The reports often showed a common pattern. First, the man would charm the woman, seducing her in the fullest sense of the word. One detail that jumped out at Anita was the number of men who made a point of characterising the woman as the stronger, more dominant person in the relationship. She’d seen Matt do that with his forlorn puppy adoration of Stacey. ‘I love her more than she loves me. There’s an imbalance.’

Next, the man would isolate the woman from other people in her life. And it would be hard to be more isolated than Stacey had been living on the Maryvale property: off the grid, eleven hours’ drive from friends, with no way to communicate with the outside world.

Usually, there were threats of violence before the physical abuse began. The safety of the children would be used as a control mechanism. Then threats to kill would be woven into the abuse. Finally, the man would murder her.

Stacey’s case slid into sharp alignment with the pattern. Recognising the common pattern didn’t suck any of the poison out of her death, but it formed a structure in which Anita could place Stacey’s story when it was too hard to hold it in her head.

Anita walked into the coroner’s records office and exchanged smiles with the two staff members. Bronwyn and Yianni had become used to her showing up, requesting their help to find documents for the feature article.

Bronwyn was a short, blocky woman in her late fifties who maintained a short, blocky haircut. Yianni was slightly younger, with silver-haired, dark-eyebrowed Greek good looks.

Anita’s default setting was to be outgoing. (Sometimes she worried she was excessively gregarious, in a way that made certain people back off.) Both Bronwyn and Yianni could be a little wary and officious, holding tight to their authority in this place, nursing the solemn duty of their jobs. But in the face of Anita’s relentless friendliness, they’d loosened up and turned out to be very helpful. She expressed her gratitude profusely. (Maybe a bit too much so.)

Before Anita had a chance to mention the case files she was hoping to see this afternoon, her phone vibrated with a message from the newspaper office. The subeditor was querying a few chunks of wording in the court story she’d filed an hour ago. Anita ought to sort out any problems before the piece was lawyered too savagely.

She held up a finger to indicate to Bronwyn and Yianni that she’d be back in a second, then sat down in the waiting area to respond to the sub’s questions.

While Anita hunched over her phone, typing, she was aware that Bronwyn had called Yianni over to her desk to look at something on the computer screen. They were conversing in low voices, but certain words spiked in Anita’s hearing and caught her attention.