Jake paused to sip the tea, bitter tannins flooding his tastebuds. ‘Have you had any other visitors in the past twenty-four hours?’

‘No. Can you tell us what this is about?’

‘What about sounds outside? Did you hear any cars or motorbikes, anyone making noise nearby early this morning?

‘No, not until we heard what sounded like a search party a couple of hours ago. Is someone lost? Why won’t you explain what’s going on?’

Jake watched both men carefully to gauge their reactions to his next words. ‘Earlier this morning the body of an elderly woman was found on your property.’

‘Who?’

‘A tentative identification has been made—Ava O’Brien.’

Max Campbell sat back and grasped the edge of the table with a hand. ‘What a shame. She was always nice to me.’

‘Course she was, you’re my boy.’

‘Dad, really?’

‘Good woman. Hard worker,’ Mason Campbell said, ignoring his son. ‘But not unexpected.’

‘Why’s that?’ Jake said.

‘She was a bit long in the tooth. Perfectly natural.’

‘Dad, she was younger than you.’

The elder Campbell’s flourishing eyebrows met to form one long, grey, shaggy crest. ‘She wasn’t married, not working, not contributing. No real reason to hang around.’

‘Dad! You shouldn’t say things like that!’

‘I’ll say whatever I want, thank you. My property, my rules.’

‘That’s not the point.’ Max Campbell’s groan indicated he was treading the path of a well-worn argument. ‘It’s a long time since we were all here together, isn’t it?’ He spoke directly to Evelyn Kelly to force the conversation on to a new track.

‘Yes.’

Jake noticed a flush begin to mottle the side of her neck. ‘You used to come up here?’ he asked.

She nodded briefly. ‘My parents were friends with … Mr Campbell and his ex-wife.’

‘But you stopped coming over when she left,’ the older Mason muttered. ‘Everyone did, the bastards.’

‘Dad! Enough.’ Max looked pleadingly at her. ‘I’m sorry.’

It wasn’t hard to see why anyone would avoid the old man’s company. ‘When you were here when the girls’ home was operating next door—did you spend any time with them?’

A chorus of shaking heads surrounded him. ‘We heard them through the hedge sometimes, but we never went over there,’ Ms Kelly said.

‘Why not?’

‘Bad girls,’ Mason Campbell said. ‘Didn’t want our kids mixing with them.’

‘I don’t know why everyone said that,’ Max Campbell countered. ‘They lived right next door and we never saw them. Hardly ever heard them. They never caused any trouble.’

‘Was it a home for juvenile offenders?’ Jake asked.

No one answered.

‘Dad?’ Max prompted.

‘So, O’Brien’s sister came back here to die, did she,’ Mason Campbell said. ‘Back to the girls’ home in the end …’

‘Maybe I wasn’t clear,’ Jake interjected, ‘Ms O’Brien was discovered in your vineyard, not in the home.’

‘No!’ Campbell senior’s fist slammed the table. ‘She’ll ruin my harvest.’

His son snorted. ‘For Christ’s sake, not this again. You haven’t harvested those bloody grapes in years.’