I’d brought the letters from my house in Glebe to my Darlinghurst office to give myself something official-feeling to do there. The Bankcard account and the electricity bill had gone up on the notice board to wait until I had the money and the inclination to pay them, but the two other envelopes looked more interesting. They were long and made of heavy duty paper, the kind you slit open rather than rip apart with your fingers. Both carried Sydney GPO box numbers to which they should be sent if wrongly delivered, but they had got their man-Mr Clifford A. Hardy. I took a Swiss army knife out of a drawer in the desk and slitted.

The first letter was from the office of the Sheriff of New South Wales informing me that my number had come up. I was a citizen, a ratepayer, a voter and eligible for jury duty. Unless I was disqualified for some reason, I was obliged to fill out the attached form and hold myself ready to serve as a good man and true. I’d met the requirement for going on twenty-five years and had never been invited before. I felt rather pleased about it-responsible, mature, a serious person with a stake in the community.

The other letter was from a Detective Sergeant Lawrence Griffin of the commercial licensing division of the New South Wales police, requiring me to present myself in one week’s time before the Glebe local court sitting as a court of petty sessions, to show why my private enquiry agent’s licence should not be cancelled and why I “should not be disqualified either permanently or temporarily from holding a licence”. I’d been a private detective for a shorter time than I’d been a solid citizen, but long enough. I thought I was in good standing. I’d had my licence threatened by the odd cop before, but that was usually heat-of-the-moment stuff-when they were angry because of something I’d done or said. More often said. But never anything as heavy as this. How could a man fit to serve on a jury not be fit to hold a PIA licence? It was bureaucracy run mad.