Hampshire had introduced himself over the phone an hour or so before and now he did it again in a loud voice, as if he needed to remind us both of who he was. I shook his hand-a bit soft, no sportsman, no gym-goer. He was tallish, but carrying too much weight, which accounted for the trouble with the stairs. There was something off about his sandy hair.

‘I was told you’d seen military service,’ he said. ‘I prefer to deal with veterans, being one myself

He said this while still standing. He had the bearing and the moustache. I invited him to sit and he did, with only the barest glance of distaste at the chair. He didn’t protect the creases in his trousers-that won him points, but he shot his cuffs, which lost them.

‘What’s the problem, Mr Hampshire?’

‘Missing son. Mind if I smoke?’ He had the cigarette out and the lighter up almost before I could make the appropriate response. I pushed an ashtray across the desk between us. He sucked on the cigarette and blew the smoke out in a cloud; he tapped on the edge of the ashtray but some of the ash didn’t land in it-one of your dirty smokers. I made allowances for stress. I pulled a notepad towards me.

‘Your son’s name is?’

‘Justin. He was seventeen and in his last year at school.’

Only just, I thought, seeing that it was March. And why the past tense? ‘What’s the name of the school?’

‘Bryce Grammar, in Dee Why.’

I was a Maroubra High boy. My ex-wife, Cyn, who’d been to SCEGGS, kept in touch with her old school friends-Janey this had married Simon that of Shore, and Susie something had married Charles something else of Kings, and I’d overheard the gossip, but no mention of Bryce Grammar.

Hampshire was working through his cigarette as if time spent not puffing was time wasted. It was going to be a smoky interview. I wrote down the name of the school and encouraged him to give me the details. He lit more cigarettes, dropped more ash and visibly aged as he smoked and talked. He’d come in looking, say, fifty, and appeared more like sixty by the time he’d finished. But I had difficulty finding sympathy for him. I was sure that, convincing as some of it was, not everything he was telling me was the truth.