‘How’s Helen?’ January gave me the can of beer and sipped at a strongish-looking Scotch and soda. I was sitting at his desk with my back to the window-glare still bothered me a bit after an eye injury I’d sustained in the course of duty. January perched on the desk with his back to the glass door.

‘She’s okay,’ I said. I sipped the cold beer and seemed to taste the hollowness of the words. Helen was back with her husband and child in the bush for six months as per ‘the arrangement’. It was an arrangement that everyone, me, Helen, Michael her husband and her daughter were learning to hate, but no one had any better ideas.

‘Can’t see how you can let her go like that. If I had her…’

‘If you had her it’d get in the way of your ambition to screw every single woman on your electoral roll and half the married ones. Aren’t you worried about AIDS?’

‘Lowest rate in Australia on my patch. I’ve got the figures. Anyway, I’ve been too busy of late to do anything much in that line. And you’re wrong, I usually try to avoid shitting in the nest.’

‘Usually?’

‘Well, when you’re busy you haven’t got the time to scout around so you might work a little close to home sometimes. Did you see Trudi out there?’

‘I didn’t see anyone wearing the name proudly on a T-shirt.’

‘Dark woman, plump you might say…well, no soap so far. Anyway, I’ve got too much on my plate. But you, you’re not busy, so I hear.’

I crumpled the beer can and set it on the desk in front of me. ‘I’ve been busier, I admit. And I need distraction. I was thinking of enrolling in a course on neo-Marxist political economy.’

‘Crap,’ January said. No one had ever accused him of being doctrinaire. ‘I’ve got a real job for you. I get letters, I get threats…’

‘Shows you’re doing your job. You should attract 51 per cent love, 48 per cent hate and one per cent don’t know.’