At the end of the meeting, I cornered Wozza, who had turned a bit pale. ‘Chivalry? Or do you really hate public speaking?’

‘Both,’ he said miserably.

We were headed back to our office when Jane caught us. She’d been working front desk duty. She held a form, filled out by hand.

Wozza squinted. Read the title. ‘Missing person?’

‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Just took a phone report from Deception Bay Transport.’ She looked around, then leaned in and whispered, ‘Jack Barratt didn’t turn up for his shift today.’

My heart thumped. ‘What?’

Jane noticed the change in my tone. ‘His boss said when he was a no-show, which has never happened before, they sent a guy round to his house. No one answered the door when they knocked, but his car is there.’

That much, Wozza and I knew already.

‘When did he work last?’ I asked.

Jane checked her notes. ‘Did the early shift Monday. Yesterday was an RDO.’

Bloody hell! That meant the last verified sighting of Jack Barratt was Monday afternoon standing on the edge of a cliff of the Devil’s Corner. By me.

Wozza plucked the report from Jane’s hand. ‘We’ll take a look,’ he said and walked off towards our office. He turned to me as soon as he closed the door on both of us. ‘You sure you saw him in the car park?’

I shook my head. I had seen someone approaching the car park—someone I thought was Jack, assumed … ‘There was no one else on the path that afternoon except him.’

‘But it could have been someone else?’

I thought about it. Pushed my mind back to exactly what I had seen. A figure moving along the path, indistinct colour flashing between the trees. It could have been anyone.

‘What about the car park? Was it empty?’

‘Yes.’ I was not liking being on the other end of an interrogation but knew it was necessary. I didn’t need Wozza to remind me that I could have been mistaken—which in hindsight I could have—but at the time I’d had no doubt it was Jack approaching.

Wozza grabbed his jacket from the coat hook on the back of the door. ‘Let’s go find someone who saw him after you did,’ he said.

I nodded my gratitude. Said nothing.

We started at Jack’s work. We spoke to the gravel-voiced Wendy again. She repeated the information from the missing person’s report. Jack had worked a seven-to-three shift on Monday, just like Wozza and I had. I reflected on the irony of Jack probably having the same plan as me. Get home. Get changed. Head out for a run along the cliff. We got a list of Jack’s colleagues from his boss. Wozza offered to check them out on his own.

‘Why?’ I asked, but I knew the answer.