‘Abbey is on the footage?’
‘Yeah,’ says Grange.
Lane’s eyes widen. ‘Where?’
‘In the main street.’
I point to the meeting room. ‘Load it up, let’s all watch it now.’
We file into the stuffy meeting room and wait impatiently while Grange fiddles with his laptop and connects cords to the dated TV unit on wheels in the corner. Fairhaven’s main street appears on the screen. Grange drags the file to the footage that was captured at 12.14 am—and Abbey appears. Her long hair is thick and loose, making it hard to see her face, but even on the grainy footage she’s clearly agitated. Her eyes are large and her movements jerky, adrenaline charging through her system. She dashes across the middle of the road to the top of the beach path where Lane and I sat and ate this afternoon before she disappears from view.
‘Play it again.’ I squint at the vision as the tape rolls again. Everything about Abbey’s body language is primal and urgent, but there’s certainly no one chasing her.
Grange looks nervous. De Luca seems thoughtful. Lane is as white as a ghost.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask him.
‘I’m fine. I’m just kicking myself again for not driving her home.’ He grips the back of his head. ‘Fuck,’ he mutters.
‘How much more footage is there?’ I say to Grange.
‘The council sent everything they have from the timeframe we requested, but there’s only one other camera and it’s much further along the street—near the church outside the public toilet—so probably only one or two hours are going to be useful to us.’
I turn to Lane. ‘Can you start reviewing it all now? I obviously want to know if Abbey appears again but I also want to timecode and ID every single car and individual that appears. We need to speak to anyone who was in the vicinity that night.’
I feel completely wired. Fairhaven seems infinite: ocean on one side, endless bushland on the other. She could be anywhere. Meg Jarvis’s bizarre rantings on the beach ring in my ears. If Abbey really is buried out there somewhere, we’ll probably never find her.
Grange hands Lane his laptop and another memory stick, along with a bunch of cords. He marches out to the main room, his face grim.
‘So, how was the autopsy?’ I say to the others, my heart still pounding.
‘Pretty confronting,’ replies Grange earnestly.
‘What did Lamb say?’
‘Apparently Fletcher was in perfect health when he died,’ begins Grange.
‘Mick reckons the weapon was a gardening tool, probably a mallet,’ says de Luca bluntly. ‘Or an axe used side-on.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah.’ She swallows.
‘Does Lamb still think Abbey could have done it?’ I ask.
De Luca nods slowly. ‘He can’t rule it out but thinks it’s unlikely. The initial blow required significant force,’ she pauses, ‘and accuracy. Mick wants to do some further analysis and tests. He said he’ll contact the Fletchers personally because it will delay the funeral.’
The idea of Abbey bringing a mallet down on Rick’s head remains jarring, but I’ve seen too many unfathomable things in my career to discount this, no matter how counterintuitive it feels.
‘The weapon definitely wasn’t at the scene,’ de Luca continues, ‘but it does look like one of Rick’s tools was missing. The killer could have taken it with them.’
‘That would suggest the killer came unarmed, which is at odds with the planned nature of the attack,’ I say.
‘Or, it could just mean the killer knew Rick well enough to know he had a lot of tools,’ says de Luca. ‘That was probably less risky than carrying something over.’
‘Good point,’ I say. ‘Though the killer still had to carry it out of there.’
De Luca shrugs. ‘True. Mick confirmed Rick had no defence wounds. Our attacker wasn’t mucking around. One quick blow to the back of the head, then three to the temple. Rick was almost certainly unconscious after the second hit and would have been clinically dead within minutes.’
I try to imagine the fleeting moment of shock before he sank into eternal oblivion. Would he even have registered anything at all?
‘Aiden knows the house backwards,’ I say. ‘Abbey too.’
De Luca crosses her arms. ‘You think they were working together?’
‘I don’t know. I’m starting to wonder if Aiden’s appearance at the house on Monday was an act. Maybe he thought putting in some face time as the grieving brother would count him out of the investigation and give more weight to the notion he left town because he couldn’t cope.’
‘But doesn’t he have an airtight alibi? I thought he was in Sydney.’
‘Lane and I have been wondering about that,’ I say. ‘We’re going to dig a bit more and see what shakes out.’
Pursing her lips, de Luca glances back at the TV. ‘Do you think Aiden and Abbey might have been involved with each other?’
‘Well, they would have seen each other regularly. It wouldn’t be the first time someone fell for the partner of their sibling.’
‘Surely Aiden didn’t knock off his brother over a high school romance?’ says Grange.
De Luca lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t bother to respond. She looks at me with unfocused eyes, and I can tell she’s working through various theories. ‘Maybe Rick discovered that Abbey ran away and that Aiden helped her.’
‘Could be.’ I explain the anomaly regarding Aiden’s claim he spoke to Rick on Sunday. ‘Perhaps they did speak then but had some kind of falling out. Maybe there’s no phone call on the record because the conversation was in person. Or maybe that’s what Rick’s call to the station was about. He might have been planning to dob in his brother—and Abbey.’
We fall into silence, and I know we’re all thinking about Rick’s lost phone message and how different everything would have played out if he’d spoken to Tran that night.
‘Alright,’ I say, ending the speculation loop. ‘What about his tox? Any initial findings?’
‘Mick is aiming to get it to us tomorrow,’ says de Luca. ‘He said Rick’s stomach contents were consistent with him drinking whisky the night before.’
Grange scrunches up his face. ‘You could smell it.’
‘He also said he suspected some drug use—something about the condition of Rick’s blood vessels and teeth,’ says de Luca.
‘Where are the bloody drugs then?’
They both look at me blankly.
‘Were there any prints on Rick’s body? Anything?’
‘Not so far. They reckon the murderer might have been in the bedroom and the kitchen. The tech I spoke to said a few of the surfaces looked like they’d been wiped.’
‘Great,’ I say, exasperated. For some reason I’m surprised: I assumed a sleepy small-time killer wouldn’t have the foresight to do something like that. ‘What about on Rick’s phone? Anything turn up?’
‘Nothing,’ says de Luca. ‘But I did notice something strange about the records. Until a month ago Rick barely used his phone on Tuesdays.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s like he just goes off the grid. Sometimes he would text Abbey in the morning and tell her he’d come pick her up, but that was pretty much it.’
‘Maybe he was just at work? Or maybe he was using another phone during those times. Find out what shifts he used to work at the pub.’
De Luca leans back in her chair with an arrogant tilt to her mouth. ‘Sure, but it won’t be relevant. He obviously worked more than one shift a week, and there are no other black spots in his usage like this.’
‘Well,’ I say with exaggerated patience, ‘it must be linked to his job at the pub if you say it was happening until a month ago. That’s the only thing that changed in his life at that time, right? Let’s workshop some other theories.’
‘Guys!’ Lane calls out from the other room. ‘Come look at this.’
The three of us crowd around his computer screen, which shows a recording paused on the same stretch of the main street as the footage we watched earlier. The time stamp is 12.31 am.
Lane presses play and the trees start to move in the wind. After a few seconds a man dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt appears. His hands in his pockets, he walks briskly along the edge of the road from the direction we just saw Abbey come from. The footage is grainy and his facial features aren’t clear, but he looks over his shoulder several times as if he’s agitated. After a moment he begins to run.
‘Go back,’ I say, and Lane does.
We watch again as the man walks along the street then runs off screen.
‘Zoom in,’ I bark.
We all stare at the blurry profile. I scan his bare arms for tattoos but see nothing.
‘Anyone know who he is?’
They shake their heads.
‘Well, find out. Send it off for analysis. See if they can work on the file so we can get a proper shot of his face. I don’t care if we have to crossmatch him with every person in town—we need to find out who that guy is.’
I grab my bag and shove my water bottle inside, spilling it all over the desk in the process.
‘I have to go. Can you send me the screen grabs before you head off?’
I’m halfway across the room when I hear the front door swing open.
Georgina and Ian Fletcher are back.
‘There’s something we need to tell you,’ says Ian.