‘Nobody from around here has done as well as you, Jamie. We all follow your stories.’

James waved the compliment aside. ‘I guess what I mean is, why did he find me?’

She held a finger up. ‘Mr Jones... sorry, it’s Cassie... yeah, he’s here... I know he’s early, but I guess he wants to spend time with the family... alright, I’ll ask him to wait, no worries. Seeya then, Mr Jones. Sorry about interrupting,’ she said and hung up.

‘I’ve got to head out to The Mulgas, maybe I could just see him tomorrow morning?’

‘He’s heading back now,’ she said, unlocking a cabinet filled with bunches of keys on hooks and holding one out for him. ‘Locks won’t be changed until the morning. Why not go have a look through your cousin’s stuff while you’re waiting? The flats are on the main road, first past the swimming pool on the left. Blond brick. Number seventeen is up the end of the drive. I’m really hoping to get a cleaner in there at the same time as the locksmith.’

The mounting information made the key seem heavier as James took it.

‘The police are finished in there now,’ she added, ‘so if you want to take anything with you, Mr Jones said you’re alright to just go for it.’

The cluster of flats looked as though they’d gone up in the seventies but had served nobody particularly well since. The door of number seventeen faced onto a fence that enclosed a small communal driveway. Beyond that was an overgrown field that gave onto the caravan park.

In the entranceway, a rush of stale air met James’s nostrils, and just by the door he recognised the old clock that had stood for years in his grandparents’ farmhouse, hands stopped at almost four; one languid afternoon, or some crisp, pre-dawn hour.

A twisted scrap of police tape had been caught by the plastic hall runner, and a few careless cops must have trodden mud into the carpet, long since dried. Beyond, the kitchen was just a tiled corner of the main room.

The clock dwarfed a card table and one armchair, shoved into a corner to make room for a television on a tray-mobile. As James averted his eyes from the lonely angle of that one uncomfortable-looking seat, his foot clipped the television magazine on the floor, dated back in the early autumn.

He picked it up and went to put it with other paperwork stacked on top of the microwave. In the top kitchen drawer, a pile of pay slips was tied with a rubber band, bearing the name of the local supermarket. Tony had regularly been paid twenty-five dollars an hour for doing something there on weekends.

James turned the handle of the bedroom door and opened it just as someone’s shadow passed across the blind that covered the front window.