‘Ray Gilpin’s nephew or whatever broke into the holiday house to paint over a wall in the living room,’ Kate said, when she had reached that part of her story. ‘His name must have been one of a dozen or so kids who had their heights marked on the wall. I knew the paint was important. He and John knew each other as kids, I’m sure of it. They would have been around the same age.’

Eckman took the pencil from her mouth and looked at her teeth marks sceptically. ‘First off, he’s Ray’s son.’

‘You know them?’

‘Second, why would he paint over his name?’

‘To erase his connection to John.’

‘You think he had something to do with John’s murder?’ Eckman asked, setting the pencil down.

‘All I know is that he has something to do with all this. He’s connected, the way everyone on this damn island is connected. He was parked outside the house. He helped me open the lock-box I found in the attic. He saw what was inside.’

‘To be clear, this is the lock-box you took from an active crime scene, right? That’s called evidence, Mrs Keddie. Evidence than you didn’t just contaminate, but evidence you withheld from the police.’

‘Evidence you missed,’ Kate said. ‘Evidence that I found in my own house.’

‘Your house is a crime scene.’

‘I’m well aware of that, Detective. My house is a crime scene and my husband’s corpse is police property.’

Eckman sank in her chair. Her jaw flexed, then relaxed. ‘Where’s the obituary now?’

‘I don’t have it,’ Kate admitted.

‘Where is it?’

‘Marcus asked if he could have it, so I gave it to him.’

Eckman sipped stale coffee from a ceramic mug and shook her head. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, Mrs Keddie. I’ll talk to Ed and Marcus Stemple, and I’ll follow up on everything we’ve talked about, but you need to take a step back now. I can’t have you running around the island like this is some sort of suburban procedural TV show. I just can’t. You understand that, right?’

‘I need to be doing something,’ Kate said.

Eckman’s expression softened. ‘I know this isn’t what you want to hear, Mrs Keddie, but the best thing for you to do is go back to Melbourne. Spend time with your daughter. Wait. Survive. Then repeat.’

Kate smiled sadly. ‘Please stop calling me Mrs Keddie. It’s Kate.’

‘Barbara,’ Eckman said. ‘But everyone calls me Bobbi.’ Eckman was right. It was time for Kate to go home. Mia needed her mother, and just as much, Kate needed her daughter. If she packed and checked out of the Blue Whale quickly enough she’d make the last ferry back to the mainland. But there was one thing she needed to do first.