Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2)(51)

‘I ran into Lauren outside the lodge,’ he said.

‘Oh yes?’ Carmen passed him a towel and sat across from him, tucking her legs under herself. She pulled her hair across one shoulder and rubbed it dry while Falk filled her in on their conversation. About the cabin, about the argument, about Alice. Outside, the rain pounded against the window.

‘I hope Lauren’s underestimating Alice,’ Carmen said when he’d finished. ‘One of the rangers was telling me that even he would struggle out there in this weather. Assuming Alice did actually walk off of her own accord.’

Falk thought again of the voicemail. Hurt her. ‘Are you thinking something else now?’

‘I don’t know.’ Carmen pulled the scrapbook between them and turned the pages. They were filled with newspaper clippings, the edges wrinkled where the glue had dried. ‘I was flicking through this while I was waiting for you. It’s a community history for tourists.’

She found the page she wanted and turned it to face him.

‘Here. They’ve glossed over the Kovac years – not surprising – but I guess they couldn’t ignore it completely.’

Falk looked down. It was a newspaper article about Martin Kovac’s sentencing. Jailed for life, according to the headline. Falk could guess why that article had been included rather than any others. It was a full stop. A line drawn under a dark period. The article was a feature piece, recapping the investigation and the trial. Near the bottom of the page, three dead women smiled out from three photographs. Eliza. Victoria. Gail. And the fourth one, Sarah Sondenberg. Fate unknown.

Falk had seen pictures of Kovac’s victims before, but not recently and not all together like this. He sat opposite Carmen in the darkened cabin and shone his beam over each face. Blonde hair, neat features, slim. Definitely pretty. All at once, he saw what Carmen had seen.

Eliza, Victoria, Gail, Sarah.

Alice?

Falk met each of the dead women’s eyes, then he shook his head. ‘She’s too old. These four were all in their teens or twenties.’

‘Alice is too old now. But she wouldn’t have been back then. How old would she have been when this was all happening? Late teens?’ Carmen tilted the book to better see the photos, the newsprint skin ghostly grey in the torchlight. ‘They’d all be about the same age if they’d lived.’

Falk didn’t say anything. Next to the four faces was a large image of Martin Kovac taken shortly before his arrest. It was a casual shot, snapped by a friend or neighbour. It had been reproduced hundreds of times over the years, in newspapers and on TV. Kovac was standing by a barbecue. A true blue Aussie bloke in his singlet, shorts and boots. The obligatory stubbie in his hand and the grin on his face. Above that, his eyes were narrowed against the sun, and his curly hair was a mess. He looked thin but strong, and even in a photo the muscle tone was visible on his arms.

Falk knew the image, but for the first time now, he noticed something else. In the background of the shot, sliced in half by the edge of the photo, the blurred rear of a child’s bicycle was visible. It wasn’t much. A small bare leg, a boy’s sandal on a pedal, the back of a striped t-shirt, a glimpse of dark hair. The child was impossible to identify, but as Falk stared, he felt his skin prickle. He dragged his eyes away, from the boy, from Martin Kovac, from the long-ago gazes of the four women staring up at him.

‘I don’t know,’ Carmen said. ‘It’s a long shot. It just struck me.’

‘Yeah. I see why.’

She looked at the bushland outside. ‘I suppose whatever’s happened, at least we know Alice is in there. It’s a huge area, but it’s finite. She has to be found eventually.’

‘Sarah Sondenberg wasn’t.’

‘No. But Alice has got to be somewhere. She hasn’t walked back to Melbourne.’

Thoughts of the city nudged something in Falk’s mind. Out of the window, he could just make out the space where Daniel Bailey’s car had been until today. A black BMW, spacious. Tinted windows. A large boot. A four-wheel drive was parked there now.

‘We’re going to need to talk to Daniel Bailey again,’ Falk said. ‘Follow him back to Melbourne. Find out what he said to Alice on that first night.’

Carmen nodded. ‘I’ll call the office, let them know.’

‘Do you want me to –?’

‘No, it’s all right. You took it last time. I’ll do it tonight. See what they have to say.’

They managed to share a smile at that. They both knew exactly what would be said. Get the contracts. It’s crucial you get the contracts. Understand that it is imperative you get the contracts. The smile faded from Falk’s face. He understood. He just didn’t know how they were going to do it.

As the wind howled outside, he let himself ask the question that had been eating at him. If Alice was still out there because of them, was it worth it? He wished they knew more about the bigger picture of the operation, but he also knew the details didn’t really matter. However it was painted, the bigger picture always showed the same thing: a handful of people at the top of the tree feeding off the vulnerable below.

He looked over at Carmen. ‘Why did you join this division?’

‘Finance?’ She smiled in the dark. ‘That’s a question I usually get asked at the staff Christmas party, always by some drunk bloke with a confused look on his face.’ She shifted on the bed. ‘I was invited to join child protection, back when I first started. A lot of it’s algorithms and programming now. I did a placement, but –’ Her voice was tight. ‘I couldn’t handle the frontline stuff over there.’