I was feeling fresh as a rose that Monday at 9.30 a.m. My booze supply had run out on Saturday night. I had no way of replenishing it on the Sabbath because we still had Sunday prohibition in Sydney then. I didn’t have a club; that’d gone a while before, along with my job as an insurance investigator. I also didn’t have a wife — not any more — or friends with well-filled refrigerators. Unless I could be bothered driving twenty-five miles to become a bona fide traveller, Sunday could be as dry as a Mormon meeting hall. I didn’t travel. I spent the day on Bondi beach and the evening with tonic water and Le Carre, so I was clear-headed and clean-shaven, doodling on the desk blotter, when the phone rang.

“Hardy Investigations?”

“Yes, Cliff Hardy speaking.”

“Good. Mr Hardy, I need your help. You’ve been recommended.”

I could think of perhaps ten people who’d mildly recommend me. None of them would know the owner of this voice — eight hundred dollars a term, plenty of ordering people about and international travel.

“Yeah, who by?”

He named a name and I heard a faint bell ring. An insurance area boss or something, a hundred years ago. Still, it was a better start than the faded wives whose husbands had taken a walk or the small businessmen with payroll panic.

“Who am I talking to?”

“My name is Gutteridge, Bryn Gutteridge.”

That didn’t mean anything to me. There are three million people in Sydney, maybe a hundred are named Gutteridge and I didn’t know any of them.

“What can I do for you, Mr Gutteridge?”

Mr Gutteridge didn’t want to say too much on the phone. The matter was delicate, urgent and not for the police. He said he wanted advice and possibly action and asked if I could come out to see him that morning. Maybe he wanted to see if I was the advising or the active type. I felt active.