I thought about explaining to Dale that some of the offenses on the list went back decades, and not all of them might be true. But then I imagined a man who I wasn’t completely sure hadn’t raped my daughter trying to explain to me that the world wasn’t such a bad place and I dropped the issue. I’d tried to broach the issue of my new accusations with him, but he wouldn’t look up from the pages.

“I need to know how you feel about them,” I said, struggling to find the right tone. “I mean, you can’t be feeling nothing.”

“I’m trying to get my daughter’s case solved,” he said. “This is about Claire. This is about finding the man who hurt her. I can’t focus on anything but that right now.”

“So you’re just using me,” I said.

“Yes.” He glanced at me. “You think I actually care if you’re a good person or not?”

“Well…”

“What did you think?” he asked. “If I found out you were innocent we were going to be best buds? Go to the pub together and grab a schnitzel? Watch the game?”

“No.”

“The day we find out what happened to Claire, that will be the last day we’ll ever see each other. Maybe it’ll be the last day you’ll see anything at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

I stood uncomfortably, watching him slowly turning the pages of sex offenders over, working his way down the list, reading the details. I left, my stomach in knots, and made a phone call in the car.

Dr. Val Gratteur answered her office phone after only a couple of rings.

“I was just going to call you,” she said.

“Oh, really? Why?”

“No, no. You go first. Mysteries annoy me.” I heard her exhaling, imagined her blowing cigarette smoke. The medical examiner smoked like an old Russian gangster.

“I need a friendly ear. I’m in a bit of trouble.” I told her about Dale Bingley’s haunting presence in my house. The subtle death threat he had just burdened me with.

“Amanda knows he’s there,” I said. “But I feel like someone else needs to know he’s hanging around me in case, I don’t know…”

“In case he does away with you,” Val said.

“He’s been close a couple of times.”

“Well, I’ll make a note of it,” she said. I heard paper shifting against paper, the click of what must have been a pen. “I’m writing it in my logbook this very instant. Ted Conkaffey … murder … equals Dale … Bingley … I drew a little picture of a knife for good measure.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you in the car?”

“I am.”

“Turn it towards Cairns,” she said. “I was going to call you because that murdered boy’s girlfriend is on her way here. She asked to see the body.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Val said. “Struck me as odd. Thought you might like to watch.”