‘I was on annual leave—a holiday with Jess and the kids,’ said Wozza. ‘Otherwise, I would’ve done it. By the time I got back to work, Wheels had put the kybosh on it.’

I remembered Wozza mentioning this earlier. He’d felt uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do. We needed to talk to the two girls involved, I decided. Kara Bromfield. She worked at the local pool. One phone call told me she was working a shift now.

Just as I was packing my notebook and phone, ready to leave, Jane came into the office. She carried a sheaf of printouts.

‘You wanted our running sheets from the night Meg was attacked. Me and Randall were doing the pub and car park checks,’ she said. ‘Here’s a list of cars we took down with the location and time we saw them. We made a list of them on the running sheet.’ She handed over several pages of photocopied running sheets.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘This could prove really valuable.’

Jane beamed. ‘Anything else?’

‘We’ll let you know,’ I said, flicking through the forms as she left our office.

‘Anything interesting?’ asked Wozza, picking up his keys.

There was something interesting. Red ute. Left-hand front tyre balding. Checked at 7.10 pm. Scratches noted on every panel of the vehicle. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘guess where Lachie Murtog’s car was on the night Meg was taken?’

‘Parked outside the pub?’

‘Yep.’

Wozza looked thoughtful. ‘And after that night, he took off for a couple of days. When I saw him this morning, he was wearing his high-vis vest.’ He checked his watch. ‘Probably on a seven-to-three shift. We can head around to his place after he finishes work.’

‘In the meantime, we need to talk to the woman who made the complaint after the Australia Day barbecue.’

Kara Bromfield was much shorter than me, and I wasn’t tall by any means. She had the physique of a sportsperson and seemed to bounce nervously on the balls of her feet when we approached her at the reception desk of the Waves Pool and Gym, where she worked. She knew Wozza from around town but looked warily at the both of us.

‘Is there a place we can talk?’ I asked her. A group of teens pushed and shoved their way past us in full school holiday volume. ‘Somewhere quiet?’

Kara left the desk in the charge of a young man wearing the same T-shirt she was, adorned with the fitness club’s logo. She led Wozza and me to the staffroom, which was quiet at 9.30 am. A huge glass window overlooked an indoor pool and muted the squeals and splashing from below. She pointed to chairs around a lunch table and we sat. Kara looked like she’d rather stand but sat anyway. Under the table, she started rocking her foot. A faint shaking was visible above the table.