‘No, nothing like that. I’ve been doing a bit more digging, and I think I’ve come across something. Look.’ I showed her the print I’d taken of the newspaper article, and she made the connection straight away.
‘I couldn’t find any other newspaper reports about the boat, but you see the timing.’
‘Yes, of course. Luce would probably have come across this man at the party they had. What are you thinking?’
‘Well …’ I rubbed my face, trying to put together the chain of logic that had seemed so compelling the previous night. ‘It seems to me that the smuggler would have had someone helping him on the island, someone who knew the right places and had collected the rare eggs beforehand.’
‘Right.’
‘It struck me, going through the police report again, how often the Kelso family crops up. Marcus and the team stayed on their property, went to the party at their house, and were ferried around the island by one of the sons, Bob Kelso, listed as a fisherman. The other son, Harry, runs adventure hiking trips over the mountains at the south end of the island for visitors. You can check out his website.’ I showed her some pages I’d printed off. One had a picture of Harry Kelso and a group of grinning, windswept kids roped together against a panoramic backdrop of rugged scenery.
‘I think that’s taken on Mount Gower, near the cliffs where Luce fell.’ I turned the pages of the police report I’d brought until I came to the photographs of the site of the accident.
‘Did you look at the index that lists the sources of these pictures?’ I asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘There are the ones taken from sea level, blurry views up the cliff, using a telephoto lens by the look of them, from a boat pitching in the swell. Detective Maddox took those, from Bob Kelso’s boat. Then there are the others, closer shots of the area where Luce is assumed to have fallen, much sharper but still difficult to interpret. Curtis, the team’s photographer, took those.’
‘So what?’
‘Maddox never went up to the accident scene. He wouldn’t have been able to climb up there. Think about it-the investigating police officer never got within a hundred metres of the accident scene. He just had to take Owen and Curtis’s word for everything.’
I pointed to one of the views from sea level. ‘The place where Luce disappeared was to the right of this buttress-you can see its shadow. She was out of sight of Curtis and Owen. Up above you can see the forest coming right to the edge of the cliff. It wouldn’t have been impossible for someone else to have abseiled down from there to where Luce was. Someone who knew Mount Gower well, for instance.’
‘Harry Kelso?’
‘I’m just speculating. But suppose the Kelso boys were doing a bit of illegal trafficking on the side, and Luce overheard them talking to the yachtie at the party, say.’
Anna shook her head. ‘She wouldn’t have kept quiet about it, that’s for sure. She’d have been horrified. She’d have told Marcus.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t as clear-cut as that. Perhaps she only had suspicions and was trying to get proof-remember how she seemed to withdraw in those last days.’
‘And Curtis and Owen were involved?’
‘That’s possible, I suppose.’ I thought of how they were both always short of cash. ‘Look, this is pure speculation. It probably wasn’t like that at all.’
‘Maybe the diary will tell us something, if we can get into it.’
‘Yes. The other possibility is to speak to some of the other people who were there at that time. I’m thinking of Sophie Kalajzich, for instance, the girl who cleaned the house they rented and became friendly with Luce. She was on a short-term contract over there, and could be back on the mainland now. There’s a Sydney address given in the statement.’
I got the number from directory inquiries, and tried it. An answering machine responded, its message giving me the number of Sophie’s mobile. I finally got through to her, saying we were old friends of Luce, and she agreed to see us. She was a model now, doing a job at a photographic studio in Newtown, she said, and we could meet her there and talk between sessions.
The address was a converted industrial building, grubby brick walls hemming a narrow laneway. Inside, past a flashy little logo, the old structure had been given a veneer of white minimalism. From the entrance lobby we could see through to a dazzlingly lit studio space in which two girls were posing in swimwear. Through another opening, seated models were having their hair and make-up worked over. I saw the expression of bemusement on Anna’s face as she took it all in, as if we’d wandered in on a freak show.
A woman came past us, heading for the make-up room, and I said, ‘Excuse me?’
She stopped and turned to me, disconcertingly pretty, but not quite real, a life-size china doll. The industrial brick and steel of the surroundings made the butterfly-bright fabrics and the tanned flesh and the impossible hair seem blatant and somehow embarrassing, even to me.
‘We’re meeting Sophie Kalajzich,’ I said. ‘Would you know where she is?’
‘That’s her.’ The woman indicated the model in the yellow bikini. ‘I think they’ve nearly finished. Take a seat.’
I thanked her and we did as she said. There were magazines scattered on a low table beside us. Anna picked one up, touching her hair self-consciously. I was watching Sophie being posed by her photographer across a striped deckchair. She was very thin. Another kind of phasmid.
Eventually she finished and wrapped herself in a robe and came towards us. We introduced ourselves, and she said she could only give us ten minutes before she’d have to get changed for the next shoot. ‘This isn’t some legal thing, is it?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Legal?’
‘You know, insurance or something. Only I don’t know anything about the accident really. I wasn’t there.’
‘Oh, no!’ I smiled brightly. ‘No, no, nothing like that. What it is, we’re old friends of Luce, and I’ve been in London all the time since it happened.’
‘London? Oh, you’re the boyfriend, are you?’ Her eyes lit up with interest.
‘She mentioned me?’
‘Only briefly. We were discussing men.’ She grinned.
‘Ah, well … anyway, when I got back we decided, Anna and I, to try to remember her on the fourth anniversary of her passing with a little book of memories, of people who knew her, especially in that last month. Something for her family to have, you know?’
Her very full lips turned down as if she’d tasted something unpleasant. ‘Oh, right. That’s really … sweet.’
‘Yeah.’ I gave her a sad smile. ‘So if you have one or two memories of her, a shared laugh, a special thing you remember about her, that would be really great.’
‘Um, well, let me see.’ She put a perfectly shaped long nail to her chin and stared upward in thought. ‘She loved her birds, the seagulls, you know? Said she wanted to be as free as them, high up in the air all the time, never coming down to land.’
I was writing dutifully. She came out with a few more fairly banal memories.
Then she said, ‘She showed me your picture, standing on the edge of that cliff, you know? And one day I met her out walking, and she asked me to take a photo of her standing in the same sort of position, with the sky behind. I think she wanted to stick it onto your picture, so it would look like they’d been taken together.’
I stopped writing, a lump in my throat.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she cried. ‘That’s so tactless of me!’ She reached out a hand to touch my arm.
‘No … it’s okay, Sophie. It just catches me sometimes, you know.’
‘Yes, of course! I’m so sorry. I still have a little cry about her sometimes too.’
‘Do you? It must have been terrible for you all when it happened.’
‘Oh yes, everyone was devastated. And the boys! Being there when she fell! Watching her … They were a mess. They locked themselves away that night and got totally smashed. Well, you couldn’t blame them.’