Muir put an arm around her. Hirsch stepped into the room, began a clumsy explanation, tried to finish on a positive note. ‘But Cathy Duigan’s already here, looking after the others.’

‘I should get dressed.’ Nan cast about the room helplessly. ‘She’ll need help.’

Hirsch stepped out of the room. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Into the kitchen, where he filled the kettle, spotting Nan’s Best Christmas Lights certificate under a fridge magnet. With the water heating, he searched the overhead cupboards for mugs and tea, and then footsteps sounded in the hallway. Glancing at the open door, he saw both women pass by, Nan in shorts and a T-shirt, finger-combing her hair.

‘Tea?’ called Hirsch inadequately.

No answer. He abandoned the tea-making and followed the women onto the back veranda. Stopped abruptly, because they had stopped.

Nan, gasping, doubled over, groping with one blind hand for a veranda post.

‘Oh, sweetheart, sit a moment,’ Yvonne said, helping her into a deck chair.

Hirsch tried to see the yard through Nan’s eyes. The lumpen shapes in the dirt; blood pooled here and there; blood smears on the white railings; the survivors with their flayed red hides. They were less wild-eyed now, though. The vet’s a horse whisperer, he thought, watching Duigan among the jostling creatures.

‘She needs my help,’ Nan said, her strength returning. ‘Is it okay if I…?’

‘Go ahead,’ Hirsch said.

But he kept Yvonne Muir with him. ‘They know Nan, they don’t know you or me.’

Muir was wound tight, started to argue, then nodded and sank into a deck chair.

Hirsch sat beside her. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘You did the right thing, asking me.’

They watched as Nan entered the little paddock. ‘Does she have children?’

‘No. No brothers or sisters. Only me and Bob and a few other friends.’

‘What can you tell me about the husband?’

‘You think Craig did this? I very much doubt it,’ Yvonne said.

Craig Washburn’s story came out haltingly. He’d been the district council surveyor until he lost his job. ‘He was getting quite eccentric and paranoid. He thought hidden forces were altering the landscape when he wasn’t looking, that kind of thing. Some places he refused to survey. He said the mallee scrub out east was the only pure area left, and that’s where he lives now, in a caravan Nan bought for him. He goes out prospecting with a metal detector, which somehow doesn’t upset the landscape balance. We all keep an eye on him—take him food, check that he hasn’t fallen down a mineshaft or died of snakebite. He’s not completely bonkers, he takes his meds. But he is odd.’

‘Odd as in paranoid, voices telling him to kill Nan’s horses?’

Yvonne Muir slapped the back of Hirsch’s hand. ‘No. Do not go there. Craig’s harmless, he doesn’t need you hassling him.’