Dad studies the empty coffee table. ‘Charlie, do I have to –’

‘It’s cool, Dad, no one wants a drink.’

‘I do. Make me a cup of tea.’

I stand in the kitchen, fill the white plastic kettle and rinse limp tea leaves from Dad’s tin pot, hearing the water hit the steel sink and the ping of bellbirds and gentle whoosh of wind through the open window. My hands are shaking. I’m getting water everywhere.

‘I’ll be brief. I’m sure you’re –’ Roberts starts. Dad waves away the rest of the sentence. He clearly has no desire to be comforted by a stranger. ‘I have some concerns about your fiancée’s accident. Her body was –’ He registers the pain on my father’s face. ‘Your fiancée was lying a short distance away from the car, the door was closed, and the way she was placed –’

‘Placed?’

‘Well, that’s the problem, sir. It seems someone took the body out of the car. She couldn’t have fallen out at that angle, in that position. The door was closed but the window was open, and the rain damage indicates the water came in through the window.’

‘Slow down, son. What does the window have to do with anything? She fell out the window?’

‘No, sir. The window was open when the car crashed, which means the rain started after the accident. She’d have had her window up in a storm.’

Dad nods.

‘And she couldn’t have closed the door herself after the accident,’ Roberts says.

‘Why not? There’s your answer. She left the car before the rain started, and tried to walk for help.’

‘The medical examiner says she died of a blow to the skull from the steering wheel. And –’ Roberts hesitates – ‘even if that hadn’t been the case, she’d smashed her left kneecap on impact, so she wouldn’t have been able to walk. I’m sorry.’

I put Dad’s teacup on the coffee table. He makes no move for it, sits like a Pompeii statue.

Roberts stands up and walks to the window. ‘It’s a strange position to find a body in, laid out on the ground like that, with her arms folded across her. The others think –’ He turns back to face Dad. ‘What we’re considering is if there’s a chance someone was in the vehicle with her. And if you’d have any ideas about who that might be.’

When there’s no response, Roberts looks to me.

‘Dad?’

‘No.’ He speaks in a whisper. ‘She left here alone.’

‘Has she ever picked up hitchhikers, sir?’

‘She knows better.’

‘Then is it possible she drove in the other direction first, up to the national park?’

Dad seems baffled. ‘You know there’s nothing up there.’

‘Not normally. But if she’d arranged a liaison, or . . .’

‘Please tell me, Constable,’ Dad says, riled now, ‘that you have some theory not based on random speculation.’

‘Sir, someone moved her. We need to talk to that person. So if you have any idea of who that might be, it would help our investigation.’