The Survivors(55)

‘This the Portuguese boyfriend?’ Kieran said, and Olivia looked over.

‘Marco? Yeah, that was him. Sean managed to dig up his last name, by the way. He and Bronte had gone snorkelling once, so it was in the payment records.’ Olivia shut another drawer and opened the final one. ‘Jesus, where are they?’ She nodded at Audrey. ‘She’s got hold of something, by the way.’

Kieran looked down at his daughter, who had fallen suspiciously quiet. She had managed to grasp a black electrical cord that was snaking across the desk and was clutching it in her chubby hand, doing her best with limited coordination skills to get it into her mouth.

‘No. Sorry, Audrey.’ Kieran reached for the cord. ‘What have you got here, anyway?’

The cord was a little unusual, thicker than a phone cable and with an odd-shaped attachment at the loose end. He’d seen something like it before though, he felt. More than once, probably. He ran his hand along its length, trying to place it as he tugged it away from Audrey. She had a tight grip and in the end Kieran had to prise it from her fist. Audrey shrieked in protest.

‘What’s she after?’ Mia said, the sound bringing her to the door.

‘Nothing. A charger or something.’

Kieran pushed the cord aside and swapped Audrey to the other knee as he turned back to the book. More sketches. Lyn the waitress wiping a table. George Barlin, looking much more candid and realistic than in his author photo. Olivia with her head down.

Kieran was about to point out the drawing to Olivia when he stopped. A pair of familiar eyes gazed out from the opposite page. Verity. She was staring into the middle distance, her chin tilted up, and had been caught seemingly unaware in the pose. Kieran looked at his mother. It was a little unnerving to see her in this setting, in this dead girl’s rented room. It was an excellent likeness. It was impossible to ignore the hollow look in Verity’s eyes.

When had it been drawn, Kieran wondered, and under what circumstances? He couldn’t imagine Verity posing willingly, but when he flipped through to the handful of loose reference photos tucked inside the back cover, they were only of scenery. He leafed through them. The beach, the town, the lookout. No faces.

Maybe Bronte had drawn people from memory, or maybe she’d got rid of the photos when she was finished. She had kept the photo of the Portuguese boyfriend though, Kieran thought, whatever could be made of that.

He turned another few pages and the portraits gave way to watercolours of the coast and seascapes, with more reference photos tucked in alongside. He looked at the paintings of the beach and thought about the first time he’d ever seen Bronte, down at the water’s edge. She had obviously been looking for ideas then, he realised now. He remembered her holding a length of seaweed in her hands. Crouching down by the shore.

Audrey was grizzling again on his knee, still trying to reach the black electrical charger.

‘For God’s sake, Audrey.’

Kieran tried to wind the cord out of the way but it was plugged in under the desk. He began to push it out of sight instead, then stopped. Something was edging its way into his thoughts. After a moment, he slowly reached down to the skirting board and pulled the plug free.

Beside him, Olivia extracted a set of keys from a drawer with a noise of relief.

‘Finally.’ She held them up in faint triumph, then looked over to see Kieran holding the charger. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he said but, curious now, he stood and ran his eye once more over Bronte’s minimal belongings. The bed, the clothes rail, a small chest of drawers, the desk, the mirror propped against the wall, a small bookshelf. Not many places to put something, and yet the whole room had that same rummaged-through feel as the rest of the house. More so, in fact, which was not surprising. The police would have been particularly thorough in here, he guessed.

Kieran wound the cable around his hand, still keeping it out of reach of Audrey, much to her disappointment. He could see no sign of what he was looking for, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. For the sake of completeness, he put Audrey over his shoulder and leaned down to check under the bed. A few pairs of shoes were lined up beneath, along with a battered suitcase. Streaks in the dust suggested the police had already checked there, and more than once.

‘What are you doing?’ Olivia’s voice had an edge to it and Kieran looked up. The daylight streaming through the window cast her face into shadow.

Mia appeared at the doorway. ‘What’s going on?’

Kieran stood again and frowned. He held out his hand, dusty now from where he’d pressed it against the floor. The black charger dangled from his palm.

‘That first day we saw Bronte on the beach,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she have a camera?’





Chapter 20


Kieran held out the camera charger. Olivia looked at it, then over to Bronte’s desk, where the black length of cord had been plugged into the wall at one end, and into nothing at the other. Finally, she reached out and took it from Kieran, winding the cord slowly around her palm.

‘Excuse me.’ Olivia’s voice was strangely calm as she edged past Mia in the doorway, walking down the hall to the living room, where Sergeant Renn had her overnight bag open and was writing down the contents in his notebook. It was very difficult not to look furtive carrying out a task like that, Kieran thought, and Renn was no exception, straightening quickly as they came in.