Chapter 33
They drove back to the festival in a silence that was warm and relaxed, if not fully contented.
Unresolved decisions, Falk supposed. He watched the winding road ahead as Gemma stared out of the window, both wrapped deep in their own thoughts.
The streets grew busier as they neared the grounds, and when Falk turned in to the parking lot, Gemma sighed and pulled out her phone.
She scrolled through her messages, and Falk glanced across at the passenger seat.
“Didn’t miss too much?”
“No. It all seems—” She paused, though, her finger hovering above the screen.
He maneuvered into a parking space as she tapped a button and lifted the phone to her ear. Falk could hear the tinny whisper of a voicemail and looked over in time to catch her frown.
“Everything okay?” he asked as she lowered the phone.
There was another pause, a little longer this time. Gemma was staring at her screen, her face lit by the artificial glow. “Has Greg called you as well?” she asked.
Falk turned off the engine and reached for his own phone. A few work messages, but nothing from Raco. “What did he want?”
Gemma was listening to the voicemail again. She hung up and clicked the screen to black. The lights from the festival entrance shone bright through the car windshield, and the sounds of music and crowds floated through the air.
“He wants to know exactly when I last saw Kim.”
“Does he say why?”
“No.”
Falk kissed Gemma goodbye inside the main gates and watched her disappear down the path in the direction of the festival headquarters.
When she was gone, he took out his phone and tried Raco, listening to the ringtone on the other end.
No answer. Falk thought for a minute, then set off in the direction of the vineyard stall.
The Monday-night festival crowd was lighter and easier to navigate, and Falk could see farther ahead than he was used to.
He spotted Raco’s family and friends gathered around the stall before any of them saw him.
The casual workers were once again behind the table, smiling and pouring for customers, and Falk saw Charlie unloading a crate of bottles.
Shane was there as well, leaning against a post, chatting to someone.
As he laughed and shifted his weight, Falk saw a blond head appear. Naomi. She was laughing, too.
“Hey, you made it.”
Falk felt a hand on his arm and turned at the voice. Rita.
“How was your evening?” she asked, interested but not intrusive.
“It was really nice, thanks.”
“Well, it’s about to get even better because we’re heading over to tackle the kids’ rides in a minute.” She grinned. “If you want to join me for the walk? Please say yes.”
“I would, but—” Falk scanned the group. Across the track, Raco’s older brother, Ben, was shepherding his various children out of the way of passersby while managing to simultaneously hold a conversation with Rohan. Zoe was watching them from her stroller, looking bored. “Where’s Greg?”
“He’s with Eva and Zara. They’ve gone to see Joel at the first-aid station.”
“By the east exit? Did he say why?”
“No. Just to say hello, I think.” Rita had caught the note in his voice, though, and frowned. “They should be back soon.”
“Right.” Falk’s eyes met hers. She’d lived with a police officer long enough that some things could go unsaid. “Listen, has he mentioned anything to you?”
“About what? Kim?”
“Yeah.”
“Not to me. Not today, anyway.” Rita shifted her weight to glance beyond Falk, over to where the rest of the family was starting to move, gathering up children and belongings. She turned back. “Go and talk to him. You know where we’ll be.”
The east of the site was as empty as always, and Falk passed only a handful of people after he cleared the rides and stalls and drew closer to the exit.
He spotted Raco straightaway, standing alone, a few steps beyond the rope that hung across the break in the fence.
He had his back turned and his arms folded across his chest as he stared out at the bushland.
Joel and Zara were watching him in silence from the first-aid station, while Eva played with Joel’s blood pressure cuff.
They all looked up as Falk came nearer, and he caught a flash of relief cross the teenagers’ faces.
How long had Raco been standing there like that?
Falk raised a hand to them, then ducked under the rope himself.
Raco turned at the sound. “Oh. G’day.” His voice was flat, and his eyes slid straight back to the reservoir track. He wasn’t smiling.
“Hi, mate,” Falk said, stepping onto the path beside him.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down to where the body of water lay hidden beyond the trees.
Falk hesitated, but only for a moment. If he couldn’t trust Raco, he couldn’t trust anyone.
“Gemma says the answer is around fifteen months before Kim disappeared.”
“Right.” Raco didn’t sound surprised. He looked over, caught Falk’s expression, and his voice changed. “Don’t worry. I’ve asked everyone.”
“Yeah? When they last saw Kim?” Falk felt a tiny thread of relief run through him. He hadn’t really been worried, but still. Ahead, the silvery shadows on the trail shifted as the breeze rustled the trees. “Why?”
“Just trying to get it clear in my head,” Raco said. “So around fifteen months, Gemma reckons, since she had significant contact with Kim?” He nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“Does it?” Falk frowned, trying to follow.
“Naomi says the same. Shane reckons a bit longer for him. Zara was in touch more often, as you’d expect, but even she found Kim hard to get hold of. Charlie says he hadn’t seen her in person for a full year. Rita and I hadn’t seen her in two.”
“Okay.” A fair while, then, Falk thought. For all of them. But he wasn’t sure what—
“Daddy?” They both turned to see Eva on the other side of the exit. “Can we go?”
Zara was following a few paces behind and shrugged an apology. “She says she’s had enough.”
“No worries, don’t blame you, mate,” Raco said, ducking under the rope and taking his daughter’s hand. “Yeah, let’s go.” He turned to Zara. “You coming, too?”
Zara hesitated, then glanced toward Joel, who was patiently tidying up the equipment Eva had been fiddling with. “I think I’ll stay here for a while.”
“All right. Come on, Eva. We’ll find Mum at the rides.”
Eva extended her other hand to Falk, swinging herself between him and Raco as they headed back into the site. The sounds and music grew louder as they drew closer to the attractions, the crowd filling in around them.
“So what’s going on, mate?” Falk said as they walked.
“I really don’t know. Been thinking, I suppose,” Raco said over his daughter’s head.
“I mean, I get it that Rob Dwyer has a hard time believing Kim didn’t talk to any of us on the night.
For what it’s worth, I can take his point on that.
” He shrugged. “But it was a really busy night. And then when Zoe was found alone, it didn’t feel like a stretch to chalk up the whole night to Kim behaving out of character. ”
Raco’s mouth was a hard line as he swung his daughter. Screams from the rides echoed in the night air.
“But the thing is, avoiding us wasn’t out of character for Kim lately,” he said. “It hadn’t been for a while. Rita was right the other day, saying that Kim wouldn’t have come to the christening. She probably wouldn’t have. She’d been pulling away.”
“You don’t think it was just a distance thing?” Falk felt the weight of Eva’s small hand gripping his. “Her moving to Adelaide, maybe some mental health issues in there as well?”
“Well, yeah. I did think that. But if I take a step back, it feels like there’s more to it.
On one hand, okay, it’s a few unreturned phone calls or Kim not mentioning that she’d left her job, or never getting around to visiting.
But for her to drift away from everyone she used to be close to feels…
” Raco shrugged. “Deliberate, I suppose. That night at the festival wasn’t unusual.
It was how things were between us and Kim.
It’s like she was gone before she was even gone. ”
They slowed on the path to let a children’s mini-train on wheels trundle across in front of them, groups of energetic kids and their tired-looking parents waving from the carriages. Eva dropped Falk’s and Raco’s hands to wave back, and they both dutifully did the same.
“They friends of yours, Eva?” Falk asked as she enthusiastically waved them off into the distance, and she looked at him like it was a silly question.
“No. It’s what you’re supposed to do here.” Her tone had enough of Rita in it that Falk had to smile. “It’s fun.”
“You know what? You’re right, Eva. It is.”
With the track ahead clear once more, they walked on, the lights from the rides throwing bright colors onto their faces.
Falk turned back to Raco and had opened his mouth when the words simply disappeared.
It happened without warning as, in a dormant part of his mind, something stirred.
Whatever it was shifted, heavy and stubborn, only to resettle awkwardly.
It left behind a mild but distinctly uncomfortable sensation, as though Falk had forgotten something he really needed to remember.
He blinked in confusion. What had triggered that?
He walked on, doing his best to fade out the noise and bustle around him as he tried to capture the thought.
A few paces ahead, Eva pointed at some people on a ride.
And there. There it was again, another unwieldy shudder, before the sensation sank back into the depths.
The uneasy feeling lingered, though, pulsing and persistent.
There was too much going on around for Falk to get a clear read.
Still, he waited. Nothing more. Finally, he gave up and looked over at Raco.
“So what are you thinking?” Falk said. “With Kim?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it probably doesn’t add much in real terms. Doesn’t change the fact that Zoe was found alone.
Or that Kim must have taken herself out of that east exit, or that her shoe turned up in the water.
But I can think of a few reasons someone might cut themselves off, and none of them are good.
It’s a red flag any way you look at it.” Raco glanced down at his daughter.
“You know, if a report like that came across my desk at work, especially with a baby involved, I’d have been asking questions straightaway.
Getting some of the health teams involved, I’d be thinking maternal welfare checks, that kind of thing.
” New lines formed on his face. “You can be too close sometimes. See what you expect to see, not what’s really in front of you. ”
The alert pulsing in Falk’s head ratcheted up a whole notch.
“There’s Mummy.”
Eva pointed, and up ahead, Falk could see Rita standing by one of the baby rides.
The concern hadn’t quite left her eyes. Charlie was there, too, talking to his older brother and Rohan, all three leaning in to hear each other over the music.
Shane was checking his phone, frowning at the screen, but Naomi was nowhere to be seen.
On the far side of the track, the ferris wheel rose into the sky.
It creaked and groaned through its lazy rotation.
“You coming over?” Raco said to Falk as Eva pulled on his hand.
“Yeah. I will. Be there in a sec.”
Falk slowed and stepped clear of the path.
He watched Eva run ahead of her dad, arms outstretched, and suddenly found himself picturing her just a few minutes earlier.
Waving at the train ride, sounding a lot like her mother.
The alert was coming faster and louder now because in Falk’s head, that thing that felt so heavy and stale and worn was moving again.
Not just moving but taking on a different shape.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to focus.
The shape was something he recognized, but as he turned it over and then over again, it shifted and reformed in an unexpected way, catching a new light.
And different shadows, too. Ones that made it look both familiar and like something else entirely.
Falk’s eyes flicked open. He stepped onto the path and walked a few fast paces, stopping when he reached the base of the ferris wheel.
We see what we expect to see.
Falk ignored what was right in front of him and instead cast his mind back, re-creating the scene in front of him as clearly as he possibly could. This same spot, twelve months earlier. What had happened?
Gemma and Naomi had been there. A short distance along that same path, their heads close as they spoke.
Rohan, too, underneath the wheel itself, chatting to the Queensland tourists.
Elsewhere on the grounds, out of sight, Raco and Rita had been with their children.
Shane and Charlie at the vineyard stall.
Zara making her way to the bushland party.
Joel, lovesick and alone at the first-aid station. And Falk himself, here in this spot.
We see what we expect to see.
Falk looked up. Because now, he was thinking about more than just that moment last year.
He was thinking about other things, too.
About Kim on the phone to Charlie and Zara.
What was said, and what wasn’t said. And Joel at the east exit sticking to his story.
And Raco checking the fence perimeter. And the most efficient and terrifying way to make a parent do anything you might want them to do.
And how Eva Raco, like her mother, was sometimes so very right.
We see what we expect to see.
Falk gazed at the ferris wheel, up to the top carriages rising high in the air. He lifted his arm and waved. He waited.
We see what we expect to see.
A dozen hands waved back.
Gone before she was gone.