She pulled out of the carpark, impatient to call Ryder once she was on her own phone and tell him what she’d overheard. She’d been tempted to ask Elijah about the man having dinner with Sergeant Collins, but she couldn’t risk raising the publican’s suspicions. She had to remember she was a woman on a working holiday, not a detective, and Ida Stevenson would have no interest in a middle-aged man dining with the local police sergeant.

Headlights lit the cabin as the driver of a car parked by the kerb behind her switched their lights onto high beam.

‘Turn it down,’ Sterling muttered, her heart jumping as the car swung onto the road then accelerated to sit on her tail. With her own engine not fully warmed up, she maintained a steady speed, hoping the driver would overtake.

She decided to turn left when the way home was straight ahead, feeling increasingly unnerved when the car behind did the same. She made a second turn, looping back to the hotel. She’d taken Ryder’s advice and left some items in her cubicle that she could go back for in case something like this happened. She turned left again, glimpsing the shining lights of the hotel not far ahead. Just then, the driver pulled out onto the wrong side of the road and floored it. Sterling maintained her speed, watching in her side mirror as the car began to draw level. And then the vehicle was beside her, the driver tooting and young men hollering from the open windows as they passed by.

The red glow of taillights disappeared into the darkness as the car turned right, screeching around the corner in the direction of the Alpine Way.

‘Idiots,’ she muttered, pulling into the carpark for the second time that day. Cutting the engine, she sat in the darkness until her heart rate had returned to somewhere close to normal. She walked quickly into the pub to retrieve a plastic bag from the cubicle in case there were other people watching.

‘It’s always tempting to head straight home once the danger has passed,’ Ryder was saying, ‘but you did the right thing going back in and getting the groceries you left there.’

‘I have an assortment of things in the cubicle,’ Sterling said wryly, sitting on the edge of the bed to unlace her boots, the phone on speaker beside her.

‘Good work. And you’ve never seen the man with Sergeant Collins before?’

‘No.’

‘Flowers said he’s big on fishing. Do you think he might’ve been a fishing mate?’

‘I don’t think so, Sarge. They weren’t that upbeat, they were more serious. And it was after Collins spoke to Heidi that the other man said, “I wonder if this will delay the Lorrimers’ plans for . . .” whatever.’

‘Okay, it’s likely they were talking about Art’s death then. What did he look like?’