Bowls filled, more wine poured, they abandoned the cheerless police station dining nook and ate in the backyard, once a concrete square, now transformed by Hirsch with a shade cloth, Ikea outdoor furniture and a few geraniums in terracotta pots. Twilight drew in. He lit tea candles; the evening wrapped them in balmy shadows. Wendy Street’s half-smile as she toasted him was sleepy, heavy-lidded—desire that she cloaked with her daughter present.

‘So,’ she said later, when darkness had fully settled. ‘One last review?’

Hirsch groaned, creaked upright, and pulled the two of them out of their chairs.

They strolled the town arm-in arm, past others checking out the Christmas lights on foot; the occasional prowling car. About a third of the town’s dwellings were decorated. Hirsch kept his voice low as he defended his judgments. Some displays were too busy, others dreary and clichéd. The Hannafords’ swagman Santa was clever, ironic; the Bolgers’ kangaroo Santa was just kitsch. Santa with one foot in a chimney was cheesy. A single, beautifully lit tree counted for more than a garden-wide mishmash of motifs. Martin Gwynne, by outlining his boxy carport with lights this year, had fatally skewed the elegance of his main display with its strings of lights draped around his shrubs and garden trees, its wire tableau of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the manger.

That left Nan Washburn’s effort; imaginative; not too cluttered. A story unfurled if read from left to right.

‘Behold,’ Hirsch said. ‘This year’s Best Christmas Lights.’

Wendy clamped herself hard against him. ‘Agreed.’

Their arms around each other, they walked back in the oddly lit evening air. The low point was saying goodnight, see you tomorrow evening.

Friday, 5.30 a.m., Hirsch stabbing blindly at his iPhone to cancel the alarm.

He collapsed back onto the pillow. He rarely remembered his dreams. They meant nothing and he wasn’t interested. But fugitive dream traces were in his head this morning, coils writhing and poised to strike. Snakes, only they were copper pipes and wires.

He liked to walk every morning, the dawn a time to cherish with only the birds busy, the air quite still and everything sharply etched. He generally made the most of it—by 9 a.m. the mid-north would be lying limp and stunned beneath a molten sun and the overnight reports of villainy, idiocy and shitty luck would have landed on his desk. But this morning he cut it short, got a quick breakfast inside him and shot down the highway to the abandoned farmhouse.

The barn was bare.

All Hirsch had were shreds of crime-scene tape, tyre tracks, indentations where the rubbish skip had compressed the dirt. The tracks meant little: Bob Muir’s ute had come and gone; fire trucks, his own SA Police Toyota.

He checked the time, six-thirty, and called his boss.

Hilary Brandl’s voice was strained and gasping. ‘This had better be good, Constable Hirschhausen.’

‘Morning jog, sarge?’