‘The weather has been hampering the search. But they did find Jasmine’s drink bottle, with blood on it.’

‘She had a cut lip,’ said Eliza. ‘From the fight.’

She let her head fall back on the pillow. Con stayed silent. He pulled out his notebook and waited. She glanced at him, down at his notebook, up to his face. He kept an expression of deepest interest, but didn’t say a word.

‘You want to know what happened up there,’ she said.

Con smiled and clicked his pen.

She waited a moment, then began to recount the same tale he’d heard her tell Murphy. The fight, and sending Madison ahead. How Eliza realised the other girls were missing and went back to find them. Things going strange. The silence, the disorientation, the storm.

Con stayed silent throughout the whole thing, jotting down notes occasionally, but keeping his eyes on her. He’d been told his deep blue eyes could be unnerving – he had this trick where he didn’t blink, didn’t waver, just stared, writing notes without looking at the page.

When she’d finished, she fell silent and watched him. ‘Does that all sound mad?’ she finally said.

Con didn’t reply. He let the silence build further. People often provided more information than necessary in order to fill silence.

‘Are you okay, detective?’ She was watching him curiously.

‘Anything else?’ he said, irritated. Neither his eye trick nor the silence was working.

‘Well . . . I think . . .’ she began. ‘It just sounds so stupid, and I honestly think Georgia might’ve been making it up.’

‘What’s that?’ he said, leaning forward.

‘On the path, before the girls disappeared . . . Georgia told me that she thought she saw a figure watching us.’

‘She saw someone? Why haven’t you told anyone?’

‘I thought she was seeing things,’ she said. ‘Even she didn’t tell me right away because she didn’t believe it. But when we walked through one of the patches of swamp, where the trees are clearer, she said she’d seen someone at the top of one of the ridges, one that looks like a fish fin.’

‘Did she say what they looked like?’ said Con.

‘Georgia said that . . . well, like a . . . huge . . .’ Her voice trailed off in frustration.

‘Like a what?’

‘A bear-man.’ She sighed. ‘See? This is why I didn’t tell anyone. Georgia thought she saw a bear in the bush.’

‘A . . . bear.’ Con had a mad urge to laugh, which he quickly quelled. ‘But you didn’t see it?’

‘Like I said, she didn’t point it out at the time. She said she didn’t want to scare any of the other girls, or let them make fun of her.’

‘Did Georgia say anything else?’

‘Just that, whatever it was, once she had seen it, it ducked behind a tree. It didn’t want to be seen. Georgia said it looked like it was carrying something on its back.’