If we don’t talk about the monsters in this world, John’s voice whispered, we won’t be ready for them when they jump out from under the bed.

‘He looked homesick,’ Kate said. ‘He missed us. He said he was ready for his trip to be over.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Like what?’

The officer shrugged, far too casually. ‘Did he seem strange? Off? Was there anything unusual about his behaviour? Stuff a wife would notice.’

Fisher scoffed and rose with an exaggerated sigh. He went to the window. He closed his eyes tightly against a dusty sunbeam, shaking his head.

The officer watched him for a moment. ‘Is there something you want to add, Mr Keddie?’

‘Kate isn’t the type of…’ He trailed off, waved a dismissive hand. ‘Forget it, it’s nothing.’

‘The type of what?’ Kate asked.

He looked at her, then lowered his eyes to his feet. ‘You’re not the type of wife who notices, Kate. If he were being coerced or threatened in any way, he might have given you a, I don’t know, a secret signal or something.’

‘There was nothing like that.’

‘Are you sure though? Because – and no offence, Kate – you can be pretty fucking vague. Passive to the point of invisible. Christ, I need a cigarette. I hate that you can’t smoke in here.’

Kate drew her lips tightly together and tried to ignore him. He was worried about his son and projecting his anxiety onto her. But his words stuck. Passive to the point of invisible. Wasn’t that how John liked her?

The officer cleared his throat impatiently and asked, ‘Do you or your husband own a caravan, cabin, holiday home, unoccupied rental property, anything like that?’

‘We have a holiday house on Belport Island,’ she said, feeling Fisher’s eyes on the back of her head. ‘But John wouldn’t go there. He doesn’t like the island.’

‘Strange place to buy if your husband doesn’t like the island.’

‘We didn’t,’ she said. ‘The house was a wedding gift from John’s parents.’

‘We summered there when John was a kid,’ Fisher said.

The officer leaned back in his squeaky office chair and whistled. ‘Wow. All I got on my wedding day was a serving platter and a couple of toasters.’

Neither Kate nor Fisher found that particularly funny; that, at least, they could agree on.

‘Do you have any suspicion that your husband may have been abducted or harmed by someone else?’

‘Not exactly…’ she said.

‘Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt him?’ the officer asked. ‘Does he have any enemies? Anyone he doesn’t get along with?’

Fisher drew in a tight breath to begin a fresh rant, but the officer put up his hand to silence him.

‘I’m asking Mrs Keddie,’ he said, then turned to Kate to wait for an answer.