I speak to one of the constables in my old team and arrange a video-link call.
‘It’ll be set up in about twenty minutes,’ she tells me. ‘Does that work?’
‘Yep, I’ll be ready,’ I say, grabbing my laptop with my spare hand.
Lane is back at his desk staring at the far wall. In the fluorescent light the mauve crescents under his eyes are pronounced.
‘Did you have any luck with the phones?’ I say.
He turns to me blankly. ‘Oh, yes. Sort of. A guy at the post office reckoned Aiden came in to buy two handsets and prepaid SIMs late last year. He said it was for mates visiting from overseas.’
‘An unlikely story.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any luck ID’ing the guy on the Penrith servo’s CCTV?’
‘No, but I was thinking I’ll get it in front of the high school principal, make sure it’s not someone from here, and then send the image out in Sydney.’
‘Good idea.’ It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him to join me on the call to Weston but he looks like he needs a good nap. ‘I’ve got to jump on a call. Nine am here tomorrow, okay?’
He nods. ‘Sure.’
I connect to the video portal and make a cup of tea while I wait. Lane is gone by the time I come out of the kitchen.
In the meeting room, an electronic sound alerts me to the call and I accept. Two men appear on the screen: Robert is seated on the right, in baggy shorts and a white T-shirt, and a young constable I don’t recognise sits opposite him. He aims a remote at me and the sound comes on. ‘Right, Detective Woodstock, can you hear me?’
‘Yes, I can.’
The constable states the date and times, then introduces himself. He explains to Robert that I’m going to ask him a few questions and that our interview will be recorded but that he is not under arrest. When the constable swivels the camera to face Robert, I introduce myself and ask him to do the same.
‘Robert Phillip Weston,’ he says softly. ‘I’m nineteen, and I’m from Brighton in the UK.’
‘Robert, do you know why I want to speak with you?’
He taps his fingers on the table. ‘I think so. About that girl.’
‘Which girl?’
‘The girl who went missing. Abbey Clark.’
‘Did you know her, Robert?’
‘I met her a few times. At the shops and then at the party.’
‘You spoke to her?’
He nods. ‘At the shops only a bit. But I spoke to her at the party. I didn’t know she was fifteen, honestly. I only saw it after, on the news.’
‘Would her age have been a problem?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have, you know, flirted with her if I’d known.’ He leans forward and wipes at his nose. ‘I just thought she was really pretty and all that.’
‘Did you have contact with her apart from at the shops and the party?’
He twists in his chair. ‘I sent her a few Facebook messages. I don’t know why I did that—I just liked her, I guess.’
‘Did she reply?’
He nods eagerly. ‘She wrote me back a really nice message.’
‘How did she respond to your advances at the party?’
Suddenly he looks crestfallen. ‘She was right angry. I don’t know why, I was just being friendly but she was really moody and kind of rude. Another girl told me she’d had a fight with her boyfriend, so I guessed it was something to do with that.’
‘What happened after you spoke to her?’
‘Nothing, really.’ He shrugs. ‘I kept trying to talk to her. I figured if she’d just speak to me, she’d realise how good a match we were but she kept shutting me down. My mates went back to the caravan park but I stayed. They’d kind of been getting on my nerves anyway, to be honest, giving me grief about Abbey.’
‘Right, so you stayed at the party. Who were you talking to?’
‘This other girl. Beth. The party was at her house—well, her family’s anyway.’
‘And how long did you stay talking to her?’
Robert sighs. ‘Not long. We hooked up for a bit, just like kissing and whatever, she seemed great, but then she went all funny and said she kind of had a boyfriend. So I left.’
‘Where did you go?’
He’s scratching at his wrist but his eye line remains steady. ‘Back to the caravan park. Then I wanted to buy some smokes.’
‘Did you see anyone on the way?’
He pauses and lets out a big breath. ‘Yeah. I saw her. The girl. Abbey.’
I feel myself pitching forward and hold on to the desk. ‘What time was this?’
He shrugs. ‘Just after midnight, I think. I left the party at maybe quarter to. A neighbour started going crazy about the noise when I was leaving.’
‘Where did you see Abbey?’
Running his fingers through his short hair, he says, ‘I was walking down the road, the one that cuts into the main street.’
‘Felton Way?’
‘Yes, I think that’s it. Anyway, I was going along on the edge of the road. When I was maybe fifty metres from the corner, something came out of the trees on the other side of the road. After a bit I realised it was her.’ He clasps his hands together and his eyes are averted. ‘She was running—and she was holding something.’
‘What was it?’
‘I couldn’t tell from that far off, but it seemed like something heavy.’
‘Did you call out to her?’
Robert shakes his head. ‘No, I wasn’t that close and I didn’t want to scare her.’
‘Are you sure? This was a girl you’d been chatting up at a party, and then all of a sudden you’re alone with her and you don’t want to try it on?’
‘It wasn’t like that, really it wasn’t. It’s like she was in the middle of something . . . She was running along the road really fast. It’s hard to explain.’
‘But you definitely didn’t speak to her?’
‘No, but I did follow her—I mean, that’s the direction I was heading in anyway.’
‘Okay, what happened next?’
Robert picks up the pace. ‘She reached the corner, you know, where that pink beauty spa place is. I was kind of watching from the other side of the street a little further along.’
I’m pretty sure I know what happened next, but I ask anyway. ‘What was she doing, Robert?’
‘She stood there for a bit, just staring at the shop. It was creepy, like she was possessed or something.’ He swallows. ‘And then it’s like she snapped out of it, she kind of jumped up, and then she stepped backwards and sort of ran at the window.’ He looks directly down the camera, his dark eyes bright and bewildered. ‘She threw the brick right into the glass.’