To be honest, I was tempted to believe him. Not because of Dad’s vindication, either, but because it seemed to explain a lot about my mother. If this was true, it meant Audrey didn’t only mistrust the police because she thought the bad ones had killed her husband. She thought the good ones, the ones who’d promised my father a way out, had got him killed. My betrayal was laid bare: I’d chosen to side with the law, the same as my father, and it had failed to protect us.

Then again, it also sounded like a story where the pieces fit together too neatly. A story that had taken Michael three years to craft especially for me.

‘Holton told you all this?’ I couldn’t keep the scepticism from my voice. It was quite the incriminating confession. ‘That’s a lot of gas for someone who’s been shot in the lung.’

‘He was tight-lipped before he got shot, loose-lipped after. Besides, he didn’t tell me all of it. Most of what I know about Alan I found out from others in jail. They all knew him. Half of them had been ripped off by his pawn shop, which was pretty well known for selling stolen goods, by the way – you wanted to move something hot in Sydney, I guarantee it found its way to Alan. And he owed money to the other half. They shook my hand, Ern. Like I’d done them a favour.’ He grimaced, and it was obvious that this act of solidarity among the other inmates was what haunted him. More, perhaps, than the killing itself.

I closed my eyes, picturing the scene in the bone-white, webbed clearing. I’ll go check on him. Michael’s back to me, his hunched shoulders, outstretched arms disappearing into the webs. We can bury him now.

‘When Alan woke up in the clearing, and you went to check if he was okay. That was when you made up your mind, wasn’t it?’

Michael stayed in the memory, talking as if he were in a trance. ‘I spent a lot of time blaming him, would you believe it? Because I felt like, in that moment, I was waking up. And maybe if he hadn’t said anything, I would have put him in the car. Maybe I would have listened to you. There was blood on his lips, I remember that. It stuck between them as he spoke, little red bridges. I don’t know why Holton told me about shooting Dad then. Maybe he wanted one last insult before he died. Maybe he was testing me, to see if I would do it. Maybe he wanted me to do it.’ Then he wrinkled his nose. ‘Sorry. That’s what the prison shrink calls “deferred responsibility”. I shouldn’t be doing that.’

‘So when he told you he shot Dad, you snapped and finished the job?’