At first, take-up of seats had been half-hearted. There was grim weather sure, but there was a fireplace, board games and a bar to compensate, which, truth be told, was what most people had had in mind anyway. Of course, there’d been a corpse to factor in. But no one knew who he was, and, remember, us Cunninghams were really the only ones sticking our noses in it. The official story was still that Green Boots had died of exposure. A tragedy, sure, but not one worth cutting a holiday short for. Explaining to the kids on the eight-hour drive back to Sydney why they couldn’t go tobogganing: now, that would be the real tragedy. But, in light of a second death, this time more obviously violent, the whispered gossip of ‘Did you hear?’ had rapidly evolved into the panicked rumours of ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Those with four-wheel drives had dug them out and made a run for it. The rest were climbing over each other for a seat on the buses, many having to leave their cars for a few days until the storm died down.

Crawford led Sofia into the room. She was wringing her hands; they looked like she’d rubbed them in ink, or at least that’s what I told myself. Everyone leaned forward. Even Andy sat up and paid attention, crossing his legs like a child.

‘Michael’s dead,’ Sofia said, though she barely needed to. Her diagnosis was etched across her face. She’d looked pale when she’d vomited after carrying Green Boots, fragile as she’d drunk her rattling tea that morning, but now she looked positively gaunt. Maybe it was due to the cold and the stress and the grief, but it was clear to me that her constitution would only hold up to one more corpse. On the plus side, such was the truth in her pained expression that even Katherine didn’t bother to object to her medical opinion. ‘He was murdered, I have no doubt. Tied up and suffocated.’

‘Jesus.’ That was Marcelo. Crawford had done his best to hold everyone out of the room once I’d found the body, only yielding to Sofia. And while the whisper that Michael had been killed had worked its way among the group, so no one was shocked by Sofia’s first declaration, only Erin and I already knew how he’d died. I could see the terror in Marcelo’s face, mingling with the grief. He was going over our last conversation, just like I was.

I’m certain someone’s cleaning something up.

‘For fuck’s sake, Sofia,’ Erin snapped, skipping the denial stage of grief outright and heading straight for anger. ‘You were right, okay? Enough with the theatrics.’