‘Yes, tea would be great,’ Tilly said tiredly. ‘I don’t see Sophie, Connor.’ She was worried. ‘You don’t think she could have been silly enough to go back?’ Her words were interrupted by the distant roar of an aircraft leaving the ground and she relaxed. ‘Ah, that must be the doctor leaving – that’s why. Seems a shame he’ll have to be called back for Matt.’

‘The cops wouldn’t let him go without an escort,’ Connor pointed out.

‘And Gerry?’

‘I don’t know, love. They’d probably take a body by road. You know, you haven’t yet told me exactly what happened. Why you and Luke were even at the cave.’

‘It was the bats . . .’ The story filled in the time while they waited, and telling it gave her a chance to order the events in her mind. She would have to go over it again, probably several times, for the police. Murder was involved, after all – quite a few murders, if a refugee boat had really sunk, and Tilly could see no reason why Matt would have lied about that. Not when he had had every intention of killing her. She had only just finished her tale when headlights appeared at the camp gate, and a few moments later, Sophie’s vehicle rolled to a halt beside theirs.

She wasn’t alone. The tall, thin middle-aged man with spectacles and a little grey goatee with her was introduced as Thomas Leary, and the younger, uniformed one as Constable Lapin. He at least didn’t waste any time, cutting across Sophie’s rush of questions with a curt demand of his own. ‘So where’s this body Ms Barker reported?’

‘Not here,’ Connor said unhelpfully. ‘Which branch of the Darwin lot are you from, Constable? I thought I knew most of the officers, by sight anyway.’

‘We haven’t met,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m from Katherine. So where—’

‘Why Katherine? I thought—’

‘Oh, the doctor was already there when I put the call through,’ Sophie said. ‘He was picking up a patient, and they told me he’d come by us on his way back to Darwin, rather than make a second trip, you see.’

‘That’s right,’ Lapin confirmed, ‘and they needed a cop, they said, so I was it. And how the hell am I supposed to get back from here, and with a body too? Which,’ he added, ‘you seem remarkably reluctant to tell me about.’

‘That’s great news!’ To Lapin’s obvious amazement, Connor seized and shook his hand. ‘Okay, if you’d just step over here for a minute, I’ll put you in the picture. Sorry, folks,’ he said, but was largely ignored for Sophie was urgently demanding the same from her cousin.

Tilly shook her head. ‘First, how is Luke? What did the doctor say?’