All that was left was to follow the creek. It was mostly dry. No running water, but reedy pools every hundred metres or so. In the distance, the pink-smudge Tiverton Hills. On either side, red soil flats with sparse mulga scrub and bleached dead grass. He came to a bend where a broad stretch of stagnant water showed between bulrushes. Small creatures had scribbled their tracks over a tight crescent of mud. Human footprints, too. Hirsch continued to follow the creek bank, and eventually the shape of a man coalesced beside a narrow cutting. It was probably fast in full flood; now it merely trapped a small pool.

He stopped to watch. Washburn—if that’s who it was—wore a khaki shirt, trousers and a greasy Akubra hat. Kneeling with his back to Hirsch he was tearing at the dead grass that fringed a stone slab flat on the ground. That completed, he proceeded to swipe away dust and stalks with a new-looking banister brush.

Hirsch coughed. The man said, ‘I knew you were there. Subtle as a mob of cattle.’

He stood and turned, revealing a seamed, whiskery face and heavy-rimmed glasses repaired with black electrical tape. Blue binder-twine in his belt loops. He removed the glasses and folded them into his shirt pocket, shrewd eyes watching Hirsch. Then he beckoned with a jerk of his head.

‘Come and look.’

‘Are you Mr Washburn?’

‘I am. Come and look.’

He’s more canny than crazy, thought Hirsch, approaching Washburn and his stone slab.

‘Shepherd’s son,’ Washburn said. He’d been clearing a gravestone.

The slab, mossy and eroded, read, James son of Geo. Taken by the Flood 5 April 1875 Aged Six Years and the Angel Sayeth Unto, every carven S tilted forward as if straining at the torrent. The rest had been worn away and Hirsch felt an infinite sorrow, a rush of feeling, the place and the past fully there in him. He heard a scream—but it was only a bird, hunting. He straightened, stumbled a little, turned and, hands on his knees, found himself peering into a pool of water trapped below the bank. His face stared back with murky intent.

Washburn grabbed his elbow. ‘Careful, it’s not stable.’

Hirsch stepped back to safer ground. He was hot in the sun, his sweat salty.

He gathered himself and said, in a rush, ‘Mr Washburn, I’m Paul Hirschhausen, based in Tiverton, where your wife lives.’

Anxiety crept over Washburn’s grizzly old-codger face. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine,’ soothed Hirsch. ‘But may I ask you where you were last night?’

Washburn couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Where would I be?’

‘You were here?’

‘If you mean my caravan, yes. No driveable car, Sonny Jim, no pushbike, no horse, no magic carpet, no broomstick, no—’

Okay, a bit crazy, thought Hirsch. ‘Thank you. Now, the reason I’m here, some of Nan’s ponies were slaughtered last night, and—’