Jake needed to keep digging. He wondered again if Lilith was dumped in Melbourne because of the pregnancy. He was going to have to ask Amelia if she had also become pregnant while at the home, and that was not going to be a pleasant conversation for anyone.

But it was also tomorrow’s problem. For now, Jake signalled to the waiter that they were ready to order.

Deciding to make up for the numerous skipped meals and packets of instant noodles that had constituted his diet for the last week, Jake ordered a four-course meal of a truffled gnocchi entrée, followed by a mushroom risotto, then cheese, several glasses of a good sav blanc and a rich chocolate dessert to finish. For the first time in what felt like forever he ate far more than was good for him, enjoying the moment of calm in the maelstrom of monstrous adults and mutilated children.

*

Evelyn had apparently chosen to do some shopping in an outlet mall after dropping Jake and Murphy at the airport the previous day and had spent the night in a nearby motel. She wasn’t Jake’s ideal chauffeur.

‘I need to stop at the hospital before we head back,’ he said to her.

‘It’s a waste of time trying to talk to the MacDonald girl again,’ Evelyn said sourly.

Jake chose not to reply.

‘It’s not that, he’s got …’

He silenced Murphy with a scowl.

Jake was missing the professionalism of Melbourne already. As it so happened, he was going to see Amelia again, but he needed to stop by the path lab first.

*

‘Ah ha!’ Meena Gill said as she opened her lab door for Jake. ‘Rumour has it you have something for me?’

‘I have a possible lead … sort of.’ He pulled a sealed sample bag from his backpack and held it up.

‘I’m looking at …?’

‘A small piece of a dried umbilical cord that’s about a decade old, from one of the girls who lived at the home Ava O’Brien ran.’

‘Does this relate to the blood sample the Melbourne lab called about this morning?’

‘If the blood sample is Lilith Haverstock’s, yes. This cord is from a child she says she gave birth to.’

‘I’d better get to it, then. The Melbourne lab has given this top priority.’

The power of guilt, Jake thought. ‘I hope it makes a difference,’ he said. ’How fast can you tell me if Liam O’Brien is the father?’

Meena tapped one finger on her chin, lost in thought. ‘I’ve already run some basic analyses on the sample he gave us for elimination purposes.’

O’Brien had given that sample without hesitation. Was that another indication he wasn’t involved in Ava’s death, or that he was supremely confident he had left no trace?

‘Could you run something basic straight away?’ Jake tried not to sound too pleading.