Bright Air - Barry Maitland [51]
She saw how agitated I was. ‘What’s wrong, Josh? Have the police been in touch? Mr Corcoran?’
‘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