The Survivors(18)

She was still clinging to that then, Kieran noted.

‘Accident or not –’ the man on the steps cut in. He was reading something on his phone. ‘It sounds like someone was seen with her.’

‘How would you know that?’ Ash snapped.

‘Evelyn Bay Online Community Hub.’ The man regarded Ash. ‘You’re not a regular on the EBOCH forum then, I take it?’

‘No.’ Ash actually laughed. ‘If I want to know what my nan and her mates think about last week’s bin collection, I’ll pop down the retirement home and ask them.’

‘Fair enough. Although personally –’ The man shrugged, his eyes still on Ash. ‘– I always find it quite interesting what people care enough to bitch about.’

An odd tension that Kieran couldn’t even begin to read passed between the two men.

‘Sorry, mate.’ He jumped in before Ash could respond. ‘You said someone was seen with Bronte? Does it say who?’

The man scanned his screen, then shook his head.

‘Not yet.’ He dropped his phone in his pocket and headed down the steps. ‘But give it five minutes.’

Ash looked like he was about to say something more when his own phone buzzed. He pulled it out, relief flashing across his face. Kieran watched his expression change as he read the text message.

‘Shit,’ he breathed as he read it again.

What? Kieran wanted to ask, but all at once he found himself picturing Bronte. Standing knee-deep in the sea. Holding out the lost property box. Lying very still on the sand. And suddenly he didn’t want to be the one to ask.

‘Shit,’ Ash said again, turning the screen so Kieran could read the message. ‘From Sean. The person seen with her was Liam.’





Chapter 8


‘Oh my God.’ Lyn broke the silence. ‘Liam.’

She breathed out the name with a haze of smoke as they all looked at the darkened windows of the Surf and Turf, where twelve hours earlier Liam had been flipping burgers while Bronte served tables. Kieran waited for the rush of denial, the surely-not-I-can’t-believe-he-would-ever breathless astonishment, but Lyn’s lips stayed wrapped around her cigarette. She took a deep, slow drag.

Ash was staring blankly at his phone, his thumb hovering above the screen, while Mia re-tied Audrey’s hat firmly under her chin, fumbling with the straps.

Kieran’s own thoughts were lurching haphazardly through the night before. Through the drinks, the chat, the kind gesture from a casual waitress, before circling back to one specific moment.

You kill someone – Liam’s words had floated from the kitchen hatch – you deserve all the shit that’s coming your way.

Somewhere inside Kieran, deep beneath soft hoary layers of guilt, a mean worm pulsated and rolled over. He breathed in and out, and opened his mouth.

‘I suppose we should wait until we know more,’ he said out loud, because he felt someone should.

They knew plenty more soon enough. The whispers and hearsay and heated exclamations were already bouncing from mouth to ear until, in fits and starts, the story seeped out.

Kick-out time at the Surf and Turf was set in stone, and the night before had been no exception. At 11 pm, the music was cut, customers were shown the door and the mops and scrubbing brushes came out for the thirty-minute nightly clean and re-set.

But it being the end of the summer and Julian Wallis being a reasonable man, the front-of-house and kitchen staff were one by one given the nod to head off early as they wrapped up their tasks.

At 11.13 pm, Liam Gilroy was recorded on the main street CCTV cameras standing on the empty pavement not far from the restaurant’s entrance. Two minutes and forty seconds later, Bronte Laidler appeared in the frame. She stopped a few paces away from Liam. They appeared to be talking. Liam had pointed to his car, a five-year-old white Holden. Bronte had nodded. Four minutes and six seconds after he first appeared on camera, Liam climbed behind the wheel, Bronte got into the passenger seat, and they both shut their doors. The car drove out of sight. There were no other cameras to capture what happened next.

Shortly before 11.30 pm, the neighbour who had bought the home to the left of Fisherman’s Cottage thirty-eight years earlier for a price that now sounded like pocket change, rose from her couch as the end titles of a James Bond film rolled, and moved to the window to pull closed a gap in her curtains. As she tugged the fabric together, she noted a vehicle that didn’t belong to any of the nearby homes parked on the street outside. Light in colour, was all she could remember.

Some twenty minutes later, the same neighbour – teeth brushed and alarm clock set – opened her back door to allow her terrier-cross to stretch its legs for a final time. As she waited, she thought she heard faint voices floating from the direction of the beach.

She was unable to commit to either a male or female tone, nor comment on the topic of discussion. They had been talking, she had insisted. Nothing more. Not arguing and certainly not fighting, or as an active member of the Evelyn Bay Neighbourhood Watch scheme she would have recalled her training and summoned the police.

Either way, by the time she had called her dog inside and taken herself off to bed, she had forgotten all about it, until Sergeant Chris Renn had knocked on her door the next morning, and asked how well she’d known the young waitress who had been staying in the cottage next door.