First, that my charges for the abduction, sexual assault, and attempted murder of Claire Bingley had been brought again. If that was the case, then I had a plan. I knew who had really assaulted Claire, and her father did, too. Months earlier, I had watched helplessly as Dale Bingley had murdered her attacker, a young man named Kevin Driscoll, in a Sydney warehouse. To prove my innocence to him, at least, I’d helped Claire’s father find the real perpetrator. And he’d enacted his brutal revenge. A diary had been found in Driscoll’s car that implicated him in Claire’s attack. I would use that to defend myself in a new trial. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

That brought about the second possibility. The New South Wales police had questioned me extensively over Kevin Driscoll’s death. They had bits and pieces to go on—my phone had been in the area of the crime scene, and I had communicated with Claire Bingley’s father in the lead-up to the murder. He had come to my house, slept on my porch, drunk my whiskey, and then been found at the scene, calm but unwilling to cooperate with police inquiries. Dale was in the same position I was—no one could prove that he had done more than stumble into the warehouse where Kevin Driscoll was killed. There was no murder weapon, no physical evidence to link him to the crime. His charges were dropped, but not dismissed. Maybe things had changed. Maybe I was being arrested now because they’d found something that could definitively put me in that warehouse on that awful night.

The third possibility was that something completely new had happened. That at some time in the past twenty-four hours a child had been stolen, assaulted, or abused, and I was being brought in as a suspect. It was possible that a new accusation against me had emerged. It had happened before. If that was the case, I needed to think about my alibi. I’d spent the whole night at home, only leaving to visit the vet at 3 a.m. But I’d sent messages and made phone calls, used the internet. I was sweating, my brain thrumming with ideas, trying to form and consolidate strategies.

I was distracted from my turmoil as the patrol car rolled toward Cairns, gliding down Kenny Street. I expected the car to turn left for the police station nestled in the heart of the tourist district, but they continued along Wharf Street, past palm-lined beaches, the newly risen sun just beginning its onslaught on the pavement. They continued past the sprawling, empty parking lot of the convention center toward the blazing-white blocks of the White Caps Hotel.

The back parking lot entrance was blocked with police cars. As we approached I caught a glimpse of a huddle of press at one of the side entrances, where more police officers stood guard, stern-faced and unaccommodating.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

They ignored me.