Everything had changed. Before, we had the body of an unknown man, brutally murdered but almost comically so. Such was the strangeness of his death in fire and unmelted snow that we could all approach it with, as morbid as it sounds, an intellectual curiosity – or, for those who disagreed with Sofia’s serial killer theory, ignore it completely. Green Boots was a puzzle to be solved: an inconvenience, a curiosity. While I’d been strutting about pretending to be a literary detective, had I even bothered to care? But this time, the victim had a name. Regretfully, the whole damn thing. Michael Ryan Cunningham.

And me? I’d been trying to figure out what happened to Green Boots so I could free my brother from his improvised prison, feeling partly responsible for the suspicion that he was held in and guilty that I had caused him to be locked in there. Now, it seemed, I’d have to live with having sent him to his tomb. Now all I could think of was Michael, chained to the coat rack, watching the ash fill the air. Of Green Boots, clawing at his neck, splintering his fingernails. I started shaking – the oxycodone was wearing off – so I took a rattling sip of my hot chocolate.

Outside there were queues of people, luggage and children in their arms. The lights I’d seen while heading down the stairs were the headlights of two buses with huge snow tyres, parked in the turnaround at the bottom of the steps. The freezing wind was coming from the open foyer doors as people filed out. Tired of fielding complaints, Juliette had jumped on the break in the storm and hired the coaches up from Jindabyne to take guests who wanted to go back down the mountain. It was a limited time offer; the weather was only having a smoko and would return invigorated. My instinct told me that the weather alone wouldn’t have been reason enough for Juliette to organise such an exodus, not to mention the refunds she’d have to give. She’d seemed hesitant about alarming the guests when we’d talked in her office, but somewhere between my accident and the discovery of Michael’s body, she’d made up her mind and called for the coaches. It had turned out to be a good decision.