‘Why didn’t you say so earlier?’

‘I reckon your nan would want to look at it, and I didn’t want to be responsible for her passing out when she saw the crime scene photos.’

‘Good call.’ I laughed.

She pecked me on the cheek. ‘Let me know if you need anything else.’

As the car disappeared down the driveway, I thought again how grateful I was for Pip’s friendship.

I carried the box back into the warmth of the house and put it down on the kitchen table. Then I put the kettle on and settled into an evening of reading by the fire.

The file contained all the statements—not just the main ones I’d accessed online. It also had three sets of crime scene photos, each set spiral bound, with a blue cardboard cover labelled with the Victoria Police insignia. They showed the scene in full living colour.

Shayna lying on the bed, arm flung out, mottled purple with decomposition.

Froot Loops scattered across the lounge room floor. An upended biscuit jar.

Brett in the kitchen.

Even in death there were shadows of the boy I’d known. My eyes filled with tears and I quickly brushed them away. Beside him on the floor was an electric frying pan. It looked like the cord had been wrenched from the wall, which I guess was lucky, because if it had been left on for days it could have burned the whole place down. From the photos, it looked like Brett had been cooking something. A half-loaf of bread and a block of cheese. A fallen spatula on the floor. Maybe toasted sandwiches? I put a hand to my mouth as I realised that Crystal must’ve eaten whatever Brett was cooking from the floor, since there was no sign of it. The switch on the power point was on. I frowned. Since when do husbands shoot their wives, then make a toasted sandwich, then shoot themselves midway through?

And where was the gun?

I kept going through the photos. Finally, there was a picture of a gun on a path outside the back door. How the hell did it get there? As a detective, I knew that cases always had loose ends and not everything is explained. But looking at these photos, this did not look like a murder-suicide scene.

It looked like a double murder.

CHAPTER 21: A NAYLE IN THE COFFIN

CHAPTER 21

A NAYLE IN THE COFFIN