Louise Rennie glanced at his phone with her face half-averted as if fearing an attack. She shook her head, uttered a mad, choked laugh and shrank away. ‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘The man sitting next to Ms Roesch. Know him?’

‘No.’

‘On Christmas Day my sergeant received a call from a policeman in Sydney asking us to check on you. Could it have been him? Was your mother in contact with anyone there?’

She was rocking in distress. ‘Yes, but I don’t know who. She bought a satellite phone.’

That explained the lack of Sydney calls from the Hamel Road house. No satellite phone had been found. Stolen, presumably, along with the toolbox and the bike.

Louise Rennie was pointing heatedly at Hirsch’s phone. ‘Are they outside? Did you bring them here? Did they follow you?’

‘No,’ Hirsch said, harsh and definite. ‘They’re in Redruth. There’s no reason for them to be interested in anything I’m doing, and I didn’t even know about you and Craig or this place till half an hour ago.’

She shoved her jaw at him. ‘I don’t trust any police.’

‘Louise,’ Hirsch said, shaking his head in frustration. He looked at her. ‘Did you think the man who came to your house on Christmas Eve was a policeman?’

‘Maybe. Probably.’

‘You can trust most of us, Louise.’

Washburn interrupted. ‘Better hear her out, Paul.’

Hirsch shrugged. ‘Go ahead. Start at the beginning.

Why was your family placed in witness protection?’

Louise Rennie took a breath, released it again, a way of ordering her thoughts. Then she started, rattling it off: ‘Our real name is Reid. We used to live in Sydney. Mum and Dad were in the police. Dad was just in the Dog Squad, but Mum was an analyst. She worked on big cases. One night we all had to pack a bag and some people took us to this town up near Moree. They said it was only for a while, till Mum gave evidence in court. We couldn’t text or call or Facebook. We had to be home-schooled, never went out, never went anywhere.’ She looked away. ‘Then one day someone shot Dad.’

Washburn interrupted. ‘He was home when normally Denise would have been. She’d have been the target. Someone leaked their location. Someone in the police. So you can see why Louise doesn’t know who to trust.’

‘I can see that,’ Hirsch said, even as he was thinking: What if the husband was the intended target? What if it had been a local crime—he’d had an affair in Moree, for example? ‘But I hope you can trust me,’ he added.

All three looked at him as if he were the last person they’d trust. He shrugged and said, ‘Why wasn’t your mother there that day?’