I copied Lorraine Master’s phone numbers and email address into my notebook and looked at the sheets of photocopy paper. There were six letters spread out over a month or so. The handwriting was a big, loopy scrawl, easy enough to read. Immature perhaps. For some reason, maybe because I wanted to get a more objective view of Master before encountering him directly, I put off reading the letters. But I was still detecting. Because you have to see both sides to get the full message on an airmail letter, I had the Masters’ address-Double Bay, and a house not an apartment. Nice. And another thing-the letters probably didn’t contain any passionate endearments or improper suggestions or she wouldn’t have handed them over so readily. Of course there could be others, she might have culled them, but six letters in four weeks wasn’t bad for a bloke.

I put the photocopies and the transcript in a shopping bag and locked up the office. As I went down the stairs I caught traces of Lorraine Master’s perfume and I wondered about the condition of the marriage. A hundred thousand was a lot to spend on someone. Was it an investment? I was going to have to do some digging. I remember a historian telling Phillip Adams on ‘Late Night Live’ that although it was nice to have letters it was better to have them to and from, otherwise you only had part of the picture. In a way, this game is like being a historian or an archaeologist. The whole story isn’t on the surface.

Early spring in Sydney isn’t much different from late winter, which can be pretty much the same as autumn. In the hour or so since I’d been on the street the wind had picked up and was colder. New Caledonia beckoned all the more strongly. I had to walk quite a few blocks before I reached the car and I was glad to get inside. It still held some of the earlier warmth of the day. I drove home to Glebe looking forward to parking a big scotch by the computer and searching through newspaper files on the web for Stewie. Well, looking forward to the scotch.