‘Usually she would’ve been, and Dad would’ve been at work—he did some gardening for the shire—but he was home sick.’

‘And your mother left the house…’

‘To do some shopping. Normally she didn’t go out.’

‘Where were you kids?’

Louise was scraping shapes in the dirt with her big toe. ‘We went with her in the car.’

‘How did you know what happened to your dad?’

More patterns in the dirt. ‘We came back from shopping and there was a police car there, so we just drove past and then a bit later heard it on the news. Didn’t dare go back.’

Hirsch tried to see the world through Denise Rennie’s eyes. Even as a civilian analyst, she’d have known all about the lies, whispers, nods and handshakes that glued a police force together. So, she disappeared with her children into her own version of witness protection.

‘How did you end up here, in particular?’

‘Mum grew up in Broken Hill,’ Louise said, as if that explained it. Perhaps it did, Hirsch thought. Broken Hill was dry country not so many hours north of Tiverton, and many Broken Hill families holidayed in Adelaide, which meant driving through the mid-north.

‘Did your mother contact anyone after you came here? Your witness-protection handlers, for example?’

‘Not for ages.’

‘But she was speaking to someone more recently?’

Louise nodded. ‘She started saying, “We need to come in, we can’t live out here forever.” But I don’t know who she was talking to or what they said. All she said to us was, until she could work something out, we were on our own. We couldn’t trust anyone.’ She glanced up at Washburn. ‘Except Craig.’

Hirsch tried to imagine their lives. Cut off from everything and everyone they knew. Home-schooled. Quick in-and-out trips to town. The kids walking along the creek to visit a crazy old man.

‘You had enough money to live on?’

‘Mum says it’s starting to run out,’ Louise said. Tears spilled. ‘Said it was running out.’

And before they could come in out of the cold, Denise Rennie was spotted, by the wrong people, on YouTube. ‘Louise, we need to think of something more secure than this. I should tell my boss. She’s a good person.’

‘No! If you do, we’ll just run away again.’

‘I’m sure I could find somewhere safe for the meantime, while we work out who to trust.’

As he said it, Hirsch had doubts. It wouldn’t matter where he took the girls, they’d be spotted eventually; someone would say something. And he didn’t want to ask a favour of anyone close to him, risk the lives of Wendy and Katie, the Muirs’, his parents or Nan Washburn. Child Protection? Any government agency would leak like a sieve.

‘Let me put my thinking cap on. I’ll get back in touch later today.’