Finally that day he logged on to his SA Police email account. Two messages: the lab had found the selfies on Flann’s mobile, Wayne posed with his victims; and the YouTube clip would be taken down—the IP address of the offending computer having been traced to a library in the Adelaide suburb of Rostrevor. Hirsch was bleakly satisfied: that was where Martin’s daughter lived now.

37

37

FRIDAY 3 JANUARY and Hirsch was taking the day off—for what that was worth in his line of work. Three things on the agenda: stock up on groceries, swap the loan Toyota for his old one, dinner at the little house on Bitter Wash Road.

He breakfasted in his backyard, flicking through Mrs Keir’s journals again:

A great many of the shearers and hut-keepers are the off-scourings of English prisons, and a more insolent set of scoundrels you could not find. They are much given to spending their money on drink and bad women, but there are a few good men of the labouring classes hereabouts, and, from their long servitude on the Sydney side, they know a good deal about sheep-work.

Thinking that not much ever changed, he walked across to the general store at eight-thirty, nodded hello to Gemma Pitcher and filled a basket with bread, milk, wrinkled apples, wrinkled vegetables, painkillers and frozen meals. He heard glass smash behind him and turned around.

Joyce Gwynne stood gaping at her left hand, a shopping basket in the crook of her right arm, a spill of shards and gherkins and brine at her feet.

A stroke? Swiftly setting his basket on the floor, Hirsch crossed the space separating them and held her upper arms. ‘Joyce? You okay?’

She winced. Pain, but he’d barely touched her. Releasing her, he stepped back. ‘Let’s find you somewhere to sit.’

‘It just slipped out of my hands,’ she said, blinking behind her glasses.

No slurring. He eased the basket from her arm and led her to the front of the shop and around to the seating area at the ‘library’—a plain wooden chair beside a case of books.

Then Gemma was hovering. ‘I’ll get her a drink of water.’

‘Thanks. And a jar broke.’

‘On it,’ she said.

She returned with water in a glass and disappeared again. Presently Hirsch heard sweeping and mopping.

Joyce was trembling. ‘He wanted gherkins for lunch, with his cheese.’

She looked tiny in the creaky old chair. Flushed, wispy grey hair awry. She sipped the water, then took a long swallow. The movements of her little stick-like arms and thin neck shifted the lines of her collar and sleeves so that Hirsch saw bruises on the pale skin.

‘Joyce,’ he said carefully, ‘how did you hurt yourself?’

She shrank as if she wanted to disappear inside her clothing. ‘Oh, I’m such a clumsy thing.’