As soon as Shaun walked through the front door, his phone buzzed.

‘Crap,’ he said, looking at the screen. He’d forgotten to text his mum to say he’d arrived home safely. Because he hadn’t until just now. He sighed and answered. ‘Hi, Mum. Sorry I forgot. I went straight home after school.’

‘Just let me know, okay?’ she said. ‘Now stay there, and try to get some rest.’

‘Okay, Mum. Sorry.’ He hung up.

They’d left the skate park after a while. The case, for the moment, was at a dead end. Shaun fell onto his bed and closed his eyes.

He thought about all the detective shows he’d seen. Maybe they should print out pictures of everyone connected to Tyson and see who were possible suspects. They were all getting tangled in his mind. Whenever he tried to imagine someone removing Tyson’s body from the lake, or dumping it in the bath, their face was missing. They had broad shoulders and big arms, grunting with the weight of the body, but otherwise silent.

He checked his phone for the millionth time. There was nothing from Megan, but there was an email from Tenner with the details of the flight and the topic for the debate. They’d discussed it at lunch, and Tenner wanted a draft by the following day. At the time, Shaun had barely absorbed anything, just nodded politely while he thought about Tyson and the skate park.

Climate change is a real and present threat to the Australian economy.

Ugh! He couldn’t have cared less about climate change right now. And the more he thought about the topic the worse it got. He’d have to research the science and the economics.

He flicked through the other details. They were on the ‘affirmative’ team, meaning they had to argue that climate change was indeed stuffing things up. They would fly out on the Sunday, kill a day in Brisbane, and then go to the debate in the evening at some posh private school.

He googled the school and immediately felt worse. It was perched on top of a hill overlooking the city and looked like a fairytale castle. They probably had a team of speech writers for their debates. They were almost certainly going to win.

Shaun didn’t care about the debate. The trip to Brisbane was an opportunity to see Megan away from her family, and maybe to apologise to her. But it was also a distraction from finding Tyson’s killer.

He considered asking Millie if she knew where Peter had found Simms. If he was near the bathtub, that might prove a connection. But there was no guarantee Millie would know. And besides, she was likely to be with Peter and the family organising Tyson’s funeral.

His mind snagged on an image: Megan, standing beside a coffin, gazing in at her dead brother.

Shaun knew the bizarre journey of a dead body in a small town.

There were no funeral services here. The town was too small. Instead, the body was stored in a special freezer at the hospital. Then a funeral company would send a car from the coast to pick it up and take it back for ‘preparations’. Even now Shaun was uncomfortable with the word. His dad had been cremated and sent back to them for a service at the church.

When he went back into his memory of the days around his dad’s funeral, everything disappeared in a murky fog. He couldn’t remember how the days moved, or how he navigated the seemingly endless time in the quiet house, watching his mother fall apart.

Megan was in that same fog right now. She’d be there for a while. Maybe she’d forget she’d kissed him. And maybe that was for the best.

When he heard his mum come home from work, he switched off his light and dived into bed. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. A few minutes after the car pulled in, he heard his bedroom door open for a few seconds and then shut again. His mum was satisfied that he was asleep. But Shaun didn’t rest, and spent most of the night looking through the posts that people had put up on Tyson and Megan’s pages.

He flicked back to Simms’s profile page. It hadn’t been updated all week. He scanned through his list of friends. And then he froze.

He knew one of the people on the list.

Tenner. Tenner and Simms were Facebook pals.

He texted Will immediately.

WHAAAAT??? Will texted back. And then another message, seconds later. What does that MEAN?!

Shaun didn’t have a clue. Why would Tenner and Simms be connected? Simms didn’t even live in town, and he didn’t have anything to do with the school.

No idea. But it could be a lead.

TENNER’S THE KILLER!!!

Shaun couldn’t believe it. Sure, Tenner sometimes lost his temper in class, but he didn’t seem like a killer and he was teaching a class when Shaun found the body.

Still, it was odd.

Shaun saw Tenner for their final class the next day. As the lesson drew to a close, Tenner asked to see their debating speeches while the rest of the class was working.

Will was almost jumping out of his skin with excitement. He couldn’t sit still while Tenner read over Shaun’s speech. Shaun had pulled it together that morning, stumbling through research and eventually writing without thinking. He knew the speech was crap, so he wasn’t surprised to see Tenner scratching all over it with his beloved red pen. At least he had a speech. Will hadn’t prepared anything.

As Shaun watched Tenner, he tried to imagine him killing Tyson and lugging the body through the skate park at night. Or sneaking into the hospital to store the body in the freezer. None of it made sense.

Tenner underlined one of Shaun’s paragraphs with steady precision.

‘I was thinking,’ Will whispered, ‘about Tyson. And, you know, all the ways to kill someone. And if it’s true that the body doesn’t have any head wounds, we still don’t know about the rest of him. Like, maybe there’s poison in his system. Or maybe they put chemicals in the bath or something that was fatal. Russians do that stuff.’

Shaun put his head down on the desk. He was exhausted. ‘I don’t think Tyson was tied up with Russian spies.’

‘Whatever,’ said Will, his whole body almost vibrating, ‘maybe he was poisoned. Or choked. I’m just saying, there’s a million ways to kill someone. I started googling it until I realised that’s, you know, probably not an awesome idea.’

‘But Millie said the police thought it was suicide.’

‘She also said that made no sense. And the police said he magically turned up after a week,’ Will said, growing louder. Tenner was busy writing a short novel in the margin of Shaun’s speech. ‘And something’s up with Simms,’ Will continued, ‘I know it. He worked with Tyson. He would’ve had access to his locker, his food, everything. He could be the killer.’

‘I don’t know what you two are talking about,’ said Tenner from across the room, ‘but you should probably stop.’

Shaun wondered how much Tenner had heard.

‘Shaun, this is okay,’ he said, handing the speech back. ‘Not brilliant, but okay. I’ve got Megan’s speech here too. She emailed it through this morning. So you can read that to make sure you’re all on the same page.’

Tenner handed him the document. Shaun handled it as if it were a sacred text. It was his only contact with Megan in four days.

‘And what are we going to do about you?’ Tenner said, turning to Will.

‘Wing it?’

Tenner didn’t smile. ‘No. You’re going to write something and we’re going to go over it on Monday in Brisbane. You can spend the whole day preparing.’

‘A whole day of prep?’ Will rolled his eyes. ‘Isn’t that a bit much?’

‘Well, I figured we could go to the art gallery too,’ Tenner said. ‘May as well see some of the sights. Make it a cultural trip.’

‘Boring,’ Will mumbled, and Tenner pretended not to hear.

‘Also,’ Tenner said, ‘some good news. Megan’s staying with her family, but I’ve managed to secure us a place for the night. It works out nicely. One of the guys from Scotts mines is my brother-in-law: Henry Simms.’

Shaun felt the ground fall away under his feet. ‘What?’ he gasped.

‘Henry Simms. We’ll be staying with him while we’re in Brisbane.’