Pip had gone to the office on Beale Street and looked in the window at the cats lying in the sunshine. When they’d noticed her standing there, a couple had pawed at the glass, meowed angrily. Were they hungry? She’d knocked, called, received no answer.

A part of her was worried that Amanda was gone because of their meeting at the bar a day earlier. That moment, as they’d stood almost where she stood now, and Pip had felt her whole body infected with urgency. Driven to move. She’d looked into Amanda’s eyes. Had Amanda known what she was thinking?

She looked down the length of the creek. Back toward its source. No sign of Amanda. But these were, unmistakably, her shoes—mud-spattered from bike riding, grass tangled in the laces. There was relief now mingling with the concern. Sweeney looked up and saw that a paling was missing from the fence across the way. The unmatched one, snapped in half, lying on the opposite creek bank. Puzzled, she crossed the creek. A sound from the house, a crashing. The renovators. Amanda might have gone to requestion them. A good idea. Pip walked around the side of the house to the front door and raised her hand to knock as the sound of paper crumpling came from beneath her boot.

I stood at the wire, watching the golfers, and called Frankie. Didn’t explain anything, just told her the name of the girl and asked for the number. She could hear how disturbed I was. How frantic. She didn’t ask questions, just logged in to her computer and accessed the phone company databases, extracted the number, read it to me as I typed it into my phone.

I called. Both goons were in the car now, watching me as I paced back to them, then to the fence again, my head down and shoulders aching with tension.

“Hello?”

“My name is Ted Collins. I’m a member of the New South Wales police,” I lied. There was no time to explain the truth of who I was. “Is this Chloe Carroway?”

There was a pause. I tried to breathe.

“Mal, is that you?”

“Listen to me very carefully,” I said slowly. “Is this Chloe Carroway?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m Senior Sergeant Ted Collins.” I could hear a tremor in my voice. I tried to talk slowly. “I’m from the New South Wales police department.”

“Okay…”

“I need you to answer some questions for me.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now.”

“It’s the police.” She’d turned away to talk to someone in the background, muffled the mouthpiece with her hand. “He says he’s the police!”

“Can you please tell me,” I said, “if last year, on April tenth, 2016, you were the owner of a Nissan ute? A blue one?”

“Um. April? Yeah, that’s right. But I don’t own it anymore. We sold it.”

“Do you have a person in your life named Kevin who had access to that ute at that time?”