He’d made several calls already: reporting Roesch, with a description of her car; arranging for the collection of Hansen’s body and the transportation of Wayne Flann from Tiverton to the Redruth lockup; reassuring Bob Muir; requesting search warrants; and asking the sergeant to update the Homicide Squad and track down Hansen’s boss in Sydney.

Now he made two more calls using the satellite phone: to Redruth Motors, requesting a truck to collect the Toyota, and to Brandl again, saying he’d need a replacement vehicle if he was to fight crime in the dark hours of New Year’s Eve.

‘Very droll,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up.’

They settled in to wait. Louise was jittery—and no wonder, thought Hirsch: Roesch was still at large and the deaths of her mother and brother lingered inside the house behind her.

He tried his warmest smile. ‘You’ll be in good hands. No need to hide now—too many people know about Sergeant Roesch. She has no motive to hurt you. She’s running for her life.’

A grubby leg jittered. Teeth nibbled at fingernails.

Jean Landy arrived first, driving a Redruth patrol car, followed by a mix of uniformed and plainclothes police to escort the sisters to Adelaide. ‘The boss is on the way,’ Landy said. ‘She stopped off in Tiverton to have a squiz at your prisoner.’ She paused. ‘You know for sure he’s the one?’

Hirsch nodded. ‘Any news on the ambulance?’

‘On way.’

Hirsch walked back to the road just as the ambulance appeared. He raised a hand to stop it, pointed to the rear of the HiLux and watched the ambulance pull up by the back door.

The driver, a morose man with day-old black stubble, wound down his window. ‘You sure he’s dead?’

‘Pretty sure,’ Hirsch said, opening the door. The other paramedic, a small woman with brisk, expert hands, got to the body first. ‘Dead all right. Several bites. What kind of snake?’

‘A brown.’

‘Nasty.’

Hirsch watched them load Hansen onto the stretcher and into the ambulance, then he walked back to the house. He was crossing the yard to the veranda when another vehicle arrived: Sergeant Brandl, driving a HiLux exactly like his wounded one. ‘Yours for the next couple of days.’

‘Thanks, sergeant.’

‘Walk with me,’ she said, striding off towards the shade of the first cypress tree as if she was controlled by wires. She stopped, turned, tucked a sweaty tendril of hair behind her ear. ‘How sure are you that Mr Flann shot Mrs Rennie and her son?’

Arse-covering, thought Hirsch. He nodded towards the house. ‘The older girl can ID him.’

‘So, nothing to do with witness protection?’

‘Correct.’

‘Why? What was his motive?’

‘He’s been robbing remote farms. Might have been on ice that night.’