She was practical. ‘Convoy, in case I have to head back in a hurry.’

The replacement HiLux drove exactly like Hirsch’s shot-up one. He headed down Hamel Road to the Tiverton road, Landy behind him, and half an hour later they were at the Flanns’ miserable cluster of house and sheds. Watching Hirsch select the house key from the bunch he’d confiscated after the arrest, Landy said, ‘Looks like no one’s lived here for years.’

Hirsch grunted. Brenda Flann was a nightmare, but at least she’d had a smattering of pride in the place; perhaps even some vague maternal streak. With her in hospital, Adam on the run and Wayne out scouting the countryside, the house, yard and sheds had grown forlorn surprisingly quickly.

Once inside, they made a rapid search of the obvious areas—under beds, in drawers and wardrobes—then the usual hiding places for people’s miserable secrets—in freezer packets and flour tins, taped to the undersides of drawers, under floorboards.

Such meagre lives, Hirsch thought. No books, barely any magazines. Clothes worn too long between washes. Greasy water in the kitchen sink, tide marks in the bath and the toilet bowl. There was a small stash of pot in an old tobacco tin, but nothing else to suggest inner lives apart from a vast new TV, a couple of Xbox consoles and an eBay receipt for a military-tactical rifle sling from a Kentucky gun shop.

That left the sheds.

In one, remnants of hay, a set of rusty harrows and an old Massey Ferguson on perished tyres. In the other, nothing of note but that shiny steel cabinet behind the sheets of plywood. ‘Tucked away,’ observed Landy, ‘but not in an obvious way. At a second glance you’d think it was a locker for expensive tools.’

‘There probably are expensive tools in it,’ Hirsch said.

Landy completed the thought: ‘But not his.’

They drew on crime-scene gloves. Hirsch found the correct key, turned it in the lock and tugged gingerly on the handle.

‘Expecting a booby trap?’

‘It’s been known,’ he said.

They weren’t blown to kingdom come and the first thing they saw was a child’s tricycle missing its saddle. Scraps of Christmas wrapping clinging to the frame.

‘Got him,’ said Hirsch.

He told Landy the story and watched fear, pity and sadness flicker on her face as she pictured Christmas Eve at the Rennie house.

Stacked upright in an open space behind the bike were three fishing rods, a whipper-snipper, an archery bow and a couple of cricket bats. Next to it, a set of shelves: toolboxes, an electric sander, a bowsaw, chainsaws and a leaf blower.

Landy reached in, tilted one of the chainsaws. ‘There’s a name texta’d on this: T. Wesley.’

‘The Porters Lagoon guy,’ Hirsch said.

Landy grunted in satisfaction. ‘We’ve got Mr Flann up, down and sideways.’