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made a note to ask why the killer hadn’t dragged the body that little bit further and dumped it in there, where it likely would’ve turned to compost undisturbed, rather than leave it out here in this . . . low-key picnic spot for travellers on the road from –
    No, not a picnic spot, though a faded family-size KFC bucket and a Fanta can stomped into the grass suggested it was sometimes used as such. But no flaking wooden table or coin-operated barbecue plate or grimy toilet block. Not even a single blanket-sized patch of ground uncorrupted by weeds or rocky dirt or disconnected tree roots rising up like mummified knees.
    A football-field sized expanse of grass and dirt, not so much hidden from the road as revealed in snatches. Snatches? Christ . . . revealed in strips . That was worse. She was so off her game. Fucking fuck fuck fuck fucking Craig. Fuck.
    May shoved the notebook into her bag and raised her camera. At the spot where, as far as she could work out from police reports, the body had been found she took care to take shots from every possible angle and distance, stopping every minute or so to wipe the sweat off her face and camera lens. The sun was relentless, the air unmoving. The grass – the exact type of which she’d have to look up later (Craig would know what kind, the nerdy fucker) – brushed her ankles and deposited straw-coloured seeds on the uncovered tops of her feet. Her mouth felt gritty with dirt.
    The shrine that had caught her attention from the road had been erected not at the place the body was found, but a few metres away against one of the anorexic, anaemic trees between the road line and the bush. Flowers – five bouquets of the type bought from a roadside stall, two flash-looking florist arrangements in ribboned boxes, fourteen scattered single blooms which may recently have been bound by the pink ribbon flipping its way towards the road. A pot plant, wilting. A smiley-face helium balloon on a stick, lodged in a child’s pale green sippy cup. A larger balloon, screaming I MISS YOU!!! tied around the trunk. RIP BELLA on pink card in a foggy plastic sleeve. Five candles, two of them never lit, one of them with BELLA carved crudely into its white wax. Two small teddy bears, a plush bunny, a sequinned butterfly pinned to a ribbon tied to a branch. BELLA MICHAELS 1990–2015 GOODBYE ANGEL etched into the tree, shallow enough that the tree would slough it off before long. YOU WILL BURN IN HELL MURDEROUS FUCKERS WHO DID THIS TO AN ANGEL ON EARTH written on the trunk in what appeared to be liquid paper. Beneath it, in green paint: unless i find you first then youll burn rite here scum. It’d been twelve hours since police had reopened the site to the public.
    She should’ve been here last night, instead of flopping around on her bed sobbing like a heartbroken teenager. Might’ve got pics of some kind of impromptu vigil and interviews with local mourners instead of a snot-streaked pillow and tissue-chafed nose. Fuck.
    The hotel bed – a double but smaller than any she’d slept in since childhood – flashed in her mind. The thought of spending another night weeping, this time in that grim little room with the bar fridge clicking on and off and the air-con thrumming and the cheap pillowcase scratching her already chafed nose caused a flutter of panic in her chest. She could drop into the medical centre she’d noticed on her way through town, get a script for some sleeping pills like the ones her mother had depended on during that terrible year when May’s father left and her grandmother died and the house was sold from under them. May couldn’t remember the name of those pills but she had never forgotten the way her mum went from being there to not, fifteen minutes after taking them. No gentle drifting off, eyes fluttering, pauses between words growing longer and longer. It was a split-second, impossible to see coming. Awake, then