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massive shipping yard. They had been able to establish ownership through the serial numbers and registration, but the badly burned and decomposed human remains found in the trunk could not be so easily identified. The only hope had been a dental match on the corpse’s teeth. As Mr O’Connor was missing, and it was reasonable to fear that it might be his body inthe car, the match should have been made months earlier. However, O’Connor’s teeth had been inexplicably ‘misplaced’ for over six months. Jimmy had no idea how.
    ‘That body! It took you seven months to find out it was my honey! Seven fucking months!’ she screamed, enraged. Her eyes bulged, moist and on the edge of tears.
    ‘We do apologise, Mrs O’Connor. We understand this must be difficult for you—’
    ‘ Difficult! He was murdered and you took seven months to identify him!’
    Her words hung in the air.
    ‘In these circumstances, a positive identification can take a great deal of time.’
    Jimmy had seen the car, and the charred corpse in the trunk. What remained of Mr O’Connor could probably fit in Mrs O’Connor’s ashtray. His eyes drifted to the smouldering mess, and, seeing images of burned bone fragments and teeth, he quickly looked away. She wouldn’t need to cremate him.
    ‘We are sorry for your loss, Mrs O’Connor,’ he repeated.
    Her husband had been no hero. The police knew of Warwick O’Connor long before his burned-out car—and corpse—turned up. He had been a run-of-the-mill thug. And around the time of his disappearance he had been implicated in the violent stabbing of a young woman named Meaghan Wallace. But now he was dead, and his wife was understandably angry about the circumstances of his identification.
    ‘Fucking pigs,’ Madeline bellowed.
    Nice.
    Under different circumstances, Jimmy might have snapped back. But he couldn’t. It was a death knock so he was on extra-good behaviour, something somewhat foreign to him.
    ‘Is there perhaps someone you could call?’ Rhys suggested. ‘Any friends or family who might be able to come over—’
    ‘Fuck off, pigs!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my house!’
    ‘We’ll leave you to your grieving, Mrs O’Connor,’Jimmy said, managing a lacquered composure in the face of her insults.
    They left the widow cursing and crying into a fresh cigarette.

CHAPTER 6
    Andy Flynn sounded like he was standing in a stadium being circled by revved-up monster trucks.
    Makedde held her phone to her ear, frowning. She regretted having answered the call, but she could not bear the thought of ignoring him any more. Somewhere she heard diesel brakes. She cupped the phone more tightly.
    ‘How are you?’ her ex continued, sounding distracted. ‘Look, I’m just near Goulburn.’
    ‘Um, Goulburn?’ she repeated, not quite masking her alarm.
    Goulburn was a small city in south-eastern New South Wales, nestled between Canberra and Sydney. Her ex had no relatives there. Unless some serial killer had recently been busy in Goulburn and he had been sent there to do a profile, there was only one reason Mak could think of for him to be there.
    ‘I’ll be in Sydney in a couple of hours,’ he confirmed.
    Mak’s stomach shrank to a small fist. He was taking a pit stop in Goulburn because he was coming to see her. This would be the confrontation she had been avoiding. ‘I see,’ shereplied, trying not to encourage whatever he had in mind. She was not ready to see him, and she knew it. She wanted to settle in first. She wanted to get her strength back.
    ‘I need time.’
    ‘We haven’t seen each other in three weeks,’ he snapped back.
    There followed an excruciating silence: him not asking to see her, and not asking her to come back, let alone convincing her in some romantic manner that she was mistaken in leaving him. She had become used to silences like those in recent months.
    ‘I…’ he began, and his voice dissolved into static.
    Mak’s ambitious effort to move to Canberra and