‘Did you see who he was with?’
‘No but he just walked straight out there, across the road,’ Yasmin said. ‘It’s stressful when that happens. Because that’s somethingelsethe bar staff are not really supposed to allow.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because next thing you know there’s fifty schooner glasses in the playground. And if you get caught with punters carrying drinks more than, like, five metres from your property grounds, you’ll lose your liquor licence. And without a liquor licence this pub is fucked.’
Russell turned and walked away. I gave Yasmin an apologetic look about the swift, unannounced exit and followed my brother across the beer garden. We entered the crowd at the front of the pub, which was a hundred people strong now. Dogs off leads. Work boots, singlets, sun-bleached hair. There were well-dressed patrons grouped in judgemental huddles drinking white wine, and knots of young people further out, at the edges of the glow cast down from the fairy lights strung along the awning and in the trees. I saw a bucket resting at the base of the sandwich board usually reserved for the pub’s menu. Someone had scrawledFor Chloe’s Familyon it in chalk. Colourful banknotes lay scattered like autumn leaves at the bottom of the bucket, fifties and hundreds mostly. I guessed there was a couple of grand in there. It felt like every eye watchedRussell and me pass through and cross the road to the playground and the big stretch of grass before the river. There were people out here in the dark, looking at the brightly lit building, which was probably doing its best night of business in years.
Russell stood, and folded his arms. I stood beside him and stared at the bare stone wall of the second floor on the left-hand side, where the hotel was.
‘Couldn’t have been him,’ I said. ‘The young guy.’
Russell said nothing, his eyes on the distant pub.
‘He could see her go up the stairwell, yes,’ I went on. ‘But there’s no view of the windows. How does he know which room she’s in?’
Russell took some side steps, changing the angle. Marched to the end of the playground and back again. I stood still, watching him go back and forth, the maestro listening for the out-of-tune tuba. Eventually he charged back across the road again, into the crowd. I jogged to keep up. We went up the stairs to the hotel section, ducking under five sets of police tape before we reached Chloe’s room. Russell took his car keys from his pocket and used one to poke the switch just inside the door to the hallway, illuminating the space. He looked up and around. Chloe’s door had been taken off its hinges, the room gaping open into the hall. Russell went into the room, turning this way and that, looking up at the ceiling, down at the floor.
‘Turn the light on,’ he said to me.
‘I can’t.’ I gestured to the wall beside me. ‘Forensics have taken the switch.’
He stood gazing at the lights in the ceiling as though willing them to come on by magic. Russell’s enormous shadow stretched up over the closed curtains against the window. Towering legs. A big, boxy skull. Shoulders that encompassed the entire width of the room. Suddenly he waved me over. ‘Come here.’
I went. We looked at the lights.
‘Why can I see the shape of a bulb in that one,’ he pointed, ‘but not that one?’
I studied the almost identical circular oyster lights, which were rimmed with glossy white plastic. Russell was right. I could see thedistinct shadow of a bulb resting behind the frosted glass of one, but not the other.
‘Maybe it’s—’ I began.
Russell marched off. He was darting into the next room as I arrived at the hall. The lights came on. He stared at the ceiling in the room next to Chloe’s. He marched out again so fast he almost knocked me into the wall beside the bathroom. In the next room, and then the next, Russell went in and turned on the lights. I ran after Russell as he ducked out the open doorway onto the stairwell. He moved so fast through the crowd at the front of the pub that he shoulder-barged a drink clean out of a man’s hand, and I had to issue apologies before I followed Russell back across the road.
I glanced over my shoulder at the pub. Nothing seemed to have changed. Russell was jogging across the grass next to the playground, heading for a rise in the earth that was crowned with scrubby grass, the lip of sand dunes leading down to the river beach. Russell hit the rise and turned and looked at the pub. He started laughing. He grabbed me by the shoulders as I arrived beside him and swivelled me on the spot.
‘Check it out.’ He pointed.
I looked. Our position on the rise of the earth gave us a thin view of the very top of the pub’s roof. An old-fashioned style, probably designed to accommodate the falling of snow, the roof angled upwards at a sharp angle, then upwardsagainat a much shallower one, meeting at the top at a very slight peak. My mouth fell open as I let my eyes drift over the three brightly lit golden ovals visible along the upper part of the roof’s length.
‘The second “light” in every room is a skylight.’ Russell was breathless. ‘You can’t see them from close in, near the pub doors. But if you stand back here, you get the right angle. A skylight in every room is leaking light up from inside. Look. There are three. We didn’t turn Chloe’s on.’
‘So he could have watched from here,’ I said, trying to hide my horror.
‘Probably right here,’ Russell said. ‘You can see the lights. You can see the stairwell. You’re close enough in that you can march upthere quickly, when you have the right moment. And out here in the dark, he could have stood watching for as long as he wanted without anyone being suspicious.’
My heart was thumping in my throat.
‘I want this young guy,’ Russell said. His eyes were on the crowd at the pub. Dodge was there, under the fairy lights, was pushing his way towards us. ‘Here comes Dodge. Between the two of you, decide who’s the least incompetent, and that person can get the image of the young guy in the cap out to all the locals. Do a region-wide SMS blast of the picture and the description. I’m going to start going through the traffic cams and see if I can spot him in one of the cars.’
‘You’re not doing that,’ Dodge said as he came to a stop before us. ‘You’re coming with me. We have a problem.’
RUSSELL
Dodge led us to his Hilux. The rural cop was jittery, his eyes a little too wide, the adrenaline pumping. Adrenaline that probably didn’t have to do that very often. ‘Fry and Lee went out to Branchy’s place, and they’re calling for backup.’
‘Why?’
