Megan had left a pile of paperbacks she’d picked up and one was The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. I was keen to read it because, in a way, Winslow had brought me to San Diego. His book, The Winter of Frankie Machine, was one of the best crime novels I’d ever read, and the description of the San Diego waterfront was so graphic and compelling I’d taken it into my head to go there as I slowly wended my way back up the west coast towards a flight to Australia. In the book, Frankie Machine ran the bait shop on the pier. The area had lived up to the description and it was lucky for me I’d been there when I had the heart attack. If I’d been driving around LA, as I was a few days before, things could have been very different.

‘Hello, Mr Hardy.’

I looked up from the book. The woman standing in front of me was familiar, but I couldn’t place her.’ ‘Nurse Margaret McKinley,’ she said. I half rose in the polite, meaningless way my generation

was taught to do, but she put a hand on my shoulder to interrupt the movement.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise you out of uniform.’

‘Understandable, a uniform’s the best disguise there is, they say. May I sit down?’

I shuffled along, although there was plenty of room. ‘Of course.’

‘You look very well,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen you here before.’

‘I walk the line,’ I said.

She smiled, took the book and examined it. ‘Ah, that explains it.’

‘What?’

‘What you said to Dr Pierce when you were coming to the surface. You said you were looking for Frankie Machine. We were puzzled. I see it’s another title by this writer. I gather the book’s set here.’

She was in her mid-thirties at a guess-medium sized with strong, squarish features and dark-brown hair in a no-nonsense style. She carried a sun hat and wore a white sleeveless blouse and denim pants that came to just below the knee; a light tan. Sandals. No ring. Ah, Hardy, stripped of your licence, but still sizing up the citizens.