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then?’
    He threw me a grin that hitched up one corner of his mouth with quotation mark creases. Then he turned his attention back to the body. I watched that grin until the lines dissolved. When he spoke again his voice was a whisper.
    ‘If we had a head, it might have a hole which would tell us one story. But right now we don’t know if it’s a suicide, an accidental, or a murder.’
    I was still looking at him when he turned towards me.
    ‘I guess that’s where you come in.’
    He gave me the full smile this time, maybe a bit embarrassed because he’d caught me checking him out. This smile hijacked his entire face and made it impossible not to smile right back. Actually, it wasn’t just my face that responded to Robbie.
    I stretched to my full height and, hands on hips, surveyed the room in a purposeful fashion as if my intention was other than breaking the eye contact between us.
    ‘Was there anything else near the body? Backpack? Anything that might suggest he’d been tramping or hunting up there?’
    I don’t know if I fooled him but Robbie stood too.
    ‘Nah. Well, yeah. Sort of …’ He shuffled some more and even in the dim light of the shed I thought I detected a blush. He motioned for me to follow him out into the backyard and over to the fence.
    Mesh wire was attached to the top of the picket fence over a length of roughly three metres. Maybe one warm, crime-free summer someone had decided to grow tomatoes or beans there, though nothing grew on it now. I looked from the fence to Robbie who was running his hand through his hair. I still didn’t get it. I looked at the mesh again and this time saw what looked like tiny threads clinging to the wire diamonds. Up close, I saw tiny patches of interwoven fibres similar to those on the body. Some were almost gossamer, others thicker mesh. I reached out to pluck one off but Robbie touched my wrist.
    ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
    ‘Why? What is this? What did you hang here?’
    Robbie was about to speak when a magpie shrieked. He shadedhis eyes and glared up with what seemed unreasonable rancour. The bird paced the branch and shrieked at him again. The heavy beat of wings announced the arrival of another bird. Robbie glared at them both. At least half a dozen magpies were squabbling with each other in the nearby branches. Robbie gazed at them with disgust as he spoke.
    ‘When the ranger wheeled the body in, I didn’t know what to do with it. I was here on my own and when I rang the Sarge he was still having his breakfast and he said to just wheel it out to the shed until he got in.’
    Several sparrows hopped along the palings towards me. A large blackbird, with bright orange beak and beady eye, bounced through the dry grass in our direction. Robbie and I watched the blackbird’s advance. This police station backyard was a regular Disneyland.
    ‘I was halfway down the yard when the wheelbarrow tipped and, well, John Doe fell out. I did my best to put him back in the way he was, but a bit of his clothing fell off and, well, a bit of our John Doe came away with it and I thought, since it didn’t smell too good, I’d hang it out here rather than stink the shed out.’
    The blackbird was within kicking distance. Its beady eye focused on the fence wire — and what was sticking to it. The magpies bobbed impatiently, annoyed no doubt that we were standing between them and lunch.
    ‘So you hung John Doe’s clothing, along with a bit of John Doe, out here on the fence, and the birds ate it?’
    Robbie looked like he was about to throw up. ‘I used to like birds,’ he said.
    I didn’t think Robbie was ever going to make Sergeant.
    The aluminium exterior door clanged open and another uniformed cop came out, hitching his belt with one hand, slapping abrown envelope against his thigh with the other. Robbie’s shoulders slumped.
    ‘Diane Rowe, this is Acting Sergeant Lou Watts,’ he mumbled as the big guy joined us.
    Lou wore the anticipatory grin of a guy