‘Ava O’Brien didn’t know that you were attacking the girls?’ Kelly said.

‘She muttered her prayers and Bible verses all the time and couldn’t see what was right in front of her.’

‘So Liam O’Brien drugged the girls, then you raped them and pulled out their fingernails?’ Jake managed to keep his voice steady.

‘They didn’t have any bloody fingernails when I got to them—they’d already been taken out. It spoiled things a little, to be honest.’

That didn’t make sense either. ‘So Liam O’Brien removed their fingernails? Did you ever see him do that?’

‘Who else would have done it?’

Jake was almost certain Liam O’Brien hadn’t been involved in the removal of the girls’ nails, although he certainly had known who was. But if it wasn’t O’Brien or Campbell, or from the sounds of it Ava, that would mean there was a fourth person involved in the abuse of the girls.

‘What happened when the girls became pregnant?’

It was a long shot, but Jake might still be able to track down Lilith’s son for her.

‘O’Brien’s sister always took care of them.’ Campbell shook his head. ‘So gullible. O’Brien would tell her they went out like cats on heat the moment she left, and she always believed him.’

Jake didn’t accept that for a second. Ava O’Brien knew the girls were being drugged and attacked under O’Brien’s care and she turned a blind eye.

‘And once the girls gave birth?’

‘We’d get rid of them, mostly.’

‘What?!’

Max Campbell’s shriek mirrored the distress Jake was feeling. Max started compulsively rubbing his hands over his face as if trying to awaken from a nightmare. Rather than give in to his silent rage, Jake used it to focus on the interview.

‘You took at least one of the girls to St Kilda and dumped her there, didn’t you?’

Campbell shrugged. ‘That part of it wasn’t my problem. I paid O’Brien to take care of things. He’d tell Ava he’d found a family who wanted to adopt them, then take them across the Strait and leave them somewhere on that side.’

Max Campbell grabbed at the table. ‘That’s where Mum’s money went! You were spending it all on this depraved child abuse!’

‘How many?’ Jake asked.

‘How many what?’

‘How many girls did you rape then dump across the Strait?’

The casual expression on Campbell’s face as he made mental calculations tore through Jake’s brain.

‘Maybe ten.’

‘And when they got pregnant, what happened to their babies?’

Campbell’s face grew sly.

Jake’s stomach sunk. What had happened to Lilith’s son?

‘There weren’t many. Only five or six.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘O’Brien’s sister would birth them, then tell the girl they had died.’

‘And then?’