. what happened before.” Ellie suddenly lunged for the call button and pressed it to summon a nurse.
“Ellie, please, quickly, think, just one more time—do you have any idea where Martin might have gone?”
“No,” she said, eyes still closed.
A nurse entered the room. She took one look at Ellie and said, “Okay, you guys need to leave. Now.”
THEN
LOZZA
“She’s lying,” Gregg said to Lozza as she drove them to the Puggo to interview Rabz. “That retrograde-amnesia thing is suspiciously convenient.”
“I agree—she’s holding something back,” Lozza said, turning into the street that led to the pub. She pulled into a parking space right outside the Puggo and switched off the engine. Gregg unbuckled his seat belt.
“Even if some of her memory does return,” he said, “how do we know if she’s going to share anything she’s recalled? And we have no way of knowing for certain just how far back—or how selective—this ‘retrograde’ thing is, either.” He got out of the vehicle. Lozza followed suit and slammed her door shut.
“Plus, there’s the weird shit with the Corolla you said you heard bolting from their house.”
“Yeah.” Lozza glanced up at the CCTV camera as they passed under it.
And the bikie with the drug package, and the Queensland plates.
Rabz sat behind her desk in her office and twisted the strings of her apron. Her complexion was bloodless, her eyes puffy. Lozza and Gregg sat facing her on the other side of her desk.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve been seeing Martin.”
“How long?” Lozza asked.
“Is this relevant? I understand you need whatever help you can get to find him, but—”
Lozz leaned forward. “The more comprehensive a profile of a missing person is, the more we can know about his or her state of mind, motivation, recent movements—it gives us more tools with which to find the person.”
“Lozz is right,” Gregg said. “If Martin has had an accident out at sea, or if he washed up somewhere, a good profile—knowing his state of mind—will give us ideas of how he might react, where he might go, what he might do.”
Rabz looked down at her hands. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
“How long is ‘a while’?” asked Lozza, watching Rabz’s eyes carefully.
The woman’s face reddened. “Before his wife arrived here.”
Lozza said, “His wife’s name is Ellie.”
Rabz swallowed, nodded. “Before Ellie arrived in Jarrawarra.”
“How long before Ellie moved to Jarra?” Gregg asked.
Silence.
“Rabz?”
A tear slid down the side of her face. She quickly swiped it away. “Since October last year. We met when Martin first came to look for land up at Agnes.”
Lozza frowned, recalling Willow’s words about the Vegas wedding. “I thought the Cresswell-Smiths were more recently married? Like in May this year.”
Rabz hesitated, shot a nervous glance at the door as if desperate to escape, then said, “Martin and I started seeing each other before he even met Ellie. He met her in early January this year. In Vancouver.”
Lozza exchanged a quick glance with Gregg. Her pulse quickened.
“Just to get this clear,” she said, “you and Martin were dating before Martin met Ellie? And then you and Martin continued seeing each other long distance throughout their courtship and marriage? Then after they moved here, you and Martin continued the affair?”
She nodded.
A dark, inky thought that dovetailed with Willow’s comments bled into Lozza’s brain. “Did Martin marry Ellie for her money, Rabz? Is that what this is about? He loves you, but she’s bankrolling your lives?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?” asked Gregg.
“Why don’t you guys bloody well find him and then you can ask him yourself!”
Lozza and Gregg said nothing. They waited.
Rabz pushed a tangle of hair back from her face and said, “I’m sorry. I’m just wired—I’m so scared he’s dead or something and I . . . I’ve had no one I could talk to, or share my worry with. We were in Sydney together and then he got a sudden call from her. She informed him that it was urgent that he come home right away. He flew back early.”
“By ‘her’ you mean Ellie, his wife?” Lozza asked.
“Yes,” Rabz snapped. “Ellie. He said he was going to leave her. We’d bought tickets to . . . we were going to go away together. Live abroad, travel the world. I don’t know what was so important that he had to rush back for.”
Quietly, Lozza said, “Here’s the thing I’m not understanding. You and Martin start an affair around the time he develops an interest in a big expensive development in New South Wales. You’re