The Dry (17 page)

Falk nodded. He knew. McMurdo took the empty glasses, and Falk took his cue to leave. He climbed off his stool and said good night, leaving the barman to switch off the lights and plunge the downstairs into darkness. As Falk half trudged, half tottered upstairs, his cell phone flashed with a new voice mail. He waited until he was locked in his room and lying flat on his bed before clumsily punching the buttons. He closed his eyes as a familiar voice floated from the handset.

“Aaron, answer your phone, will you?” Gerry Hadler's words were rushed in his ear. “Look, I've been thinking a lot about that day Ellie died.” A long pause. “Come out to the farm tomorrow if you can. There's something you should know.”

Falk opened his eyes.

18

The Hadlers' farm looked different as Falk pulled up. The tattered yellow crime scene tape had been removed from the front door. On either side, the curtains and blinds were pulled wide, and every window was propped ajar.

The midmorning sun was already fierce, and Falk reached for his hat as he stepped out of the car. He tucked the box of Karen's and Billy's school things under his arm and walked up the path. The front door was open. Inside, the smell of bleach had eased a little.

Falk found Barb crying in the master bedroom. She was perched on the edge of Luke and Karen's queen-size bed, the contents of a drawer upended onto the pale green duvet. Balled-up socks and crumpled boxer shorts mingled with loose coins and pen lids. Tears slid from Barb's cheeks onto a piece of colored paper in her lap.

She jumped when Falk knocked gently, and as he went to her, he could see she was holding a handmade Father's Day card. She wiped her face on her sleeve and flapped the card in Falk's direction.

“No secret's safe from a good clean-out, is it? Turns out Billy was as bad at spelling as his father.”

She tried to laugh, but her voice broke. Falk felt her shoulders heave as he sat down and put his arm around her. The room was stiflingly hot as sweltering air seeped in through the open windows. He didn't say anything. Whatever the windows were letting out of that house was more important than anything they could let in.

“Gerry asked me to come by,” Falk said when Barb's sobs subsided a little. She sniffed.

“Yes, love. He said. He's clearing out the big barn, I think.”

“Did he say what it was about?” Falk said, wondering when, if ever, Gerry would see fit to confide in his wife. Barb shook her head.

“No. Maybe he wants to give you something of Luke's. I don't know. It was his idea to do this clear-out in the first place. He says it's time we faced it.”

The final sentence was almost lost as she picked up a pair of Luke's socks and dissolved into fresh tears.

“I've been trying to think if there's anything Charlotte might like. She's pining so badly.” Barb's voice was muffled behind a tissue. “Nothing we do seems to help her. We've left her with a sitter, but Gerry actually suggested bringing her with us. See if being around her old things calmed her. There's no way I'm allowing that, I told him. There's no way I'm bringing her back to this house after what happened here.”

Falk rubbed Barb's back. He glanced around the bedroom while she cried. Apart from a layer of dust, it was neat and clean. Karen had tried to keep the clutter under control, but there were enough personal touches to make the room inviting.

Framed baby photos stood on top of a chest of drawers that looked of good quality but was probably second-or even thirdhand. Any money for decorating had clearly been channeled toward the children's rooms. Through a gap in the wardrobe, Falk could see rows of clothes suspended on plastic hangers. On the left, women's plain fitted tops hung next to blouses, work trousers, the odd summer dress. Luke's jeans and T-shirts were crammed with less thought on the right.

Both sides of the bed appeared to have been slept in regularly. Karen's bedside table had a toy robot, a tub of night cream, and a pair of reading glasses on top of a pile of books. A phone charger was plugged in on Luke's side, next to a dirty coffee cup, hand painted, with the word
Daddy
spelled out in spidery letters. The pillowcases still had the shadows of dents in them. Whatever Luke Hadler had been doing in the days before he and his family died, Falk thought, it hadn't been sleeping on the couch. This was definitely a room for two.

An image of Falk's own bedroom flashed into his mind. He mostly slept in the middle of the bed these days. His bedspread was the same navy blue he'd had as a teenager. No one who had seen it in the past couple of years had gotten comfortable enough to suggest something more gender neutral. The cleaning service that came to his flat twice a month often struggled to find enough to do, he knew. He didn't hoard, he didn't keep much for sentimental reasons, and he'd made do with whatever furniture he'd been left with three years earlier, when his two-person flat had become home to just one.

“You're a closed book,” she'd said one final time before she'd left. She'd said it a lot over the two years they'd been together. First intrigued, then concerned, finally accusing. Why couldn't he let her in? Why
wouldn't
he let her in? Did he not trust her? Or did he not love her enough? His response to that question hadn't come fast enough, he'd realized too late. A fraction of a moment's silence had been long enough for both of them to hear the death knell. Since then, Falk's own bedside table traditionally held nothing more than books, an alarm clock, and, occasionally, an aging box of condoms.

Barb sniffed loudly, bringing him back into the room. Falk took the Father's Day card from her lap and looked around in vain for somewhere suitable to put it.

“See. That's exactly the problem,” Barb said, her red eyes watching him. “What on earth am I supposed to do with all their things? There's so much, and there's nowhere to put anything. I can't fit it all in our house, but I can hardly give everything away like none of it matters—”

Her voice was high-pitched as she started snatching up odd items within reach and clutching them to her chest. Underpants from the bed, the toy robot, Karen's glasses. She picked up the books from the bedside table and swore loudly. “Oh, for God's sake, and these are bloody library books. How overdue are these going to be?” She turned to Falk, red-faced and angry.

“No one tells you this is how it's going to be, do they? Oh yes, they're all so sorry for your loss, all so keen to pop round and get the gossip when it happens, but no one mentions having to go through your dead son's drawers and return his library books, do they? No one tells you how to cope with that.”

With a flash of guilt, Falk pictured the extra box of Karen's and Billy's belongings he'd left outside the bedroom door. He plucked the books from Barb's hands, put them under his arm, and steered her firmly out of the bedroom.

“I can look after that for you. Let's just…” He ushered her straight past Billy's room and emerged with some relief into the bright kitchen. He guided Barb to a stool. “Let's get you a cup of tea,” he finished, pulling open the nearest cupboards. He hadn't the slightest idea what he might find there, but even crime scene kitchens usually had mugs.

Barb watched him for a minute, then blew her nose and climbed off the stool. She patted his arm.

“Let me. I know where everything is.”

In the end they had to settle for instant coffee, black. The fridge hadn't been emptied in over two weeks.

“I never thanked you, Aaron,” Barb said as they waited for the kettle to boil. “For helping us. Opening an investigation into what happened.”

“Barb, I haven't done anything like that,” Falk said. “You understand that what I'm doing with Sergeant Raco is off the record, don't you? We're just asking a couple of questions. Nothing official.”

“Oh yes. Of course, I completely understand that,” she said in such a way that he could tell she didn't. “But you've got people wondering. That makes all the difference. It's stirred things up.”

An image of Ellie flashed through Falk's mind, and he hoped Barb wouldn't come to regret that.

“Luke was always so grateful to have you as a friend,” she said as she poured boiling water into three mugs.

“Thank you,” he said simply, but Barb looked up at something in his tone.

“He was,” she insisted. “I know he wasn't good at saying it, but he needed someone like you in his life. Someone calm, with a sensible head on their shoulders. I always thought that's partly what attracted Luke to Karen. He saw the same sort of qualities in her.” She automatically opened the right drawer and found a spoon. “Did you ever meet Karen in the end?”

Falk shook his head.

“It's a shame. I think you really would have liked her. She reminds—reminded—me of you in a lot of ways. I think sometimes she worried that she was a tiny bit … I don't know, dull, maybe. That she was the only thing standing between Luke and his big ideas. But she wasn't. She was steady and really bright, that girl. And she was exactly what he needed. She kept my son grounded. You both did.” Barb looked at Falk for a long moment, her head cocked to the side a little sadly. “You should have come back for their wedding. Or anytime. We missed you.”

“I—” He started to say he'd had to work, but something in her expression stopped the words on his lips. “Honestly, I didn't feel like I'd be welcome.”

Barb Hadler took two large steps across the kitchen that had once been hers, reached out her hands, and pulled Falk into her arms. She held him firmly until he felt a tension buried deep inside him start to waver.

“You, Aaron, are always welcome in my family,” Barb said. “Don't ever let yourself think otherwise.” She pulled away, and for a moment she was the Barb Hadler of old. She placed two steaming mugs of coffee in his hands, tucked the library books under his arm, and nodded to the back door with a matriarchal glint in her eye.

“Let's take these out to my husband so I can tell him that if he wants this house cleared he can stop hiding in the barn and do it himself.”

 

 

Falk followed Barb out of the back door and into the blinding sunlight. He narrowly avoided sloshing coffee on his wrist as he sidestepped an abandoned toy cricket bat.

Is this what his own life could have been like? Falk wondered suddenly. Kids' cricket bats and coffee in farmhouse kitchens? He tried to imagine it. Working side by side with his dad in the open air, waiting for the moment when his old man would shake his hand and pass him the reins. Spending Saturday nights in the Fleece with Luke, eyeing up the mostly unchanged pool of talent until one day his eye stopped wandering. A brisk but beautiful country wedding, the first baby arriving nine months later. The second a year after that. The fatherhood role wouldn't come entirely naturally to him, he knew, but he would make the effort. They say it's different with your own.

His children would be friends with Luke's son, inevitably. They'd all have to take their chances at that shabby country school, yes, but they would also have acres and acres of land where they could stretch their legs.

Days working on the land would be long, of course, but the nights at home would be warm and full of noise and chaos and laughter. Love. There would always be someone waiting for him with the light on. Who could that have been? he thought. Ellie?

Straight away, the image started to blur and fade. If she'd lived. If he'd stayed. If everything were different. The idea was a complete fantasy. There were too many lost chances for that vision to have played out.

Falk had chosen his life in Melbourne. And he was happy with it, he thought. He liked being able to walk down the street, surrounded by people but without a single soul recognizing him. He enjoyed work that taxed his brain rather than his back.

Life was give-and-take. His flat may be quiet and empty when he returned at the end of each day, but he wasn't watched by curious eyes that knew every last thing about him. His neighbors didn't judge him, or harass him and spread rumors about his family. They didn't leave animal carcasses on his doorstep. They left him alone.

He knew he had a habit of keeping people at arm's length, collecting acquaintances rather than friends. But all the better should one of them ever again float bloated and broken to the surface of a river, a stone's throw from his family home. And yes, he battled the daily commute to work and spent a lot of his days under fluorescent office lights, but at least his livelihood didn't hang by a thread on the whim of a weather pattern. At least he wasn't driven to such fear and despair by the blank skies that there was even a chance the wrong end of a gun might look like the right answer.

Luke Hadler may have had a light on waiting for him when he came home, but something else from this wretched, desperate community had seeped through that front door and into his home. And it had been rotten and thick and black enough to extinguish that light forever.

 

 

Falk's mood was low as they reached Gerry, who was leaning on a broom outside one of the barns. He looked up in surprise as they approached, and cast a nervous glance toward his wife.

“I didn't know you'd arrived,” he said as Falk handed him one of the mugs.

“He's been inside helping me,” Barb said.

“Right. Thanks.” Gerry sounded uncertain.

“There's still plenty to do, when you've finished messing around out here.” Barb gave her husband a small smile. “It looks like you've made even less progress than I have.”

“I know. I'm sorry. It's harder being here than I realized.” Gerry turned to Falk. “I thought it was time we came and faced it. Confronted things.” He looked toward the house. “Listen, is there anything in there you'd like? Photos or anything? You'd be welcome.”