‘Gaol. Yes. For a very long time. Will you work for me?’

‘Eh?’

‘You are a detective. You worked for Norman, you can work for me. I can pay you enough. Find out for me who killed him.’

The proposition rocked me, but maybe it was what I had in mind all along. She told me that she was from the Philippines and had come to Australia as a sort of mail-order bride. She thought her blood was more Indian than Filipino but she wasn’t sure. This had happened almost ten years ago, when she was eighteen; she’d put up with six years of near-imprisonment until Scholfield had broken her out. She didn’t give me the details and I didn’t ask. She and Scholfield had been lovers since then, on an irregular basis because he was often out of town. He’d help set her up in business as a handicrafts dealer. The way she told it, she had immigration and tax problems and Norman had marital problems, but she’d loved him and he was all aces to her.

‘Did he tell you what he was doing, I mean… recently?’

‘No. He never told me details. Big, he said. Very big. He treated it as a joke. But I don’t think it was a joke. He was very worried when he rang me the last time.’

‘Was that…’ I searched my memory and came up with the date. ‘And about this time of day?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was worried, I was with him. He was worried two hundred bucks worth.’

‘I will pay you ten times that to find who killed him.’

‘Put it like that and I’d be glad to. Where would I start? Any ideas Miss…?’

‘Seneka, Louise Seneka. I don’t know. I am thinking.’

Just to watch her think was a pleasure. She’d drunk about two-thirds of her drink, but the ice had melted and she’d lost interest in it. I’m a bit that way with a g amp; t myself, so I tend to slug them down. She didn’t smoke or fidget in any other way. She sat and concentrated and you could almost feel the force of the concentration. Scholfield had been a tall, slim man with thick fair hair, cut short. He wasn’t handsome but he looked extremely healthy, which almost amounted to the same thing. They’d have made a good, contrasting pair. One thing was sure, with a woman like that to keep company with, he wouldn’t have jumped.