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gone. It had infuriated May to have her mother check out so purposefully and completely. What if I need to ask you something? What if something goes wrong? she would say whenever she caught her mother slipping the pill down her throat. It can wait. You’ll cope , her mum would say then tuck herself in bed and wait for oblivion.
    At the time she’d wondered how you could want that – that total absence? How could you want to be unreachable, to remain unknowing all night long? It was less like sleep – which May knew to be filled with interruptions caused by mosquito bites, brothers’ snores and farts, suddenly too-heavy blankets or too-loud wind – and more like death. But now that sleep had become the too-rare, too-brief interruption to her pain, she understood. She yearned.
    Back out through the trees May photographed the verge where the car must have stopped. There had to have been a car, because there was no other way to get here, unless the killer or killers had somehow persuaded the woman to walk the five kilometres from where she was taken. And it would have to have been persuaded rather than forced because most of the way would have been in full view of passing traffic and at least some of the time in daylight. That’s if she’d been brought here directly. May made a note to ask about the timeline at the press conference and headed back to her car.
    Leaving the door open in hope of a breeze, she pulled out the tourist map the woman at the hotel reception desk had given her and studied the layout of the town. The road running off the highway exit ramp, John Street, bisected the town from north to south. Her motel was at the northernmost end, the more expensive place right before the Melbourne exit. Most of the west–east running streets cut across John and the parallel Elizabeth Street, forming a neat grid. A few stumpy streets, lanes and cul-de-sacs interrupted the pattern here and there. Wherever you stood in town there was a pub within four blocks. The nursing home where Bella worked was on King Close, a cul-de-sac off Elizabeth Street, close to the southern edge of town. This place, the place where she ended up, was just off the edge of the map, somewhere around the Pizza Genius and Imperial Hotel ads.
    With luck, Bella Michaels was unconscious from the beginning and never knew what a drab, uninspiring journey her last one had been nor what an ugly patch of nothingness she bled out onto. With luck, she went from there to not in an instant and was absent for all that followed.

    M y phone rang early. The cops wanted me to come down for another interview before the press conference at one. They offered to send a car but I didn’t need that. I had Nate.
    A few steps into the police station I stopped and looked around, confused. I knew I’d been there two days before but I recognised nothing. There was a poster advertising Neighbourhood Watch, another explaining about translation and interpretation services. A bench seat covered in navy vinyl, scratched blue and beige floor tiles, a wood veneer counter with thick, clear plastic reaching up to the ceiling. I could’ve sworn I’d never seen any of it in my life.
    Nate touched my shoulder and asked if I was okay. I nodded and stepped towards the counter, but before I could tell young Matt what I was there for he smiled at me and pressed a buzzer and said, ‘Chris. Hello again. Detective Brandis’ll be right out.’
    A vaguely familiar skinny middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a too-tight grey suit appeared from behind a door I hadn’t noticed.
    â€˜Thanks for coming in,’ he said, barely glancing at me, his gaze falling hard on Nate. ‘Brandis,’ he said, holding out a hand, which Nate shook while giving his own name. ‘You’re the ex-husband?’
    â€˜Bella’s brother-in-law,’ I said, though it seemed no one was listening.
    â€˜You’ll have to wait out