‘What?’ demanded Detective Feng. Caleb was silent. I’d have to explain.

‘I study Ancient Roman art…’ I began.

‘What?’

‘Pliny.’ I knew it didn’t matter.

‘Right,’ Detective Feng said. ‘Let’s talk about what you said to Penelope.’

‘I said a lot of things to Penelope.’

‘We mean yesterday.’

‘So do I.’ Caleb put his hand on his head. He was getting even paler.

I cast Selena a desperate look. Every legal program I ever watched on television came crashing into my mind. This questioning couldn’t be okay. There had to be a way to make sure what he said was inadmissible.

‘You have to get out of here,’ I said.

The male police officer opened his mouth to speak.

But Selena stepped closer, silencing him. ‘My patient needs rest.’

Finally, the police officers left. ‘We’ll have to come back, you know,’ Detective Feng said, from the door.

Only Selena and Jack remained. Caleb fiddled with his bed controls and the pillow end sank.

‘Is it all right for me to examine you now?’ Selena asked him.

I pulled Jack into the hall. The police officers hadn’t gone far – just back to the nurses’ station, where they clustered, beasts regrouping and renewing their attack, staring. I kept my voice low. ‘Did you know about this?’

Jack held my eye. ‘Phoebe, Caleb has told the officers he was with Penelope all afternoon. She has verified his story. Mostly; there’s a half-hour period he can’t account for.’

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this from him. ‘Can’t you make this stop? You know us. Caleb thinks the world of you.’

Selena stepped through the door, left the room, giving me a sad smile. ‘We’ll want to keep him for a while longer. He certainly isn’t well enough to be taken to a police station.’

‘Thank you.’

Jack followed me back into the room. Caleb’s eyes soon found him.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Jack promised me. He rested a hand on Caleb’s arm. ‘You doing all right, lad?’

Caleb touched his bandaged head. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You’re doing all right,’ Jack reassured him. ‘Sometimes it’s best to say nothing. You’ll see things more clearly once you’re out of here. Plenty of time to talk then.’ I remembered what Jack had told me about his wartime experience. He’d been forced to talk when he wasn’t ready because his information suited operational needs. The trauma that followed. His jumpiness and his fear of sleeping because dreams returned him to Iraq.

‘All right.’

‘It was natural causes.’ Jack sounded insistent. ‘You do believe that, Caleb?’

‘But—’

‘Natural causes, Caleb. It’s hot and dry out there. A tinderbox. We’ve been talking about it. Politicians are desperate for a scapegoat. They want to deflect attention from what they aren’t doing. When they realise you weren’t there, they’ll give up. It won’t take long. I’ll tell them everything I can to support your story.’

Later, I read Jack’s notes, handed over in the prosecution brief. I learned how he had discovered that Caleb was a suspect. They wanted a suspect caught before he could offend again, and things moved very quickly. The investigation team met in the conference room I’d glimpsed on television, so I could picture the scene clearly: the incident board – map, coloured pins, photographs, timelines. At the centre of everything, an oval table surrounded by uniformed police and CFA officers. Jack had been horrified when the commissioner spoke. The amount of damage, the number of casualties, the level of community anger against the government inaction, all were shocking. Once Caleb’s name was mentioned, knowledge of his year-ago car accident, his unconventional appearance, apparently was enough kindling for accusations to catch and spread.