Gwynne gave her a grimace intended to function as a smile and fixed sternly on Hirsch. ‘There’s a kiddy locked in a car.’ He gestured at the sun. ‘In this heat, Paul.’

7

7

IT SEEMED VERY likely that Martin was enjoying himself. The avid eyes, the smiling earnestness.

Hirsch snapped out of it. What mattered was a kid locked in superheated air. Today’s forecast top was thirty-five degrees and it was high twenties already: the temperature would be close to fifty inside a car.

He forged along the footpath as Gwynne struggled to keep up. Then a soft thud and Gwynne wailing, ‘Oh, no, oh no.’

Hirsch darted a look. The guy had dropped his phone. Idiot. Hirsch ran on, and after a beat, Gwynne was at his heels again, gasping: ‘All good, no damage to the screen. Talk about lucky.’

Hirsch shook his head. ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

Gwynne faltered, then was labouring close behind Hirsch again. ‘Should I have?’

Doctor Pillai, thought Hirsch, Gwynne already gone from his mind. The doctor, based at a little medical centre in Redruth, held a clinic in Tiverton every Friday—and there was her dusty Forester, parked outside the ex-Bank of Adelaide building.

By now Hirsch was sprinting along the shopfront veranda. This close to Christmas, there were a dozen cars parked snout-up to Ed Tennant’s little supermarket: farm utes, station wagons, sedans, all as dusty as Dr Pillai’s Subaru. Everyone—Ed, his wife, their customers—clustered around a rusty pink Hyundai. Panting from the heat, the fast jog, Hirsch asked if anyone had thought to fetch the doctor.

‘I sent Gemma over,’ Tennant said.

Sliding through the mix of farmhands and townspeople, Hirsch peered into the rear seat of the little car. A toddler slumped in a baby seat. All of the windows were up. He tugged on a door handle.

‘Already tried that,’ someone said.

Scouting around for a rock, a metal bar, anything, Hirsch said, ‘Whose car is it?’

No one answered.

Frustrated, Hirsch said, ‘Ed, check the shop.’

‘Already done. Everyone’s accounted for.’