His father had been self-made, no old school ties and titled antecedents to back him up. He had remained a very private individual; there were few entries under the categories of clubs and interests. Horse-racing was his only spotlight activity. The only thing to cross-reference him under was “money”. My researches turned up only two points of interest. One, Ailsa Gutteridge, nee Sleeman, had been married previously to James Bercer (deceased) who had been a tycoon on much the same scale and in much the same area of business as Gutteridge. Two, no Dr Brave was listed in the medical directory.

I walked back through the park. The rubbish of scores of lunches was being picked over by the birds and made me feel hungry. I drove home to Glebe, stopping only to pick up a flagon of white wine. I was thinking about Ailsa Gutteridge. I had a feeling that she might be a key to it all. If I was wrong I was prepared to try a new tack, but it’s nice to get off on the right foot once in a while.

My place in Glebe is a small, two-storey sandstone terrace close to the dog track. I put most of the severance money I got from the insurance company down on it and in good months I can make the payments. The dog track is a convenient meeting-place for some transactions in my trade and, as they say, Glebe is one of those places where if you can’t see a pub by looking both ways down the street then you must be standing outside one. The Falcon just squeezes into the back courtyard of the house which has two rooms up and three down. I cook, after a fashion, and listen to music on the bottom floor and sleep and read on the top.

I showered in the outhouse two feet away from the toilet and wolfed down a curried egg sandwich and several glasses of the wine. I put Nina Simone on the stereo partly for pleasure and partly to annoy my neighbour on the left. She sings the songs other people write better than they do, but for Dr Harry Soames, my neighbour, Dylan is king and Mitchell is queen so that Nina’s versions of their stuff drives him beserk. Soames is an economist and when he isn’t on sabbatical he spends his time under earphones or bitching about my not repairing the iron lace on the front of my house. Word is that he wants to buy me out to raise the tone of the street.