Allie sped through the town in grim silence. Streets flashed by in a blur of weatherboard houses, gum trees and crows until we finally stopped at one that looked just like all the others – except for the two police cars. The cops had blocked off the whole road but they were mostly gathered at one end, standing around a high wire fence that surrounded something I couldn’t see from here.

Dad and Allie got out of the car, and I followed after them. As we neared the fence I realised it enclosed a low pit – there was a gradual slope downwards to a mass of leafy vegetation. Derek Bell came hurrying over, looking even twitchier than he had this morning.

‘Are the victims in there?’ Dad asked, nodding to the fence.

‘Yeah. It’s the access point to an old stormwater drain. A passerby spotted one of the bodies.’ Bell blinked in a stunned kind of way, like he couldn’t quite absorb what had happened. ‘The victims … It’s Tom Cavanagh, and Martin Flint.’

I gaped. ‘The director and the nurse are dead? Here? But then who died in the fire?’

‘You’re certain?’ Dad asked.

‘I know them both. There’s no doubt.’ Bell dragged a trembling hand through his hair. ‘Killed with single stab wounds to the chest, probably sometime during the night.’

‘Anyone hear anything? See anything?’

‘We don’t know yet. No one’s come forward, but it’ll take a while to interview all the residents.’

Bell nodded over at where a crowd of anxious people were clustered around a police officer. They were all speaking at once, pelting questions at the cop.

‘But who died?’

‘What happened to them?’

‘Are we safe here?’

Bell looked pleadingly at Allie. ‘You think you could … ?’

She nodded and strode over, holding up her hands and speaking in a low, reassuring tone. Within a few minutes, the hubbub of voices had quieted.

‘She’s good with people, huh?’ Dad asked.

But Bell’s attention wasn’t on Allie. Instead he was looking around the street. ‘Why dump the bodies here, of all places …’ He cast an uneasy glance back at the entrance to the drain.

‘They weren’t killed in there?’ Dad asked.

‘No. There’s not enough blood. They had to have been killed somewhere else. Come on, I’ll show you.’

Dad followed Bell towards the gate in the fence, but not before shooting me a stern look that meant: You are not to view homicide victims. That was fine by me. I didn’t want to look at murdered people and talk about how they’d died, any more than I wanted to think about the details of how I’d died. I’d leave that part of detecting to Dad.

I suddenly remembered how Catching had thought I was still here because someone had murdered me and I had ‘unfinished business’. Could the ghosts of Cavanagh and Flint be about, clinging to their earthly remains? Although I hadn’t stuck with my body. There’d been a period of nothingness, followed by drifting through colours – and then I’d heard Dad crying. When I’d reached him I’d found that a couple of weeks had passed since the accident and my body was already buried.

The director and the nurse might be different to me, though. Except some deeper part of me was certain that they weren’t around. I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I did. For whatever reason, there wasn’t any unfinished business for them. I guessed it was up to Dad and me to figure out who had killed them, and why.

I turned my attention back to the residents. They were mostly people Dad’s age or older. While there were no children outside, it was obvious by the toys scattered across front gardens that families lived here. I hoped the kids weren’t too scared.

I hoped Dad and I could solve this before anyone else got hurt.

Dad came back through the gate and strode away from the rest of the police, pulling out his phone to make a call. I went over to him and caught the end of a low-voiced conversation: ‘Yeah, quick as you can … There’s definitely something off … I’ll check in again later.’

‘Something off about what?’ I demanded as he hung up.

He put his phone back to his ear so he could talk to me without getting stared at. ‘The case. Rachel’s sending a team from the city; they should be here early tomorrow. I need some officers here who don’t report to Derek Bell.’

‘He’s scared, huh? After you left the station this morning, he was standing in the doorway looking around like he thought someone might be after him.’

Dad nodded, like he wasn’t surprised. ‘That’s how he looks now. I don’t know how deep he’s into whatever this is, but three people murdered in a town this size? Something’s going on around here, and Bell knows more than he’s saying.’

Dad was right – the deaths couldn’t possibly be unrelated. ‘This has to all be connected to the home, right? Wouldn’t the kids who were in there know something?’

‘Maybe.’ His mouth tightened. ‘But Rachel said they still aren’t saying much. They could be scared. Kids like that, caught up in the system – it wouldn’t have been hard for the men running the home to intimidate them into silence over the drugs operation. Or whatever was going on at that place.’

‘But Director Cavanagh and Nurse Flint can’t push them around now. Rachel should tell the kids that!’

‘She’ll do her best to reassure them, but …’ He sighed. ‘Those kids have probably been failed so many times they won’t believe anyone in authority will treat them fairly. Besides, Rachel thinks there might be something else going on. She says it seems like they’re not afraid, almost like they think everything’s been taken care of. I suppose they might just want to put the home behind them. It’s gone now, after all.’

I thought back to the not-quite-smiling faces of the kids in the photo Dad had shown me. The home was supposed to have been a place that was good for them. It might’ve been, too, if Allie and the other people who’d wanted to volunteer had been allowed in. Instead they’d been shut out, so that Sholt could sell drugs or whatever he’d been doing. And Derek Bell hadn’t done anything about it, either because he was involved or because the Sholts were rich and powerful. ‘How those kids were treated – it’s not right!’

I sounded like Dad. He heard it too; his mouth curved into a smile. ‘No, it isn’t. But the boss is onto it. She’ll keep talking to the kids until they trust her enough to talk to her, and get them all the help she can, too. She’s got the city end of this. I need to solve things here.’

I could help him with that. ‘Well, if Cavanagh was at the Sholt place, maybe Flint was there too, hiding out from the cops. Last night there was some kind of fight – which is how the window got smashed – and Alexander Sholt killed them both. Then he dumped the bodies here because … um …’

‘It might have just been the first place that came to mind,’ Dad said. ‘Everyone around here seems to have known about the old drain. But there’s something else.’ He nodded towards the fence. ‘See the gate? It was locked. The police had to use boltcutters to get in, and there’s no sign of any tampering.’

‘Then how did Sholt – or whoever it was – get the bodies in there?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘There probably is tampering, in a way that isn’t immediately apparent. But why would someone bother to hide the break-in, only to leave the bodies where they could be spotted by a passerby? Unless Sholt thought the bodies were better hidden than they were …’

He fell into silence, frowning his thinking frown.

After a moment his gaze sharpened, focusing on something past me, and he put the phone back in his pocket. I turned to see Allie approaching.

As she neared us, Dad asked, ‘Did you know the victims well?’

‘Not at all, really. Just to say hello to. Those two kept themselves to themselves.’ She shifted to look towards the drain and then past it, staring at … a bus stop?

‘It’s so strange,’ Allie murmured. ‘We were only talking about Sarah this morning.’

‘What’s the connection?’ Dad asked.

‘This is the last place she was seen,’ Allie replied. ‘She got off the bus there, and she would’ve walked right down this street to get to her house, which was a block away. She vanished somewhere between here and her home.’

‘Maybe it’s all linked somehow!’ I exclaimed. Then I thought about it. ‘Except … Tom Cavanagh and Martin Flint couldn’t possibly have known Sarah. They weren’t from around here. So probably not.’

Allie had reached the same conclusion. ‘There’s no real connection, of course. Just coincidence.’

Dad nodded his agreement. ‘Did any of the residents see or hear anything?’

She shook her head. ‘We’ll need to conduct proper interviews, but no one’s volunteering any information.’ Her face lightened. ‘Well, except for Tansy Webster and her angels.’

‘Angels?’

Allie nodded at the crowd. ‘See the woman in green?’

There were several women wearing green, and I was trying to figure out which one she was talking about when Allie added, ‘With the dogs?’

Oh, that woman: the old lady in the tracksuit with four fluffy white mutts sitting at her feet.

Dad nodded, and Allie continued, ‘That’s Tansy. She’s a big believer in … well, lots of things. Anyway, she’s insisting she heard wings beating in the air above her house last night, only they sounded too large to belong to a bird. The dogs heard it too, she said; barked half the night.’

Wings in the air. Too large for a bird.

My heart slammed against the walls of my chest.

‘Dad. Fetchers!’

My father gave a slight shake of his head.

‘I don’t care whether you believe Catching or not,’ I told him. ‘I do. The Fetchers could be looking for her, and I’m going to see if she’s okay!’

I ran, so worried for Catching that I was streets away from Dad before it dawned on me that I didn’t know how to get to the hospital from here. But I could always get to Dad by focusing on him. Maybe it would work the same way with her?

I closed my eyes, picturing Isobel Catching’s sharp-edged face in my mind. After a second, I began to have a sense of her. It was faint at first and difficult to pin down, almost like she was moving, but then it grew steady and strong. I concentrated. Everything shifted around me, as if the entire world was a deck of cards that was shuffling itself into a different order. When I felt it all settle back into place, I opened my eyes again.

I was standing at the end of Catching’s hospital bed. Words rushed out of me: ‘Catching, there might be Fetchers around – Fetchers who’ve come into this world. Some people have died—’

‘I heard. It’s all the nurses can talk about.’

‘—and there was a witness who heard wings beating in the air, too big for a bird, and I think they might be coming for you.’

Catching held up a hand. ‘Slow down, Teller. It’s not Fetchers.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yep.’

‘Are you really—’ I substituted a more useful question: ‘How can you be sure?’

‘No one’s coming to get me. Promise.’

She sounded absolutely positive. Maybe Dad was right and there weren’t such things as Fetchers. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was truth in Catching’s story. Either way, I felt dizzy with relief now the threat was gone – or, okay, it seemed the threat had never actually existed, at least not in this dimension. But I’d thought it had.

Catching pointed to the end of the bed. ‘You’d better sit before you fall.’ I sat, and she added, ‘Thanks anyway. For coming to help me.’

‘Yeah, well. It’s what fr—’ I caught myself on the word. Catching wouldn’t want to be called my friend.

But to my astonishment, she said, ‘Guess it is what friends do.’

‘Um. Are we friends, then?’

She regarded me with an expression that said I’d failed to understand something. ‘I told you what I thought about your dad, didn’t I?’

I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything. ‘Yeah.’

‘So we’re friends. Because friends always tell each other the truth. Even when it hurts.’

That was a very … Catching definition of friendship. But I’d take it. I grinned at her. She didn’t exactly return the smile, but one corner of her mouth pulled up. Close enough.

She shook her head at me, still with the almost-smile lingering on her lips. ‘You’re an idiot! If there were Fetchers here, what were you gonna do? Haunt them?’

‘I don’t know! I probably should’ve waited for my dad. I’m pretty sure he’ll follow me here, by the way. Oh, and I haven’t told him that you can see me. I didn’t want … that is, I …’

‘You didn’t want me telling him he’s sad? I think he already knows.’

‘I don’t want you reminding him!’

‘Relax, Teller. I won’t tell him I can see you.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I told you what I think, because that’s what friends do. Now I’ll keep your secret. That’s what friends do too.’

I wondered if Catching had a list of rules written down somewhere of how to be friends. I’d never met anyone like her. I didn’t think there was anyone like her. ‘Thanks.’

She nodded, her gaze turning inwards. ‘I had a friend. In the beneath-place. She used to tell me true things. Or true as she saw it.’

‘Things that hurt?’

Catching’s almost-smile vanished and her hand clenched into a fist, bunching up the sheet where she was gripping it. I’d spoken without thinking, and I felt terrible. Her friend had told her things that hurt.

I was more convinced than ever that Catching had been through something awful – and apparently she hadn’t been alone. But her friend wasn’t here now, and the fact that Catching hadn’t mentioned her before made me worry about her fate … and about whether Catching herself was still in danger, whatever she said.

‘I know you haven’t exactly seen my dad at his best,’ I told her, ‘but he’s the person I’d call if I was in trouble. He can help you. You just have to give him a chance.’

‘I’m not telling you what happened to ask for help,’ she said.

‘Then why are you telling it?’

Catching drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. ‘To be heard.’

I was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then I said, ‘Well, that kind of sounds like asking for help. And even if it isn’t, just because you’re not asking doesn’t mean you don’t need it.’

Catching said nothing; she just watched me out of those fathomless brown eyes. But it wasn’t uncomfortable sitting here together. In fact, it was nice to sit quietly with someone out of choice, instead of doing it because they didn’t know I was there. It had been nice to have a normal conversation, too. Well, okay, not totally normal – but Catching telling me I was an idiot had been an ordinary thing for one friend to say to another.

I suddenly found myself missing the cousins. They were the ones who usually teased me over my mistakes. And they defended me, if anyone outside the family dared to laugh at even the stupidest things I did. Like the time I’d thought I could sing. I’d been ten years old and halfway through my big performance at the school assembly when I’d realised the teachers were wincing and the kids were clapping their hands over their ears. It had been such a shock; Aunty Viv had always said I had a lovely voice! It wasn’t until the horrible moment on the stage that I’d remembered she’d said the salt cake was lovely too. I’d stuttered into silence. Kids had begun to giggle, and I’d almost burst into tears. Then the cousins had started shouting.

First Dennis: Shut up and let her sing!

Then Trisha: Like any of you could do as good!

Angie: None of you are better than her!

And finally six-year-old Charlie: None of you are better than any of us!

Catching and I sat in comfortable silence that was broken only by footsteps in the hall outside. I recognised my father’s brisk tread and stood up just as he came bursting through the door.

‘Hi, Dad. No Fetchers after all. Sorry.’

He shot me a look that said, I told you so. But he couldn’t have been sure, or he wouldn’t have come charging in like that. Dad wasn’t completely convinced he was right about Catching making everything up, no matter what he claimed.

‘Come to hear the rest of the story, policeman?’ Catching asked.

‘I suppose I have,’ Dad answered. ‘If you want to tell it.’

I remembered he’d said he wanted to talk to Catching again, back when we discovered that the person who died at the home had been stabbed. It seemed like we’d found that out a thousand years ago. It had only been this morning.

Dad pulled a chair away from the wall, placing it beside the bed and sitting down. ‘Would you like to tell me about the fire this time?’

She sniffed. ‘We haven’t got to that part yet. And the next part …’ Her gaze drifted to me for a moment and then away again before Dad could realise she was seeing me. ‘The next part is about my friend. And the grey.’