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a little longer by the door. ‘We’ll give you some space.’
    The lid was up, and inside was a khaki army disposal blanket. Anya turned to the SOCO with the camera. ‘Have you taken all the photos you need yet?’
    ‘I haven’t disturbed anything apart from the corner of the blanket we moved. As soon as it was clear it was a body, we called for you.’
    He stood to the right of Anya, camera poised. She gently peeled back a section of blanket to the chest. A small pale hand was visible against a bony forearm. Anya held her breath and lowered it further. The photographer snapped with the flash on .
The child’s body was curled into an almost foetal position, clutching a stuffed duck. A girl. Blood was smeared around her mouth and had dripped onto her threadbare butterfly nightdress. Fine, shoulder-length brown hair framed the pale face. On the exposed skin, collar bones appeared prominent.
    ‘She’s too big for a three-year-old but small for a ten-year-old,’ Anya commented.
    ‘Any obvious trauma?’ Bowden remained a few steps behind.
    ‘Not that I can see.’ She gently lifted the nightie. ‘Blood stains on the underpants, though. We have to consider sexual assault, so the implication is, a man is likely to be involved in the death.’
    ‘Which means,’ Schiller said what they were all thinking. ‘The mother probably knows him. She’s either involved in the death or taken off with the other child.’
    ‘Or, it’s possible whoever did this has the mother and the three-year-old,’ Anya said. ‘Either way, it’s urgent you find Jenny and her younger daughter.’
    ‘If a whack-job raped and killed the girl then took the mother and kid, they could be dead already,’ Bowden said solemnly.
    Another officer entered and immediately had everyone’s attention. ‘Rest of the property is clear. No more remains.’
    Anya was concerned about the amount of blood in the bathroom. There didn’t appear to be trauma to the girl’s face, or that much blood on her clothes. It was possible the blood in the bathroom came from someone else. ‘Did you find anything that could have been used to inflict trauma?’
    He shook his head.
    Bowden took command. ‘Listen up, everyone. We have a missing mother and her three-year-old child. We need a description of them and recent photos. Someone in this freakin’ community knows something.’
    ‘Judging by the blood in the bathroom,’ Anya reminded them, ‘if Jenny and Mia are alive, one or both could be critically injured.’
    ‘For now we treat this as a homicide and a missing persons investigation,’ Bowden ordered, before punching numbers into his phone and heading out of the room.
    The message was clear. If Jenny or Mia had bled in the bathroom, they had to be found quickly to have any chance of surviving.

5
    A nya suggested she visit the GP on Beatrice’s list whose surgery was nearby. Bowden immediately volunteered Schiller to tag along with Anya in her car.
    Beatrice Quaid would have to formally identify the young body back in Hobart, to establish whether it was, in fact, Emily. Anya could only imagine her grief at losing a second grandchild, and being told that Jenny and Mia were missing, possibly murdered. There was nothing she could do directly for Beatrice now. Besides, as a family member who had raised the alarm, Mrs Quaid might find herself a person of suspicion in the initial stages of the investigation. Except the older woman didn’t appear capable of lifting a child into a toy box by herself, or dexterous enough to wipe the bathroom floor. And there was the issue of a possible sexual assault.
    Anya and the detective stood in the waiting room amongst sniffles, babies, bandaged limbs and the elderly. A woman in her forties appeared from an end room, seemingly unperturbed by the noise or number of filled seats in the waiting area. Blue earrings matched the frames on her glasses.
    A receptionist handed her a file with sticky notes attached. ‘There’s a