One reason for his savage denunciation of me presented itself-fury that a man older and smaller than himself could beat him in a physical contest not just once but twice. It was hardly enough. I went through the documents again. Something there niggled at me but I couldn’t pin it down. I knew I had enemies, but a dying enemy trying to screw me was a new and unsettling experience.

I trod on eggshells for the next month or so but the police didn’t approach me again and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I got on with the usual run of things-serving notices, a bit of bodyguarding, the tracing of a missing husband. Eventually the Harvey killing surfaced in the papers. Cleve Harvey, it emerged, was a small-time police informer, and he was shot by one of the men he’d dobbed in on a minor matter that eventually led to a conviction on serious drug charges. There was another informer, DNA and a weapon, and the shooter went down for a long stretch. A small-time player who had struck it unlucky hadn’t concerned the police enough for them to probe closely into his life. That explained their lack of interest, but it didn’t explain why Cleve had fingered me. I thought I was within my rights to contact Detective Sergeant Wilson.

‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said when he answered the call.

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Good result on the Harvey killing. I see you got a mention.’

‘I did.’

‘I didn’t, did I?’

‘Come again?’

‘Don’t piss me off, Sergeant. Did the shooter say anything about me?’

‘No.’

He hung up, leaving me with the question.

The answer came quite a bit later and in a strange way. I’d lost interest in Rugby League after the Murdoch manoeuvre ruined the competition. I was never keen on Union for the mauls and scrums, and I found just looking at the no-hands game frustrating.