‘I’m sure she will appreciate that.’ Jake smiled wanly. ‘Please ensure you email me a link to your phone’s data as soon as you get home. I’m not sure where your coffee buddy has gone…’

‘That’s okay. I’d rather go straight to the hospital anyway.’

Once Charlotte had left, he checked in with Murphy. ‘Where’d Evelyn get to?’

‘She had to go shopping or something,’ he replied. ‘You know women.’

‘Hmmm. So, how’ve you gone this morning?’

‘Contacted all the campers, so that’s done.’ He hesitated.

‘What about locating other girls from the home?’

‘Nothing so far.’

Jake suppressed a groan. ‘What have you tried?’

‘Apart from Ava O’Brien, I can’t find any records of people living there.’

‘But you know they did. So where have you looked?’

Murphy looked like a kangaroo staring into the headlights of an oncoming semi-trailer. Which way would he jump?

‘We can ask Liam about them, he’ll be here in an hour,’ Kelly said, exiting his office. ‘I watched the video of the interview. Bit forceful, Hunter?’

‘Had to be, sir, time’s getting away from us.’

‘Fair enough. Take an hour’s break, clear your head before the next interview,’ Kelly said.

‘I could start writing up …’ Jake began.

‘That’s an order,’ Kelly said. ‘Clear your head.’

Time to replenish his meagre kitchen supplies, then.

*

The fog had become, if anything, thicker. Far above, the sun shone brightly, turning the sea of mist into a blinding wall of light. As he exited the station, Jake donned his sunglasses to ward off the glare. Though small, the town’s one and only supermarket was surprisingly well-stocked. Jake’s repetitive consumption of two-minute noodles boiled down to the ease with which he could make them, as well as the predictability of flavour and texture. There weren’t many other options when it came to dealing with a kitchen that consisted of a sink and a kettle. Once he had electricity in the cottage, he hoped to expand his range of culinary creations.

As he wandered the aisles, Jake mulled over a discussion with Kelly earlier in the week—before he’d discovered Ava’s corpse—on the extent to which community policing required a sensible interpretation and application of the law.

Jake’s superior officer lived in a world where he was the highest authority on most local matters. Fifteen-minute and half-hour parking time limits were not to be enforced, for example. Caught between a lack of longer-term council parking on the main street and various residents’ lobby groups—who wanted both more and less parking—each attempt to give a ticket in recent years had resulted in a drawn-out battle in petty claims court. Kelly had made a unilateral decision that parking restrictions were not to be enforced.

Kelly and Murphy were also clearly aware of a roaring black-market trade in illegally butchered meat, raw milk and untaxed goods and services bartered or traded for at local cash rates of twenty dollars an hour. This fee structure seemed to apply to all tasks, regardless of difficulty or complexity.