They walk back along the track in silence.

‘Was it her?’ Cooper asks as they reach the turn. Then, ‘It was her, wasn’t it?’

Oli mentally sifts through the three photos of Nicole Horrowitz that ran in the news coverage. ‘I think so. She used to have shorter hair, lighter. That …’ Oli pauses. ‘That woman had long hair.’

‘I guess it grew.’ He clicks on the image. Zooms in. ‘I don’t know why I took this,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to do anything with it.’

‘I know.’ During the first year Oli worked at the paper, she took an earring from a crime scene. She knew it belonged to the victim; it must have fallen on the ground and been kicked across the hotel car park amid the attack. The woman died in hospital two days later. Oli kept the earring in her wallet for years, would occasionally get it out, look at it. ‘I get it,’ she adds.

He gives her a grateful glance.

They make their way back to the driveway. The crowd is bigger now, and Oli recognises several journos from competitor papers and news sites. ‘We need to find out if she was living here with someone.’ Oli ignores a pointed look from Melissa Warren, who is applying a hideous shade of coral lipstick.

‘How are we going to do that?’

‘We meet the neighbours.’ Oli’s eyes land on the letterbox. ‘We go to the local shops, maybe the post office.’

Pia calls, but the connection cuts in and out, and Oli hangs up in frustration. Then Pia texts her. ‘It looks like the house belongs to a couple who live in Tasmania,’ Oli tells Cooper. ‘It was left to them four years ago when their elderly uncle who lived here passed away. There’s no apparent link to Nicole Horrowitz, but Pia’s trying to contact the owners.’

‘Maybe she was renting it from them?’ Cooper offers.

‘Maybe.’ Oli thinks about the small strip of shops they passed through earlier, the huge blocks of land. It’s so isolated out here. Residents would certainly notice a new face, but they probably wouldn’t question a long-lost niece or distant cousin. Nicole could have pretended to be anyone and slipped fairly quickly into anonymity—forged a new life, or stolen someone else’s. But why? Was she so scared of Alex that she fled, or did guilt drive her away?

‘I read about this person once who was renting a house from someone who died, and they just kept living there for years,’ Cooper says. ‘All the relatives just assumed she was paying, but no one was tracking the money. That was somewhere in the States, though.’

‘Shhhhh.’