‘They’re likely to tell me to go and do something rude to myself, unless it’s someone I know. D’you happen to know who Peter spoke to?’

She opened a notebook and I thought it was about time. I did the same. I poised a pen over a blank page‘.

‘Inspector Tobin,’ she said.

I drew a cross on the page. ‘One of the worst.’

‘One of the things I’ve been trying to do is match the mad letters to the issues Peter’s been most vocal on. I’ve also been singling out references to bombs and death.’

‘God, this must be heavy stuff. How long has January been getting poison pen letters?’

She laughed. ‘All his life probably. D’you know much about him?’

‘No, not much. Sydney law degree…’

‘Like me.’

‘Ah, you go back a way?’

‘I told you I thought it’d take a hundred no’s.’

‘Yeah. Well, he went to war when he probably didn’t have to…’

‘Like you.’

I realised two things then. One, that Trudi Bell was a very sharp woman who did her homework and remembered what she’d studied; two, that Peter January and I had more in common than I liked to admit. As Trudi told me more about him I felt the familiarity of it: working class background by a surf beach, public schools and an uneasy balance between sports and the books. We’d both studied law at university and then studied death-me in Malaya, January in Vietnam. But he’d gone on with the law and had risen meteorically while I’d…I tried to remember the term for it in one of the books Helen had left…plateaued, that was it, I’d plateaued early.

‘Are you listening?’ she said sharply.

‘Yeah, sure. Issues.’

‘He’s anti-nuclear, of course; anti-US bases…’

‘How’s he feel about smoking pot on the monorail?’

She grinned. ‘He’s against the monorail.’

The monorail was the big local issue-whether an above ground ‘people mover’ should run through the city to the Darling Harbour development. Most movers liked it, most people didn’t. I leaned forward and attempted my January imitation. “Trudi, Trudi, you’re avoiding the question.’