‘Chloe—Ms Lutz—was seen to have attended dinner at 8.07 p.m., as you know.’ Fry took out a notebook and started flipping through it. He looked at his colleagues. ‘We’ve got her on camera. From the accounts of the locals, she took a seat at a table under the big tree out there after leaving the counter. She was alone for the duration of her dinner and wasn’t seen taking any phone calls. One Mr Stephen Branch, a local pest inspector, seems to have been the only person in the beer garden to actually speak to Ms Lutz while she had dinner and worked on her laptop.’
‘And what did he say?’ I asked.
‘He admits to commenting to Ms Lutz as he passed her at the table that she was working hard.’
‘She was “working hard”?’ Dodge frowned.
‘Yeah.’ Fry looked at his boss. The drop in formality as Fry spoke to his superior as opposed to me was instant and stark. His country accent thickened and his shoulders lowered. ‘It’s like, she’s been there hammering the keys madly, spewing out words in a document. And Branchy has walked by and said, “Workin’ hard, eh?”, sort of thing. He said she said, “Ah, yeah,” in response and smiled, but didn’t really engage. Like, she hardly looked up. Just went back to her work. Branchy reckons she seemed really focused on what she was doing.’
‘Was he trying to engage her?’ Dodge asked. ‘Was it a conversation starter that she rebuffed?’
‘It seems that way,’ Fry said.
‘And these guys have noticed her go back up to the room?’ I asked. ‘Branchy, and co?’
‘Yes,’ Fry said. ‘Mr Branch and a couple of his friends have confirmed they saw Ms Lutz go up the external stairs and pass Mr Turth, the electrician, as he came down for dinner. Mr Turth timed his exit from his room by a text message he sent to his girlfriend before he left, so we’re talking around nine o’clock.’
‘And you showed Branchy and crew a picture of Mr Turth,’ I said slowly, ‘to confirm it was the same guy?’
Fry and Knowles looked to the female officers for help. None was on offer. ‘I mean, we knew it was Turth from their description.’ Fry said.
‘But you didn’t back it up with a photo?’
No answer. I made the kind of sound I make when I sprint out of the shower to answer the phone and the caller hangs up just as I get there.
‘They’ll go back and confirm it with a photo,’ Dodge said.
‘Uh-huh.’ I sighed. ‘So, we’ve got the text message to give a rough estimate, by Mr Turth’s account, of what time Chloe went upstairs.’
‘We’ve also timed Ms Lutz’s return to her room,’ Kalowski piped up, ‘using the cameras over the bar. At the time Ms Lutz was eating dinner, there were two other tables at dinner in the beer garden. A table of eight and a table of four. It’s the policy of the bar staff not to clear a table until everyone has finished eating. We can see on the footage that one of the bar girls brings back a single empty plate and a beer glass around quarter past nine.’
‘Ms Lutz ordered a schnitzel,’ Lee added. ‘And a schooner of Tooheys New. We’ve got her debit card transaction.’
‘You know what time Mr Turth sent his text message,’ I said. ‘And you know what time Ms Lutz’s table was cleared. But you don’t know what time she went up. Neither of those things are good enough indicators. Both of those times are easily blown out by up to a half an hour. Turth estimates the time it took him to leave the room by the text message. But after he sends the message, he changes his shirt, takes a piss, stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and contemplates what the fuck he’s doing with his life: there’s fifteen minutes he didn’t pay attention to. And the bar staff were, by Mr Winter’s account, fucking around all night chatting and giggling. They most likely didn’t get to Chloe’s table to clear it right away. Maybe we add another fifteen minutes.’
‘Does a half an hour really matter that much?’ Kalowski jutted her chin at me. I locked eyes with her. Electricity in the space between us.
‘Are you genuinely asking me whether a thirty minute over-under for our murder windowreally matters?’ The ice in my voice froze Kalowski in her spot.
‘They’ll narrow down the time further—won’t you, team?’ Dodge said. ‘It’ll be priority number one.’
I sat, thinking. Frogs were making a racket in the thick reeds that framed my view of the river. The water was lit purple by an artificial evening created by the walls of the valley. The temperature was down in the teens now, I guessed. Above us, the remaining sheets of corrugated iron on the awning gave a gentle rattle as a breeze drifted through.
‘Nobody in the beer garden gives an account of anyone acting strangely towards Ms Lutz?’ I asked. ‘No one else talking to her? Watching her? Looking over her shoulder? We’re trying to lock down a vantage point, here. The back of the pub is the only place where you can see the external stairwell and the windows to the hotel rooms. If it’s not Rob Winter going up there and knifing her because he knows which room she’s in, it has to have been someone hanging around in that time period, between eight p.m.—or seven-thirty—or nine p.m.—or fuckingeleven-thirty, for all you chumps know—when she went up to her room, and 12 p.m., when Superman Ears got home.’
‘Superman Ears?’ Lee squinted at me.
‘Guest in the next room. Excellent hearing,’ Dodge said. ‘Allegedly.’
‘There are no reports of suspicious behaviour.’ Knowles shook his head. ‘Everyone said—’
‘Don’t give me that,’ I barked. ‘Half the guys in the beer garden that you’ve interviewed appear to be your mates. They’re not going to report their own suspicious behaviour, or each other’s, and your own personal biases are going to water down any weirdness you hear from them anyway. He had to be there, he had to be watching Chloe, and someone had to have seen him doing that. Who’s the creep at the bar? The one we saw watching her on the CCTV?’
‘We haven’t locked him down yet.’
‘Why not?’
Kalowski gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Because we’re human beings, and it takes us time to do shit, sir?’ I gave her a warning glare. She carried on defiantly. ‘He might be from out of town. We’re showing a photo around, but no one is recognising him. He paid cash at the bar and only ordered the two drinks.’
