Copyright © 2020 S. R. White

The right of S. R. White to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

First published as an Ebook in Great Britain in 2020 by

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication – apart from the obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 6840 2

Cover images © Dominic Jeanmaire/Shutterstock

and Roadwarrior Photography/Shutterstock

Cover design by Patrick Insole

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About S. R. White

S. R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.

About the Book

‘A taut, beautifully observed slow-burner with an explosive finish.’
Peter May

‘Original, compelling and highly recommended. S. R. White is the real deal.’
Chris Hammer

HE DISAPPEARED FOR 15 YEARS . . . SHE HAS 12 HOURS TO FIND OUT WHY.

After a puzzling death in the wild bushlands of Australia, detective Dana Russo has just hours to interrogate the prime suspect – a silent, inscrutable man found at the scene of the crime, who disappeared without trace 15 years earlier.

But where has he been? Why won’t he talk? And exactly how dangerous is he? Without conclusive evidence to prove his guilt, Dana faces a desperate race against time to persuade him to speak. But as each interview spirals with fevered intensity, Dana must reckon with her own traumatic past to reveal the shocking truth . . .

This book is dedicated to my mother,

Patricia, a woman of letters and

language her whole life

Chapter 1

In the purple pre-dawn: the ink-black pools and white spray of Pulpit Falls. Dana Russo was here on this morning each year, and it always seemed the same. Never rained, never snowed. Bruised and sullen, every time.

She could easily climb over this flimsy fence. Two strands of wire threaded between rudimentary wooden posts. It was nothing, would only take a second. She wouldn’t have to jump, really. She could just fall.

Maybe that would be better. Dana knew about trajectories: it was part of her job. If she landed on the middle rock – the one splitting two churning arcs of swift water – they’d understand it was deliberate. She’d have died in a manner that would demand close scrutiny. It would oblige them to sift through her life, looking for the explanation. Her emails and private documents, the contents of her safe, her diary. Everything would be exposed and picked over. She’d be dead, and then sliced open. Dana knew how far investigations could burrow; the kind of stones they turned over.

Whereas if her head struck the nearside bank, cleaving open her skull in a single strike, it might be considered an accident. There had been a lot of rain recently, and then this icy spell, so the edge was brittle. They might think her stupid or foolhardy, but they couldn’t prove she’d meant it. Perhaps then, they’d have less reason to pilfer the remains of her life and hold them up to the light.

A cold breeze slapped her face. Below her, a hawk skimmed the surface of the calmer water downstream. She watched its careless, immaculate wheeling and heard a keening cry through the misty air. Eucalypts on the far shore hissed; the blustery chill made her eyes water.

This was her Day. The day Dana granted herself full permission to think about all this; to examine it and ask if she found herself wanting. Each day through the year she kept it as locked down and hidden away as she could. Often, she failed. She failed because while the threat and the shame kept its strength, she waxed and waned: she was the variable. It was her reaction that stumbled frequently – she drifted with good days and bad, triumphs and disappointments, strong and weak. She tried to contain it adequately by allowing it one day of total freedom. For this Day alone, she deliberately and overtly questioned from every angle if she wished to live another year. If she was still asking at midnight, the contract was made: she would try to carry on until the next Day.

Last year she’d sat with the engine ticking over, safety belt unbuckled, staring at a large tree near her house. She’d fretted that the road wasn’t straight enough to gather a killer speed: she could ram into it, but she might still be alive afterwards.

Now she was shivering in an empty car park. She stepped back from the edge and squatted, hidden from any dog-walkers or joggers, her back uncomfortable against the car’s radiator grille.

This place – already a wound in her mind. Her memory reeled and spun, back to an identical day that changed her life. Being found at the foot of the falls would invite comparisons, make people reach for connections.

So she couldn’t jump. But she knew how to shoot.

Dana closed her eyes and counted to five. She held her revolver in both hands; it juddered as she struggled for breath. The barrel felt sharp on the roof of her mouth. It grazed and nuzzled, begging for the chance to release her. The trigger pressure on this weapon was hefty, but her thumbs squeezed consistently. Saliva oozed silently down to the grip.

Up: she must point up. She knew this. Shifting herself a little against the car, adjusting her posture, the memories skidded past her. Even though she fought to rein them in, they started to pulse faster, became subliminal. She closed her eyes again, squeezed a little more, feeling the trigger mould a groove in her thumbs. A silent tear caressed her cheek.

All Dana had to do was move her thumb a centimetre. Then it would be over. She’d never have to think about it again. There would be no more recriminations; no more hours glaring at her reflection, daring herself to own what she’d done. She’d never have to wake up again with a feeling of dread already drenching her. There must be something better, beyond this. If only she could do it. If only she had the courage. If only—

She could feel the phone vibrate despite her thick jacket. She hesitated, blinked hard and swallowed. The ringtone wouldn’t go away.

Dana hid when she could from loud noises, from bright lights, from squealing children and yapping dogs; from sentiment and kindness, from impatience and arrogance. She needed the flat line of quiet consistency. Usually she struggled through much of it beyond the gaze of others. Especially on this Day, she had nothing to give, and every moment since midnight she’d been a beat away from snapping. The pressure it created was volcanic, irresistible.

The ringtone still wouldn’t go away.

The gun bumped against her lip, numbing it on contact. Dana glanced at it, put the safety on and holstered. On her forehead was a cooling sheen of sweat; she felt clammy and nauseous under her coat. She stood uneasily and leaned against the car. In the windscreen’s reflection she loomed across the convex glass, pallid and desperate. Swearing, she fished out the phone and swiped.

‘Yes?’

‘Dana?’

Neither of them could hear above the roar of the waterfall. ‘Hold on,’ she shouted, and climbed into the car. Closing the door silenced the siren call of her pain. All she could make out now was her own stuttering breath. ‘Yes?’

‘Dana, glad I got you.’ Bill Meeks, her boss. ‘We have a dead body. Sending you the route. It’s kinda hard to find if you’ve never been there . . . Dana?’

She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t up to doing that. Her hand was shaking; she dropped her keys. ‘Isn’t Mikey on call?’

There was a pause. Did she come across as irritable, unprofessional? Why should she care either way? She wasn’t first on call today.

‘Yeah, he’s had to go to Earlville Mercy. His kid: stomach pains. You’re next cab off the rank. See you in twenty.’

He was gone before she could grunt any kind of reply. She looked back at the fence, and the void.

Someone just kept her alive, by dying.

Something didn’t want her gone. Not yet.

Chapter 2

Jensen’s Store was down a rutted track about two hundred metres off the Old Derby Road, between Carlton and Earlville. Surrounded by tall pines, its solitude and serenity meant it made little sense as a commercial venture – there was no road frontage; the sign for it was half obscured by undergrowth and unlit. If Dana hadn’t been following instructions on the phone, she’d have overshot. Behind the building, forest stretched away gauzily.

The building itself was a lazily designed flatroof; wilfully utilitarian, it had a short overhang on a frontage that was mainly glass, speckled with fluoro-coloured posters of special offers. The parking area to the side was simply gravel and mud, mixed by spinning wheels and crunching boots. It was rutted and slippery in the despondent winter.

The emergency vehicles were parked herringbone along the approach lane: the area around the store was being tracked by a single-file line of uniforms, treading slowly as they scoured the frozen soil. The sun was above the horizon, but obscured below lingering mist which billowed lazily through the trees and gave everything a grey, ethereal wash. The occasional ghost gum stood out, a sharp vertical sliver like pristine flesh. Ferns glinted silently with crystalline frost.

To one side, two paramedics gazed at the gloom and drew testily on cigarettes. Their green smocked uniform had short sleeves; one seemed oblivious to the damp chill, the other yanked on the zip of a red puffa jacket. The hardier of them gave a raised-head acknowledgement as Dana passed; she couldn’t place him but nodded back in any case. Aside from the search team, she and Bill were the only cops available for now.

She snapped on some gloves at the entrance, where a wire basket offered two-for-one on rubber-soled deck shoes. When she started as a police officer, putting on latex gloves was a cop or a medical thing: now everyone did it, even if they were only heating a pastry. She checked her boots, tapping off some mud from her waterfall visit, and covered them with plastic booties that swished as she crossed the aisle. Reflexively, she looked for cameras: one over the checkout counter, and that seemed it for the interior. Maybe there were others hidden.

The police incident code had been ‘response to silent alarm’, so she knew that much. Little else. The alarm was one of those that covered the perimeter of the building, not internal movement. By the first aisle was a pinboard of local notices – grass-cutting services, a wooden aviary free to a good home and a ratty-looking old Ford Falcon to be gutted for spares. Above this, a gallery of the regular staff, who were all ‘looking forward to helping you’.

As she reached the third aisle, staff from the medical examiner’s office came into view, holding the stretcher. The two bearers had the same red hair and freckled faces, similar bloodless lips and consumptive countenance. She thought they might be twins and considered this an odd kind of family occupation. They paused automatically when they reached her, looking stoically up and forward to nowhere while she peeled back the zip on the body bag.

The victim’s face was puffy but looked oddly contented. The serenity of dead people never ceased to amaze Dana. Even those who’d suffered violent, lingering or painful demises: they all took on a repose of quiet satisfaction, as if a job well done. Somehow, in a small way, it gave her hope. They usually looked . . . pleasantly asleep.

The victim was maybe late thirties, and shaven-headed. His skull was broad at the forehead, giving him a massive and tipped-forward look even when horizontal. He was absurdly tall, with a large, bear-like jaw, and the collar of his T-shirt was ripped on one shoulder. With the body bag zip further back, Dana could see the entry wound. Just one, it looked like. No hesitation marks she could see, no splatter. The bleeding would all be internal. A smallish rose of dried blood on the T-shirt surrounding it and some smeared and bloody finger marks. Maybe a palm, too.

She guessed a blade of fifteen centimetres – it would need to be that long to pass the ribs and enter a major organ. Sometimes, only one wound spoke to expertise but frequently it was blind luck. In a melee of two people grappling for their lives there was little time or space to be forensic. The attacker might have stabbed purely to get the victim off them, or get away, or make them stop. Few people wielded a knife accurately – their efforts were often wild and desperate.

She zipped up carefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. The ‘twins’ headed for the door in lockstep.

Around the corner, Bill crouched by some blood droplets. There were several packets of rice behind him which had dropped from a shelf without breaking open. That appeared to be the extent of the physical evidence. A minor clean-up in aisle three: on a par with a kid spilling some chocolate milk. Even one pint of blood looked like a serial-killer rampage if it was sprayed around in a struggle; this was maybe ten drops.

Because of the solitary stab wound, Dana had expected the knife to be on the floor. A single stab in panic, in the midst of a scuffle, usually prompted the stabber to drop the blade and flee. At the very least, they let go in shock at what they’d done, or in disbelief that the person in front of them was dying. That didn’t seem to have happened here.

Bill glanced up. He would have been handsome when younger. In fact, she’d seen pictures of him up to his forties when he was exactly that. It was as if he’d signed a Faustian pact: breath-taking until mid-life, then your face will collapse. He looked almost a travesty of what he once was and she sometimes wondered – as someone who’d never experienced one – what it was like to have a definable golden era behind you, a period when your whole life glowed and others basked in it. Perhaps the juxtaposition was painful, or maybe it was comforting to have been something significant, once.

‘Hey, Dana. Sorry to take your day off you.’

She nodded non-committally, unsure exactly how much Bill knew about her motivation for taking this day off work each year. He knew it was an important date – half the station knew that much – but she didn’t know if his knowledge went beyond that.

Best not to ask. Best to avoid.

‘One stab wound,’ she noted.

‘Suspect is headed to the station. Knife is still someplace unknown – we’ll need a detailed finger search of the store, and maybe the undergrowth within throwing range. Unless the killer departed and took it with them. Patrol responded to a silent alarm linked to the station.’

‘A professional?’

Bill hefted himself up and rubbed the base of his spine. ‘I only saw our suspect briefly. No ID, nothing obviously incriminating. Couldn’t get a word out of him except his name. Nathan Whittler? Ring any bells for you? Nah, me neither. But, uh, dishevelled and disorganised at best. Could be a serial killer, for all we know. But no, I doubt he’s a hitman.’

‘Hmmm.’ Having nailed one last year, she didn’t believe professional killer meant anything beyond financial payment. That hitman had been an idiot, in a dozen different ways. But he’d been paid to do it.

Bill stretched out a kink in his back. ‘Dead man is Lou Cassavette, the store owner. There’s a sleeping bag, a home-electronics mag and some Chiko Rolls in the storeroom by the freezer section. Looks like he was waiting up for someone.’

‘Hmmm, breakfast of champions. CCTV? I saw the camera by the checkout, but’ – she glanced up and down the aisle – ‘I’m guessing we’re out of luck here.’

‘Yeah, only one other camera, in the storeroom. Overlooks the food-prep area out the back.’ Bill schlepped off a glove and scratched his forehead.

Dana took out a torch to see the blood drops more clearly. There was no way her kneecap would let her crouch down. ‘Mr Cassavette didn’t trust his own staff. He watched if they were dipping the till; he watched if they were spitting in the food. So maybe the suspect is an employee, or ex-employee?’

Bill nodded. ‘Way ahead of ya. I’ve got Luce checking for employment records as we speak. See these?’ He pointed at the bloodspot trail and she swung the torchlight back on them.

She followed the pathway with a silver beam. ‘Half of them in one place – where he was stabbed? Then he fell, or staggered, back a couple of paces, then they stop.’

‘That’s how I see it,’ Bill replied. ‘Stabbed here . . . fell back to here . . . and either he or someone else clamped something on the wound to stop the flow.’

‘Does our suspect have any blood on him?’

Bill stood again and smiled. ‘Oh, yeah. He has blood on his hands. Bent over the guy, hand pushed against the wound.’

‘Burglary gone wrong?’

Bill waved at a corner of the store. ‘Looks like he climbed in through that window over there. Professional, too. Put a bag on the windowsill so there’d be no marks, and bags on his shoes, too. He had a rucksack full of loot, but . . .’

Dana had reached the end of the aisle and could see the entry point. She scanned the floor less for prints, more for detritus like leaves or burrs; but there was nothing. The guy had entered smoothly and professionally, like he’d done it a hundred times before.

She turned back. ‘But?’

‘See for yourself. Weird.’ Bill pointed at a red rucksack to her left. It was well worn but still in good shape – in the gathering daylight she noted fresh dubbin recently applied to the seams. Through the open top she could see several paperbacks and two packs of mosquito repellent. Prising past these with a pen, she saw cans of beans and some chocolate bars. The rest was lost in the bowels of the rucksack. She’d get a full inventory later.

She ducked her head around the corner as Bill took out his phone. ‘Why was he stealing this? He could buy all this for next to nothing.’

‘Exactly. Why kill for that? Why be killed for that?’ Bill shrugged his shoulders and turned away to dial.

Dana took a glance back towards the exit and the preceding aisles. A couple of mountain bikes would be worth several thousand; she imagined fishing rods weren’t cheap. There were cigarettes for sale behind the counter, but they were secured by a roller door as per the law: she hadn’t seen any in the rucksack. The burglar seemed professional enough to enter seamlessly but amateur enough to steal cheap, largely unsellable items. The owner appeared ready to die for a minor point of principle – for stuff that wouldn’t even register on his insurance premium.

Halfway down the next aisle, splayed across the tiles, a packet of kitchen knives lay at an angle. The plastic lid had been ripped and one knife was missing. It seemed, from the indentation in the packaging, about the right size. She heard a murmur of Bill’s conversation, then his farewell to whoever.

‘Hey, Bill,’ she called over the top of the shelving. ‘Killer didn’t bring his own weapon?’

Bill leaned around the corner. ‘Yeah, looks pretty ad hoc, doesn’t it? Assuming that gap in the packaging turns out to be the weapon.’

She looked more carefully at the way the lid was ripped. It was still creased from the guy’s grip: rushed, but not frenzied. She wondered briefly why whoever did it had taken the third-longest knife and not the biggest one. Surely he would have wanted the best weapon he could get if the attack was spontaneous? And what had Cassavette done to make him feel he had to attack?

‘Did Cassavette have a weapon?’

Bill rocked his hand. ‘Maybe. Haven’t found one for him either. When Forensics get here they’ll search the whole place. But nothing yet.’

She realised she was wasting battery and switched off the torch. Golden light was now spearing in through the skylights on the eastern side of the building, glittering off the visible silver insulation in the ceiling. She could see cobwebs in the corners. Refrigerators hummed. The whole tone of the place was upbeat and direct – buy now, try this, grab one of these, limited time offer. All the colours on the walls, the packaging, the posters and special offers; they were lurid candy and cartoonish. Lonely, desperate homicide was a counterpoint.

‘So . . .’ Dana scuffed a foot against a kick plate below the shelving. ‘Guy comes in, ready to steal some beans, apparently. Gets halfway through; Cassavette makes himself known.’ She turned and went to the end of the aisle, pointing with the torch. ‘That’s our man’s escape route. I’m guessing all the doors were locked.’

‘Yup, and the lights were off. Someone opened the mains box and shut the power off before they came in.’ Bill joined her near a display of toys for kids of all ages. ‘Patrol switched it back on after they found the suspect and the body.’

‘This place doesn’t have back-up generators?’ Most did these days; the cost of replacing stock after an outage was horrendous.

‘They do, but they’re only wired to the freezers and refrigeration.’

Dana nodded. ‘So it’s totally dark. Cassavette comes out of his hidey-hole over there; the burglar’s only way out is back through the window he used. You have to assume Cassavette – either deliberately or accidentally – blocked the escape.’

‘Logical. He’s clearly been waiting up nights expecting a burglary; he figures help’s on its way because the silent alarm was activated when the window opened. All he has to do is contain the guy until the cavalry arrives.’ Bill went to the window and looked out at the parked vehicles. The uniforms were trooping back to three marked Commodores, disconsolate.

‘Yes. So why would the burglar go crazy? I mean, he looks like a pro – the forensic awareness, the very particular choice of what to steal. That isn’t random, it’s planned. So if he’s a pro and it’s all gone a little wrong, why fight your way out? Why so desperate?’

‘Maybe he’s on two strikes and this will send him away for a while?’ Bill turned back to face her and held his palms open. ‘I dunno. First sweep of the databases might tell us.’ There was a crunching of gravel outside. ‘Ah, proper search team.’

‘He was completely silent about what happened?’ asked Dana as they headed for the door.

‘He hasn’t said a word, as far as I know.’ Bill waved to Stuart Risdale, the head of the search team, who gave the thumbs-up as two others disgorged themselves from a darkened SUV. ‘Check that. The guy repeated one word.’

Bill turned to face Dana as the freezing air hit them from the doorway.

‘Guy said, “Sorry.” Several times.’

Chapter 3

It was fourteen minutes’ gentle drive from Jensen’s Store, down a series of backroads, to the Cassavette house on the outskirts of Earlville. Dana had time to find a classical-music station on the way.

Earlville was considered the less prosperous of the ‘twin towns’. It had a sneering, fractious relationship with Carlton; a kind of sibling rivalry between orphans. Marooned in a region of forests, swamps and lakes, the two towns were merely background noise for city dwellers three hours away. Earlville thought Carlton was full of snobs and the wasting of public money; Carlton thought Earlville should give up its nostalgia for low-paid sweat jobs and join the modern world.

Most of the properties along the route were large ‘lifestyle blocks’: homes set back among the gums and myrtle, surrounded by pony paddocks. Faux-hacienda, with terracotta tiles replacing Colourbond, seemed the look du jour. Well-tended horses chewed thoughtfully near the road, steam rising gently from blanketed flanks. Twice she saw puffing teenagers hoisting tack on to a shoulder. Maybe the first thing in their adolescent lives they’d shown consistent sacrifice for; perhaps that was why their parents indulged it.

Many homes on this road had ostentatious stone entrances; Dana could tell which ones had electric gates, too. She’d noticed a while ago that shuttering off the outside world – and thus implying that everyone was a threat – was something that had seeped gradually from the city to Carlton. Score minus one for the famous Aussie egalitarianism, she thought: now, just like in so many other places, ‘others’ were a potential risk to be managed.

Bill was now at the station, debriefing the first-on-scene officers and prepping the suspect for interview. Lucy was driving in from home. Mike was on his way back from Earlville Mercy hospital and would ride as first assist to her investigation. Mike was a completer-finisher. Thank God: Dana had proper back-up.

Too early for commuting SUVs, she had the road largely to herself. Her pre-dawn excursion to Pulpit Falls kept pushing itself to the front of her mind. She had enough strength to shove it back temporarily, but she knew it couldn’t be contained.

Even murder was just a displacement activity. Investigating a killing staved off the force and resonance of memory, the crippling panic and catastrophic damage it caused. She’d granted her blind-siding depression one Day of freedom, and now she was compromising that. It would exact a price for the betrayal.

Her mind drifted a little: the Day seeped in. Slivers of a scalding blue sky long ago, scarlet blossom on cool grass, filigreed shadow and soap bubbles: she could almost feel the light that had sparkled in front of her. She shook her head. If there ever was a right time to consider that – and she didn’t feel there was – now was not it. She held the steering wheel tight and in her head she screamed, Focus. Work: work would surely drive out everything else. It always had.

The crime scene had been a series of pieces, not a coherent whole. If the killer was the burglar, it didn’t make sense – the burglary seemed like a professional job, and a professional would surely simply hold up their hands to the break-in and take the consequences. There would be no need to do anything more. Maybe Cassavette was the type to fly off the handle: How dare you steal from me?, and so on. But even then . . . the knife packaging. If the burglar had punched or kicked Cassavette and he’d hit something fatal on the way down: that would have been an understandable death. But when someone reached on to a shelf, tore open a pack of knives – selected the third smallest; that bothered her, too – and then stabbed: it was a degree, however small, of forethought that seemed at odds with an ad hoc altercation. There was something big beyond the obvious.

If it hadn’t been the burglar, the options would fan outwards from the life of Lou Cassavette. Family, business partners, friends, disgruntled former friends, people he owed, people who owed him, former lovers, spurned would-be lovers. She mulled over a list of possibles and how they might be narrowed down. She’d put Mike on to it. Dana was the primary and would pursue the prime suspect. Mike would look at other options and play devil’s advocate to whatever she was thinking.

As she got nearer the Cassavettes’ home the landscape changed. Lush gardens and majestic trees disappeared, replaced by scrubby lots and small industrial units. Roofs turned to scrappy and rust-flecked old Colourbond, neat verges dissolved, spangled concrete prevailed. The luxury of space disappeared and the average wage spiralled down to . . . mean. Next to a small strip of stores, high-set floodlights still illuminated the mist-draped parking area, where hooded skateboarders regularly outnumbered cars. A barricaded store in the middle of the strip promised to buy your gold for cash. To one side, a mini-mart offered to unlock any SIM card; on the other, an office window claimed that no cash was kept on the premises overnight.

She turned past a faux-stone entryway on to a new estate. It had been built to exploit the new freeway junction ten minutes away but had turned into a money-laundering opportunity for international crime. The banks now owned half the houses, and most of the rest were held by the courts and tax authorities: shells where it was foolish to fit copper pipes, or wiring. Earlville’s now-shunned mayor had opened the estate in a flurry of ribbons, flashbulbs and gurning optimism. He had been indicted but was still awaiting his chance ‘to put the record straight’. Actual owners were thin on the ground and either full of regrets or blessed by their endless and ignorant patience.

Low homes, more roof than brick, hunched on curved streets that must have looked lovely in the artist’s rendering. In the publicity the streets would have shimmered under blue summer skies, casually populated by hand-holding couples smiling as their offspring launched a toy yacht in the ornamental lake. In the chilly early morning of a weekday the streetscape was silent and bleak: kerbside holes awaiting ‘heritage street lighting’, front-yard saplings shivering and inconsequential. Roads finished abruptly, with vandal-proof fencing shielding vacant blocks. The developer hadn’t finished the street signs yet: it took three attempts down identikit cul-de-sacs to find the place.

Dana parked outside the Cassavette home as a grey BMW swept towards the main road, xenon headlights slicing the gloom. The driver held his phone to his ear, barking silently as he passed her. She took a deep breath. The Cassavette house was identical to the one each side; a series of three joined at the garage. A way of shoving smaller blocks on to each development. A country the size of a continent, she thought, and we’re ramming people together. The homes would each have the same floorplan, and neighbours would feel a bizarre sense of familiarity when they entered the house next door. The Cassavettes had forgotten to bring in the rubbish bin – it sat forlorn at the beginning of their path.

Uniform patrol hadn’t spoken to anyone yet; she would have to do The Knock. Some officers ran from that responsibility: she had an autopilot mode she could use. Telling the nearest or dearest had a rhythm, structure and etiquette she could understand, which both reassured and rescued her. Dana had done it twice before. Those hadn’t felt as difficult as they should have: she’d been cocooned by the recipient’s shock. Their emotional concussion allowed her to get away with her own reticence. They seemed to want to make tea or coffee or offer cakes; they rarely asked tricky questions.

She skirted around empathy because, primarily, it wasn’t helpful to the investigation. Close family were close enough to do more harm than good, to harbour grudges and nurture fears: they knew weak spots and moments to strike. Dana knew that well enough. Close family were therefore suspects until proven otherwise, and it hindered clear thinking to have already been sympathetic. Dana tried to strike a balance between humane and professional – if push came to shove, she’d always take the latter.

The door knocker was a metal lion’s head. When she used it, the door – being cheaper than the knocker it held – clattered in the frame. They threw these places up, she thought. Above the door, the soffit was already peeling paint.

The woman who answered was small, neat and oozed rapid capability. Dana made instant calculations. The woman would have fast-twitch muscles, she would eat and walk quickly, she would glance around like a bird, and she would struggle to relax. People would call her a dynamo, sparky, busy. Megan Cassavette was around one metre sixty, dark hair pulled back from a scrubbed, pretty and slightly freckled face. No-nonsense, she would be slightly unaware of her own attractiveness and as a result underestimate who she could attract. She wore a black business suit over an electric-blue blouse. Dana never noticed shoes.

‘Yes?’

Dana offered her ID palm up, as if inviting the woman to pick a card, any card. ‘Good morning. I’m Detective Dana Russo. Are you Megan Cassavette?’

Megan took a half-step back. Her hand rose to her throat, where it touched a thin gold necklace over a slight skin-blush. ‘Yeah, I am. What is it? Lou? Is Lou okay?’

‘Maybe better inside, Mrs Cassavette?’

Dana waited at the threshold until Megan had retreated almost behind the door. The walk into the living room was too long for both of them: Dana wanted to blurt it out and Megan had already guessed. It seemed a charade to say it out loud. Megan perched on the edge of an armchair and reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief, while Dana set the recorder going.

Dana started speaking as she sat. ‘Your husband was at Jensen’s Store last night?’

Megan nodded, and her breath caught for a second. She flashed a look to a framed photograph next to a large-screen TV: the couple waving kayak paddles triumphantly in crisp New Zealand air, bookended by snow-capped peaks. He was a head and neck taller than her. Wet hair suited Megan; a damp T-shirt accentuated Lou’s gut. It struck Dana that Megan was a fair bit younger than her husband – perhaps ten years. Or maybe, simply much better looking.

‘Uh, yeah, we own it. Lou thought someone was stealing, so he camped out there sometimes. I told him . . . oh, God. What happened? Is he hurt? Tell me.’

Dana focused her effort on keeping eye contact. Megan Cassavette had grey eyes; she’d rushed the mascara. ‘We don’t know all the details. Mr Cassavette was stabbed this morning, at around five thirty. He died at the scene, before officers could reach him.’

Sometimes they crumbled, but often they didn’t. Megan opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Dana didn’t want to stare obtrusively, didn’t want to look away. She re-set her position on the couch purely for something to do. Raw emotion was heading her way; it prompted her flight response.

‘Mrs Cassavette? Is there someone I can call for you? People usually don’t like to be alone—’

‘Usually?’ It was snapped, and there was a moment when Megan seemed on the point of attack. Then it faded. ‘Oh, of course. You must do this all the time. God, how horrible for you. Uh, no, thanks. I’ll call my mother soon. Yeah. No. Thanks.’ She swallowed hard to keep the tears back – Dana saw a shard of stubborn pride in it.

Dana nodded. ‘I understand this is the last thing you want to do, but it would really help our investigation if you could answer a few questions. Are you up to that, Mrs Cassavette?’

Megan glanced to the fireplace then drifted slowly back to Dana, as though she were spinning through the air and couldn’t tell which way was up. ‘Uh, sure. Ask away.’

‘Thank you. Have the two of you lived here long?’

Megan was looking straight at her, but Dana understood that she wasn’t really seeing anything. Megan coughed and tried to focus. ‘Mm, nearly a year. Yeah. A year next month. Moved out here when we bought the store. Country scenery, you know?’ She waved vaguely at the kitchen, which lay at the far end of the living room. Through its window was a framed view of a metal fence, a water butt and a Hills Hoist that hugged itself in the chilly gloom. ‘Fresh air, fresh start. That sort of thing.’ Her reply held a trail of bitterness. ‘Who did it? Have you caught him?’

Dana took a second. ‘It’s very early in the investigation, Mrs Cassavette. Very early. There’s a lot of ground to cover.’

Megan’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though she were calculating.

Dana tried to ease her back to the moment. ‘Moving out here from the city. Was it a success?’

Megan shook her head and a small tear escaped. ‘No, not really. Lou and I were running.’ She stopped to wipe her nose. ‘From each other, from ourselves. This was supposed to turn it all around.’ She squeezed her handkerchief tight. Her voice faded to a whisper. ‘Jesus.’

Dana didn’t know what to say. She tilted her head slightly, hoping that would imply a thousand words of sympathetic consolation. ‘You said your husband thought someone was stealing?’ she resumed.

Megan had stopped moving, looking, feeling – breathing.

‘Mrs Cassavette? Stealing from the store?’

‘Hmm? Oh, yeah. Well, after he’d pocketed the cash from the sale, the old owner said he thought someone was stealing. Little bits of stock kept going missing, but he couldn’t work out how. We thought maybe shoplifters, or more likely some of the staff.’ Megan stopped long enough to draw the back of her hand across her eyes; the make-up smeared a little. ‘The old guy was a soft touch, employed stoners and losers. Lou put a couple of cameras in and changed some of the staff. There was nothing wrong at first. He thought the last guy didn’t manage the place properly.’

Talking about something peripheral had helped Megan get some control. Her voice quivered less. ‘But then, about three months in, stuff definitely went. Stupid stuff – low grade, nothing, really. But it annoyed Lou. He hates – hated – things like that. It was the principle, not the money. So every few nights he was sleeping in there. Christ knows what he thought he’d do if he . . .’ She glanced up. ‘That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

Dana felt skewered by the look, and by the obvious but reasonable question. ‘We don’t know many details yet, Mrs Cassavette.’

‘For God’s sake, will you call me Megan? Mrs Cassavette is a stupid mouthful. Stop being so polite.’

But, Dana wanted to say, polite is my default. I need it.

‘I’m sorry, Megan. All we know at the moment is that your husband died in the store, possibly from a single stab wound. Do you know of anyone who’d wish him harm?’

‘Lou? Christ, no.’ Megan snorted and stood up. She smoothed down her blouse – Dana had noticed it was creased – and re-tucked a stray hair. ‘We hadn’t been here long enough to annoy anyone but each other.’ Megan examined her hands: flawless but unpainted nails. ‘He’d had a couple of arguments with suppliers, but nothing that would explain . . . no.’ She walked over to a sideboard and straightened a pile of magazines, talking to the wall. ‘He was getting fed up with the old “That’s how we do things out this way” mentality. Like the internet never happened, you know?’

She turned back, as though Dana were some retail consultant. ‘Like Lou couldn’t get his stock trucked in overnight from all over. He was trying to be nice. He was trying to bring some locals along with him. That Earlville mentality – they warned us, but we didn’t realise. They wouldn’t play ball.’ She looked to the window and the grey sky. ‘But that was nonsense. No one would do this . . . for that.’

She regathered. ‘I can’t think of anyone else here who’d hurt him. No.’

‘What about from your old life in the city? Any grudges, enemies made – things like that?’

Megan sniffed and looked away, like she’d heard a shot in a forest. ‘Coffee?’ She was already on the move, with the bustling style Dana had predicted. Sudden switchbacks weren’t unusual after this kind of news – Dana rode it. ‘Thanks. Flat white with one, please.’

Megan waved an arm in acknowledgement but didn’t turn around. She began to navigate the process in a series of accurate, snappy movements. Dana left her to it, glancing over occasionally for signs of heaving shoulders or a clutch of the countertop. Between sidelong looks, she examined the happy snaps above a collection of paperbacks. Photos of the loving couple; judging by Megan’s hair, all taken in the last few years. Only three of the photos showed them wearing rings. Dana reckoned they had been together for three or four years, married for perhaps two; the initial romance a little whirlwindy. Megan maybe settling because Lou seemed rock solid and established: a man, when she’d dated tall adolescents for too long.

‘I’m old-fashioned enough to have them printed out and framed.’ Megan’s voice was unexpectedly close. ‘Just having them on your phone, it’s like it doesn’t really count. Like you don’t want them enough.’

Dana took the coffee. Both mugs had the same company logo. ‘Thanks. I can’t even operate the camera on mine. I guess it has one.’ She nodded at the mug. ‘You work for City Mutual?’

‘Yeah, claims adjuster, in Earlville.’ She eye-rolled. ‘It’s as riveting as you imagine it would be. Spent part of yesterday checking the price of table lamps.’ She drifted for a moment. ‘We needed a solid income while the store got on its feet.’

They sat again. ‘Tough times, huh?’

Megan took a sip. Making coffee had given her time to gather herself a little. ‘Retail’s always tough. Lou had big plans for the place, but it was going to take a while. He turned one corner of it into a little café. We’re a nation that can’t do anything without sipping a latte first, he reckoned. Wanted to add an antiques place on the side. Make it a “destination”.’ She air-quoted, then spoke to the ceiling. ‘Dreams outside his reach, every time.’

Except, thought Dana, for you. Lou married up: he got that one right.

Megan shook her head, suddenly wearied. Shock like this didn’t come through consistently; it bit in nasty little spasms, asymmetric steps down to despair. ‘We used to run a little supermarket. Updated milk bar, really, in the ’burbs. You know the kind of thing – you forgot something basic, couldn’t be bothered to cook? Overpriced, but you paid it, coz it was just around the corner? That was us.’

And, suspected Dana, Megan had been pretty happy with it. Probably kept her friends from college, had enough money. In retrospect, that life had been sweet, even if they’d both talked at the time about trying for something better. Maybe only Lou actually believed the vision, and Megan didn’t hate it enough to draw a line in the sand.

Dana was conscious that Megan’s coffee-making had dodged a previous question.

‘From your former life in the city, Megan: any grudges, enemies, problems that might have followed you here?’

There was a short pause. Possibly, thought Dana, Megan was reaching back to past events and scanning them. Or maybe she was judging what should be revealed and what should be left for the police to discover themselves. Dana tended to veer towards the latter in such situations, unless she had good reason not to do so.

‘No, I . . . no. Just an ordinary couple. We ran a corner shop, not a crime syndicate, Detective. We sold milk, pre-cooked chook, cigarettes in large cartons, DVDs for the terminally bored.’

Dana nodded, but it slid into her mind to ask Mike to be exact with the follow-up. Megan was quick to paint a certain type of picture, and Dana felt it was a little too quick.

‘Megan, one of the things we have to do is establish exactly where everyone was within a certain timeframe.’ Dana glanced at her face for signs of opposition, but Megan was semi-zoned out. Her coffee was tilting forward. Dana reached out silently and carefully nudged it back to level: Megan didn’t notice.

‘Megan?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Just a couple of questions. Can you tell me where you were from midnight last night until I arrived at the door?’

‘Oh, yeah. I was here. All night. Uh, watched the end of the footy, texted Lou goodnight – he texted back – and then bed.’ She put down the coffee and puffed her cheeks. ‘Got up usual time for work. I was about to brush my teeth and head out when you arrived.’

Dana nodded. Most people don’t put their jacket on before they clean their teeth, she thought. ‘I have to ask: is there anything to verify that? Beyond texts, I mean. Wave to any neighbours? Go online at all?’

‘I’d had a couple of glasses, so I hit the pillow. I wasn’t expecting Lou back before I went off today. When he does these little vigils he normally pops back after the store’s opened, for a shower and clean clothes. We don’t usually see each other till dinnertime.’

In the modern world most alibis came from devices. Mobile phones could be cross-referenced with triangulation of transmission masts to give a location and time; cars sometimes had black boxes and satnav.

‘Did you use any technology last night? That sometimes helps us to place people.’

Megan frowned. It seemed to cross her mind to be indignant about having to disprove a negative, in the midst of grief. Then, she thought for a second.

‘No, I don’t believe I . . . uh, Big Brother.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘We have an electric meter that logs each socket, apparently. Lou used to call it Big Brother whenever he was railing against government generally. I usually tuned him out when he did that. But maybe it can tell you when I was home, at least?’

Dana nodded, unconvinced. ‘We’ll look into it.’ Lucy would do that.

Alongside alibi was motive.

‘Final question for now, I promise. Does anyone stand to gain if something happens to Lou? That you know of?’

Megan opened her mouth, closed it, then smirked. She drew back slightly. ‘You can’t seriously . . . oh, wait, you’d have to check stuff like that.’ She rested her elbows on her knees and leaned in close: confidential girl-talk as she rubbed her wedding band absent-mindedly. ‘Detective, this house is rented. All the money’s in the store, which has debts the size of Brazil. So I’ll probably end up with nothing but bills. Assuming I can sell that damn store to anyone.’

Megan eased back. ‘Anyone else? Nah. We’re not big enough competition for the big guys; there’s no one itching to see the back of us. We were just small fry trying to swim, that’s all.’

Dana nodded warily. Something in her back-of-mind radar went ping, but she wasn’t sure what. ‘Does your mother live nearby?’

‘Uh, yeah. Ten minutes. Can I ring her now?’ Megan was up and pecking at the phone before Dana could answer. Dana stood and mouthed, ‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’ Megan nodded distractedly as her mother picked up.

It seemed strange to Dana for someone to immediately reach for their mother at a time of crisis; to see her as a sanctuary, an emotional harbour. Logically, Dana understood it: but it was the difference between comprehension and empathy. Just like she could comprehend the adrenaline rush of a parachute jump but would never set foot on the runway.

Dana made some phone calls: summoning a search team for the Cassavette house and letting Dennis the Tech know that Lou’s computer, and Megan’s laptop, would be coming his way shortly. He reminded her about the potential for memory sticks and external drives – his pet hate when cops thought providing the computer was all there was to it. Dana wanted to see Megan’s mother and Megan’s reaction to her, to see what that kind of intimate support looked like. She rationalised it to herself by imagining she was ‘sort of with’ Megan until family help arrived. Besides, she needed islands of solitude when she dealt with people, especially when they were emotional.

She asked Megan for a copy of the will and life insurance. Megan, as Dana had expected, knew where they were and had an efficient filing system. She handed them over wordlessly and padded away to the fireplace.

Dana looked closely at the calendar on the kitchen wall in case there was something useful – medical appointments, that sort of thing. Nothing but birthdays and anniversaries. She speed-dialled Mike.

Mike Francis picked up on the second ring. ‘Ahoyhoy.’

‘I’ve said before, Mikey, it’ll never catch on.’ There was a smile in her voice. ‘That’s why Edison invented “hello”.’

‘If it’s good enough for the man who invented the telephone, it’s good enough to use on the telephone . . . Sorry you caught a live one on your day off.’

‘Maybe better to be busy today, anyway.’ Dana paused. ‘You’re first assist, is that right?’

She could hear Mike trying to move a mint around in his mouth. ‘Uh-huh. What do you need?’

‘Okay, several random things, no particular order.’ Dana poked her head around the corner: Megan was staring expectantly at the driveway and clutching her elbows. ‘Please check the ages and marriage certificate on the Cassavettes – I want a read on their relationship and I only have her to go on. Find out what day and when the rubbish is emptied around here – she doesn’t have an alibi except herself and she kind of ducked the question. We’ll need reliable uniforms to do some door-to-door with her neighbours. Just background – the usual bull about “Someone might have noticed strangers,” etcetera. I imagine someone will be a right old gossip. I have the will and life insurance here, but check the Cassavettes’ financials and phone records. Thank you.’

There was a short pause as Mike finished noting the instructions – it would be small, round, formidably neat good-boy-at-school handwriting. ‘. . . financials . . . phones. Got it. Not happy with the burglar we got?’

‘Covering all the bases is all. Oh, and any intelligence from the Cassavettes’ past in the city. I know you’re already on it, but her answers on that were a little pat for my liking. Thanks, Mikey.’

As she finished speaking a burgundy Honda squealed to a halt outside. A salt-and-pepper, post-hip-operation version of Megan got out and hustled across the lawn. Her obvious anxiety for her daughter made Dana’s eyes prickle. Megan opened the door and, as it tilted shut, Dana saw her fall against her mother’s shoulder and convulse.