I grinned at him. ‘West?’

‘It’s no bloody joke, Cliff. A few more and I’m in real trouble.’

I finished my coffee and took a shot at the bin over the desk. Bullseye. ‘What do the cops say?’

‘What do they ever say? Yes, sir, very sorry, sir, give us the numbers, sir, and we’ll keep an eye out. The last time a cop solved a crime in this town was about the time a doctor cured a patient.’

‘Can’t be that long.’ Terry didn’t smile, and it looked like time to drop the levity. He’d never been a boastful man but the self-deprecatory crack about making lists had struck me as a fragility that he probably couldn’t afford in this kind of business. In any case, the lurk was a new one on me and interesting in that respect. And it seemed to hold out the prospect of travel; I’d been stuck in Sydney too long. It was time to get business-like.

‘A hundred and twenty-five a day and expenses, Terry,’ I said. ‘I’ll waive the retainer because you’re a friend.’

‘No you won’t!’ He reached for a fat cheque book and wrote rapidly; I could see the seven hundred and fifty dollars from where I sat. I took the cheque and looked at Terry rather than it. There seemed to be something almost furtive about him, and that was the last word you’d normally apply to Terry Reeves. I gave him one of my hard-guy looks.

‘Something else you want to say, mate?’

He sighed. ‘Shit, you might as well know. We installed cameras behind the desk a year ago. Didn’t want to, but the insurance boys insisted on it. We’ve got pictures of the clients. Snoopy stuff. We destroy the bloody things when the cars come back.’

I snapped my fingers rudely. ‘Gimme.’

The manila folder came out again and Terry shoved it across the desk. The photographs were in colour and blown up to postcard size. The camera looked to have been mounted fairly high behind the desk; the pictures showed the customers full face, but in two instances the lens had caught faces in half profile.