I think hard about all the conversations with Xanthe. Cormac was too clever, too meticulous to reveal anything real about himself, but Xanthe was different. Where did she live? Close by, in an apartment maybe? Xanthe was playing games as Raze so … Then it hits me. Evan knew the area she was in.

‘Evan,’ I say. ‘You had the IP address for Raze.’

His eyes go wide.

‘What does that mean?’ Simms says.

‘I can show you,’ he says. ‘I just need a computer with the internet to log on.’

Simms stands, opens the door and gestures for us to step outside. We march down the halls back into the crisis room. Simms hunches over the long wooden table and taps the password into a laptop. Then he steps back, pulls the chair out for Evan and says, ‘All yours.’

Evan slides in, opens a browser and accesses his gaming account.

Simms calls over two other cops, and all of us gather around as Evan navigates his account. He had sent the IP address to another gamer, and when he pulls up the message he copies and pastes it into an IP look-up.

“Pakenham East” comes up and beneath it is a map with a large blue radius.

‘So the IP address used was in this area,’ he points.

‘Can you narrow it down in any way?’

‘Me?’ Evan says. ‘Well no, I just know that they’re somewhere near Pakenham East based on the IP, but they could be running a proxy to hide.’

‘Pakenham East,’ Simms says, turning to one of the other officers. ‘Check to see if either of the Schultzes owns property near Pakenham. In fact, let’s get a list of any properties owned by either of them, beginning with anything in this radius,’ he says, thrusting a finger at the screen. ‘Then we can check in with all of them, working backwards.’

‘The mum,’ I say, now remembering something else. ‘July said something at dinner, something that annoyed Cormac. She said he has a place in the country. He might have told her about it, knowing he was going to one day take her there. Maybe he was telling the truth. But it’s not just that,’ I say, turning away from the screen, locking eyes with them all one at a time. ‘I read in an article about Nathan’s mum that she died at her home. It was in the country somewhere— ’ I pause, thinking, trying to remember the suburb. Meanwhile Evan is tapping away at the keyboard. He pulls up the article, scrolls through it.

‘— Beaconsfield. It was Beaconsfield Upper,’ he says.

‘That’s it,’ I say.

‘Alright, let’s start there,’ Simms says.

‘We can contact their ISP for personal information from the account,’ says one of the cops. ‘But it will take a while.’