The Survivors(46)

The cemetery was well behind them now. There was no-one on the track ahead or behind. The only sounds were the crunch of their feet and the waves breaking below. Kieran watched Liam as they walked. His head was tilted down, his expression dark.

‘Go on, then,’ Kieran said. ‘What happened?’

Liam looked up at that. A strange tight smile crept across his face. ‘I knew you wanted to ask.’





Chapter 17


Liam squinted as a gust of sea air blew dust and dead leaves across the track. Having been invited to tell his side of the story, he now seemed oddly hesitant.

‘I’d driven Bronte home before, you know.’ He rubbed the corner of his eye with a finger. ‘Loads of times.’

‘Like a weekly thing?’

‘No. I mean, I usually offered. It’s, what, two minutes out of my way? But it was so close and she mostly liked to walk.’ Liam shrugged. ‘The Saturday shift was a late one, though, so sometimes, yeah. I’d offer and she’d say okay.’

One shift and not every week. Kieran wondered exactly how many times counted as ‘loads’ to Liam.

‘She said okay this Saturday?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. We’d been talking. About you, actually.’ Liam glanced over. ‘I didn’t even know you were back and then suddenly you turn up like that.’

‘Right.’ Kieran fought the instinct to apologise. He didn’t have to give notice to come back to his own hometown.

‘Anyway, I was telling Bronte about what had happened back then. She was nice about it.’ Liam seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘I dunno. So we got in my car, put some music on, drove to her place –’

Kieran couldn’t help noticing the cosy language. Liam made it sound like a date.

‘– I parked outside. She had a book she was going to lend me – something by that G.R. Barlin dickhead who’s always hanging around. But she said I should read it, so I went in with her to get it.’

‘She invited you inside?’

‘Yeah. She did.’ Liam sounded defensive. Either Bronte really had invited him, or he really believed she had.

‘Right.’

‘She found the book and we talked for a couple of minutes. But then I had to get up early next morning to go to the gym, so I left.’

No way. Kieran almost laughed. There was no way in this world Liam had been inside the home of the girl he liked after 11 pm on a Saturday night and voluntarily pulled the pin so he could be fresh for his gym session. Kieran didn’t know exactly what had happened, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt it hadn’t happened like that. And what was more, he was pretty sure Sergeant Chris Renn would know it too.

‘So what did you guys talk about at her place?’ he said instead.

‘Bronte’s art mainly. She’d been working on this coastal project all summer. She said she’d got some new ideas she wanted to sketch out.’

There it was, thought Kieran. The polite excuse. I’ve got so much work to do. Probably accompanied by a yawn and a faux-regretful smile while she rested one hand on the open door.

‘Then what?’ he said.

‘I told you,’ Liam said. ‘I headed off. I had to get up for the gym.’

‘How long were you at her place for?’

‘Hardly anything. Ten minutes or something. Then I left.’ Liam stopped walking now and looked at Kieran. The trail had turned to asphalt under their feet. They were nearly back in town. ‘But you know that. You saw me.’

‘When?’ Kieran frowned.

‘On Saturday night. You were walking along Beach Road. I drove right by you.’

Kieran remembered the blinding headlights coming around the bend. The rush of air from a car passing too close and too fast in the night.

‘That was you, was it?’

‘Yeah, didn’t you see? I saw you.’

‘And Mia?’

A tiny beat. ‘Yeah. Both of you.’

Liam was staring at Kieran as he tried to cast his mind back. Could the car have been Liam’s white Holden? He remembered putting his arm out towards Mia. He could hear the roar of the engine, see the tail-lights disappearing into the dark. He wasn’t sure.

‘You remember that, right?’ Liam was frowning now. ‘I know you do. You told my Uncle Sean you saw a car.’ He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. ‘It was mine. Leaving her place.’

‘Sean told you I’d seen a car?’

Liam hesitated. ‘Only after I’d already said that I’d seen you on the road.’

Kieran couldn’t decide if he believed him or not. He pictured Sean’s face at the marina the day before. He wasn’t sure how far Sean would go to help his nephew. Pretty far, probably.

Liam was still watching him. ‘If the cops talk to you –’

‘They already have, they’ve been to my parents’ house.’

‘Oh yeah. That’s right.’ A look flashed across Liam’s face too fast for Kieran to read. ‘Your dad was out walking that night too, wasn’t he?’

Kieran didn’t answer. There was a loaded moment, then Liam took a breath.

‘Look,’ Liam said. ‘I already told the cops that it was me driving, so –’