‘That Luke was lying when he gave you an alibi? The whole time. So what’s that, twenty-odd years? I saw Luke riding his bike alone on the day it happened. Nowhere near where you boys said you were. I know you weren’t together.’ He paused. ‘I’ve never told anyone that.’
‘I didn’t kill Ellie Deacon.’
Hidden somewhere in the dark, the cicadas screeched.
Gerry nodded, looking down at his feet. ‘Aaron, if I’d thought for a second that you had, I wouldn’t have kept quiet. Why do you think I didn’t say anything? It would have ruined your life. The suspicion would have followed you foryears. Would they have let you join the police? Luke would have had the book thrown at him for lying. All that for what? The girl was still dead. Killed herself, realistically, and I know a fair few others thought so too. You boys had nothing to do with it.’ Gerry struck the toe of his boot against the ground. ‘At least that’s what I thought.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? Jesus. I don’t know what to believe. I always thought Luke was lying to protect you. But now I’ve got a murdered daughter-in-law and grandchild, and my own dead son with his fingerprints all over his shotgun.’
Gerry ran a hand over his face.
‘I loved Luke. I would defend him to the end. But I loved Karen and Billy as well. And Charlotte. I would have gone to my grave saying my son was incapable of something like this. But this voice keeps whispering,Is that true? Are you sure?So I’m asking you. Here. Now. Did Luke give that alibi to protect you, Aaron? Or was he lying to protect himself?’
‘There was never any suggestion Luke was responsible for what happened to Ellie,’ Falk said carefully.
‘No,’ Gerry said. ‘Not least because you alibied each other, though, eh? You and I both knew he was lying about that, and neither of us said anything. So my question is whether that puts the blood of my daughter-in-law and grandson on my hands.’
Gerry tilted his face and his expression was lost in shadow.
‘It’s something to ask yourself before you go scurrying back to Melbourne. You and I both hid the truth. If I’m guilty, so are you.’
The country roads seemed even longer on the drive back to the pub. Falk flicked on his high beams and they carved a cone of white light in the gloom. He felt like the only person for miles. Nothing ahead, nothing behind.
He felt the sickening thud under the wheels almost before he registered the small blur streaking across the road. A rabbit. There, then instantly gone. His heart was pounding. He tapped the brake automatically, but was a thousand kilos and eighty kilometres an hour too late. No contest. The impact had come like a blow to the chest and it nudged something loose in Falk’s mind. A memory he hadn’t thought of in years slid to the surface.
The rabbit was only a baby, shivering in Luke’s hands. His fingernails were thick with grime. They often were. For Kiewarra’s eight-year-olds, weekend entertainment was limited. They’d been running fast through the overgrown grass, racing to nowhere, when Luke had stopped dead. He bent down among the long stalks and a moment later stood, holding the tiny creature aloft. Aaron ran over to see. They’d stroked it, each telling the other not to press so hard.
‘He likes me. He’s mine,’ Luke said. They argued about names all the way back to Luke’s house.
They found a cardboard box to put it in, and loomed over to examine their new pet. The rabbit quivered a little under their scrutiny, but mainly lay still. Fear masquerading as acceptance.
Aaron ran inside to fetch a towel to line the cardboard. It took him longer than expected and when he re-emerged into the bright sun, Luke was still. He had one hand in the box. Luke’s head snapped up as Aaron approached and he snatched his hand out. Aaron walked over, uncertain of what he was seeing, but feeling the urge to delay the moment when he would look inside.
‘It died,’ Luke said. His mouth was a tight line. He didn’t meet Aaron’s gaze.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. It just did.’
Aaron asked a few more times but never got a different answer. The rabbit lay on its side, perfect but unmoving, its eyes black and vacant.
‘Just think about it,’ Barb had said as Falk had left their home. Instead, as he drove down those long country roads, the dead animal still fresh under his wheels, Falk couldn’t stop thinking about Ellie Deacon and their teenage gang of four. And whether Ellie’s dark eyes had looked as vacant after the water had finished filling her lungs.
Chapter Four
The yellow police tape was still hanging in strips around the door of Luke Hadler’s farmhouse. It caught the morning light as Falk parked next to the police car on a patch of dead grass out the front. The sun was still some way from its peak position, but Falk’s skin was already tingling from the heat as he got out of the car. He put his hat on and surveyed the house. He hadn’t needed directions. He’d spent almost as much time at that house growing up as he had at his own.
Luke hadn’t changed much about the place since he’d taken it over from his parents, Falk thought as he rang the bell. The chime echoed deep inside, and he was struck by the feeling of having travelled back in time. He felt such an uneasy certainty that a cocky sixteen-year-old would swing open the door that he almost took a step back.
Nothing moved. Windows shrouded by closed curtains gazed out like a pair of blinded eyes.
Falk had lain awake for most of the night thinking about what Gerry had said. In the morning he’d rung and told Gerry he could stay in town a day or two. Only until the weekend. It was Thursday. He was expected back at work on Monday. But in the meantime, he would go to Luke’s property. He would look at the financials for Barb. It was the least he could do. Gerry’s tone made it clear he agreed. It was almost literally the least Falk could do.
Falk waited for a moment, then made his way around the side of the building. The sky loomed huge and blue over yellow paddocks. In the distance, a wire fence kept a shadowy tangle of bushland at bay. The property was very isolated, Falk noticed properly for the first time. It had always felt full of life when he was young. His own childhood home may only have been a short bike ride away, but it was completely invisible somewhere over the horizon. Looking around now, only one other house was in sight: a sprawling grey building hunched on the side of a distant hill.
Ellie’s house.
