He walked along the creek to the gravestone. It drew him—he supposed it always would—and he lingered for a while. Lichen crawled across the chiselled face, filling the grooves and channels that spelt out the boy’s name and fate, and the father’s appeal to God. Hirsch blinked. Realised he was holding his hand over his heart. Weird. He turned away to stare down into the creek, where murky water pooled around the bulrushes. A tiny ripple—a yabby or a water plant, shapeshifting as if woven into the water.

He walked on, curious about the creek beyond the gravestone and hoping to spot footprints in the moist soil at each of the stagnant pools, or creek-bed stones that had been rolled weather-side down by small feet. Mostly the creek was broad and straight, the bed barely two metres below the paddocks on either side, but where it curved, or cut between hillocks, the banks were significantly higher.

He was picking a noisy path through one such gulch—the tumble-smoothed stones, clustered pink, dry and weirdly testicular, tocking out a jerky tune under his feet—when a scree of dust and pebbles rattled downslope to spill over his shoes. He tilted his head, dwarfed by seven or eight metres of striated red soil embedded with rocks. A glimpse of dead grass at the top. Some creature up there, he thought. Or the dirt was unstable.

He turned back, passing the gravestone for a final silent tribute. Then the long drive home, thinking about Wendy, and when he finally reached the police station in Tiverton, a pair of Sydney cops were waiting for him with hard faces shut tight.

20

20

AN ORGANISED CRIME Squad senior sergeant named Vita Roesch and a Homicide Squad senior constable named Robert Hansen.

Both shopsoiled, as if they’d spent the day sitting in a plane and then a car, which they had. Both still managing to crowd Hirsch’s little sitting room, which was frayed and unloved to begin with, and put him on the back foot.

The ceiling fan chopped at the stale air. ‘Pull up a pew,’ Hirsch said.

Hansen glanced disparagingly at the sofa before perching as if fearing the fabric would soil him. ‘Op-shop chic, mate?’ he said.

Vita Roesch said, ‘Now, now, Robert.’ She turned to Hirsch. ‘A quick word and we’ll be on our way.’

She sat on the other end of the sofa; a woman of forty with the lean, searching look of a hunter, offset by a multicoloured cotton sundress that showed sleek, tanned legs and shoulders. It all brightened up the sitting room, anyway.

Hirsch remained standing. ‘Tea? Coffee? Cold drink?’

‘Water, please,’ Roesch said.