A theme-park take on old rural Australia, thought Hirsch, taking in the solar panels on the shearers’ quarters, a stone building that had been converted into a block of four pricey self-catering units. Two faced the woolshed, sharing a back wall with the two that faced the stony ridge overlooking the little settlement. Antenna arrays, fresh paint, parking bays marked by red-gum sleepers. Irrigated lawns dotted with old ploughs, wagons and tractors. Curtains drawn on one of the units, a dusty white Audi SUV parked outside it. Impossible to tell from this angle if there were guest cars parked at either of the rear-facing units.

But the Dunners were about. Spotting their glossy-dusty black Range Rover parked at the rear of the woolshed, Hirsch steered down the flank of the long building and pulled in alongside it. Got out, took a moment to admire. The woolshed was a vast, beautifully proportioned structure of local stone. One of the side doors was open. He stepped in.

High ceiling; massive posts and beams; holding pens with slatted floors; an odour of lanolin. Silent and empty now, but suggestive of a time when a grazier might shear sheep by the thousands.

He stepped outside again and headed for the office, a partitioned space at the rear. Paused: a patch of the side wall was cleaner, sharper than the rest. It had been sandblasted. He peered: traces of white swastika and penis clung to the porous stone and friable mortar.

‘Expected you last week, young fella.’

Hirsch turned. Rex Dunner had emerged from the office. He wore cream moleskins and elastic-sided R. M. Williams boots, all part of the unique pastoral-Australia mystique. Until five years ago Dunner and his wife had run a real estate agency in North Adelaide.

Hirsch shook Dunner’s freckled, wrinkled old hand. He was a desiccated seventy, but wiry and brisk. ‘Mr Dunner.’

‘Constable. You bearing good news? A gang of graffiti artistes locked up, keys thrown away?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘I see.’

He thinks I’m a sloppy policeman, thought Hirsch, or he knows it was a lost cause. Or both.

‘I’m afraid there’s only one of me,’ Hirsch said. ‘In a perfect world I’d station someone here overnight for a few weeks, or drive past every hour, but that’s out of the question. Have you thought of installing CCTV?’

Dunner jerked his head, inviting Hirsch to walk with him to the office. ‘What good would that do? A ghostly image of some idiot with a spray can? It would only illustrate what I already know.’

‘We might get an ID.’

Dunner shook his head. ‘Costing me a fortune in cleaning.’

Everything would boil down to cost with this man. Installing cameras, for example. They reached the door to the office. ‘It seems significant that the attacks have been recent.’

Dunner paused in the act of turning the doorhandle. ‘How so?’