‘McCrae’s wife could easily have lied. Maybe she didn’t want to admit that her husband was fooling around with his students.’

‘But the others all confirmed he left.’

‘I still want to talk to him,’ Cooper huffs. ‘Get his side of the story.’

‘Have you tried to contact him?’

‘Yeah. I messaged him on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, but he never replied. He’s still teaching, though, so he won’t be too hard to find.’

‘When you spoke to Alex, did she say anything about where she went that night?’

Cooper shakes his head. ‘No, I didn’t ask about that. Like I said, I wanted to save the main points for the interview. She did say she was comfortable with talking about Evelyn, though. You know, like the moments after she died, and when Alex called the ambulance.’

Oli remembers the statement Alex made in court, her face white and her voice shaking: I remember thinking that maybe the bath had somehow overflowed into the hallway, and that’s how the water got all over the floor. But it wasn’t water. It was blood.

‘Maybe you can get Bowman to talk to you as well.’ The thought comes out of nowhere. ‘He’ll be a great juxtaposition to Alex, and it’s a nice angle, the case he built that was overturned. I’d say it still pisses him off—his strike rate is almost perfect.’

‘Sure, I like the idea of interviewing him,’ Cooper says, sounding terrified. ‘Do you think he’d do it? Heaps of cops in the States do podcast interviews, but things are pretty different over there, aren’t they? Do you reckon you could speak to him? It would definitely be better coming from you.’ He pauses for breath just as his phone connection drops out. ‘Hey, no way!’ he exclaims.

They approach a roundabout with no signs and, not knowing which way to go, Oli pulls over. Cooper grabs the phone from the holder and prods the screen. After a few moments, a shiny black BMW tears past. Oli accelerates in pursuit. ‘It’s fine, Cooper. I know where we’re going.’

He raises his eyebrows cartoonishly. ‘How?’

Oli gestures to the BMW. ‘I don’t think Melissa Warren is heading to a midweek mountain picnic.’

Mercifully, the impromptu car chase lulls Cooper into silence. Oli follows Melissa’s BMW up the winding curves of the mountain for a few hundred metres, until the road turns almost one hundred and eighty degrees onto a steep dirt incline. Oli jerks the car to the right, and Cooper’s arm flies out to brace against the dashboard.

Up ahead, the serene bushland has been invaded by emergency vehicles. A small cluster of people wearing jeans, boxy blazers and sunglasses are talking into their phones: homicide detectives. The second cluster is more eclectic. An attractive woman in a tailored skirt. Two scruffy men in jeans with cameras propped on their shoulders.