‘He might of gone out,’ Gemma said, lifting and dropping her heavy shoulders. ‘Wasn’t here when I went to the toilet this morning. Why? What’s he done? What do you think me and Adam’ve done?’

Hirsch turned, beckoned. Adam joined them.

‘In the early hours of this morning, someone attacked Mrs Washburn’s ponies.’

He waited. He watched. Gemma’s hand crept into Adam’s again and he saw both kids trying to get a handle on the news. Gemma said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean some of the ponies are dead, and some are badly injured.’

‘Shot?’ said Adam.

‘Hacked with an axe or a machete or some kind of large blade.’

Hirsch waited again. Tears welled in Gemma’s eyes. Adam was slower to take it in, and when he did, he wrapped Gemma in his arms.

He looked at Hirsch. ‘I would never do that. And me and Gemma were here all night.’

‘Would Wayne do it?’ Hirsch asked, even as he knew that brother would always protect brother in this family.

Adam’s face was shut tight. ‘Not him, neither.’

Gemma piped up. ‘Wayne called Adam a fuckwit for stealing Nan’s ute. Said it served him right he had to apologise.’

‘Yeah. He couldn’t care less about her horses,’ Adam said.

‘But he did go out at some stage?’

Adam toed the dirt and shrugged. ‘Probably to the pub.’

Hirsch knew he’d just heard a lie, but where was the lie? Wayne had lied to Adam? Adam had lied to protect Wayne? And Adam had merely speculated, not made a statement. Everyone lied, every day—especially to the police. A one-off, outright lie, from someone unused to lying, could often be identified and disproved. Constant and habitual lying was harder to recognise, let alone challenge, because the liar no longer saw a distinction between a lie and the truth. They were all just words deployed in the interests of survival. In any case most people lied some of the time, generally layering it with the truth to deflect blame, to sugar-coat their cowardice or stupidity.

Separating the two could be a headache. And right now Hirsch was sure of Adam Flann’s innocence in this matter, at least.

He nodded his thanks, wished them good day, and drove further into the back country.

Out where the bare red dirt was swept by the wind, the roads were rutted tracks. Eyeless stone ruins could be glimpsed through the stubby mulga trees or stood becalmed on a stony plain that would never nourish a grain crop, let alone a sheep. Stone everywhere: as white quartz reefs in the paddocks; as flat, erupted slabs around which Hirsch steered his police 4WD; as pebbles that pinged in the wheel arches when he picked up speed; and as rounded, water-tumbled rocks the size of footballs and tennis balls in the creek beds. Or as fieldstones harvested for long-ago farmhouses, barns, fences and stockyards.