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‘Meg, Sophie is 22 years old, studying forensic medicine at Sydney University. She can look after herself, live where she likes, and with whomever she likes.’
    ‘No she can’t. What gave you that idea?’ Meg turned back into the kitchen, the tea towel in her hand flying into the air. ‘You do have a short memory, Alistair Fitzjohn. And you a policeman too. Have you forgotten that this time last year Sophie got arrested for being a public nuisance in that damned university sit-in? That alone demonstrates she can’t look after herself.’ Meg slumped down into a kitchen chair. ‘This is worse than I thought. There’s nothing else for it, she’ll have to come home to Melbourne. I won’t have my daughter cavorting around Sydney living who knows where.’ Fitzjohn sighed and started toward the stairs. ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘Meg, it’s late and I’m tired. I’m turning in. I have an early start in the morning.’
    ‘But you can’t. We have to talk about this because I need your support when I speak to Sophie in the morning.’
    ‘I’m working on a case, Meg. I won’t be taking any time off until it’s solved.’

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
     
    With his camera equipment slung over one shoulder and a haversack over the other, photojournalist, Ben Carmichael, pushed his way through the crowded Cairo International Airport in an effort to secure a seat on a flight out as the city descended into chaos.
    Torn between his desire to extend his assignment and remain to film the Arab Spring revolutionary wave of demonstrations, and his fiancée, Emma Phillips’s wish that he return home, Ben moved unwillingly to the ticket counter. After all, Emma had left him with no false illusions when last they spoke by telephone a few days earlier. His constant absences were causing them to drift apart. Ben knew which he must choose because he was aware that once he found himself in the throes of an assignment, the adrenalin kicked in and everything other than what he caught on camera was forgotten.
    It was late on Saturday evening when he climbed into a cab at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport on the last leg of his journey home. Weary, and yet tense, he stretched his long lean body out and tried to quell the images of the horrors he had witnessed during the past four weeks.  At the same time, he contemplated the reception he was likely to receive from Emma.
    When the taxi pulled up in front of the home they shared in CrowsNest, he paid the driver, slung hi s haversack over his shoulder, and walked through the garden to the front door. In the darkness he did not notice the junk mail spilling out of the letterbox at the gate nor see a yellow tinge to the grass on either side of the path. He just felt an overwhelming desire for his life to resume its normal path, at least for the next few weeks until his next photojournalism assignment. Hastening to the front door, he turned the key in the lock and walked inside. As he did so, a feeling of unease took hold. His haversack dropped from his shoulder, the thud as it hit the old oak floor filling the silence.
    ‘Emma?’ he called into the hot, stuffy atmosphere. ‘Emma, darling, I’m home,’ he called again up the stairwell. ‘Hey, sleepy-head.’ Ben took the stairs two at a time to the landing above where moonlight emanated through the front bedroom window, producing an eerie glow. A tingling sensation went through him. Tentatively, he walked into the room. The bed remained empty and undisturbed. ‘Emma,’ he whispered before his thoughts tumbled back to recall their last conversation. Had his relentless pursuit to capture,on camera, life as it happened, driven Emma away ? He dived at the closet door, pulled it open and stood back. There, hung in meticulous order, were Emma’s clothes. Relieved but puzzled, he made his way back down the stairs, stepped over his haversack and walked through to the kitchen. The steady drip of the tap into the sink of unwashed