‘A hay carter from Tamworth. Seems he wandered into his local cop shop to say he’d only just heard about the Rennie kids. Said he was on his way back to New South Wales on Christmas Eve after delivering a load of hay to a station out east of Tiverton and gave a lift to a couple of kids who might have been them.’

‘An hour ago? Sarge, I—’

‘He gave the coordinates.’ She recited them to him. ‘Can you check it out? I can’t spare anyone. Inspector Kellaher’s gone back to the city, Sergeant Dock’s at lunch, I have no idea where our Sydney friends are, and the children and I are flat chat.’

Hirsch accelerated, driving with one hand on the wheel, the Toyota juddering on a narrow road shouldered with talc-like dust and loose gravel. ‘Who talked to the truckie, sarge?’

‘One of the support staff. I’ll put her on. Let me know how you go.’

There were phone-fumbling sounds. Hirsch pictured one of the civilians at a desk in the town hall, logging information into a computer. He said, ‘Hello?’

‘What can I do you for?’

‘Sergeant Brandl said you took the call from the truck driver?’

‘From someone at the Tamworth police station originally, then the truck driver, and when I realised what he was talking about, I passed the phone to one of the Sydney detectives.’

‘Which one?’

‘I think his name’s Hansen.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Took off straight away.’

An hour ago. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

Hirsch could hear a shrug in her voice. ‘To check it out, presumably.’

‘Alone, or with Senior Sergeant Roesch?’

‘That one?’ scoffed the woman. ‘She came barrelling up a few minutes later, wanting to know where he was off to.’

‘And she also left?’

‘Just grabbed the coordinates and took off. Rude cow.’

To head off Hansen before he hurt the girls.

Hirsch tried calling Roesch. No answer and his signal kept cutting out. He reached for the radio handset—no, the cord was still cactus.

The minutes passed. He increased speed; the temperature gauge rose—the radiator, he thought. Cleaning off dust and chaff was on his to-do list, which was long. Cleaning the radiator had been on it for at least two months now.

The sun beat down. Mirages shimmered, vanished, renewed themselves further along the road. The distant hills were grey-blue, the closer hills mottled: dead grass, a dirt underlay and stone reef striations. The Toyota shuddered on the corrugations. Dust boiled in his wake. Then he was braking, swerving, straddling a lizard. He sped on, checking the rear-view mirror. No roadkill, thank god. He’d been responsible for a few squashed creatures in his time and wasn’t yet blasé about it, unlike the locals.