In an exhausting series of trials, Lachie and Jimbo pointed the finger at Jack, who by that stage was well and truly rotting in his grave. Lachie admitted getting a phone call from Jack from the cliff top after I’d left. The phone call ended when Jack, who’d asked Lachie to come and help him, said, ‘Mate, someone’s just arrived. Don’t worry about it.’ Who that person was, we don’t know, although I suspect it was the person I’d seen coming through the trees. If only I had waited another minute.

In court, dead Jack made a great scapegoat. He was the one, they said, who had the old prescriptions for chloral hydrate. He was the one who attacked the girls, they said. They knew nothing about anything. But the pictures of the drugged girls were clearly taken at the garage they all rented.

In the end, while it was clear from the photographs that the girls had been drugged, it could not be proven that Lachie and Jimbo had raped any of them. No forensic link, no confessions, and no witnesses. The strongest evidence we had were statements from three of the identified victims, who remembered drinking with Jimbo beforehand, and two who remembered drinking with Lachie.

The legal eagles flapped their expansive wings and wove their silver songs into stories that beguiled the jury.

Wozza and I were there for the verdict. Neither of us had any expectation of one we’d be happy with.

‘How say you on the charge of sexual assault on Meg Mulligan?’

‘Not guilty.’

How say you …

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

I was about to get up and bow out of the courtroom when Wozza put a hand on my arm to stop me.

‘Wait for it,’ he whispered. ‘Just cos they can’t say beyond a reasonable doubt who raped the victims, there’s a stronger case for the druggings.’

I looked at him more closely. ‘Are you wearing your best suit?’

He turned to me like he was the good kid in class and put a finger to his lips and shooshed me.

‘How say you on the charge of administering a drug to cause the incapacitation to the first victim, known to the Court as Victim A?’

‘Guilty.’

‘How say you on the charge of administering a drug to cause the incapacitation to the second victim, known to the Court as Victim B?’

‘Guilty.’

I turned to Wozza and smiled. Maybe there was some justice left in the system after all. We listened as the two men were found guilty of drugging the victims we had charged them with assaulting. I felt a surge in my chest because I knew what was coming.

‘How say you on the charge of administering a drug to cause the incapacitation of Mervin Geoffrey Evans?’

‘Guilty.’

Murmurs rippled across the packed courtroom.

‘How say you on the charge of the manslaughter of Mervin Geoffrey Evans?’