‘Never,’ said Chandler, abruptly – maybe too abruptly. It sounded like an admission of guilt.

‘When I freed myself from the zealots and their idea of paradise I tried to go as far away as possible. I got access to the money from a trust fund my dad had set up years ago and travelled around for a couple of years. New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia. Then somehow I found myself back in West Australia. Something possessed me to seek out this place again. I found nothing had changed – the landscape, the smell, the feel were all the same. As if time had stood still. As if the deaths of my mum, my dad and my brother had meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Like they had been forgotten. I started walking. Maybe I wanted to do what Martin did. After a couple of days trekking and sleeping in my car I found the shack and began to treat it as home. I moved in and lived up there. It’s amazing what you find out about yourself out here all alone at night.’

Gabriel paused for breath. Chandler considered making another heartfelt plea for his kids’ well-being but instinct told him that Gabriel was not in the mood to be distracted.

‘There’s a lot of pain in this forest, Chandler, pain that was heaped upon me. People have brought me nothing but pain, religion has brought me nothing but pain, so it’s right that I take revenge on these things, out here where it started, offer something to the soul of my brother, the souls of my parents. They didn’t die out here but this is where they were lost. They deserve some company out here.’

All of a sudden Gabriel let out a humourless chuckle. ‘The first victim was called Adam,’ he continued, glancing at Chandler. ‘Ironic I suppose – but unplanned.’

‘When?’ asked Chandler, the policeman in him taking over.

‘Nearly three years ago. January the fourteenth 2010. He was hitching to find work like Heath. Those are the easy ones, the desperate ones. He was a talkative lad, a bit older than me, eager to make some money for a holiday. He was obsessed with himself; Adam did this, Adam did that, repeating his name over and over and over. Hearing it repeated like that – well the urge to kill him suddenly came over me. I needed to kill him. But I had no idea how to do it. So in the middle of nowhere I pulled off the highway on to a dirt road. Told him I needed to have a piss, grabbed the rope from the boot, climbed into the back seat and strangled him.’

Gabriel stared at him. ‘It was hard to do, harder than I’d imagined it would be but I felt charged, like I had gained some measure of revenge.’