Hirsch opened the driver’s door. The glove box was open—the boys, probably, rifling through for anything of value—and the key was in the ignition. Dust caked the dash, the instrument panel and the shelf behind the seats. Not road dust, dust-dust—suggesting disuse and long-term storage. He turned the key, watched the fuel gauge climb to the quarter mark—so that wasn’t what had stranded Adam and Daryl out here. The edge of an ejected cassette poked from the tape player: The Seekers’ greatest hits. Hirsch’s mother, a sly stirrer, liked to bawl out ‘Morningtown Ride’ whenever her menfolk lapsed into their brooding silences at the dinner table. Hirsch wondered if Adam or Daryl had played the tape. Would they even know how to work the player?

Hirsch returned to his Toyota and entered the plate details into the MRT, an onboard computer in tablet form. Unregistered since 2016; last known owner Nancy Washburn, 11 Kitchener Street, Tiverton.

Hirsch shook his head; it made sense. Nan Washburn bred prize-winning miniature ponies on a five-hectare block at the edge of town; Daryl Cobb’s sister earned pocket money helping her. If Daryl had also worked there, or visited, or gone there to fetch Laura because their mother had flipped out, he’d have known about the ute.

But would he have stolen it if not in the company of Adam Flann?

Back to the old ute. Hirsch tried the ignition key. The motor caught, shuddered on four of its six cylinders for half a minute, then belched and stalled in a cloud of toxins. Cracked head? Vapour lock?

He closed the door, walked around to the rear and unclipped the tonneau cover. More dust, rat droppings, straw, ropes, stirrups, a small cracked saddle, a plastic bucket, a five-litre fuel can, empty grain sacks. And under everything a coil of insulated copper tubing. Left over from some renovation project? Heating for the stable block?

Copper, anyway.

Locking the ute, pocketing the key, Hirsch drove back to the highway, paused for the Redruth High school bus and followed it into town.

Nan Washburn probably had the best of two worlds, rural and urban. Her lovely old stone house faced farmland and the distant ranges in one direction, the town in the other, and was close to everything. In thirty seconds she could be halfway across her property; three minutes to the shop, a friend’s house, the community tennis courts.