Of course there was a lot more to my question than that. I meant, among other things: Why are you going against the traditions of the institution you’ve spent your life in? But Martin Oldcastle wasn’t the sort of man to serve up easy answers to questions like that. Too honest. That honesty tipped the balance in his favour, but I had one more question.

‘If I take this on, it’s going to cost money. You’re looking at seven or eight thousand dollars.’

‘Not a problem.’ Flatly, like that.

‘Well…’

He leaned forward across the desk. ‘I’ve been a senior police officer for twenty years. I’ve got no family. I don’t drink much and I don’t gamble. I bought my flat back when a decent place to live in didn’t cost the bloody earth. I drive a 1988 Falcon. I play bowls at the weekend and I go on bus tours around Australia in my holidays. It’s my life we’re talking about and I can afford to pay you if you’ve got the guts to take it on.’

Maybe the choice of car swung it, maybe the bus tours. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll need two signatures-one on a contract and one on a cheque.’

What I was signing up for was personal protection of Oldcastle for every hour of every day I could manage. That’s somewhere well short of twenty-four. I had to sleep and I had to deal with other things from time to time. Luckily, if that’s the word, I wasn’t in any kind of relationship just then that required any attention. Still, thinking you can protect someone just by becoming their Siamese twin is a mistake. You lose perspective and flexibility. For example, it’s useful to walk around a subject’s neighbourhood a few times to get the feel of the place. You don’t want the subject there with you. You need to call on a few of the neighbours, lying your head off about why you’re ringing their bells, and you need to be alone when you do it. You need to drive the subject’s car to the supermarket and buy a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine and see if anyone takes an interest. Stuff like that, and you need trustworthy backup while you’re away and that costs money and makes you anxious. It isn’t my favourite kind of work…