Chandler took solace in the shade as Mitch sidled up beside him. His friend’s initial enthusiasm had waned and now, in a further notch to his increasingly grating personality, he had taken to ordering the volunteers around like personal slaves. No ‘Thank you’, just a warning to keep their eyes open. More scolding than encouraging.

Over the last few weeks Mitch’s own appearance had altered, his cheeks were hollow with hunger, the pockmarks of his teenage acne had deepened.

Mitch whispered to him, ‘I joined to do police work, not be a sniffer dog.’

‘This is police work,’ replied Chandler. ‘We’re trying to determine what might have happened to him. Do you not feel a sense of duty?’

Chandler had been as surprised by this sense of duty as most. It had been non-existent throughout his teenage years and he was still trying to come to terms with it. The Force and upcoming fatherhood had aged him. He was morphing into his dad, solid and dependable. Not a bad thing, but he was only twenty-two.

Mitch raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t bought Chandler’s attempt to motivate him. ‘What I get Chandler is the sense that we’re looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found. If he wandered out this far he knew where he was going. And knew that he wasn’t coming back.’

‘What do you want, Mitch? Murders? Drugs? Prostitution? Try the big city.’

Mitch pulled a rotten branch from a tree, dry timber exploding from the trunk. ‘I’m thinking about it,’ he said, crumbling the desiccated wood in his hand and letting the scraps fall to the ground.

‘Are you serious?’ asked Chandler, his attention removed from the old man scrabbling around in the dust.

Mitch nodded. ‘I am.’

‘You’ve only been in the force a year.’

‘So?’

‘So who’s going to take you?’

Mitch licked his oddly blue lips. ‘I’ve talked to a senior down in Perth. She’s open to it.’

‘Perth . . . ? Bloody Perth?’

‘Yeah, bloody Perth. I’m not going to get anywhere doing this hide and seek shit.’

‘Big plans,’ said Chandler, not a little snarkily, ‘big plans.’

‘Just because you’ve got yourself stuck.’

‘Nothing stuck about it.’

Mitch’s grin was full of contempt and made Chandler want to punch him. ‘You stuck it in Teri, now you’re stuck here.’

Visions of his eight-months-pregnant girlfriend stirred Chandler’s guts. He wanted more than anything to be with her rather than tramping through these woods. But he told Mitch what he had told her.

‘Life goes on. It has to. There’s no other choice.’

With that he left Mitch by the tree and returned to Arthur’s side. The old man had uncovered some plastic wrapping and was trying to piece together what it had originally been.