Viv’s smile was smug. ‘Exactly.’ He reached into his briefcase. ‘I downloaded the appropriate forms. Does that make you happy?’

‘I think it might. You want a kiss?’

‘No thanks. I just want to see you back at work.’

It happened and more easily than I’d imagined. I’d had a couple of suspensions even before I’d had the book thrown at me. I’d served a brief gaol term which, strictly speaking, should have cancelled me out for a long spell except that I had some high-profile help. There was no chance of getting help this time. The application was processed and the hearing was held and the matter was referred to a committee and a sub-committee and they must have built up a metre-high stack of paper. But in the end I was reinstated, given the plastic licence card and a folder of rules and regulations that would have taken a week to read.

Then it was a matter of getting liability insurance at a ruinous rate given my age and record, joining a gun club and putting in the hours to qualify for a pistol licence and renting an office and furniture. All costly. I’d had my house in Glebe free and clear of mortgage for years; now I took out a sizeable mortgage again at a high interest rate over the fairly short term the bank allowed me. Gratifying, though, to find out what the old place was worth. I felt I’d got away with something. I was back in business with a necessity to earn money to cover my overheads. Just like the old days and I got a lift from it.

At my daughter Megan’s insistence I bought some new clothes, and that gave me a buzz, too. But I drew the line at changing cars; Megan just wanted to get her hands on my noble old Falcon.

The office was in Pyrmont, squeezed between Miller Street and Bridge Road. The building had been a warehouse. It’d been gutted, honeycombed, painted and rewired but sometimes I could swear I still smelled wool or wheat or copra or whatever had been stored there. I threw a small office-warming party. Megan, her partner Hank and my ten-month-old grandson Ben, Frank and Hilde Parker, Viv Garner, Daphne Rowley, my doctor Ian Sangster and a few other Glebe types drank cask red and white, ate saladas and cheese slices and wished me luck.