To the Sea Read online

  By early afternoon, Tony had known they weren’t going to find anything at Garnet Point. The weather had turned. Everything smelled of rain. A strong southerly had blown in and the temperature had plummeted. It might be the middle of summer but the heavy grey sky had dropped low, blotting out Mount Wellington and the surrounding hills and islands. And it was cold. A big swell had developed out in the channel and the water was rough and choppy, throwing waves against the jetty and little beach. This was not the calm blue stillness of Driving Sound they had all dismissed yesterday. The rain blew in late afternoon. Tony had called the marines to ask about another dive as the ocean was starting to look like the only place Zoe could have disappeared into without leaving a trace.

  But Bill Watson had flatly turned down Tony’s request. He wasn’t risking his divers for a floater. He would resume the search as soon as conditions allowed and he would let Tony know when that time arrived. It might be days.

  After their interview with Eva Kennett, Tony had sent Narelle back to town early to follow up calls and pick up some papers from Zoe’s principal. On the drive back to town, Paul and Tony had gone over the day’s findings in short bursts of talking which ended up back in weary silence. The family wasn’t helping. Tony didn’t think they could help. Paul continued to emphasise their strangeness and the day’s interviews had merely confirmed this assessment. Neither man was in a mood for argument.

  Tony replayed the interview with Eva Kennett to himself. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Narelle about it, but he was interested in her take on it. Eva Kennett was worried about why Zoe was gone. She was worried that she didn’t know where Zoe was. But she didn’t seem to be worried that Zoe was dead. She had smiled sympathetically when Tony had talked about his concerns. He had deliberately used the words drowned and gone and body but they hadn’t landed on Eva Kennett as he had intended they would. Instead, he had heard the melodrama of his words as they bounced back to him. Eva wrong-footed him at every turn.

  The catch-up with Narelle and Paul back at headquarters and the arrival of the forensic reports hadn’t moved the case any further forward. Zoe’s DNA was in her bed and only her bed. Saliva on her pillow. And some of her blonde hairs were found on the front and back passenger seats in her father’s car.

  But nothing else. All the fingerprints and DNA were identified. No strangers. No one where they shouldn’t be. Forensically, the site was clean.

  And so here the three of them were late at night trying to figure out the next step.

  ‘You two do know that you can go home, don’t you?’ asked Tony as he looked across his desk at his two detectives still reading through notes and reports.

  ‘Yeah, we know,’ answered Paul. ‘But Terri and the kids are asleep now and I couldn’t sleep with all this stuff in my head so it’s probably better for everyone that I stay and crack the case by morning. Then I can take the day off tomorrow.’

  ‘Where did you learn to be so optimistic?’ asked Narelle looking over at him.

  ‘Christian Brothers and a good Catholic education. It leaves you with a life view you can’t shake. Not the one they thought they were teaching but a more fucked up one. Only the afterlife to keep you going through this shit.’

  ‘Let’s give the investigation one last go-through. We might’ve missed something,’ said Narelle. She looked tired but she didn’t know how to give up on anything.

  ‘I’m in,’ said Paul.

  They dragged their chairs over to Tony’s desk.

  ‘We need food,’ said Tony. ‘My shout.’

  Twenty minutes later they’d set up everything they had on the case on Tony’s desk, including Narelle’s laptop with all the forensics, and plugged in the electronic whiteboard, takeaway containers from the Chinese Dumpling World across the road were on an adjacent desk and they were ready to go.

  ‘Back to the beginning,’ said Narelle with her mouse in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

  There was nothing new. Tony kept waiting for the moment when they would spot the clue they’d missed, the stray word or meaning they’d not heard the first time, the forensic detail that had eluded them, the clash of evidence or statements that proved the lie or the error. No new leads with phone records or bank account details. Zoe’s official phone records were the same as her call log on her phone and she hadn’t withdrawn any money from her bank account or used her credit card since two days before Christmas.

  It was all as it had been yesterday and today. Zoe was there, according to the family and at least one neighbour who had seen her out on Table Rock with Matt, and then she was not. There was no blood, no unidentified fingerprints or DNA, no evidence of family discord or reason for Zoe to be a runaway, no one else in Garnet Point had seen her on the only road in or out of the small town; no trail of any kind to follow.

  Zoe’s PE teacher, Miss Wilkinson, had called Narelle from Morocco. She’d confirmed Zoe’s sporting abilities and that Zoe was a wonderful girl. And she said there was a boy. She didn’t know his name but she could identify him from a photo. He was a Hutchins boy and she had seen them together on several occasions holding hands. He often waited for Zoe when she was training after school and they left together. Miss Wilkinson was of the view that Zoe would never do anything as irresponsible as run away. If she was missing, someone had kidnapped her or she had met with some other hideous, unspeakable tragedy. She’d offered to come back from Morocco to assist with the search.

  So the PE teacher knew something the family didn’t, thought Tony. Zoe had a boyfriend.

  Miss Canning had given Narelle the names of those boys she remembered dancing with Zoe at the formal. Three names were marked with an asterisk. These boys had danced with Zoe more than once. Paul would follow them up tomorrow.

  The only other new pieces of information for Tony were some photos of Zoe he hadn’t seen before.

  As they flashed up on the big screen, Tony asked Narelle to stop. The photo on the screen was one of Zoe with two of her little nieces. Zoe was sitting on the lawn leaning back on her arms with the sun on the water behind her. She was looking at the camera and smiling out from under a soft wide-brimmed straw hat. Both the little girls had their blonde heads on Zoe’s stomach and they were laughing. Shrieking with laughter by the looks of them.

  Zoe Kennett was an extraordinary looking girl. Tony looked at her smiling face and realised that he was smiling back at her. He looked over at Paul and Narelle, embarrassed, but neither of them were looking at him. Paul was concentrating on his sweet custard dumpling and Narelle was looking intently at the screen. Tony noticed that she had a small smile on her face too. The two younger girls were the focus of the photo, but Zoe dominated it. She was looking straight at the camera with her blue cat eyes. Her damp hair was incandescent and sparkling white as it blew out to one side of her face. Her messy hair, the freckles on her nose, her full lips and the little gap between her square front teeth lent her a deceptive childlike appearance but overlaying it all was a natural unadorned sexuality.

  Tony could well believe that boys at the formal had been entranced. No way this girl was not the girl at the formal every boy wanted. No way every other girl at that formal didn’t hate Zoe Kennett just a little bit.

  ‘She’s an incredible-looking girl, isn’t she?’ said Paul, looking up from the last of his dumpling.

  Tony couldn’t reconcile the fresh, live energy of the girl in the photo with where this case was going. Here was Zoe with her little nieces. This was not a brooding teenager, too cool for small children and other family members. Not off by herself glued to a phone screen. She looked kind and warm. Tony wondered what her voice sounded like.

  ‘Any more photos of Zoe, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yeah, a few.’ Narelle clicked slowly through eight more photos of Zoe. In one she was standing alone under a pine tree with her back to the camera but her two nieces were with her in most of the other photos. In two of them, you could see other members of the family in the background and a long trest
le table set for a meal. In another, Zoe was lying in a brightly coloured loose-weave hammock with her arms above her head, shielding her eyes from the sun, and she was again looking straight into the camera. At him. The hammock appeared to be suspended over the blue water of Driving Sound. It was a perfectly balanced photo with four distinct layers like a rainbow cake: the bottom layer of green grass, the deep blue layer of the sea, the bright-coloured layer of Zoe and the hammock and the pale blue clear sky icing its perfection. ‘Go back,’ said Tony. Narelle started clicking the mouse and the photos scrolled back.

  ‘Stop.’

  In this photo, Zoe was standing with her arms around the shoulders of her little nephew next to the trestle table covered in a brightly coloured cloth and set for a meal. There were two bowls of green salad and a jug of orange juice on the table at her elbow. There was a cluster of out-of-focus champagne bottles on the table behind her. Tony could also make out a fuzzy John Kennett standing further back. Next to him were Carl, Max and Con in shorts and T-shirts grinning and holding up tennis racquets like the Three Musketeers.

  ‘When were these photos taken?’ Tony asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  ‘Not sure,’ said Narelle. ‘I didn’t download them. I’d have to check.’

  ‘Check,’ said Tony and Paul in perfect synch.

  Narelle sat up straight and quickly scrolled through the folders to find the original downloaded file.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said quietly after a long moment. She looked over at Tony.

  The photo of Zoe lying in the hammock came back up onto the screen as Narelle clicked the mouse again. Tony stood up and walked over to the screen so his face was right next to Zoe’s.

  ‘They were taken the day Zoe went missing,’ said Narelle. ‘The times on them are all between 18.05 and 18.30.’

  The three detectives stared at the photo.

  ‘How did we miss this?’ He wheeled around with his hands on his hips and his head thrown back to the ceiling. His white shirt was loose but still mostly tucked in, his cuffs were folded haphazardly up his forearms and he had lost his tie hours ago.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Narelle. ‘I don’t know who downloaded them. Probably Jack, but he didn’t tell me. Maybe he didn’t know what they were. I just assumed they were photos the family had given us as per your request for a recent photo. They’re all of Zoe.’

  ‘These photos were taken by someone in Zoe’s family, minutes before they sat down to dinner. The most recent photo the family gave me was one of Zoe taken on Christmas Day. No one mentioned taking any photos of Zoe the day she disappeared. Can you tell what camera they were downloaded from?’

  Narelle continued to work at her laptop.

  ‘It was a phone,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know whose but we can easily find out. We just have to check all the phones owned by members of the family and we’ll get a match. Jack made that file but I don’t seem to have it here.’

  They continued to look at the photo of Zoe lying in the hammock. Paul and Narelle knew better than to say anything.

  ‘This bloody family,’ Tony said to the screen, so quietly that Narelle and Paul didn’t seem to catch it. ‘What are they playing at?’

  Why hadn’t the family shown these photos to his people? Wasted hours of interviews could’ve been answered just with these photos. Max had shown them some photos he’d taken on Christmas Day but they were all family shots, mostly of his own children, and there was nothing of note of Zoe. Why didn’t the rest of the family check their phones and cameras to be sure?

  They’d all said that they’d not seen Zoe immediately before dinner. They’d all said that they had no idea where she’d been after she came in from swimming and before she sat down to dinner. But here she was. Playing with her nieces, mingling with her family, posing for photos. In one photo she was talking to her father. Their heads were together, almost touching, and he had his arm lightly across her shoulder. An intimate moment between father and daughter; a quiet togetherness in the blur of a large and noisy family getting ready for dinner.

  There was Zoe lying in a hammock, a hammock hanging from a tree and verandah post at the front of the house. Tony had walked past it numerous times over the past two days. Everyone who walked between the house and that table had to walk right past the hammock. Right past Zoe. And yet none of them had seen her. Or they’d seen her and told him something different. She was there, right there in front of them, with them, playing with her nieces and nephew, talking to her father, almost brushing up against her sister as she set the table for dinner.

  Mixing with his fury now, another emotion was coming through. He was excited. They had something to go on with. Zoe was a little bit closer. He could finally see her.

  ‘Call Jack,’ he said without turning away from the screen. ‘I want to know whose phone these photos are from.’

  ‘Now?’ asked Narelle. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘He should’ve told us during business hours and he should’ve emailed you the file. He might not forget next time.’

  He heard the beeps as Narelle pushed numbers on her phone.

  ‘And they all confirmed she was wearing blue,’ said Tony, looking up at Zoe on the screen.

  Zoe was lying in the hammock wearing a bright orange sleeveless sundress.

  Day three

  Tony

  TONY LAY IN HIS BED LOOKING UP AT THE DARK SKY THROUGH HIS bedroom window. It was almost dawn. It would be light by five which was only half an hour away. He wondered now why he’d even come to bed. He should’ve just showered, had some breakfast and been ready to go back to the station as soon as the day began. His head was thick and he could feel the beginnings of a headache building behind his eyes. He wouldn’t sleep and he wondered who he was going through the motions for. His bed was empty.

  Tony’s bed had been empty for a long while now. Lila had sometimes stayed at his place but he’d never really felt that she belonged in his house.

  Tony had moved out of his parents’ house after he made detective. His mother had cried and begged him to stay. Italian men did not leave their mother’s home until they married. She wept for his loneliness and the empty life that was all he would have in his own rented house. She didn’t understand the new life her youngest son was building for himself.

  His dad didn’t understand Tony leaving either but he wouldn’t say the words. So on the day he moved out, Tony kissed his mother goodbye and he and his dad loaded up the ute with his few belongings, a spare fridge from the garage and a large box of food, which Lucia had been cooking for the previous two days, and he moved into a little weatherboard cottage in Sandy Bay. The rent was cheap enough and Tony loved having a whole quiet house to himself, even if it was small.

  That first night he walked around the empty house in just a pair of track pants with his bare feet cool on the old floorboards and drinking a cold beer. Tame Impala was playing loud out of his new speakers and he was having Thai noodles delivered. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy.

  Lila was a lawyer he’d met at a party. He could tell that she was disappointed when she’d found out that he was a cop. His expensive suit had deceived her. She always referred to him as a senior detective when they were with other people, although they both knew it wasn’t going to be enough for her. But on that first night, by the time she understood that she’d been flirting with a cop for the entire night, it was too late to transfer her attentions. So she and Tony had left the party together and he had spent the night at her place.

  Lila was small and pretty in shades of brown. Long dark brown hair, large brown eyes, creamy caramel skin even in the cold of winter and always her golden earrings and bangles to offset the deeper golden hues of her shapely body. The sex was the best part. She was uninhibited with her body and careless with her feelings, and the months after the party had been an exciting time for them both. They were always ready for sex. As soon as they were inside her flat or his house, it was a rush to the bedroom or any surfa
ce they could find when the bedroom was too far away. Sometimes they didn’t even get home. One night after they’d left a club down on the wharf, they’d stepped into the shadowed doorway of a closed restaurant and, up against the wooden door, Tony had wrapped his long coat around them both, lifted her dress and they’d done it right there. He had no idea if they’d been seen. He didn’t care.

  Being with Lila was intense and fun but they both knew that one day it would end and they would walk away from each other a little bit hurt but not seriously injured. Their hearts might be chipped but not broken. They weren’t building anything. There was nothing to take slowly. They were racing towards oblivion, loving the craziness of it.

  It had lasted longer than Tony had expected. Four months after the party, they were still together and Lila had been to several Vincent family get-togethers and Tony had been up to Launceston twice to visit Lila’s parents and her sister. For others, particularly for Lucia Vincent, it looked like a relationship that might last.

  And then in August Lila had attended a Law Society dinner and asked another lawyer to go with her. It hurt about as much as Tony expected. She called him a couple of weeks later and asked if he wanted to go away up the coast for the weekend. He dodged and pleaded work. She understood. A week later he texted her asking her out for dinner and she texted back that she was working late. It was over. They didn’t meet to discuss it, they didn’t fight, there was no stuff at each other’s houses to collect, no mess to clean up.

  He didn’t like being alone again but that was the way he had lived for most of the past three years, after breaking up with Amy. He still couldn’t think about the time he’d spent with Amy without feeling the pain of her leaving him. He had loved her and she had loved him and he still didn’t know how it had all unravelled and why they just couldn’t keep loving each other and enjoy it. It was so hard by the end. Every day had become an exhausting workout for some gruelling future life neither of them could find the energy for and the relationship had collapsed in a heap of grief and pain and recriminations.