Oli’s gaze shifts to the police tape that Beanpole tied firmly to the wooden fence post after their exchange, before looking along the path, up the short flight of brick stairs to the concrete porch and open front door. The house itself appears innocent enough, though perhaps a tad neglected. The white weatherboards have a skirt of dirt, and the tiled roof is covered in lichen. The patchy lawn has been recently mowed, but the garden beds are thick with weeds. To the left of the front door sits a pair of terracotta pots with brightly coloured flowers spilling out in cheery puddles. A rainbow dreamcatcher dangles behind the glass of what Oli assumes is a bedroom window.

Movement draws her eyes back to the front door. Chief Inspector Gregory Bowman emerges from the house dressed in full scrubs, a young woman next to him. Oli gasps. The woman is covered in blood. A police-issue blanket hangs across her shoulders, her light brown hair is limp and her feet are encased in crime-scene booties. She’s crying, tears smearing the blood on her cheeks. Bowman gestures for her to move along the porch where she is shielded by a hedge wall.

He speaks briefly to a woman who covers the speaker of her mobile phone to listen, their heads bent close. Bowman looks much older in real life than he does on TV; deep lines tunnel across his forehead, and his unusually thick hair has almost finished its transformation from dirty silver to crisp snow.

A trio of plain-clothes detectives arrive, all men. They duck under the police tape and march purposefully up the path, ignoring the cops—including, Oli notes with satisfaction, an eager-faced Beanpole. There’s no sign of Isabelle Yardley, and Oli’s skin crawls with relief and a strange desire to sate her curiosity, to tug at a loose thread. To tempt fate.

It’s bloody freezing. Her heart thumps as she rubs her hands together and cranks up both the heater and the radio. She begins to make notes in her book as the blood-soaked body flashes back into her mind. The ABC news bulletin reports that police have been called to a residence in St Kilda regarding the discovery of a body, but relays nothing more than Oli already knows.

More cops turn up and congregate on the lawn. It starts to drizzle and the muck on her windscreen morphs into ugly brown streaks. Oli’s vision begins to blur just as a large hand raps sharply on the driver’s window. She jerks in fright, throwing her weight against the car seat.

Then she winds down the window and thrusts her middle finger into Rob’s laughing face.

‘Want to get in?’ Her deep voice is even huskier than usual.