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Jasper had carefully cut away; no one would know.
    â€œAnnie?” The voice behind her was familiar, and Anne’s head snapped around so fast, she felt muscles pull.
    Mrs Flynn looked strange in the light, so pale, almost lost but for the determined expression on her face. The woman didn’t appear afraid or horrified. She just said, “Not together, Annie. Don’t bury it intact.”
    Understanding, Anne said, “ Just the small hurts . That’s what it said. Only the small hurts heal.”
    â€œAnd are you willing to risk it?”
    Ten minutes later, Anne had used the spade to separate head and body, and dug another hole deep enough to satisfy Mrs Flynn. The bloodied ball was gently interred and covered over, the corpse laid as if to sleep in the hollow space.
    Together, they made their way to Jasper’s car. On the back seat, another stolen child curled, deep in slumber. They peered at the little boy, their mothers’ hearts aching but somehow not in the same way as before. They’d been broken too well, fractured too entirely. What now filled the cracks between the fragments, holding the pieces together and allowing the women to go on, was cold, hard iron.
    â€œDo you recognise him, Annie? I don’t.”
    â€œNo, can’t say I do. Probably from a town further over, maybe a property somewhere.” Her hand hovered over his forehead, dark curls damp in the heat, but she didn’t touch.
    â€œHe’ll not wake for a while,” said Mrs Flynn, speaking low.
    â€œCan you be sure?”
    The older woman shrugged. “I’ve read a lot.”
    The police radio squawked, the voices of two young constables blared across the paddock. “Got a GPS fix on the Inspector’s car. He’s parked by Deadman’s Mount. Get out there, Robbo, and see why he’s not responding.”
    â€œYoung Robertson’s got a foot like lead; he’ll be here in no time at all. He’ll take care of the little one. We’d best get cracking; I’m parked not far from you. Grab a branch and wipe away your footprints as you go. Did you touch his car?” Mrs Flynn asked. Anne shook her head, but she raised the shovel. The old woman nodded. “Then take that with us. It’ll be handy.”
    *   *   *
    When Anne finally crawled into bed beside Brian a few hours later and closed her eyes, all she could see was the blackness of a hole in the hillside of Deadman’s Mount, of the inside of a pit where dead eyes tried to stare up to the sky that had once mirrored their colour. All she could think of was a small, headless body curled in an anonymous grave without the benefit of a coffin or the respect of final words.
    Anne drifted back to the day Maddie had first gone, how she’d not come home from school, how panic had finally set in when none of her friends had seen her. Anne thought of the hours she’d spent, searching alongside the other men and women who couldn’t simply sit around and wait, how they’d tramped across Hanrahan’s paddocks and others like it, circled Deadman’s Mount, and found nothing, seen nothing to say it was a doorway. A place where the missing had been laid to wait while they made passage through to under the hill. She wondered how Brian would react when they woke and found Maddie gone again. She didn’t think he’d take it well. She didn’t think he’d stay.
    She began to make plans for the future. Plans for dissolution, for moving, for carrying on life elsewhere after the inevitable furore of Jasper’s disappearance had died down. For hunting all the Mr Underhills there might be amongst the children of Eire.

 
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