Some detectives believed they could pick the perp straight away. Caruso wasn’t in that camp, but he knew something was off kilter here. The husband and wife almost seemed afraid of each other. As for guilt, well, the mother kept saying: ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to the shop.’ But, equally, those other four women and their kids were at fault. While they all seemed distraught, only two of them—Julia the pregnant organiser and Imogen who’d rung the police—actually blamed themselves. Were the others—Tara the flirty redhead and Mel the earth mother—working on self-protection? He’d already heard Tara point the finger: ‘Lexie must have left the gate open when she went to the shop.’

They’d got the background checks on the playgroup mums and their husbands. A parking ticket here, a speeding fine there, nothing out of the ordinary. He’d shown a picture of a maroon Honda Jazz, like Josh’s, to the elderly neighbour. Darryl Lawson had peered closely at the image, taking his glasses on and off, then insisted the car he saw was red. And that red hatchback was hard to check. No make, no rego number. They were doing some grunt work on it. Looking up all red hatchbacks registered in Merrigang and the southern suburbs of Canberra. Any stolen red hatchbacks. Any links to known paedophiles.

The superintendent wasn’t happy about the community volunteers turning up for the search last night. Neither was Caruso. Particularly when it involved a few of the husbands—Lucas and Josh, in particular. Caruso knew of cases where suspects had volunteered for a search. Made it easier for them to find out what the police knew, and to possibly divert the searchers. No doubt, it gave the bastards a thrill to be among it all, knowing they were responsible for bringing out all the police resources.

With the AMBER Alert, the comms centre had received two hundred calls from the public and yet not one lead. How could a child simply disappear? The SAR team had clambered through stormwater channels and opened up the drains within a five-kilometre radius.

Nothing.

Vanished.

And it wasn’t like that terrible case where the mother and stepfather had been the last ones to see the girl alive the night before she was reported missing. Turned out the two of them had killed her a week previously. No, Caruso had four adult witnesses who were with Bella in that room only moments before. He and Suze had been to Tara Murphy’s house yesterday, Imogen Lawrence’s this morning and now they were on the way to Mel Wainwright’s. Every available police officer was either dealing with the ongoing protests at Parliament House (protestors had camped overnight near the Aboriginal Tent Embassy) or searching for Bella.