‘Looking for this, were you?’ He gave a smug laugh, flipping the notebook and looking at the cover. ‘Handbags. Full of secret little pockets and flaps and zips. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been pulling apart some good girl’s bag and found a neat little side sleeve stuffed with drugs that you coppers have overlooked.’
‘Can I see that?’
‘They’re dark inside, handbags. That’s what gets you. Small zips so your keys don’t get caught. They actually sell lights on Amazon that you can clip on the—’
‘The notebook.’ I put my hand out.
‘Oh, I can’t let you take this one,’ the tech said. ‘It’s part of the evidence submission.’
‘Just let me photograph the pages, then.’ I gestured for him to spread it on the table. ‘It’s relevant.’
The tech stood there filling out his evidence submission form while I pulled on gloves, then photographed the pages in Chloe’s notebook one by one, flipping and shooting, flipping and shooting. When I was done, the tech pulled down an overhead camera that was mounted on a coil and photographed the whole collection. ‘Just sign here, please, sir.’
RUSSELL
We’d been walking for five solid minutes, through the trees at the back of the pub and down a dirt road along the riverbank, when Dodge finally got up the gumption to speak again. He was slightly ahead of me, glancing back as I shot texts to people I knew in the grief team about Chloe’s parents. I also googled Chloe Lutz and got a sense of her. The girl I’d seen laid out, cold on a slab at the medical centre, had been big-mouthed and smiley in life, animated in a way the CCTV in the pub hadn’t shown her to be. She was showing gums in all her photographs. Always struck a playful pose. Her carefully curated internet life gave me the impression of a happy person who was quick to laugh, who felt at home in cafes with a laptop and a cappuccino. She called herself a smattering of different things across her profiles: Student. Journalist. Student journalist. Writer. Woman of letters. Scribbler. She wrote reviews and profiles for online magazines, and on the weekends when uni was out, she flipped furniture she got cheap or free off Facebook Marketplace for cash.
I kept my eyes on my phone screen as Dodge spoke.
‘Would you mind clearing something up for me?’
‘What?’
‘Just because, you know, I’ll be needing to do the paperwork …’
‘What do you want, Dodge?’
‘It’s not “Gunther”?’ He gripped his hat down by his thigh, flicked the brim with his index finger so that it made a rhythmicsnapping sound. ‘Because your brother is calling you Russell, and you’re calling yourself Russell, but my call sheet said—’
‘Russell is my middle name. I go by that,’ I said. ‘ “Gunther” can go on the paperwork as and where it needs to.’
We kept walking. Dodge managed to swallow his curiosity for all of about three seconds before it came bubbling up again.
‘So why not—’
‘Because I might be an incredible prick, Dodge, but I’m not the kind of prick who walks around calling himself “Gun Powder”.’
‘Ohhh.’ Dodge gave an awkward laugh. ‘Right! Gunther. Gun. Gun Powder. That’s … That was Dad’s idea, I suppose, was it?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I’m with you, I’m with you.’ He nodded. ‘I’m Louis, spelt the French way: L-O-U-I-S. But the amount of times I get “L-E-W-I-S” or “Lois” or “Louise”—mate, I have been sorely tempted to go by my middle name.’
I said nothing.
‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘it’s “Shirley”.’
I looked up. Dodge laughed hard, pointed at me, pleased with himself that he’d got a reaction. I blew out air and tried to resist the urge to turn off the road and walk straight into the river, hands by my sides and my eyes on the horizon, never to be seen again.
We were turning down an even smaller road between the trees, a foot trail at best, that opened onto a field. The gums and wild bottlebrush parted into a decent strip of land beside the brown, snaking river. Cicadas were zipping loudly in the undergrowth. Dodge stopped beside a broken-down gate, scratched at his thinning blond hair. I looked at what was before me in the field, slipping my phone into my back pocket.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘So, um.’ Dodge turned and stood beside me for once and looked at the giant houseboat. The vessel was sitting in the middle of the wide, unmown field, its port side to the road. ‘It’s … It’s just an idea.’
‘Why are you showing me a houseboat, and why is that houseboat in the middle of a fucking field, Dodge?’
‘It’s a long story.’
