‘I’m glad to hear it. What can you tell me about this?’

He shakes his head and groans quietly. ‘Sorry, Ol. Not today.’

‘Come on, Rusty. Can you confirm if it was a suicide? Please?’

He keeps his mouth closed, little muscles in his jaw clenching.

She drops her voice. ‘But it’s definitely Nicole Horrowitz? That’s what I’m hearing.’

‘Jesus, I haven’t even been inside.’ He straightens his shoulders assertively, then seems to get flustered again. He still won’t look her in the eye. ‘That’s what I’ve heard, okay?’ His voice is almost a whisper.

Oli’s heart begins to hammer. ‘And she hung herself, is that right?’

‘Oli, enough.’

Angry voices erupt behind them: more media have arrived. Someone is standing in someone else’s shot, and everyone’s complaining about the reception. Half of them are on the phone, the other half madly texting. Modern journalism at its best, Oli thinks wryly.

‘Bowman’s coming.’ The rumour spreads through the crowd like a virus. But after a few moments, everyone breathes out. False alarm. There’s no sign of the chief inspector.

Cooper returns and looks at Rusty then back at Oli in a way that suggests he somehow knows about their romantic past.

‘Hello.’ He sticks out his hand without introducing himself.

Oli rolls her eyes. ‘Rusty, this is Cooper Ng. He works with me at Melbourne Today. Cooper, this is Senior Constable Frost.’

‘Nice to meet you, Cooper,’ Rusty says, shaking his hand.

‘You too.’ Cooper pulls a business card from his pocket and hands it to Rusty before darting off again, snapping shots like a tourist.

Rusty raises his eyebrows and shoves the card in his pocket. Mildly embarrassed, Oli smiles up at Rusty. ‘He’s very green,’ she says. A female cop is now standing in earshot and gives her a dirty look. ‘I’ll come find you later,’ Oli says, while Rusty studiously ignores her.

She cuts across the front of the crowd to find Cooper, discovering him about twenty metres along the property’s wire fence, standing in dense shrubbery.

‘What are you doing?’ She ducks to avoid a stick scraping her face.

‘I was hoping there might be a line of sight to the house, but there isn’t. I got a couple of good pics of the police before, though. They were talking ominously.’

‘Ominously?’

‘Yeah.’ He steps toward the road, lifts the camera, and takes a few covert snaps of Rusty and his colleagues through the tree leaves. ‘You know, like serious cop chat. They’re good shots. The uniforms look great against the bush.’