‘I don’t know. We’ll have to ask her when she shows up.’

‘The thing is,’ Vita Roesch said, ‘if Ms Pitcher didn’t know where the Rennies lived, how do you suppose the shooter found the right address?’

‘I have no way of knowing,’ Hirsch said.

‘And I expect you’re wondering if Ms Pitcher’s going to turn up dead,’ Hansen said, as if Hirsch might be to blame if that happened. He paused. ‘Tell us about the YouTube clip.’

Hirsch complied, for the millionth time. ‘And no, I didn’t post it.’

Hansen smiled lazily. ‘Some people like a bit of free publicity.’

Roesch interrupted. ‘I think we should come clean with you, Constable Hirschhausen.’

Presumably, Hirsch thought, that meant mostly lies and a few half-truths. ‘Okay.’

‘I can concur that Mrs Rennie and her family were in witness protection.’

Expecting more, Hirsch waited. Nothing. He looked from one to the other. ‘And?’

He continued to wait. Then: ‘Am I allowed to know why?’

With a look at Roesch, Hansen said, a little more human now, ‘I’m afraid not.’

Hirsch said airily, ‘I’ll just google them, will I?’

In a flash, an impregnable wall seemed to slam down between the Sydney detectives and Hirsch. He was being warned not to try scaling it. He raised his hands in surrender. ‘Okay. What I think happened is, Mrs Rennie had been hiding from someone, only to be spotted in a YouTube clip, and this someone come looking for her—driving a silver Passat.’

‘That’s a working theory,’ Roesch said, looking at her knees again.

Hirsch had to keep playing along. ‘You know who he is, clearly. Why not wait till he goes back to Sydney and arrest him?’

‘A little matter of evidence,’ she said.

Hirsch looked at her. ‘Can you at least tell me who he is?’

‘Above your pay grade, mate,’ Hansen chimed in.

Hirsch ignored him. ‘Senior sergeant, shouldn’t we have been told we had protected witnesses living in the district?’

‘You know how it works, constable.’

That seemed to be that. Roesch and Hansen stood and shook hands with Hirsch; he showed them to their car. On the footpath outside the police station, Roesch stopped suddenly and turned to Hirsch. She placed her palm fleetingly on his chest, and withdrew it almost instantly, with a slightly apologetic grin. ‘How’s your grapevine?’

For a mad moment, Hirsch thought she meant the one he’d trained over the trellis in his backyard. But she meant contacts and informants. ‘Not bad.’

‘Tap into it. Maybe those children were picked up by a local person who hasn’t listened to the news. Or someone’s sheltering them.’

‘Or a perv has them,’ suggested Hansen. Cocked his head at Hirsch. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know any pervs?’

‘There are various ways it could have gone,’ Roesch said hastily. It looked as if she wanted to get Hansen out of there.