It hadn’t been my proudest hour. Mrs Selby hadn’t passed the sobriety and steadiness test but she wasn’t a complete ruin. There was a strength about her, eroded by the booze and other things, but still present. She might be capable of obliterating a child from her life, then again that act might have something to do with the drinking. But Richard looked like the candidate for that role — a hell of a good timer when he was up and a real bastard when he was down. Bettina had no time for mum and dad, that was clear — appeals to uncover the lost grandson would cut no ice with her for the best of reasons. Weighing it all up, as much as the aggressive traffic would let me, I concluded that I hadn’t learned a damn thing, hadn’t earned a cent of the money in my pocket. The way to start earning it was to find Henry Brain.

The traffic was heavy all the way back to the city and beyond. I picked up Bridge Road and slogged down through Glebe to Leichhardt which has some nice places and some not-so-nice. Logan’s address was somewhere in between, veering towards the non-nice. It was a big three-storey terrace with a deep, overgrown garden in front. The place was divided into flatettes and a roughly painted notice on the gate told me that Logan was upstairs front in flat three. The walls had been painted within the last five years, the floor had been cleaned within the last month and the stair carpet was anchored on most steps. I went up; the bright day died on the first landing and a boarding house gloom took over.