Enjoying herself, she took an iPhone from her jeans pocket, tapped and swiped. Shading the screen from the sunlight, she showed Hirsch a series of photos: the tail end of a dusty 1980s Falcon wagon, a sagging section of curved corrugated-iron veranda roof, a snapped post, Ed and Martin holding Brenda by either arm.

‘Like me to email these to you?’

Hirsch nodded, gave her his address. ‘And perhaps keep them to yourself? No need for them to go viral,’ he said lightly.

Monica gave a good-humoured shudder. ‘Get on the wrong side of the Flanns?’

Hirsch felt depleted suddenly. ‘She’s a complete pain in the arse.’

Monica patted his arm. ‘Good luck.’

By 1.30 p.m. the spine-jarring back roads were behind him and he was on the Barrier Highway again, slowing for the southern outskirts of Tiverton. A couple of crouching farmhouses, the disused railway station, the grain silos. When Hirsch was posted to Tiverton a year ago, the silos were glum, grey, weather-stained. Since then an artist had painted a huge flowering bottlebrush and a Sturt desert pea on one, merino ram heads on the other. There was something uplifting about them, he thought. The artistry, the incongruity, the sense of liberation from the buttoned-down lives all around. Others felt it too, a kind of pride and delight.

He drove on, passing little stone houses behind hedges, the Catholic church, a disused garage, the Uniting church, the institute with its stone Anzac standing guard, the pub—a couple of early drinkers contemplating the mangled veranda iron—and finally, on the northern edge of town, the shop and the primary school opposite the police station.

Police station. The front room of a tiny redbrick house, in fact, with a chest-high counter to separate Hirsch’s desk, swivel chair, filing cabinets and computer from the great unwashed. Behind his office, a door that led to his cramped living quarters. Out front, a patchy bit of grass and a wire fence, a little blue-and-white Police sign beside the gate. A short, badly potholed driveway, his old Nissan in the carport at the side of the house. Owing to the yawing, pitching back roads and the weight of his equipment belt, Hirsch’s back was a nagging mess, so he U-turned to park in the street rather than thud over his driveway potholes. A couple of the council’s road-maintenance guys had promised him a shovelful of leftover asphalt one day, but nothing had eventuated so far.

He locked the police Toyota and stood for a moment, mentally sorting the rest of his afternoon. He was still to eat the sandwiches he’d packed this morning. Check the landline answering machine, read departmental emails, deal with Brenda Flann and the fallout from her little adventure. And take Katie Street home. Last day of the school year tomorrow, Christmas next week: Wendy’s daughter would be bursting out of her skin.