THE FIRST OF January. Hirsch slept in. So did everyone else.

Then, early afternoon, he offered his second happy new year of the season.

‘Yeah, happy new year.’ Gemma Pitcher’s response was clear and confident, a sense almost of grace in her heavy round face. The boys, seated on either side of her, barely muttered. All three kids looked bleary. Wherever they’d been hiding, they’d given the new year a thorough welcome.

Hirsch had decided to use his sitting room for this: private, not too formal—but also not too much like home, with the police station just through the door behind them. ‘I’ll need to speak to each of you alone at some stage,’ he said, knowing that in a perfectly managed police operation he’d have split them up immediately and gone in hard against each one.

Gemma shrugged; Adam scowled; Daryl looked as gormless as ever.

‘But let’s just establish the main facts. First, where have you been the last few days?’

‘We don’t want to get them in trouble,’ Gemma said.

‘That won’t happen. It’s just to satisfy my curiosity.’

‘My cousin’s.’

‘Did your mum know?’

‘No.’

‘Where?’

Gemma shrugged, the stretched neck of her black T-shirt halfway down one fleshy shoulder. ‘Does it matter?’

Probably not. Hirsch took out his phone, found the snap of Lavau. ‘Do you recognise this man?’

Gemma peered. ‘He’s the one come in the shop.’

Hirsch nodded. ‘Thought he might be.’

‘Who is he? He going to come after me?’

Hirsch his head. ‘Nope. Dead.’

‘Okay,’ Gemma said, unconcerned. The boys looked cowed and sullen. Young.

The next stage would need a light touch. Go in too hard and the kids would clam up. ‘Just to deal with a couple of other matters first,’ he said, fixing on Daryl, ‘did you guys spray-paint Mr and Mrs Dunner’s woolshed, by any chance?’

The Cobb boy merely looked more vacant. Adam Flann gave a delayed blink, a little frown. ‘Who?’

‘Doesn’t matter. How about copper wiring, copper pipes, can you tell me anything about that?’

Adam hardened. ‘We never did no copper.’

‘What about Wayne? Was he into stealing copper?’

‘Nup.’

Hirsch made a mental note: check Wayne’s prints against the ones found on the crime-scene tape at the barn.

‘What about Kip?’

‘Who?’

‘Mr and Mrs Fuller’s dog, over on Munduney Hill. It went missing a few weeks ago. Know anything about that?’

Gemma knew about Kip being found on the road. Affronted, she looked at the boy seated on her left, the boy on her right. ‘They wouldn’t hurt a dog.’

But Daryl stirred, a light coming on. ‘Him? He went mental at us.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Hirsch asked. The mild tone that meant business.

Daryl realised he’d said too much and subsided.

‘Daryl? When was this?’

A shrug. ‘Ages ago.’

‘You were there with Adam and Wayne?’