‘The call came to me,’ Brandl said, ‘but I’m dealing with a three-car pile-up near Farrell Flat and can’t spare anyone.’

‘I’m closer anyway,’ Hirsch said.

Brandl continued, an odd tone to her voice: ‘The thing is, the call came direct to my mobile, a man asking a series of questions to establish who I was before telling me he was from police headquarters in Sydney.’

A tone in her voice: suspicion. She hadn’t been given the full story. Watch yourself.

‘Right,’ said Hirsch, reading between the lines. Why would this man call her mobile and not the police station landline? And how would a policeman in Sydney even know her mobile number? And why had the call come from there? Sydney residents concerned because interstate relatives weren’t answering the phone on Christmas Day would probably notify their local station first. They’d pass on the request to police in Adelaide, who’d ask the closest rural station to make the check.

‘Perhaps headquarters gave them your number,’ Hirsch said.

‘Perhaps,’ Brandl said, not buying it. ‘Call me as soon as you learn anything and I’ll get back to Sydney.’ Pause. ‘This bloke sounded a bit tense.’ Another pause. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Welfare checks were reasonably common in Hirsch’s experience, often on behalf of someone who’d been unable to contact an elderly parent, an addict son or daughter, a friend in an abusive relationship, a neighbour whose newspapers were piling up. On one occasion he’d actually discovered a body—natural causes—but in most circumstances the explanation was mundane: the loved one or neighbour was deaf, off on an unannounced holiday or avoiding their relatives.

Late afternoon by the time he reached the Bitter Wash Road turnoff, heading east, the sun low behind him, flaring on the hills ahead. His sense of travelling back into the past was stronger than usual—roads that had barely evolved from bullock-wagon routes, old buildings, drooping telephone lines, ancient Austin trucks listing on perished tyres. But behind and beneath the things he could see was a more remote and comfortless past, at least if Mrs Keir’s journals were anything to go by.

He slipped Katie’s CD into the slot. Leonard Cohen, ‘Closing Time’. Perfect for bringing order to his long line of jangled thoughts. Redding, 6 Hamel Road, Mischance Creek. You didn’t ask for a welfare check on a whole family unless something was wrong. Even if they’d all spent Christmas Day at another location, or with other people, wouldn’t at least one family member be contactable on a mobile? Or have posted their plans on Facebook, or texted someone?