I drive round the back of the house, and park where I think I can’t be seen from the entrance. I walk through the back-garden gate to the front door, and knock. There is no answer, and I yell out quite loudly, asking if anyone is home. The house is silent. So I sprint through the garden and out the back gate. Then I run across the couple of hundred metres of grassy paddock to the front of the kiln. There is a car track: not a road, but a recently used line of wheel ruts. The grass has not been allowed to grow over the bare dirt. Neither has it been able to grow in the small area at the front of the kiln. I can see before I step that there is a faint remnant of a footprint. A large-tread work boot maybe.

The kiln has a cast-iron door at the front. I heave it open, noticing that it is not covered in dirt or cobwebs, or anything else that might suggest this thing is a never-used relic. Inside, the surface is clean, and swept clean. I can’t tell if it has been used in the past few weeks, but it is certainly in use. And then I hear the sound of a motor — distant, and then suddenly close. I run to the side of the kiln, away from the noise. I look around, madly trying to locate it. I don’t know what I’m going to say if it is Ben. I might even accuse him outright. But then the vehicle sound moves on towards the sheds and beyond, and I see a white farm ute bump its way to the paddocks on the other side. I try to steady my breathing, and I walk bent double, instinct telling me this is what you do when you are hoping not to be seen.

I start my ute, turn back, and speed up, leaving the house behind me, all the time checking mirrors for a sign of the ute or any other. Near the sheds there is a bloke standing next to his ute talking on a phone, watching me go. I pass the bright crops, and then pull up at Ben’s mailbox. All I have to do is put the boxes in his mailbox, and then the problem is over. That was why I came up here. Except I am now certain that Ben was cremating the bodies, and that he was manipulating Tito and maybe Elaine. I should go to the police, but it would be so much easier to leave the problem here. The police might not even believe me.