Madaline smoothed the map out, realising too late that what she thought were wrinkles in the paper were really tracings of the lake’s edge. The map Nat had brought was old: hand-drawn, photocopied more than once; some lines had two or three sketchy echoes, others faded in and out of clarity. Still, the general shape of the lake was there. It did look a bit like a bird. Not a magpie, really; maybe a hunched and curious vulture. In the top right-hand corner the lake fed into a thin channel that squirmed out towards the sea.

She picked the megaphone up off the corner of the map, and the paper flapped up violently, snapping like a loading sail in the wind. She jammed one hand against it as she tried to activate the megaphone with the other. Where the hell was Tommy? He was supposed to have arrived before her to get everybody ready but no one had seen him.

Madaline heard the whine of feedback and spoke into the megaphone. ‘Hello?’ Her voice blared out and the searchers fell silent. There weren’t nearly enough people for a proper search. Pathetic numbers, really. Kuiper and Tarden had done no more than trawl the back tables of the Ottoman, but it was better than she could have done herself. Some of them were wearing their orange SES jumpsuits but had rolled them down to the waist for easier access to cigarettes; it was also a subtle indication that it wasn’t a real emergency. Nat was here, which was good, and Megan: a closed Ottoman meant a better turn-out than she had feared. They were bored bodies, Madaline thought, looking for something to do between the tides. She recognised all the faces, even if not the names. They were faces she’d dealt with, come up against, especially in the winter months; by late April, the phone calls would start at night. Mostly just boredom and bravado; most of them settled down after she arrived, happy for the attention. If they wanted to take it further, she’d cuff them and issue a few threats, but she hardly ever had to use the lock-up. At most, they’d get a summons to appear up at Byron or a tongue-lashing from Tommy for wasting everybody’s time.

Madaline didn’t like to admit it, but she was secretly glad of these outbreaks of real police work. Perhaps she welcomed the attention as well. None of them were bad people, really, they’d just become stuck in a life that offered no change and little reward. Not that she could talk.

A familiar blue and white four-wheel-drive came down into the carpark. Tommy’s face was red behind the wheel. He parked and stepped carefully out onto the gravel, pulling on a reflective vest. Everyone had turned to look at him.

He waved his arms down at them as if discouraging applause. ‘How are we all?’ His blinked his eyes rapidly. ‘This dry wind, bloody hell.’ He came up into the circle of searchers, pulling a squashed pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He lit one, sheltering it from the breeze with his body. ‘Madaline,’ he said. ‘This is your operation. Just pretend I’m not here.’

Madaline gritted her teeth. The lazy bastard hadn’t changed. Ever since she had arrived, he had treated her not as a welcome addition to Reception’s police presence but an excuse to do less himself, to be a police officer only when it suited him. The first days of Stephanie Gale’s disappearance had been the worst. The way he constantly threw responsibility to her, the junior officer. Back then, the world was not the freezing edge of a winter lake but the apricot arms of summer sand, stretching endlessly in both directions. The dark mass of the bluff, the beckoning crash of warm-weather waves. And Ned, in his perennial green jacket, despite the baking heat. Madaline in a uniform of even fresher fabric.

Had she known her feelings for him then? Probably not. So why had it all seemed so hard? Why had a routine search started to feel like the slowest torture? It came back to her often, the memory of those first days. The same emergency service jumpsuits, the same expectant faces. They shot into her mind with the strange warm glow of ancient photographs.

Madaline found herself talking, her voice suddenly clear: ‘Thank you all for coming this morning. As you have no doubt gathered, time is of the essence. We have two missing persons who were last seen heading for this site at approximately six o’clock yesterday evening. Bill and Louise Sawyer, both of the Gold Coast, took a room at the Ottoman Motel with their son, Simon. They left him in the hotel room, heading to Magpie Lake.’

A different photograph flashed into Madaline’s head: a stretch of cane fields, a cleared track narrowing back to the horizon. Her father, leaning on a shovel, foot propped up on the blade. The only way she could ever remember him: arms crossed like a single muscle against his chest, eyes etched into a permanent squint. A grimace, a fortress.

‘Their car was not parked here at the lake, but we have reason to believe they may still be here. Bill and Louise are both in their mid-to-late thirties, and have no experience in bush survival. We are to assume, unless we learn otherwise, that they are both in the vicinity of the lake. I have appointed four—’ she shot a glance at Tommy, ‘five team leaders, along with myself, to guide the separate teams to different areas around the lake. Please see me to be allocated to a team.’

Her mother, sprawled on a cane chair. Christmas Day. The sweat from a true tropical summer shining her brow. In the warm Polaroid wash, her face reduces to shapes: fat circles of mascara, wedges of lurid eyeshadow, the fractal damage of self-crimped hair. Madaline, behind the lens, taking her very first picture.

‘Your group leaders will each have a map of the area they will search. Please stay with your teams, and report to your leaders anything you think is pertinent to the search. Leaders will alert me to any significant developments, otherwise we will reconvene back here in three hours. Remember water, remember a hat. This is a mostly contained area, and I am confident it will be just a matter of time until we find Bill and Louise. Any questions?’

The wedding waltz. That stupid tradition. Every face in the crowd blasted by a too-bright flash. Madaline with her back to the camera. Her hair is longer, plaited down below her shoulders. Will’s face wears a look of rare contentment. The smile that stretched his lips ever since she told him yes. What the camera can’t see—what history didn’t record—was Madaline’s animal groan, barely covered by the music, her tears misconstrued as happiness: her mortal fear that she’d made the worst mistake of her life.