‘How d’you read it?’ I asked.

‘To be honest, I see it as payback. I’m no angel and the cops haven’t managed to nail me for a few things I have done. They’re causing me grief for something I didn’t do.’

There were a lot of dodgy police back then, many of them capable of framing people and using their powers and the courts to pay old debts.

‘What about the other two?’

He shrugged. ‘No idea who those guys are but I could hazard a guess.’

‘That might help.’

‘No, I’m not a dog, but you know how it works, Hardy. They could’ve green-lighted the job and set me up to take the blame.’

He was right about that. It happened. If it had, the weak spot in the arrangement was the witness. I poked around and got enough on him for Bickford to cast serious doubt on his evidence if the case came to trial. It didn’t. Wheels turned and the charges were dropped. It made me popular with Bickford, who put work my way for the next few years. Frost had thanked me. It made me unpopular with the police but that was nothing new.

The files were arranged in chronological order so I could see that other matters had come along hard on the heels of that one. It had been a busy time and the details had been crowded out long ago. I made some notes, put the old file back in its place, and copied the notes into the Forrest file and then to the memory stick. I fitted the memory stick onto my key ring. It felt like a day’s work so that’s what I called it.

I felt good about Bobby’s case. It had an interesting texture to it. The phone rang as I was about to leave the office. It was Sarah Kelly, a woman I’d met down in the Illawarra on a brief holiday a while back.

‘You said you’d call me,’ she said.

‘I should have,’ I said.