That night, Shaun could hear the blood beating in his ears. He had never experienced silence like this before. Back home was quiet, but he could still hear the road outside, with the occasional rumble of a truck. Or at the very least, there was the intense thrum of insect life in the scrub around his house. Here, in the middle of the city, there was nothing. It was as if the silence had the whole weight of the house behind it.

If he got up, everyone would be sure to hear him.

Dinner had passed quickly. Sharon Simms was actually really nice: a tall, friendly woman who cooed over her husband’s injuries and reminded him when to take his pain medication. Tenner brought pizza home and hugged his sister. That was weird.

They all sat at the table and ate, talking about the universities in Brisbane. Then they went into the media room, turned on the TV and handed the remote to the boys. Will chose an action movie that was pretty dumb, but they all laughed at the corny lines.

Now he lay in the darkness and stared up at the ceiling.

It was time to get moving. He got out of bed and padded across the carpet to the door. He was ready. He’d gone to bed wearing socks, shorts and a T-shirt. He took a deep breath and turned the handle. There wasn’t a sound, but his heartbeat was ricocheting off the walls and probably waking up the whole house.

He needed to get downstairs to the office. That was the obvious place to start. If he could somehow hack into Simms’s laptop, he might be able to find something.

As the credits on the movie were playing, he had planned out the trip in his mind. It had seemed easy then, but in the hush of the night it struck him as almost impossible.

He stood in the doorway, briefly contemplating the door opposite him. It was Will’s room. There’d barely been any time to talk before they went to bed. Should he knock?

He’d be more quiet on his own. And besides, if someone flicked on the lights and busted him, he could always say he was looking for a glass of water and had got lost. But if there were two of them, it would be more difficult to explain their snooping.

Resolving to move silently but quickly, he made for the stairs. At the end of the landing was a door that led to Simms and Sharon’s room. That door was open a crack, but there was only darkness on the other side. Yet another door led to Tenner’s room. He stopped for a second at the top of the stairs, testing for any sound. Nothing. So far, so good.

He crept down the stairs, praying that they wouldn’t creak under his weight. But of course, one did. Halfway down, out of nowhere, there was a creeeeeeeaaaaaak as he shifted his weight. He froze, his head thudding, his feet tingling.

But again there was nothing. It had sounded ferociously loud to him, but it obviously hadn’t been enough to wake the others. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He decided to move quickly down the rest of the steps, even leaping over the final few, and landing silently on the ground level, his socks dampening the noise.

He’d made it. He swallowed and headed for the office.

Then he felt something warm and hairy brush against his legs.

He almost jumped up the stairs again and struggled to swallow his urge to yell out. He looked down. Bernie’s eyes glittered up at him, his face almost a smile.

Shaun suppressed a laugh and Bernie’s tail wagged as Shaun knelt down to pat him gently on the head. Then he swore to himself. Bernie would now follow him everywhere. He had no choice in the matter. He must have come from Simms’s room.

He moved towards the office, Bernie’s paws making a gentle clicking sound behind him. It was only a short distance to the office, but he couldn’t risk it. He picked up the dog and carried him to the office door.

He turned the handle, once again grateful that it opened soundlessly. The room was carpeted – thank God – so he set Bernie down. But as he stepped into the office, he heard that unmistakable clicking headed in the opposite direction, and then the muted thud of a leap up the stairs.

Even Bernie wasn’t allowed in this room.

Shaun closed the door behind him and went over to the desk. Simms’s laptop was waiting.

He opened it, and the light from the screen washed across his face. He needed to enter a password. He’d expected this, but had hoped he might’ve scored incredibly lucky.

He’d been running through possibilities while they were watching the movie. The computer would only let him enter a wrong password three or four times before it locked him out. Then he might have to sit in the office for an hour or more to wait for another chance. Or worse, Simms would get a notification on his phone that someone was trying to unlock his computer.

He took a deep breath and stared at the screen. The tiny cursor blinked back at him, begging him to try. He had narrowed the field down to three. But what if none of them worked?

Over dinner, Simms and Sharon had talked a lot about their daughters, but they seemed to favour one in particular. Her name was Alex. She was graduating from university this year. Presuming that she had gone straight from school to university, Shaun had done the maths and figured out her birth year.

He typed Alex into the computer, trying to make as little noise as possible with the keys. Then he entered the birth year. He paused, took a breath, and pressed enter.

Wrong. But a new line of text had appeared in red at the bottom of the screen.

Your password must be at least eight characters long, include a capital letter and at least one numeral (1, 2, 3 …)

Okay, he was on the right track with the combination of characters. His own password was his mum’s name followed by the year of his birth. With any luck, Simms wasn’t that clever. The text and letters were probably connected.

He began typing in his second choice: Sharon. He wasn’t sure when she was born, but he had looked at some of the pictures in the lounge area on his way to the bathroom earlier. There was one of their wedding, with Henry and Sharon and the date printed in large, bold script at the bottom. Shaun had felt his skin prickle.

The wedding looked expensive. It was a huge photo, and the smiling couple looked relaxed and joyous in front of a beautiful beach backdrop.

Should he enter the year of the wedding, or an abbreviated version of the whole date? He bit his lip, typed the date and pressed enter with a final, quiet tap.

Wrong again.

There was new text at the bottom of the screen.

Warning: you have one attempt remaining.

Only three attempts. He was almost certainly not going to get this right. It would be safer to stop now, close the laptop and go back to bed.

But he had come so far.

He typed Bernie and then stopped. How old was Bernie? He didn’t look young. Or old. He just looked like a dog. And Sharon and Simms had hardly spoken about him.

Typing quickly so he didn’t overthink it, he simply added 1234 and pressed enter.

And the computer unlocked.

He almost laughed. The relief was a rush, and it broke his concentration.

He didn’t notice the door opening.

‘What are you doing?’

Shaun jumped to his feet and turned. It was Will. He sank to his knees and brought a hand to his chest.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered, struggling to keep his voice as quiet as possible. ‘Don’t do that! You scared the crap out of me.’

Will was in boxer shorts and a singlet. ‘I went into your room but you weren’t there.’

Shaun stood back up and found the chair again. ‘I came down to look for – you know – evidence.’

Will grinned. ‘That’s hardcore.’ He crouched beside Shaun. ‘I didn’t think you would after all of that stuff this afternoon.’

Shaun traced his finger over the trackpad, waking the computer back to life. ‘You mean about my dad?’

‘Nah, just about how he didn’t know anything about Tyson.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘Dunno. I wanted to ask about the money, but I couldn’t find a way to do it.’ He gazed at the computer screen. ‘You unlocked it!’

Shaun couldn’t resist a small, proud smile. ‘Yeah.’

‘That’s amazing.’

The desktop was blank. Shaun had spent so much time thinking about the password and sneaking down to the office, he hadn’t considered what to do after he managed to open up the computer. It was a sleek, slimline laptop. He was used to his bulky machine that was a few years old.

Will pointed to the bottom of the screen. When Shaun moved the cursor there, a small row of icons popped up. ‘There,’ he said. ‘His email.’

Shaun clicked on the mail application, and he was greeted by an inbox stacked with strangers’ names and acronyms he didn’t understand. He scrolled through them, uncertain what he was looking for. The emails spun in an endless stream as he scrolled through, eventually landing on almost two weeks prior, to the day that Shaun had found Tyson.

But there was nothing. Just paperwork from someone who’d bruised themselves a week earlier. An invitation to an upcoming conference in Singapore. And, of course, a receipt for a flight out of town and back to Brisbane.

‘Try searching Tyson’s name,’ Will whispered, pointing to a search bar in the corner of the screen. Shaun did. The cursor whirled, deep in thought, but then: No results found.

He leant back, wondering what to do next. Perhaps it was better to shut the laptop and leave now. The email, at least, was a clue in Simms’s favour. He’d never emailed Tyson, or even mentioned him in an email to anyone else.

Will reached across Shaun for the trackpad. ‘Check the trash.’

They looked at the screen, scanning heaps of spam and advertising email. But there was nothing, again.

‘Should we try Facebook?’ Shaun said.

‘I guess. But when I’ve looked at his profile before he hasn’t updated it since last Christmas with pictures of his family. I don’t think he uses it much.’

Shaun went to the Facebook login page. They didn’t have to re-enter a password, which was lucky, but a few minutes’ search told them there wasn’t much to find anyway. Will was right. Simms hadn’t posted anything for a few months, and his feed was a pretty boring stream of family updates and crappy memes.

The browser history turned up a similarly mundane list of sites the boys weren’t interested in: mining equipment, news articles about business and a Google search asking why his phone wasn’t charging properly.

‘There!’ Will lunged at the screen.

Simms had searched for Tyson Grant.

Shaun checked the date. It was just a day after Shaun found Tyson in the lake. He’d searched for it around midnight, and he hadn’t looked at anything else. He opened his browser, searched for Tyson’s name, and then quit.

Will and Shaun looked at each other. ‘What does that mean?’ said Shaun.

‘I don’t know.’ Will turned back to the screen. ‘But look, he visits this bank page a few times. Maybe that’s where his account is?’

They clicked through to the page and were met with a space to log in. They needed a client number and a password.

Shaun took a stab. He put Simms’s last name under the client number and Bernie1234 as the password. But it was incorrect. The client number, the computer hinted helpfully, was a randomised eight digit number given to Simms when he opened the account.

Shaun was about to give up when Will started opening the desk drawers. ‘He might have written it down somewhere,’ he said.

There was a scrappy mess of receipts, pens and forgotten bulldog clips. No sign of a notepad or anything that looked like a client number.

‘Well,’ said Shaun, ‘that might be it. We should get upstairs.’

Will held up a finger and reached over Shaun again, taking control of the trackpad and guiding the cursor across the screen. He clicked on an icon at the bottom. A small window appeared that looked like text messages.

‘Yes!’ Will cried, a bit more loudly than was safe.

Shaun pressed a finger to his lips. ‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Some newer laptops let you send and receive text messages as well. They sync with your phone.’

Shaun blinked a few times at the screen, slowly scrolling through a long feed of phone numbers, text messages and names. ‘These are his actual messages from his phone.’

Will nodded, scrolling back up to the top of the message list. There was Sharon Simms. Clicking on it brought up a bunch of short messages that Simms and his wife had sent back and forth.

Leaving now xoxox

That was the last one, from Sharon to Simms, just a few hours ago.

Shaun cringed. It felt wrong to read such personal stuff. Something about the intimacy of Sharon’s xoxox made him feel as though he’d gone a step too far. His gut was telling him that she wasn’t involved in any of this business. Her relaxed poise at dinner, the way she’d laughed so freely at the movie, it didn’t make sense.

Impatient, Will flicked across the trackpad and clicked on the day Shaun had found Tyson.

Simms had sent his wife a message just before 5.00 pm. Something’s come up at work. All good, but they’re flying me home tonight. I’ll see you soon. Xoxox

Sharon hadn’t replied.

Shaun looked to the side of the screen, at the long feed. Most of the exchanges had names attached to them. He didn’t recognise any beyond Sharon’s, and Simms’s daughters. But in the middle was a number without a name. He clicked on it.

The entire history was short. It was only three messages long.

The first was from Simms.

Thank u.

That was sent at 5.00 pm the same day Shaun found Tyson. He must have sent it only a moment after the one to Sharon.

Then, a few days later, from that number back to Simms: Call me.

Shaun recognised the date on the next message as the day that Simms had been beaten up by Peter. Simms had sent a message at around 7.00 pm. As Shaun read it, he felt his skin crawl, and his blood turned electric.

Have the stuff. Meet you at IGA.

That was the final message between them.

Shaun read it again. And then again. Each time he felt more and more empty.

His mother had been working that night. She would’ve seen Simms.

‘That was the night Peter beat him up, hey?’ Will whispered.

Shaun just nodded, checking the time again.

Will looked at his friend. ‘So, Simms sent this message and then Peter …’ He paused, considering. ‘We never did sort out where Peter found him. Maybe at the IGA? Was your mum—’

Shaun interrupted him, ‘Yeah, Mum was working.’

‘Holy crap,’ Will said.

Shaun felt himself getting angry. ‘She saw Peter bash Simms and didn’t even mention it because she didn’t want me involved.’ The more the pieces came together, the angrier he became. ‘But at that point Tyson hadn’t even turned up. For all she knew Peter might have been right; he might have been targeting his son’s murderer. But she didn’t believe me. She’s never believed me. She just took me to a doctor the next day because she thought I was psycho—’

Will put his hand over Shaun’s mouth. ‘Stop!’ he hissed. Shaun hadn’t noticed himself getting louder. The house breathed around them, the computer buzzing faintly.

‘We don’t know any of that,’ said Will. ‘Okay? We just need to think. We don’t know whose number this even is.’

Shaun swallowed, forcing himself to calm down. ‘Okay,’ he said, whispering again. ‘So, who?’

Will stared at the number, as if that would turn it into a name. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Peter?’

‘Why would he call Peter?’

Will shook his head. ‘I don’t know – he’s our only other suspect.’

Shaun’s mind was blank. He couldn’t think of anyone who Simms would contact. He could only think of the IGA and his mum being on shift.

‘It’s not my mum’s number,’ he said. ‘But maybe she’s got another phone.’

Will grinned. ‘Mate, your mum’s a badass and everything, but I don’t think she’d have a silent number.’

Shaun wasn’t sure what to think anymore.

‘The point is,’ Will said, ‘that number belongs to someone who knows something. Those are weird messages to send to a stranger. Simms had “stuff” to give to whoever it was.’

Even if Simms was completely innocent, the whole thing was weird. Shaun stared at the screen. ‘We should memorise the number. We don’t have our phones to take a picture or save it.’

They recited the number to each other a couple of times. It took them a few minutes to get it down, but they only had to remember it until they got back upstairs and could key it into their phones.

When they were done, Will glanced at the corner of the screen. ‘We should go to bed. We’ve been down here for ages.’

Shaun closed the browsing windows and quietly shut the laptop. His heart was still pounding, but it seemed more distant now. He felt as though his brain was under water. The trip down to the office had been nerve-wracking, but he half-glided back up the stairs, with Will close behind. The house seemed less dangerous now that they had conquered some of its secrets. Will paused at the door to his room.

‘Hey, ah …’ He looked away. ‘I was wondering if I could sleep in your room?’

Shaun almost didn’t hear the question. Will had muttered it so quietly in the darkness. He moved closer so that Will could hear him properly. ‘Look, Simms isn’t going to come after us with a knife. Peter beat the crap out of him. He’s fine. He would’ve come down to the office if he wanted to get us.’

Will stared at the carpet. ‘Yeah, maybe. But it’s not him – I just – this place is so quiet. And I’ve never slept in my own bedroom before. Even when we go away I still share a room with my cousins and sisters and that. I’ve never fallen asleep by myself.’

Shaun smiled. After everything Will had done for him, this was the least he could do.

‘No worries,’ he said.

Will looked up and grinned. ‘Really?’

He nodded. Will went back into his room, grabbed the pillow and quilt from his bed, then followed Shaun into his room. He made a small nest for himself on the floor. Shaun offered him the bed, but he shook his head.

They just lay there. Shaun was thinking about Simms and his mum and Peter and, every so often, Megan’s smile and her sadness. And occasionally he was reminded of the lump on the floor beside him, eventually snoring into the night.