* * *
A couple of days after the policeman’s visit McCullock discovered one of their shovels missing. It was the long-handled post hole shovel he’d used at Great Northern, one of just two shovels they kept at the house. Only a month earlier he’d fitted it with a new whitewood-sapling handle.
For a time he wondered why the Constable might have taken it, but then put the thought from his mind. Alongside the shock and concern of his partner’s disappearance the matter was too trivial even to bother with.