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  Then an interruption. The wrapping didn’t get finished.

  Hirsch shuddered, then took himself in hand. He stepped out of the shed and advanced on the house. Onto the veranda. A knuckle rap on the front door.

  Waited, tried the door: locked. Knocked again. No answer. Went around to the rear of the house.

  The back door was open.

  Hirsch nudged it with his forearm, stepped in when it was fully ajar, and saw that he was in a kind of mud room: work boots, rubber boots and old trainers against one wall, coats along a line of hooks, a small cupboard with a shoe brush on top, a broom rack. Two doorways: one to the kitchen, the other to the laundry. Both rooms empty.

  But clean crockery gleamed in a rack beside the kitchen sink—several plates and bowls, from a main meal. Last night’s dinner? Not Christmas Day lunch, not if the unfinished tricycle was any indication.

  Hirsch stepped through to the dimly lit hallway leading to the front door, aware of three things: a beautifully patterned pressed-tin ceiling; wainscoting; a woman face-down on the floor at the end. There was enough light from a glass panel in the front door for him to see bare legs, pale blue shorts, a T-shirt once yellow but now mostly dark with blood.

  Shot in the back before she could reach the door? Before she could warn somebody in one of the front rooms?

  Hirsch scanned the floor automatically for spent cartridges before unholstering his service pistol. Stood for a while, listening. The house spoke like any old house, but he didn’t have the sense of human hearts beating in it. He stepped quietly along the hallway and stopped at the first of the intermediate doors.

  A teenage boy’s bedroom: posters, scattered clothing, general mess. He went in. No bodies, no one hiding. The room opposite contained two single beds. Rumpled bedclothes on one, with a scattering of soft toys and a Little Mermaid poster on the wall. The other bed, for an older child, hadn’t been slept in. Novels in a fantasy series on a bedside table, boy-band posters on the wall, a little desk holding a lumpy pottery jar stocked with a range of colourful pens.

  No blood, no bodies.

  But Hirsch added another Denise Rennie falsehood to the list: she apparently had three children, not one.

  He continued to the end of the hallway and knelt beside the dead woman. Flies had found her. She was cold, no pulse, and the blood had dried to a stiff scab on the T-shirt. Her head was turned to the left, her cheek against the floor, giving him a clear look at her face. Yes: Denise Rennie.

  Hirsch gathered himself again. The doors on either side were partly open. The left led to the main bedroom: a queen-size bed, a massive old wardrobe and a modern desk with an ADSL modem, a printer and a computer on it. Two red lights among the green on the modem, indicating some kind of fault. The internet would be a problem this far from town.

  He checked the wardrobe and the floor on the other side of the bed, then returned to the hallway. Stepped around Rennie to knuckle open the other door.

  A sitting room with a Christmas tree in one corner, a mess of wrapping paper, boxes and presents strewn around it. Looted after they’d been wrapped and placed under the tree, thought Hirsch. All he wanted to do was make this mundane deduction and leave the room, but his gaze was drawn to the sofa and the overwhelming fact of a teenage boy slumped in death, facing Grand Theft Auto on a wide-screen TV, big headphones over his ears, a game controller in his lap. Wouldn’t have heard his mother’s screams or the shot that put her on the floor—but paused his game when the shooter entered. Shot in the chest before he could get up.

  Hirsch stood there, thoughts in chaos. Mother dead, son dead. But where was the husband? Anna, the toddler? The older daughter? Had the husband run off with them? Butchered them in one of the sheds? Dead somewhere himself?

  This was not the time for a churn of supposition. Checking again for ejected cartridges, he made a rapid, more thorough search of the house: under beds, in wardrobes, behind furniture. Drawers and cupboards had been rifled in some of the rooms. He went back to the main bedroom: no men’s clothing or belongings anywhere. No sign that Denise Rennie was running an online business. He finished by photographing the bodies on his phone.

  Then, as the light faded from the sky, he searched the outbuildings. No one in the boot of the little Hyundai or under the workbench. No one under the tank stand or in the implement shed. He entered the shearing shed. It hadn’t been used for years but the odours lingered: lanolin, sheep shit; the wooden rails and floor slats still greasy. A place full of shadows. He stood a moment, listening for the susurrations of children in hiding, fearful of the next bullet. Only silence. He went through the shed quickly, found nothing and began a circuit of the house.

  The phone line was cut.

  Hirsch photographed it, returned to the Toyota and radioed Sergeant Brandl. She listened, said, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and ended the call.

  Hirsch waited, darkness spreading around him, and ten minutes later Brandl was saying, ‘I’ve informed the Homicide Squad and police in Sydney—who, incidentally, got very heavy with me. Don’t touch anything, don’t poke about, don’t let anyone in. And have you found other bodies?’

  ‘Negative—but how many other bodies might there be?’

  ‘It was like dragging a state secret out of them. Last name Redding, mother Denise, son Nick, daughter Louise, daughter Anna. That’s all they’d tell me. You’re positive it’s the woman whose kid was locked in the car?’

  ‘Positive. She said her name was Rennie, no mention of other children, and she lived with her husband. Noel, Neil, one or the other. But there’s no sign of a man living here.’

  ‘Estranged? Tracked them down and snatched the girls?’ Brandl said.

  ‘Maybe. What happens next, sarge?’

  ‘Short term? I’m supposed to join you and make sure you haven’t, quote, fucked up the crime scene. We’re to wait for CIB from Port Pirie, and eventually a Homicide team from Adelaide will take over.’

  ‘Is anyone coming from Sydney? They wouldn’t get here before tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘No idea,’ Brandl said. ‘See you soon.’

  Hirsch continued his circuit of the house and outbuildings, thinking it would take Brandl an hour to reach him. Finally, jittery, restless, he gazed out, away from the house. There was one thing he could do before the queer half-light disappeared.

  16

  HIRSCH RANGED ON foot in all directions, across the patchy dry grass beyond the yard and the sheds, around and through a nearby huddle of gum trees, over the neighbouring paddocks, into the mallee scrub fringe and along a dry creek bed. Looking for bodies, breadcrumbs. For dirt powdery enough to hold shoe prints.

  Fruitless. Too dark. He returned to the house and searched the weedy drainage channels on each side of the driveway. It ended at a stock ramp on Hamel Road, beside a fence gate. Here the soil was looser, part talc and grit, churned by vehicle tyres—his included. No shoe prints, not that Hirsch was expecting any. If the girls had been abducted, they’d be in a vehicle. If they’d run, they’d head across country, not along the driveway.

  He wandered back to the house and the world had become a silent place, full of shadows cast by a slice of moon. With nothing else to do, he sat in the HiLux, listened to his CD. Dylan, ‘Desolation Row’. Spot on.

  Then his old training kicked in. Grabbing a roll of crime-scene tape and several garden stakes, he sealed off the tyre-churned dirt between the crown of the road and the stock ramp. Then he opened the paddock gate and marked out a path to the house parallel to the driveway, one stake every twenty metres, preserving his dwindling supply of tape by tying bows to each stake. Finally, he sealed off a parking area for the expected flood of official vehicles on patchy grass away from the yard, house and sheds. That was about all he could do to preserve the scene. He left the HiLux where it was and waited, seated on the ground this time, his back to the trunk of a pepper tree.

  Sergeant Brandl arrived first, the headlights of her Commodore pitching and yawing over Hirsch
’s path of paddock stones, clods and grass tussocks parallel to the driveway. He stood so she’d spot him, pointed to the parking area he’d marked out, and watched her pull up and get out.

  She said, ‘I’d like to go in and look for myself, but it was made pretty clear I shouldn’t go stomping over everything in my hobnail boots.’ She glanced around at Hirsch’s row of garden stakes. ‘Good thinking with the tape.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  ‘Got any other photos?’

  Hirsch handed her his phone, watched her flick through to the end. ‘So where are the two girls?’

  ‘I had a quick look around before the light failed. Didn’t spot anything.’

  ‘If they’re not out there somewhere, dead or hiding’—she indicated the endless plain—‘then maybe they’re with the killer.’

  ‘Maybe. Let’s suppose an estranged husband or boyfriend does find them. Why not kill all of them?’

  ‘The girls are special to him?’ Brandl said.

  Hirsch looked away, wanting to anchor his gaze to something ordinary. But the pepper tree, the tank stand and the house were crouching shadows in the starlight. And like any member of a police force, he knew all about the chaotic thinking of a domestic tyrant.

  They were silent until Hirsch broke it. ‘Sydney, sergeant?’

  Brandl cocked her head at him. ‘You’re thinking they’re a long way from home, if that’s where they’re originally from.’ She shrugged. ‘A good hiding place.’

  ‘Or not,’ Hirsch said. ‘Someone found them.’ Then a cold, clenching sensation. ‘Oh, God…’ he floundered, trying to squash the realisation. ‘The YouTube clip.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Brandl turned to him and touched his forearm fleetingly. ‘Not your fault, constable, okay? You might feel responsible, but you’re not to blame.’ She took a step back. ‘Rather than twiddle our thumbs until the others get here, let’s do a bit of brainstorming. What else can you tell me about the mother?’

  ‘Nothing, really,’ Hirsch said. ‘Doctor Pillai might know more. But someone was looking for her yesterday.’ He related his conversation with Gemma Pitcher. ‘Except he didn’t use the names Rennie or Redding—it was Reid.’

  ‘We’ll need a description from her. What did she tell him?’

  Hirsch shook his head. ‘She couldn’t tell him anything. None of us knew anything about Mrs Rennie until last Friday. She only came in to Tiverton then because she needed a repeat prescription and Doctor Pillai has a clinic there on Fridays.’

  Brandl brooded. ‘The way she overreacted. Gave you a different name and a false address. Sydney police all cagey and officious. It’s feeling more like witness protection than simply a family hiding from some unhinged bloke.’

  The sounds of vehicles. Bumpy headlights. Port Pirie detectives and a crime-scene van, Hirsch guessed. He thought of his poor, damaged little town. ‘Two atrocities in one week, sarge. I’ll have reporters coming out of my ears.’

  Brandl touched his arm again. ‘I will, you mean. The Homicide Squad’s setting up a major incident room in the Redruth hall. Half the accommodation in town’s booked out already.’

  Hirsch doubted that would protect Tiverton from media attention. He watched an unmarked sedan park beside Brandl’s Commodore. The crime-scene van parked beside the ribbon of tape closest to the house.

  It was Detective Comyn driving the car, his passenger John Alwin, the new Port Pirie CIB inspector, in a wrinkled shirt, his tufts of carroty hair arranged around a vulnerable-looking white scalp. The man himself didn’t seem vulnerable. He was a curt, take-charge type.

  He scowled a hello to Brandl and turned to Hirsch. ‘I know who you are.’

  Hirsch was fed up all at once. ‘Is that a fact. Sir.’

  ‘Don’t be a dick, constable. Now, you came out here because…?’

  ‘Sir,’ Brandl interrupted, ‘I received a call from police headquarters in Sydney, requesting a welfare check. We were tied up with a traffic incident, so I asked Constable Hirschhausen to do it.’

  ‘I’m asking Constable Hirschhausen. You arrived here when?’

  ‘About three hours ago.’

  ‘Found two dead.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hirsch said. Beyond the inspector’s shoulder he could see the crime-scene crew setting up external floodlights.

  ‘Touch anything?’

  Hirsch cast his mind back. ‘I checked they were dead. Walked through each room. Knelt to look under beds. Opened doors, wardrobes and cupboards.’ He added: ‘I wore gloves.’

  ‘Why did you go through the house? Weren’t you told not to?’

  ‘Not at that stage. I was looking for other victims.’

  Either the inspector was obtuse or hadn’t been told a thing—or he was being a prick. His words came at Hirsch in mocking, testing spurts. ‘Looking for other victims. Then what?’

  Hirsch used cop-speak. ‘In what little light was available to me I undertook a search of the sheds and adjacent paddock areas.’ He paused. ‘Sir, we need a search party here first light tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, do we now? When you made this search, did you find anything?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you that you might get shot?’

  ‘I wanted to find the missing girls, sir.’

  Alwin grunted. He turned away. ‘Good thinking with the crime-scene tape. That was you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Alwin clapped his hands. ‘Right. Detective Comyn will take your statement. Then when the crime scene officers have checked in and around your vehicle, you may go.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Sergeant Brandl, I’ll need that Sydney contact, and then you may also go.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘But I want you both working the phones tonight. Volunteers from all over, start searching at first light. If any of the local graziers have a spotter plane, well and good. I’ll see if the air wing can give us a chopper.’

  ‘Sir,’ Brandl said.

  ‘And Constable Hirschhausen, you’ll need to make yourself available for interview sometime tomorrow.’

  ‘Homicide Squad, sir?’

  ‘Whoever they throw at you.’

  17

  BOXING DAY. HIRSCH, bleary in the dawn light, was walking along the creek bed, sandwiched between Martin Gwynne and a Redruth pharmacist named Delia Paley. Straggling lines of volunteers kept pace with them on each bank. The search helicopter chattered above the mallee scrub to the north-east. Separate line searches, fanning outwards from the house on Hamel Road, were covering the dry wheat flats.

  And Gwynne was going on and on. ‘It’s just that I have had some experience.’

  Miffed because he hadn’t been put in charge of a search team.

  ‘Out of my hands, Martin,’ Hirsch said.

  Thank God. He’d spent hours making calls and setting up a phone-tree last night, then, on four hours’ sleep, had been one of the first to arrive at the kill house. He’d helped oversee the parking of the volunteers’ vehicles, but after that he’d been told where to go and what to do, same as everyone else.

  ‘For example, those tourists last Easter,’ Gwynne insisted.

  A Japanese couple who’d wandered into the bush after puncturing a tyre on a stone reef, to be found a couple of hours later by a scratch search party of Tiverton townspeople. Probably the quickest and least onerous search in mankind’s history.

  ‘We’re all equal here, Mr Gwynne,’ Delia Paley said—warm, polite, but with an edge.

  A spasm of disparagement on Martin’s face, what Hirsch could see of it under the sensible broad-brimmed hat. A blob of zinc cream on his nose, turning greasy.

  Hirsch swung his attention back to the creek bed. It had been pointless trying to spot shoe prints in last night’s half dark; he was hoping the sunlight would yield the clues they needed. The helicopter banked, swooped over them and disappeared towards the Mischance Creek ruins. It’s going to be a morning of false sightings, Hirsch thought. A different note cut the a
ir and he looked up: a crop-duster based at the Clare aerodrome.

  Martin halted importantly, his palm pushing at the wall of hot, still air, and peered down at the pebbles and sand. Crouched. Straightened, took out his phone and photographed whatever was at his feet, then glanced left and right for markers. Photographed a bent tree on one side, a dimpled hollow in the red dirt bank on the other.

  Delia Paley had stooped to look at Martin’s find. ‘Star Wars figure,’ she said, reaching out a hand. ‘Chewbacca.’

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing. That’s evidence.’

  Standing again, Paley flushed. ‘It’s old.’

  ‘It could be significant.’

  Hirsch said, ‘I think Delia’s right, Martin. It’s been here for a very long time.’

  Sun-bleached, cracked, missing an arm. He glanced up onto the bank, where Bob Muir waited patiently, looking in on them.

  ‘Bob, do the locals use this as a picnic spot?’

  Muir nodded.

  Hirsch turned back to Gwynne and clapped him on the back. ‘But thanks for spotting it, Martin. I would have missed it completely.’

  Gwynne gave that some thought, then nodded. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Delia Paley said, sharing a look with Hirsch.

  He gave her a strangled grin. His life often consisted of standing between antagonistic parties. He took a swig of water from the bottle clipped to his belt. ‘Better keep going.’

  They walked for five kilometres, Hirsch relaying their progress to the other teams and to Sergeant Brandl, who was coordinating from the house. Hot, getting hotter, nothing to deflect the sun. Hirsch’s bare arms were burning. Delia Paley turned an ankle when one round stone rolled against another, and switched places with Bob Muir.

  After a while Bob said, ‘Search and rescue dogs?’

  ‘Two dogs and handlers expected late morning.’

  ‘Police or SES?’

  ‘Police.’

  Trained in tracking and air scenting, probably. Hirsch visualised it, the handlers offering a T-shirt to one German shepherd, a little singlet to the other, before setting them on their way.