‘They’re saying her laptop and her phone are missing.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And can you just tell me … They’re saying she wasn’t raped or beaten up or anything like that. Just that she was killed and her stuff was taken.’
‘I believe at this stage that she wasn’t sexually assaulted.’ I started walking again. ‘But an autopsy will tell us more about exactly what happened. She certainly wasn’t beaten.’
A sound, strangled and hoarse.
‘Larry, your daughter was attacked by someone who wanted her dead very fast. I believe she was specifically targeted—’
‘And that’s how she died, is it?’ Larry cut over me. ‘Fast?’
I thought about the blood trail on the carpet in the hotel room. Chloe trying to drag herself towards the window while her attacker searched the room. ‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘It was fast.’
Another silence while Larry took this in. The breeze off the river swept around me. Made the native grass shiver and scratch at my boots, insistent, the land trying to tell me stories, to claw me down and make me answer those agonised fathers who were in line for justice long before Larry.
‘Have you got experience with this sort of thing?’ Larry asked. ‘I mean, you’re going to find him, aren’t you? You know what you’re doing?’
‘I’m going to find him, Larry,’ I promised. ‘I always find them.’
‘Okay.’ A long breath that rattled the phone line. ‘What can I tell you that’ll help?’
‘Talk me through the last six months with Chloe,’ I said. ‘Specifically her love-life and her work life.’
‘Uh, there hasn’t been much of a love-life.’ Larry’s voice loosened a little. ‘Her mother likes to live vicariously through her with the dating. Finds it interesting, the twists and turns. Young people and the stupid stuff they do. They’re like sisters, giggling about it, or crying about it, you know, Jill and Chloe. But there hasn’t been anything in the past … I don’t know … year?’
‘Why was that?’
‘Chloe had a major break-up with a boy, and he was cheating on her, maybe. She could never prove it, mind you. But his uptake with another girl afterwards was too quick. I’m talking a week. Chloe was getting texts from her girlfriends saying they were seen out together getting hot and heavy. Like I said: twists and turns and stupid shit.’
‘Can you text me the boy’s name, and anything you know about him? Car. Employer. Address. Was he ever aggressive with her? Did they fight in your presence?’
‘Oh, no, no, nothing like that. And I believe the boy’s in Italy right now anyway. The detectives here are onto that and they’re telling me he’s abroad. But I can text you all that stuff.’
‘Tell me his new girl’s name, if you have it. Same stuff for her. Address, vehicle, employer. Only if you have it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Why was Chloe in Redbelly Crossing?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Larry heaved a heavy sigh. ‘See, this is the thing I don’t understand. She used to keep us updated about all that kind of stuff. While she’s been doing her degree, she’s been making her way writing all sorts of things. Restaurant reviews, and long pieces about people for the paper and for a handful of websites. And she always shows us that stuff. If she ever has to travel to do it, she says so. She’ll say, “Oh, guess what, I’m going to Noosa to review a hotel and they’re paying for it.”’
‘Okay.’
‘I have been, um, sceptical from the start that you can make a living anymore as a journalist, you know?’ Larry said. ‘With all the technology that can do it for you. AI and all that. I wanted her to go into something more secure. Like banking, maybe. We’re a family of bankers. But she was never excited about that. So I think since she took up the journalism degree, she’s been trying to prove to me that you can actually make a go at it if you work hard. She’d say, “I just got paid three hundred bucks for a fifty-word review of this movie” or whatever. So, if she was out there at Redbelly Crossing writing a story, she would have made sure I knew. Just so I’d knowshe was making money. Had a job. She definitely would have told me.’
‘Unless it was dangerous,’ I said.
Larry was silent. My words hung in the air.
‘Did you ever discuss how dangerous it could be, to be a journalist?’ I asked. ‘Had she ever talked about going overseas to be a war correspondent or to cover violence?’
‘She knows I would never have allowed that,’ Larry said. ‘There are other people to do that.’
‘Did she cover any dangerous stories that you know of? Did she tell you about them beforehand?’
‘I can’t … Urgh. Christ. I can’t think.’
