‘You decided to remove Ava as a threat, didn’t you? You went to her home—where you knew she would be alone in the early hours of Friday morning—knocked on the door so that she let you in, put your hands around her throat, and strangled her. Then you laid her out on a plastic tarpaulin, sat on her and pulled her fingernails out with pliers.’

The attending officer recoiled slightly.

‘You then stuffed her in a bag, drove her to Mason Campbell’s vineyard along fire trails through the bush, carried her to the middle of the vineyard, and dumped her body.’

Kelly somehow contrived to look bored.

‘It was dawn when you left with the bag you’d carried her in draped across your shoulders. The boy you came across in the vineyard—Jamie Taylor—took your giant silhouette for a monster in the fog. When you realised he hadn’t seen your face, did you think you were in the clear?’

Again, Kelly refused to answer.

‘When Liam O’Brien saw his sister’s fingertips at the morgue he knew who had killed her though, didn’t he? That’s why you had asked Murphy and me not to mention the damage to her hands to him, wasn’t it?’

The female officer shifted in her seat.

‘From the moment I told you Liam had behaved strangely after seeing her hand, you knew he was on to you. From that point on it became a cat and mouse game of you trying to silence him before he could find a way to leave town.’

Still no response.

‘In the end you cornered him, knocked him unconscious, strangled him, and staged his death to look like a suicide—complete with a note from him claiming responsibility for Ava’s murder.’

Kelly remained silent.

‘When it became apparent that your attempt to make it look like a suicide didn’t work, you moved on to plan B—contriving to have Mason and Max Campbell arrested for both murders. Mason Campbell is a serial child rapist and deserves to be put away for the remainder of his life, but Max—as far as I can tell—is not guilty of anything here.’ Jake tried to elicit a response by shouting. ‘You would have put an innocent man in gaol to cover for your crimes!’

Still nothing. Jake wondered if Kelly was hearing anything he said at this point. His eyes were open, but perhaps he had drifted into the void behind them.

‘To cap it all off, today you attempted to kill your own daughter and stage her death as a suicide, setting her up to take the blame for any crimes the Campbells were found innocent of. You have nothing to say about any of this?’

Kelly looked at Jake. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. You’re mistaken on all counts, and I’ll see you tossed out of the force for false arrest.’