven’t done enough.” Dwyer’s eyes fell to the photo of his late daughter. He sounded suddenly deeply exhausted, for the first time since Falk had met him. “But I understand how he feels. I really do.”

Dwyer sat for a moment longer, staring at the desk, then cleared his throat and checked his watch. He fixed Falk with a steady look, back to his more familiar self.

“Tell me something about Kim. Something I don’t know.”

Falk gave a short laugh. “Pretty sure you know everything I know.”

“Bullshit.” Dwyer was good-natured but firm. “You were at that christening yesterday. Everyone relaxed, chatting. Reflecting. You can’t tell me there was nothing.”

Falk started to shake his head, then stopped. There was possibly something, he remembered now.

“Well, you might already know this, but she’d left her job about a year before she disappeared. Resigned, but hadn’t told anyone. Not here, anyway. Rohan said she was stressed about work in general, rather than anything specific.”

“Told you there was something.” Dwyer allowed himself to look smug for half a second before growing serious again. “What was Kim doing for money, in that case?”

“Maybe nothing. She would have been pregnant not long after.”

“You’d expect Rohan would be earning a decent enough wage as an engineer.” Dwyer looked at Falk. “Or are you thinking financial problems?”

“I really wouldn’t know. Not about them. I always tend to lean into the finances, though. Part of the job. Rule it in until I can rule it out. Might be worth considering.”

“Yeah. I will.” Dwyer frowned. “It’s a shame Kim gave up her work, though. For any reason. She was good. We have community fundraising days every year; I do a bit for that addiction charity I’m involved with. Kim ran her own business so she used to design the posters and banners for us at cost.” He swiveled his chair a few degrees so he could see out of the window, onto the main street. “Her office was just over there before she moved to Adelaide, so I’d see her most days, coming and going.”

Falk looked over Dwyer’s shoulder. Across the road, he could make out what looked to be a shared office space. Two businesses—31A and 31B, Falk could read if he squinted—with a shared frontage and entrance.

“That’s where she worked, is it?” Falk said. “What’s in there now?”

“Print shop.” Dwyer pointed to the left-hand office, then the right. “Lawyer.”

“Were either of those operating when Kim still worked there?”

“No.” At the question, Dwyer swung back a little in his chair to look at Falk. His expression was unreadable. “They weren’t.”

“What?” said Falk.

Dwyer paused, debating silently. “You’re going to read something into this.”

“I’ll do my best not to.”

“You will, though.” Dwyer didn’t sound judgmental, simply resigned to the inevitable. On the desk, his phone started ringing. He reached for it, but didn’t answer immediately. “You’re going to see something that’s not there. You will. But you’ll be wrong.”

“Okay.”

“One cop to another, this is a small town. It’s just one of those things.”

“Try me.”

“For a couple of years, Kim had the office on the right.” Dwyer picked up the phone. “And until he died, Dean Tozer had the place on the left.”





30


Dwyer was right, Falk hated to admit as he stood on the street in front of the office block that Kim and Dean had once shared. Falk’s immediate instinct was to read a whole book into that.

He’d left Dwyer to his phone call and walked out of the station and straight across the road. Falk looked at the businesses now—31A and 31B—and was fairly sure he could feel the officer’s eyes on him through the station window. Falk didn’t mind. If the situation were reversed, he’d be watching, too.

Dwyer had been adamant, though, and Falk knew from personal experience that coincidences were almost daily occurrences in small towns. Still. He breathed out and consciously pushed his instinctive reaction down. Then looked again.

The offices were both nondescript, glass-fronted spaces, with a view out onto the main street. There were two people working in the print shop, and a lone woman in the lawyer’s office, who regarded Falk warily from her desk when she spotted him peering in. He moved on quickly. From what he could tell from the external layout, the businesses shared nothing but a front door and entrance hall. The occupants would see each other arriving and leaving, but not necessarily during the day. Not unless they wanted to, which Falk supposed they might. Kim and Dean had gotten along, from everything he’d heard, and they’d both been close to Charlie.

Falk stepped away and walked slowly the whole stretch up and down the main street, past some of the shops he’d been in earlier. He ignored them now, looking beyond the retail fronts and instead counting office spaces. He spotted eight that he thought looked suitable for small to medium businesses. About what he’d expected, give or take. If Kim and Dean had both wanted to work in the center of town, the choice was not exhaustive. And that choice would have been dictated further by other factors, Falk guessed, such as lease availability. But the fact was, Kim and Dean had found themselves working side by side, for a while at least.