‘It does, but it’s notstrong enough,’ I said. ‘I’m not discarding it. I’m just saying we need to make it stronger. A demonstrated interest in true crime, and this town being steeped in true crime cold cases, isn’t enough for us to say that’s definitely or evenprobablywhat she was doing here. It’s not enough to go rushing off down that path. It just doesn’t work like that. We tread carefully and choose our paths with real caution. Because if we pick the wrong one, we’ll be wasting time that we just don’t have.’
Bridie nodded but she hadn’t reinflated yet. I glanced at my watch. Time was on my mind. Wasting it. Cherishing it. Losing it. My daughter sitting here before me, her heartbeat ticking in her neck, and not on a slab in a medical centre waiting to go in the ground.
‘Hey, listen,’ I said. ‘Dodgy Dodge and his Travelling Troop of Ding-Dongs are getting ready to kick things off down at the pub.’
Bridie shook her head, amused and dismayed at the same time.
‘I can’t attend that right away,’ I went on. ‘Everybody in town will know who I am by the sight of me. I want things to heat up a little first. So, between now and when I can sidle in, I have fifty more phone calls I have to make. Are there any quick wrangles nearby? Something we could get done in an hour or less?’
She whipped out her phone, slowly reinflating. Her eyes darted down the screen. She nodded. ‘Unknown animal in a chimney. Ten minutes from here.’
‘You drive.’ I grabbed the keys from the edge of the table and slid them over to her.
EVAN
Istared at the results on the screen for a long moment. Then I clicked back out of my profile and clicked the other match, the one below mine. My brother’s face, hard and stiff, appeared in greyscale beside his police credentials. Russell’s DNA had been entered into the NCIDD database around 2018 when he made detective. I’d gone into the system a year earlier, when I was asked to provide a sample to exclude myself from a bungled crime scene that a colleague had been leading. I called the tech back with shaking hands, misdialling twice. He grunted an answer. ‘You get a hit in the system?’ he asked.
I didn’t know how to reply. For a long moment I sat staring at my laptop screen, the phone to my ear. The beer garden at the pub ahead of me was still roped off. When I looked up, I could just see the edge of the police marquee at the back. But there were people assembling at the front. The tech spoke again, ‘Hello? You there?’
‘Yes, I …’ I breathed. ‘Yes. Listen, uh, we’re in very sensitive territory here. Because there’s a suspect in the mix who’s in … who’s maybe in law enforcement. We don’t want to tip anyone off.’
‘Okay.’
‘So just deal with me, and only me, on this.’
‘You said that already.’
‘I’m saying it again. If anyone else calls, wanting to talk about the results, just refer them to me.’
‘I can do that.’
I hung up. Went to Google. SearchedY-STR DNA test familial link.
Y-STR DNA analysis can be used to establish familial relationships between males by comparing short tandem repeats (STRs) on the Y chromosome. The tests examine a fixed set of markers known to have high variability on the human Y chromosome. They are an effective way to identify men who share a paternal relative.
I thought about my son. Then about my father. I was dialling Arthur when the urge to vomit rose up in my belly, so swift and hot and fast I had to grab the door beside me and throw it open, retching into the empty space beside the car. Nothing came up. When I shut the door again, Dad was on the line and I was sweating at my hairline in the rear-view mirror.
‘Evan?’
‘Were you in Redbelly last night?’ I asked.
‘Me? No.’ I heard the unmistakable scratching of the old man’s cigarette lighter. ‘Don’t tell me you’re so desperate for witnesses you’re just cold-calling everyone you know.’
‘I’m pretty sure Chris was there,’ I said. ‘And I want to know if you were with him.’
‘I was not.’
‘Where were you?’
‘I was here, seeing some arsehole from Maroota about selling the old GT,’ Dad said. ‘I’m going to have to sell them all. The cars. I can’t get under them anymore.’
‘You had someone at your house?’ I said. ‘What time?’
‘I don’t know. Seven. Eight. You’re not honestly asking me for an alibi, are you?’
‘I have to go,’ I lied. ‘Someone else is calling.’
I rang off, stared at the screen before me, the DNA matches. Thought about my father and the gunshot injury to his right arm, the fact that he couldn’t even get down on the ground anymore to tinker with his yard cars. He’d been favouring his old gunshot wound when I saw him at my house, clutching the arm against his side, something he’d been doing since I was in my late twenties.I thought about how much physical fitness it would have taken to pin a woman in her twenties against a wall. I thought about the alibi he’d just given me. Easily provable with the phone calls or messages between my father and the seller, and the account of the seller themselves.
