First thing in the office on Monday morning, after I’d shared my concerns about the Millard case with Wozza, we turned back to Meg’s investigation and discussed strategy for our investigation to find the person—or people—responsible for the attack on her. Given that Pete from Bellanook CIB had the Ruth Bader Ginsburg tattoo lead, he’d said he’d do the phone data request. I gave him a call to see if he’d found anything. I put him on speaker so Wozza could hear.

Pete’s excited voice echoed around our office. ‘Jack Barratt was in Bellanook on the night our first victim was attacked.’

‘That’s great!’ Wozza said.

Pete hesitated. ‘Well, yes and no. We could triangulate the data, but all the techies could commit to was that he was “in the vicinity” of the hotel where our victim was drinking. His phone data has him heading back to Deception Bay around the time of the attack.’

Opening the scans of the photos we’d found in the search of Jack’s place on my desktop screen, I lined them all up and looked not at the victims but at the surrounds. Old mattress. Dirty concrete floor. In several of the images, bits of the wall beyond were visible. As far as I could tell, it looked like grey besser block.

‘Pete, I sent you the polaroid scans. Do you think he could have drugged your victim and brought her back here? The place they’re taken to looks like some kind of garage.’

‘Or a workshop,’ said Wozza, looking over my shoulder at the images.

‘I think we need to check out Jack’s work again.’ I turned to Wozza. ‘Did you see anything like this when you collected his timesheet the other day?’

‘Nup. But I only went to the front office.’

We promised to keep Pete in the loop and headed for the car.

Deception Bay had only one transport company in town. It was on the outskirts among the other businesses that required space: a car yard, plant nursery, service station and agricultural equipment yard. Deception Bay Transport was next to the nursery. Wozza pulled up in the car park and we headed inside.

The manager was an older woman called Wendy. We explained that we were working on the sexual assault cases and would like to look around the premises. She scoffed in a pack-a-day kind of voice. ‘I’ve read about that in the newspapers. Can’t imagine that Jack is involved in any way. He’s a good bloke. And if you ask me, these girls, they dress in skimpy clothes and go off to the pub and then cry rape the next day.’

I watched her hard face as she spoke. No compassion, no grey areas for her. And no fault on the part of the men.

‘I mean, what do they expect?’ Wendy finished her rant and pursed her lips.