The Survivors(81)

‘Liam didn’t do it,’ he said, his voice smothered. ‘I know him. I’m not sure what more I can say.’

Kieran didn’t reply, and eventually Sean looked up.

‘You too, hey?’ He sounded resigned. ‘Throw away the key?’

‘Mate, no.’ Kieran shook his head. ‘I honestly have no idea. You know Liam better than I do. And the cops haven’t made a move on him, have they? So that’s something.’

They both looked over to Renn, who had taken a computer tablet out of his bag and was looking at the screen, flicking through in a way that was unremarkable but suddenly felt very familiar to Kieran.

‘Pendlebury was down at the caves earlier,’ Sean said, reading Kieran’s mind. ‘I saw her from the boat.’

‘Yeah, I saw her too. Mia and I were –’ Kieran saw Mia heading towards them, and moved over to make room for her. ‘I was just saying to Sean that we saw Pendlebury at the caves.’

‘Did she say what she was doing?’ Sean said. ‘Seemed like she was there for a while.’

‘No. She was looking at The Survivors.’

‘Oh.’ Sean frowned. ‘Why from the beach? Why not the lookout? Or the water, even?’

‘Don’t know, mate.’

Sean shook his head and drained the last of one of the beer glasses. Outside, Ash and Olivia seemed to have fallen quiet. Kieran was wondering if they were still there, when he heard Olivia say something. Her tone was blunt. The restaurant was so empty, it was hard not to feel like they were eavesdropping.

‘I can’t believe people have abandoned this place,’ Mia said. ‘After how many years?’

‘Yeah,’ Sean said. ‘Julian says they’ll come back, once this is all over. But who knows how long it’ll go on?’ He sighed. ‘Have you been on that local chat forum? There was something a few days ago about a boycott of this place, I think.’

‘There was,’ Kieran said. ‘A lot of people weren’t in favour, though.’

‘No? I can’t face going on there. Some of the stuff people were writing was unbelievable. Listen –’ Sean stood up. ‘I need another drink. Do you want anything? While we’re waiting for Ash?’

Kieran looked at Mia and they had a silent conversation.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Kieran said. ‘We’ll have one with you while we wait.’

Mia watched him leave, then turned to Kieran.

‘Listen, I meant to say, there was something else about your dad on the forum,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I saw it before. It’s nothing to worry about –’

Kieran had already got out his phone and was pulling up the EBOCH site.

‘It was someone saying he looked frail at the meeting,’ Mia said. ‘Here –’

She leaned over and touched his screen, scrolling until she found the comment. She was right, it was nothing more than that, but still Kieran’s heart constricted a little in his chest at the sight of anonymous strangers gossiping about his dad’s health.

‘Maybe we could ask Renn if he could get it deleted,’ Mia said. ‘I mean, like George said they were doing. If they’re deleting some posts, how hard is it to delete that?’

‘He thought it was only stuff to do with the investigation, though.’

‘I know, but still.’

Kieran scrolled through, scanning the comments for any further mention of Brian. He couldn’t see any immediately, but there was an ocean to wade through now. Mia had been right, the people of Evelyn Bay were absolutely spilling their guts about each other. It made him feel depressed to look at it. Kieran was about to close the screen when his gaze snagged on a rare deleted entry.

This comment by Theresa Hartley has been removed for violating EBOCH guidelines.

Kieran frowned. Theresa Hartley, Mia’s music teacher with the granddaughter at Bronte’s uni in Canberra. What had she managed to stumble across, Kieran wondered, that was deemed by the police too hot to share? He located the search function on the site. Theresa had been reasonably active, he saw now, with several dozen posts to her name. Several dozen, but only two deleted ones.

Kieran tapped on her earliest deleted comment and the thread claiming Bronte had been caught on the beach having sex popped up. Of all the lurid remarks on that topic, Theresa’s had been removed. Kieran tried to think. What had she said originally? The replies to her post were still visible. Having sex doesn’t mean she wasn’t a nice girl, someone had responded to her.

That was it. He remembered now. Bronte was a nice girl, Theresa had written. Her granddaughter said so. And then she’d posted a link. Kieran pulled up his own browsing history. The link to the social media site he felt too old for was still there. He clicked through and the tribute page to Bronte popped up.

Kieran looked through the latest posts. There were some sketches, a poem that struggled to rhyme the name Bronte with anything useful, a few drawings. He scrolled down to one image and paused as he felt a stir of recognition.

It was a photo. Not of Bronte, but of a beach. Evelyn Bay’s beach specifically. Kieran could see Fisherman’s Cottage in the corner. It was the first photo in a gallery simply entitled ‘Summer Scenes’.

Kieran opened the gallery. More ocean shots. All local, he could tell. A streetscape of the town itself. An artfully taken shot of the outside of the Surf and Turf. The Survivors, as seen from the lookout.