“No. Except— There wasn’t a body when we went back. It always seemed like a coincidence: Uncle Davy, then Mr Scott. Two men disappearing, both vanished from the wrecks of crashed cars … I’ve got questions too.” But he didn’t say for whom.

We reached Carter’s Crossing, and the brief hiss of bitumen, by lunchtime. I dropped from the cab gladly. We don’t travel well, do we, Bettina? I would have sat on the ground, but Trish grabbed my arm as if she thought I was going to fall.

“I’m quite well,” I said, disengaging myself. “Thank you.” When we walked, I stayed carefully out of reach.

Carter’s Crossing was the smallest of the three towns of Inglewell. One street, a few houses leaning and fading into encroaching trees. A roofless grey building that might have been a church. Not even a closed railway station: the line went right by. The only shop was a shed labelled CROSSING MOTORS. Its roller door was almost all the way down.

“Stay here,” said Gary. “She knows me. Well, she knows you two, too. Just … stay back.”

We lingered near the kerb while Gary crouched to talk under the door.

“You wouldn’t have stood for that, once,” said Trish.

“Margie—hey, Miss Hale?” Gary was saying. “I’m trying to find a bloke in a ute. Beardy. Taller—well, taller than me. Has a mate with him. Old Holden?” he said, and looked back at me as if I would have noticed, but I only remembered the geese. “It was in bad shape. Cages on the back. Your sister said—no, Casey—said they were from out this way?” He waited.

Trish and I, standing back, couldn’t hear the answer.

“You never used to let anyone speak for you,” Trish went on. “Especially Gary.”

“He just wants to help.”

“Why’s that, do you think?” asked Trish, nastily.

I didn’t know. We don’t associate with the Damsons. But I hadn’t had to beg Gary to help look for my brothers—he’d arrived almost as soon as I sent word through Trish. Thinking about reasons was uncomfortable.

“He knew Mitch and Chris,” I said distantly. The word friends stirred in my memory. But my brothers had been wild and uncivilised—my mother said so, and I agreed—and friends was such a petty word. “Maybe they … owed him money?” Trish looked at me sideways, sighed.