There were clues, of course. Police had found Kevin in the warehouse, slumped on his side, minute by minute cooling as his body adapted to its filthy surroundings. Beside Kevin’s body they’d found a man, someone resembling, but wholly different to, the Dale Bingley who’d existed not long before. Dale had been sitting with his knees drawn up, his arms hanging loosely around them, calm. The gun was gone. In the dust nearby, there were shoeprints, some of them very large, some of them very expensive.

Outside the warehouse, police had found Kevin Driscoll’s car with the driver’s side door open, the cabin light on. No prints. On the passenger seat, a journal and a pen, long scribblings in a heavy hand. A diary.

I’d seen Dale Bingley on the news only the night before, standing with his wife on the steps of a police station. He’d shaved. The shirt he was wearing was immaculate. Rose Bingley was holding his hand. All around them stood important people, people I didn’t recognize. Lawyers. Detectives. Specialists, probably. I didn’t know. He’d made bail.

The man who’d stolen my life was dead. In time, the media would release details of the diary, and that would go some way to exonerating me, at least for people who wouldn’t go so far as to believe that Kevin and I had acted together and that he’d deliberately kept me out of his writings. The police had kept me in Sydney for a week, wanting to talk about Dale, Khalid Farah, Kevin. Why I’d been at a house the police knew Kevin had been at only hours before he had been murdered. Why I’d called his ex-girlfriend, and what we’d spoken about. Whether or not I believed Dale Bingley had set out to murder Kevin, and whether or not I’d been there when he did. I’d brought Sean to the interrogations and enacted my right to silence. There was no case against me. The police couldn’t put me at the scene of the crime. I’d reported my phone stolen and thrown out my shoes, and no witnesses had seen me or Dale driving there that night. The case against Dale also had major problems. There was no gun found at the scene or anywhere near it. Dale wasn’t talking. His lawyer was one of the country’s top QCs. If he got into trouble, there would always be a provocation defense. Temporary insanity. Self-defense. Whatever they liked. I didn’t think the case against Dale would hold up. Or that he would care if it did.

Amanda knew that my wife had offered to give me back something of what I had lost. In the week I’d been in Sydney, I’d seen Lillian again, this time alone with Kelly at a McDonald’s, Jett nowhere to be seen. She’d asked me again to come home. I’d given her my answer.