Chapter 21
The good folks of the Marralee Valley were not the types to waste a sunny Saturday morning, and the festival grounds were as busy as Falk had ever seen them.
He’d left Raco and Rita in the vineyard driveway, packing the kids into their car, and walked to the site rather than squeeze between the child seats.
He’d followed the main route, approaching the festival via the parking lot rather than the reservoir, and had still beaten them there.
From a shady spot near the entrance he watched the Racos approach, Henry complaining bitterly from the stroller as Eva swung from her dad’s hand.
“Listen, I can wrangle them both if you want.” Rita nodded to the kids as they all met outside the gate. “Just not for too long.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, my love.” Raco smiled and gave Rita a kiss. “All right, Eva. Say bye to Mum. She and Henry are going to check out the baby rides while you and me and Aaron do some investigating.”
“Really?” Eva’s face was instantly alert and serious. “What are we looking for?”
Raco put his hands on his knees so their eyes were level. “Ways to get in and out of here.”
Eva frowned, then pointed to the main entrance beside them, a bottleneck already forming. “That’s easy. There are lots of ways.”
“Well,” Raco said mildly. “We’ll see.”
He straightened and together they walked over to join the crowd waiting to get inside. Henry’s stroller saw him and Rita waved breezily through the side gate, while Falk, Raco, and Eva stood in the line for the turnstiles.
“So, the entrance is always staffed,” Raco said to Falk as they shuffled forward, and they both looked over to the workers in festival T-shirts on either side of the queues.
“They keep an eye on the numbers coming in, open the side gate. Watch for potential troublemakers as well, so they can get security involved if they need to.”
Raco took Eva’s hand as they passed through the turnstiles, and rummaged in his pocket for some cash for the charity collectors inside the gates. Falk did the same, pulling out a handful of coins and dropping them in the nearest collection tin.
“Thanks, mate.”
Falk stopped and looked up at the familiar voice.
Even then, it took him a moment to recognize the speaker.
Sergeant Dwyer seemed a different man out of uniform.
He was dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, collecting alongside a kind-faced woman who Falk guessed from their body language must be Dwyer’s wife.
“G’day, Eva. Gentlemen.” Dwyer nodded at the three of them, smiling as he held out the tin for another passerby to drop in a donation. “Appreciated, thank you.”
Falk looked past him to the sign propped up nearby. Each day had seen a different charity on the gate, and this wasn’t one he was hugely familiar with. He recognized the logo and branding, though. A support network for families of those with alcohol abuse issues.
“This is my wife, Cathy, by the way.” Dwyer nodded to the woman waiting patiently for Eva to painstakingly deposit Raco’s coins into her tin one at a time.
“Hello.” Cathy looked over and smiled. She had a badge pinned to her shirt showing a photo of a young woman captured in a spontaneous glance.
A surprised, amused look lit up her eyes, but for just a moment, her frozen long-gone gaze reminded Falk a little of Kim Gillespie.
The similarity ended there, though; this woman was years younger, with fair hair framing her face.
Caitlin Dwyer, he read, above the charity’s logo and dates of both her birth and her death.
What had Raco said about her? Falk thought back.
Choked on her own vomit after a party the previous year.
According to her mother’s badge, Caitlin had been just twenty-two.
“I’m very sorry about your daughter.” Falk turned back to the sergeant.
“Thank you.” Dwyer’s reply was steady, but there was something deep and sad behind his eyes.
“Doesn’t get much easier, but we try to make a point of talking about it.
Not a popular topic this time of year—” His eyes followed a couple clinking past with a large case of wine bottles, their young children trailing in their wake.
“But a community like this, there’s a drinking culture built in, and youth alcohol issues don’t get much attention.
People think it’s just kids being kids, but some of them—” His eyes slid to his wife’s badge, then quickly away.
“They can’t handle it. Oh, great, thank you.
” He held out his tin as another passerby reached over.
“All right,” Raco said as Eva finally dropped in her last fifty-cent piece. “Well, good to see you, Rob, Cathy. We’ll let you get on.”
“Thank you for the money, sweetheart,” Cathy said to Eva. “Here, let me give you a sticker. Enjoy the rides.”
“We’re not going on rides,” Eva announced. “We’re investigating the exits.”
Dwyer’s mouth twitched into a half smile. “That right, Eva?” He spoke to the girl, but his eyes flicked to Raco’s for a measured beat. “Well, that sounds very interesting. Make sure you let me know what you find out, won’t you?”
Falk watched as Dwyer and Raco held each other’s gaze a moment longer, then Raco inclined his head. Understood. One cop to another.
“Well, that sounds like our cue,” Raco said as a large group clicked through the turnstiles and Cathy held out her tin hopefully. “Let’s keep moving.”
Raco rolled his eyes good-naturedly as they walked away, but didn’t seem too put out.
“Bloody Dwyer. It’s quite hard to stay annoyed with him, though.”
“Sad about his daughter.” Falk glanced back. Cathy was shaking her tin again. “Not surprising he’s not a fan of the opening-night party, I suppose.”
“No. He’ll have that shut right down within a few years, I reckon. Cathy told Rita once they think it’s where Caitlin learned to drink, and they’re probably right. Although, from what I hear, she picked it up pretty fast, anyway.”
“Gave them a bit of trouble, did she?”
“Yeah, a lot of heartache.” Raco’s eyes dropped to the charity sticker on his own daughter’s T-shirt.
“Still does, I guess. But that’s the thing about Dwyer, he knows how it feels for families to lose someone.
The pain’s real for him. And I get that Zara’s frustrated, but you can’t accuse him of not taking Kim’s disappearance seriously.
Okay—” He slowed. “Let’s stop here for a second. ”
Raco indicated a small gap between stalls. It was off the track, but they could still see the entrance clearly. Falk thought he could sense Dwyer watching them, but when he looked over, the officer was focused on a new group coming through the turnstiles.
“So, for the sake of argument,” Raco said, tucking Eva in beside him, “if Kim didn’t go through that back east exit, she had to leave some other way.” He pointed to the crowds streaming in. “But I’ve never thought going out the entrance was a realistic option.”
Falk observed for a minute, watching the strong one-way flow of traffic, the staff monitoring the situation on either side of the gate. Anyone trying to push the wrong way through the tide of strollers, scooters, wheelchairs, families linking arms, and strolling couples would surely be noticed.
“I reckon you’re right,” he said finally. “Someone would remember.” He looked up at the CCTV camera installed on a temporary pole. “That’s one of the new ones?”
“This year. Yeah. No camera then.”
Falk nodded and turned back to the entrance. Both sides were flanked by stalls packed tightly together, selling impulse items to get people in the spending mood, small handmade soaps, ice cream. Behind the stalls, a two-meter-high chain-link fence formed a snug barrier.
“What do you think, Eva?” Raco said lightly to his daughter. “Would you try to get out this way?”
“No.” The girl frowned, like it was obvious. “I’d go out the exit.”
Raco’s smile moved from her to Falk. “Me, too. So let’s check that out.”
Falk and Eva followed him through the crowds along a short loop of track, past more rows of stalls. A painted sign saying RIDES directed people deeper into the festival grounds, and below it, another marked EXIT pointed the other way.
Falk glanced to the right and caught a glimpse of the Penvale Vineyard stand.
Shane was there, he could see, the man’s height putting him half a head above the crowd.
He was with a casual worker Falk didn’t recognize, and they looked to be doing a brisk trade.
A stack of Kim’s flyers was in a prominent position on the table, and as Falk watched, a woman took a flyer, glanced over it, then went to put it back.
Shane motioned for her to keep it, but she smiled and shook her head, reaching instead for a bottle of red and turning it over to read the price.
They disappeared from sight as the crowd shifted around them and Falk walked on.
It only took a minute to reach the large west exit, quiet at that time of day, and they again tucked into a spot just off the path.
Falk had been through the exit several times now, but tried to look at it again with fresh eyes.
While the entrance had been closely controlled, the west exit was wide open.
No turnstiles here, simply a tall wooden archway over the broad track, leading out to a sea of cars glinting in the morning sun.
“They’ve got to make it easy for large numbers to get out quickly if needed.
Same reason they’ve got the east exit at the back, for overflow.
” Raco nodded toward a security guard sitting on a stool at the side.
“There are two guards in the evenings, same as last year. Alert the cops to any obvious drunk drivers, anyone who’s overdone it and looks like they might cause trouble on the way home. ”
Falk glanced upward. There had been one CCTV camera on the exit last year, he knew, but he could see at least two more now.
“Kim didn’t come out this way,” Raco said. “That’s a one hundred percent guarantee.”