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dropping something plastic. I looked around and didn’t see anything. But a minuteor so later I smelled smoke and I looked around again and saw this funny tube-shaped thing and smoke was pouring out of the end. It looked plastic and I remember thinking, ah, that’s what I heard being dropped. By then people were screaming and scrambling and I was trying to tell them that nothing’s on fire, don’t panic, but at the same time I was scared myself – who’s to say that’s not step oneof a bomb and step two is a huge explosion?’
    ‘Did you see who dropped it?’ Ella asked.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘The platform was packed, and people were coming down the stairs and squeezing through the crowd all the time.’
    Ella’s wrist was aching now, her handwriting deteriorating.
    ‘Then what happened?’ Murray said.
    ‘Everyone went charging in a panic up the stairs. I wenttoo, then hung around up on the street until your fellas in uniform arrived, then I told them what I saw. They asked me to come back down and identify the thing, and here I am.’
    As with the paramedics and Jessica Sullivan, Murray thanked her, gave her his card and told her they might need to talk to her again sometime. She smiled, the red stone glinting in the light, and went up the stairs.
    Ella shook out her hand. ‘Still think Furst is suspicious?’
    ‘Just because the descriptions match reasonably well doesn’t mean he’s not up to something,’ Murray said.
    ‘Yeah, that’s why he stayed around to talk to us.’ But she remembered witnesses at another murder who’d waited in the blinding summer heat to tell a story she’d believed completely. ‘Anyway, they all described thesmoke bomb and the panic too.’
    They needed to know whether Meixner had jumped, fallen or been pushed.
    She pointed at the CCTV bubble overhead. ‘Time to watch a movie.’

THREE
    G rimy and exhausted, Alex walked from the car to their townhouse, his workbag over his shoulder and Mia stalking in silence behind him. He unlocked the door and held it open for her. She marched past without turning on the light and disappeared into the dark living room.
    He closed the door, dropped his bag and switched the light on himself, wondering if Markohad a family; if somebody was waiting for him to come home or if the police had already told them. He’d been called to houses where such news had been delivered and people had collapsed; he’d delivered such news himself. The girl and her parents popped into his head: her grip on his hand, her mother’s tears on his shirt. Don’t go there.
    His stomach rumbled. Frances and Donald had been kindenough to feed Mia but he needed to eat.
    ‘Do you want a bit of toast?’ he asked her.
    ‘Yuck.’
    He went into the kitchen and put the light on, then dropped two slices of frozen bread in the toaster. ‘What did you have for dinner?’
    ‘Chops and vegies,’ she said. ‘Yuck.’
    ‘I hope you said thank you.’
    She didn’t answer.
    Alex leaned back on the sink and rubbedhis face with both hands. They smelled of alcohol handwash; he and Jane had used half a bottle each to clean off the railway grime. He was wearing his spare uniform from his locker at work; the dirty one was rolled up in his bag to soak later. There was a big pile of washing to do, and the dishwasher needed to be emptied, and he hadn’t done the floors in a week. His plan this morning had been to getthrough the day. He’d done that, but still felt like he’d failed.
    His stomach rumbled again, but he pressed the button to stop the toaster and went back to his workbag, then into the lounge room. He turned on the lamp to see Mia sitting sideways in an armchair, her legs over the side. She picked at her nails and didn’t look up, but he saw her glance across out of the corner of her eye.
    ‘Here.’ He held out the phone charger he’d bought on his way to Frances’s place.
    She took it, still without looking up. ‘Thanks.’
    He sat in the other armchair and