‘Really?’ Falk was surprised. Barnes had the wholesome milk-fed look of a homegrown country boy.
‘Yeah, his parents are in farming, though. Not here, somewhere out west. I think that made him the obvious choice for the placement. I feel for the guy really; his backside barely touched the ground in the city before they sent him up here. Having said that –’ Raco glanced towards the closed station door, then reconsidered. ‘Never mind.’
Falk could guess. It was a rare day when a city force sent its best officer on a country secondment, especially to a place like Kiewarra. Barnes was unlikely to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Raco may have been too tactful to say it, but the message was clear. In this station, he was pretty much on his own.
They put the box of Karen’s and Billy’s belongings on a spare desk and opened it. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. At the window, a fly bashed itself repeatedly against the glass.
Aaron sat on a wooden chair, his bladder nervous and aching, and stuck to the plan. I was with Luke Hadler. Shooting rabbits. Two, we got two. Yes, Ellie is – was, I mean – my friend. Yes, I saw her at school that day. No! We didn’t fight. I didn’t even see her later. I didn’t attack her. I was with Luke Hadler. I was with Luke Hadler. We were shooting rabbits. I was with Luke Hadler.
They had to let him go.
Some of the whispers took on a new shape then. Not murder, perhaps, but suicide. A vulnerable girl led up the path by the Falk boy was a popular version. Pursued and used by his slightly odd father was another. Who was to say? Either way, between them they as good as killed her. The rumours were fed well by Ellie’s father Mal Deacon, and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads and they never died.
One night a brick was thrown through the Falks’ front window. Two days later, Aaron’s father was turned away from the corner shop. Forced to walk out empty handed with burning eyes and his groceries piled on the counter. The following afternoon, Aaron was followed home from school by three men in a ute. They crept behind him as he pedalled his bike faster and faster, wobbling every time he dared look over his shoulder, his breath loud in his ears.
Raco reached into the box and laid out the contents in a line on the desk.
There was a coffee mug, a stapler with ‘Karen’ written on it in white-out, a heavy-knit cardigan, a small bottle of perfume called Spring Fling, and a framed picture of Billy and Charlotte. It was a meagre offering.
Falk opened up the frame and looked behind the photo. Nothing. He put it back together. Across the desk, Raco took the cap off the perfume and sprayed it. A light citrusy scent floated into the air. Falk liked it.
They moved on to Billy’s belongings: three paintings of cars, a small pair of gym shoes, a beginner’s reading book and a pack of colouring pencils. Falk turned over the pages of the book, not at all sure what he was looking for.
It was around that time he realised his father was watching him. From across the room, through a window, over his newspaper. Aaron would get the feathery sense across the back of his neck and would look up. Sometimes Erik’s gaze would flick away. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Contemplative and silent. Aaron waited for the question but it didn’t come.
A dead calf was left on their doorstep, its throat cut so deep that the head was almost severed. The next morning, father and son bundled what they could into their truck. Aaron said a hasty goodbye to Gretchen and a longer goodbye to Luke. None of them mentioned why he was leaving. As they drove out of Kiewarra, Mal Deacon’s white ute followed them for a hundred kilometres past the town limits.
They’d never gone back.
‘Karen made Billy come home that afternoon,’ Falk said. He’d been thinking it over since leaving the school. ‘He was supposed to be out playing with his friend and she kept him home on the day he was killed. How do you feel about chalking that up to coincidence?’
‘Not good.’ Raco shook his head.
‘Me neither.’
‘But if she’d had any idea what was going to happen, surely she’d have got both kids as far away as possible.’
‘Maybe she suspected something was up, but didn’t know what,’ Falk said.
‘Or how bad it was going to be.’
Falk picked up Karen’s coffee mug and put it down again. He checked the box, felt around the edges. It was empty.
‘I was hoping for something more,’ Raco said.
‘Me too.’
They stared at the items for a long time, then one by one, put them back.
Chapter Thirteen
The cockatoos were shrieking in the trees when Falk left the station. They called each other home to roost in a deafening chorus as the early evening shadows grew. The air felt clammy and a line of sweat ran down Falk’s back.
He wandered along the main street, in no rush to reach the pub waiting at the other end. It wasn’t late, but few people were about. Falk peered into the windows of the abandoned shops, pressing his forehead against the glass. He could still remember what most of them used to be. The bakery. A bookshop. Many had been completely stripped out. It was impossible to tell how long they’d stood bare.
He paused as he came to a hardware store displaying a line of cotton work shirts in the window. A grey-haired man, wearing one of the very same shirts under an apron with a name badge, had his hand on theopensign hanging on the door. He paused mid-flip as he noticed Falk assessing the merchandise.
Falk plucked at his own shirt. It was the same one he’d worn to the funeral and was stiff from being rinsed out in the bathroom sink. It stuck under his arms. He went inside.
