[Mitchell Mystery 02] • Whistle Down the Wire

On a wet winter’s night in 1967, Harry and Dianne Colston are killed when their car crashes into a freight train near the town of Mitchell. But from the outset Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole suspects it might be more than just a tragic accident.

Making his way through heavy rain to the Colstons’ property later than night, he finds the disturbing sight of a toddler left home alone. He phones Harry’s sister, Linda Fantasio, who arrives and takes possession of the child. But something about her strikes him as being off-putting, and not quite right.

The next morning Cole enlists the help of his new constable, Christine Sheridan, in revisiting the accident scene. There they see signs that only reinforce Cole’s suspicions about the crash.

With few obvious clues to go on, however, Cole begins investigating the dead couple’s past and discovers that more than a few people had an axe to grind with the Colstons. Untangling the farmer’s messy dealings leads him to neighbouring landholders with their grievances, horse and cattle traders, the town’s illegal bookmaker and his sidekicks, as well as to the wealthy Kinross family. But buried deepest in the Colstons’ affairs is Harry’s hairdresser sister and his wife Dianne’s down at heel family. When Harry’s will surfaces and makes no mention of his child, everything bequeathed instead to Fantasio and Harry’s wife’s family, Cole smells a rat.

But as he tries to tease apart the mystery he is hindered on realising his new constable is getting too close to one of the main suspects. And that he can’t trust his station staff to keep their mouths shut. He soon feels that the investigation is his and his alone. Against this backdrop, Cole’s marriage to Nancy is struggling and his mood is worsened when a visit from their daughter Vicky goes badly awry.

As Cole digs deeper into the Colston mystery he finds family pitted against family, and sees that money drives everyone’s ambitions. An attack aimed at him personally blows away any idea he might have had that the Colstons’ deaths were accidental. He sends his wife Nancy away for safety, but it only serves to highlight the growing distance between them.

But the reasons behind the Colstons’ deaths are more complicated than Cole first thought, and don’t belong just to the present. The more questions he asks, he more he understands that the Colston family hid secrets going far back in time. He learns that the Colstons’ connection with another family was a dangerous one, when that family has sent its matriarch to live in an asylum, a woman from whom Cole learns a startling secret.

But answers don’t give themselves up easily. Was the motive for the Colston killings financial or personal? And was Harry or Dianne the real target? And who had the strongest motive of all for wanting them dead?

When the past reaches out to strangle the present, and Cole finally understands the truth about how and why the Colstons died, he uncovers the most shocking revelation of all.