Falk and Luke revisit their old alibi in Melbourne

Five years before the Hadler family murders, Aaron Falk and Luke Hadler met in Melbourne and returned to the story they had used to account for their whereabouts on the day Ellie Deacon died. Falk asked where Luke had really been; Luke repeated that he had been shooting rabbits and reminded Falk that he, too, had been alone. The exchange ends not in a confession but in silence, exposing how the pair’s shared alibi bound them together even as it strained their friendship.

The Last Meeting

The conversation takes place at a bar in Federation Square, on a gray day when rain remains a nuisance rather than the blessing it will become in Kiewarra. Falk arrives harried, damp, and straight from work; in his suit he feels like another gray man in the crowd. Luke, despite having just emerged from a lengthy suppliers’ convention, is more conspicuous: he has a beer, an amused smile, and the energy to survey the backpackers and black-clad youths around him. He greets Falk with a beer and a slap on the shoulder, the easy familiarity of an old friend still visible in the gesture.

By then, however, Falk admits that in many ways he barely feels he knows Luke. Their meeting is also shaped by the grim case Falk is working on: a footballer’s wife has been found drowned in a bathtub, with thousands of dollars in cash in suitcases beside the bed, and Falk has been called in to trace the bills. When the word “drowned” slips out, it brings Ellie’s death into the conversation without either man needing to name it. Falk asks whether there has been trouble for Luke in Kiewarra. Luke briskly says there has not been any for years, and that he has told Falk so before.

Returning to the Alibi

Falk does not offer the automatic thanks that he has apparently given Luke on earlier occasions. Instead, he asks whether Luke will ever tell him where he really was that day. Luke answers that he has already told him a thousand times: he was shooting rabbits. The explanation is familiar, but it has never entirely convinced Falk. Luke rarely went shooting alone, and Falk remembers Luke at his bedroom window on the night in question. Although fear and relief color that memory, the story still seems to Falk as if it had been plucked from the air.

The recurrence matters: this is not the first time Falk has challenged the account, and Luke’s answer does not change. Falk’s question presses on a weak point in their shared version of events, but it does not establish where Luke actually was. Instead, Luke shifts the pressure back onto Falk, asking where Falk was if they are going down that road again. Falk says Luke knows he was fishing. Luke narrows the claim to its uncomfortable detail: Falk was alone at the river. The exchange makes clear that the rabbit story is not an isolated uncertainty; Falk’s own account also depends on Luke accepting his word.

Mutual Leverage and Silence

Luke says he will have to take Falk’s word for it, adding that Falk’s word is good as gold to him. The assurance is also a reminder of the balance between them: each man can question the other, and each has reason to leave the other’s account undisturbed. Luke proposes that it would be better all round if they stuck to shooting rabbits together. The suggestion offers a neat, shared version of events in place of two solitary activities, but the conversation does not establish that they actually went hunting together that day. It remains a proposal for what they should say, not a clarification of what happened.

Falk considers his options as the bar’s noise rises and falls. He sips his beer and says nothing. The silence is the scene’s decisive action: Luke has exposed the vulnerability in Falk’s alibi, and Falk chooses not to pursue the question further. The exchange gives neither man a new account to rely on. It shows instead how the old story is maintained through reciprocal restraint, with the possibility of disclosure held over each of them.

A Friendship Left Unsettled

Their final meeting ends with the customary excuses about trains to catch and early starts. As they shake hands for what proves to be the last time, Falk struggles once again to remember why they are still friends. The ordinary politeness of the farewell contrasts with the mistrust just beneath it: the two men can still perform the gestures of friendship, but their conversation has returned them to the lie that made silence necessary.

In the present, Falk tries again and again to imagine Luke chasing his own son, but the scene remains hazy and will not come into focus. That difficulty leads him back to this last encounter in Melbourne, where the past offers no clean explanation. Luke’s repeated rabbit-hunting story, his counterquestion about Falk’s solitary fishing, and the proposal that they claim to have hunted together all leave the central fact unresolved. The flashback therefore deepens the uncertainty around the old alibi while showing its personal cost: whatever the men once knew, by their last meeting Falk can no longer take their friendship—or their shared account—as uncomplicated truth.