‘I know. It’s a bit of a puzzle.’ Connor stepped further in, waving the torch about to find the back of the cave. ‘Here’s where it ends. All in all it’s a pretty large space.’ The beam lit on the python again, its head lying flat on its coils at the base of the wall. ‘Okay, old fella, stay there.’ He moved back towards Tilly and added, ‘I think we should check out the other two caves while we’re here. Not that there’s likely to be anything in them.’

‘Whatever.’ Tilly wiped her streaming face and pulled at the damp cotton of her shirt. ‘I just want to get out. It must be forty degrees in here.’

His assessment was correct. The next opening in the hill was no more than a split in the rock that ran only a metre or so deep. Like the larger cave, it dripped moisture and due, Tilly thought, to the greater amount of light it received, it had a lusher supply of ferny growth on its walls. The third was a shallow shelter with a wide opening and a sloping roof that met the floor within a half-dozen paces, the space between threaded with the twisted roots of trees growing on the hillside above.

‘Just the one possibility then,’ Connor mused, rubbing his chin with the end of the torch. ‘Makes you wonder how they came to stumble across it. The racket could’ve been going for years, of course. Does your husband have much bush savvy, Tilly? Could he find his way around this sort of country?’

‘Gerry’s a fisherman,’ Tilly said. ‘I suppose that our fishing camp was in the bush, but he isn’t Crocodile Dundee. Anyway, I thought you suspected him of running drugs, not poaching.’

‘No reason why he couldn’t do both. And we know that he’s been at Binboona recently.’ He turned aside. ‘Well, what do you think – lunchtime? My stomach seems to think so. Do you want to go back to the springs to eat?’

‘No,’ she said definitely. ‘Too many march flies. We can eat in the vehicle, then I think we should follow those tracks as far as we can. Like they say, knowledge is power and prevention’s better than cure. If we can find out where and how they’re getting away, then maybe we can stop them.’

‘Under that ironwood tree then,’ Connor said, adding with a little smile, ‘You see, I do know the timber and a lot of the plants in the area. It’s why I chose to pose as a botanist.’

‘Well, you didn’t convince Matt,’ she retorted, handing him his sandwiches. She hesitated. ‘He’s a bit of an oddball, suspicious of anything different. He’s a hard man to know with his prejudices and silence.’

‘But you do?’