‘Behave yourself, or I’ll cripple you.’

He nodded and sagged back on the ground. ‘Don’t hurt Selina’, he said.

‘We’re not communicating.’ I moved the gun a fraction in conciliation. ‘Selina was abducted this morning. I’ve been hired by her agent to find her. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

He sat up a bit straighter, but all the combat toughness had left him; he was pale and the hand he put up to pull off the goggles was shaking.

‘I don’t know’, he said.

‘You know something, sonny. This is a nice, quiet spot. Something nasty could happen to you here, and there’s enough evidence about for me to fix it any way I like. D’you see what I mean?’

He nodded.

‘Right. Now this was a pay-off you set up here. You’re a photographer, I assume you were selling pictures, right?’

Another nod.

‘You did a good job.’ I squinted along the line of the. 38. ‘Who was in the pictures.’

‘Xavier Carlton.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Carlton was a big-time businessman and sportsman with criminal and political associations, which every journalist in Sydney knew and kept quiet about. He was also a pillar of the Church. ‘Who else?’

‘A girl.’

‘Selina. You bastard. How much?’

‘Thirty thousand.’

‘For what?’

‘Prints, negs, the lot.’

I had no time for Carlton, he was a corrupt and vicious hypocrite but blackmailers are a low breed too, and this one had put his supposed girlfriend right in the shit. It was hard to understand.

‘How did you set it up?’

He spoke slowly and carefully, editing as he went along. ‘Carlton was celebrating his Golden Slipper win, we latched on to him. He got amorous and I got some pictures.’