Chapter 17
The vineyard was quiet as Falk pulled up and parked next to Raco’s car.
He walked through Charlie’s house, finding the kitchen empty now, and then stepped out onto the veranda.
He could see no movement among the vines, but across the dirt driveway, the door to the vineyard’s office stood open.
The slam of a desk drawer and a muffled swear word floated out into the still afternoon air.
Falk looked around once more, then wandered down the steps and toward the noise.
“G’day.” Falk leaned against the open office door and looked inside.
“Oh. G’day.” Shane McAfee glanced up, then down again.
He was behind a desktop computer, his bulky frame crammed into an office chair and his face flushed despite the air conditioner rattling full tilt in the corner.
He was looking at the screen like he was staring into an abyss. “Thought you might be Charlie.”
“No.”
“Is he out there?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“Right.” Shane tapped a couple of strokes on the keyboard and swore again, under his breath this time. He ran a hand over his chin and wiped the sweat on his shorts, then sat back heavily. “Don’t suppose you know anything about spreadsheets?”
“A bit,” said Falk, who knew an exhaustive amount. “You need some help?”
“Charlie needs these latest invoices added to the winter quarter figures, but the accountant’s started us on this new system and—” Shane pointed to the screen as Falk edged past the filing cabinet to see.
“Here. The column spacing’s blown out, but when I tried to fix it I lost a whole bloody section. ”
“It won’t be lost.” Falk leaned in and immediately recognized the accountancy program.
He’d recently spent a whole week using it to trace several million dollars in disguised income.
He reached over and moved the mouse a few times.
“It’s usually still in there somewhere. You just do this, and then this. And—yeah—there. That what you needed?”
“That’s the one. Yes.” Shane breathed out. “Thank God for that. Cheers, mate. I owe you one.”
“And look, you’re importing the hard way. It’s a lot easier if you go here and then drag that over—”
“To where?”
“There. Yep, that’s it.” Falk spent a couple of minutes showing him, then stood back and watched as Shane completed several rounds himself. The guy frowned as his weathered fingers coaxed the mouse across the desktop. The other hand was idly massaging his left knee joint.
“That’s so much bloody easier,” Shane said. “You do this for work or something? I thought Greg said you were police, too.”
“Financial division with the AFP,” Falk said. “So, yeah. I do this quite a lot.”
“You like it?”
“Working with spreadsheets?”
Shane smiled. “The job.”
“Yeah, I do,” Falk said truthfully. “It’s interesting.”
He could tell Shane was expecting him to say more, but both the conversation and the spreadsheet had triggered a well-worn sequence in Falk’s head.
He could immediately feel the virtual heft of unanswered emails weighing down the phone in his pocket.
He hadn’t thought about or communicated with work for at least twenty-four hours, which was something of a record lately.
He was on leave, he reminded himself, but it was already too late. He was thinking about it now.
“It’s good that you like it,” Shane said, bringing Falk back into the room. “Lucky to find something you enjoy.”
He seemed to mean it, which was somewhat rare. Most people went out of their way to slide in a backhanded comment about the perceived dullness of Falk’s chosen field. Falk watched him for a minute, working away at the computer. “When did you retire from footy?”
“Earlier than I wanted to.” Shane gave a rueful smile. “Not long after I turned twenty-four. Only got to play one more full season after that grand final you were at.”
Falk nodded, because all of a sudden he was back there again. Sitting with his dad and watching this guy play what probably ended up being the peak game of his career. “Injured out?”
“Yeah, third quarter of the second game the year after. Against Collingwood, that one was. Tore my ACL.” Shane’s hand dropped to his knee again. “The physio and recovery techniques are better now, but back then—” He shook his head. “Game over. Never got back.”
“That’s a real shame.”
“Yeah. I thought so, too.” Shane shrugged. “Happens, though.”
“What did you do afterward?”
“God. Everything, at first. Went a bit nuts for a while. I was at a loose end, but I had a fair bit of money—or it felt like it at that age, anyway—and the bouncers at the VIP nightclubs all recognized me, so—” Shane stopped, pointing at the computer.
“Sorry, do I copy these figures to here? Or here?”
“The first one. Yep, exactly.”
“Great, thanks.” He nodded. “Yeah, so it was all a bit of a blur for a while, but at least it was fun, and then…” Shane paused.
He shot a glance up at Falk, the faintest trace of humor in his face.
“Then, I don’t know if you remember, but this one photo kind of surfaced of me in a pretty compromising—”
And just like that, all at once, Falk did remember.
That’s right, that had been Shane McAfee.
The image had been everywhere for five minutes, and all these years later Falk could instantly conjure it in his mind.
Not the frequent photos of Shane stumbling red-faced and sweating out of a nightclub and into the early hours with a string of different women on his arm, or the few of him in front of an unidentified white powder smeared across a grubby glass coffee table, but that single very unfortunate one, involving a bottle of his own urine and a dare at a dinner table at a Sydney black-tie function.
It took a significant mental leap to reconcile this large, softly spoken man with that guy—disgraced former footy star Shane McAfee—captured in notoriety in newsprint and online, and Falk scrambled for an appropriate response. Shane just shrugged and gave a small self-deprecating smile.
“Don’t worry, mate. What can you really say?”
“For what it’s worth,” Falk said, “I had completely forgotten about that.”
“Lucky you.” Shane grinned. “Although, to be honest, I couldn’t remember a thing about it myself either by the next morning.
Other people definitely could, though, and the photo was right there, so my commercial endorsements and media work and everything were gone.
Club distanced itself, which wasn’t surprising, really.
” For the first time, he sounded a little sad.
“I apologized, obviously. Went for a stint in rehab.”
“Then you came back here?”
“Yeah.” Shane moved the mouse and clicked.
He was getting the hang of it now. “It was a bit shit at first, but I couldn’t think what else to do.
And everyone knew I’d left with this golden chance, and then here I was, back again with a dodgy knee.
But Charlie was still around. Kim, too. So that was good,” Shane added, but his face clouded at her name.
“They were together again, and Charlie had just bought this place. Kim got pregnant with Zara not long after, so Charlie couldn’t really afford to take me on, but he did, anyway. And yeah, been here ever since.”
On the computer in front of Falk, Shane dragged the final file into place, then reached across the desk for a pen and a piece of paper.
“Anyway. This”—Shane nodded at the clear screen—“was really useful. I’d better write it down so I remember next quarter.”
“I can send you a link that’ll help. Especially if your accountant updates again, which is possible. This system isn’t a great one, to be honest.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t put it past him. He’s always changing things around. Reckons it’s more efficient, but—” Shane grunted in dismissal. “Maybe for him, I guess.”
“You can’t get Charlie to use someone else?” Falk said. “This doesn’t need to be hard.”
“Maybe. It’s tricky, though, because this guy’s the local operator, and we all try to support each other around here.”
Shane hauled himself up, and the desk chair squeaked with relief. He went over to the small fridge in the corner and took out a bottle of water and a couple of glasses. He held one up to Falk, who nodded.
“Back in the day, the local accountant used to be this mate of ours, so he used to do everything for us with the books. He was really good. Like you just then, he knew all the tricks.” Shane passed Falk a glass, then took a long swallow from his own. “Made it all make sense.”
“You can’t use him anymore?” Falk said.
Shane examined his water for a moment. “No. He died. It was shit. Hit-and-run.”
“Dean Tozer?” Falk said, and Shane looked up in surprise.
“Yeah. Did you know him?”
“No. But I was just out at the reservoir with Zara, and I met his son. Charlie mentioned him last night, too. I didn’t realize he worked with you, though.”
Shane nodded. “Not just with us, he did the books for most people in town. He was a smart bloke, worked for some big accountancy firm in London for a while so knew what he was doing. Then when he moved back here to look after Joel he started up on his own. It was good, you know. He understood the businesses around here, and everyone liked him so we all used him.” Shane concentrated harder than he needed to on refilling their glasses.
He took another deep drink before he spoke again.
“So Joel was out at the reservoir, was he? How did he seem?”
Falk pictured the tall, subdued boy. “A bit sad, I would say.”
“Right. I might go around and see him later. Dunno if he mentioned it, but Dean died during festival week. Six years now, but it’s still hard. Especially this time of year.” Shane paused, swirling the water around in his glass. The man seemed to want to talk, but stayed silent.
“I saw Dean’s memorial plaque,” Falk said eventually. “On the barrier near the Drop.”
“Yeah.” Shane looked up. “You ever attend accident scenes? As a cop?”