Even if it emerged that O’Brien wasn’t the father, Jake was certain he was implicated. It was clear someone had drugged Lilith in Dunton, moved her unconscious body into the boot of a car, smuggled her across Bass Strait, then dumped her on St Kilda beach. It might have coincided with Ava’s annual trips ‘to see friends’, but Jake doubted that tiny Ava would have been physically capable of carrying Lilith’s body to the car.

‘I’m sure O’Brien was involved somehow,’ Jake said. ‘We’ll interview Amelia again on the way through town, then when we get back to the station tomorrow afternoon, the first thing I want to do is bring O’Brien in for questioning again.’

‘Want me to set it up?’

‘Let’s surprise him. If he’s our man, I don’t want him preparing for it, or getting nervous and running.’

‘Smart. It would have been a repeat thing, though, right?’ Murphy said.

‘What would?’

‘The attack that left the girl pregnant.’

‘She said it happened just the once.’

Murphy scoffed. ‘Yeah, they don’t get pregnant the first time.’

Could he really lack such a basic grasp of reproductive biology? ‘Murph?’

The constable ran one hand over the side of his crisp brown hair and guffawed.

He was kidding. Jake was starting to suspect that Murphy had a sense of humour he couldn’t quite grasp, though he was willing to work at it in order to get along with him for the next two years.

‘And what’s it with the nails and strawberries?’ Murphy said.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Jake admitted.

‘Do we have any idea who dumped Ms O’Brien in the vineyard?’

Jake was glad to see Murphy re-engage. ‘We have a lot of leads and we only need one of them to pay off. Anyway, let’s order, hey?’

As Jake perused the menu he thought about his current line-up of suspects. Although Amelia and Lilith both had motive, it was highly unlikely either of them were involved. Jake would do his due diligence and check Lilith’s alibi to ensure she hadn’t somehow discovered her origins and returned to Dunton to kill Ava O’Brien … she certainly had reason to, but there were no indications that she was involved or that her interaction with him earlier today had been a performance.

Turning the page from entrées to mains, Jake reasoned that Charlotte was probably in the clear as well. She lacked any apparent motive for attacking Ava. It was remotely possible she had discovered the abuse Ava had subjected her foster sisters to and sought revenge, but Jake doubted it.

Could it have been Liam O’Brien? His reaction to seeing Ava’s hand in the morgue said no, but it was also possible that he was acting.