“My garden. The only way to landscape it’d be with a jackhammer.”

So at least I sent her off smiling.

I took a fresh manila folder, wrote “Madden” on the outside, tore off the three sheets of notepad and put them inside. Begin as you mean to go on-neat and tidy. Then I leafed through the forty-five printed pages of the Act. As I read, the lines from the Paul Simon song came into my head-”There must be fifty ways to leave your lover”. There were nearly that number of ways to lose your licence, temporarily or permanently: to commit an indictable offence was a pretty good way, also to be cited adversely in evidence given in court; to employ as a sub-agent an unqualified person could get you in trouble and “unduly harassing any person” was pretty bad. A bit further down in section 17, subsection 1, I found it: “Every licensed private inquiry agent shall paint or affix and keep painted or affixed on his place of business in a conspicuous position a notice showing in legible characters his name and description as a licensed private inquiry agent.”

The damning evidence was right there on the desk in front of me-the card with the hole through it. I didn’t even have the pin. I was in total breach of 17(1). But how could they know? The card had been on my door when I came in an hour before, hadn’t it? Well, had it? I couldn’t be sure.

All good clean fun, but it wasn’t funny, really. The licence was my meal ticket. Without it, I couldn’t earn Ms Madden’s thousand bucks or anyone else’s. I had a mortgage to pay and a Ford Falcon to support. I had bills on the noticeboard at home and I needed about 2000 calories a day to keep going. I folded the letter and put it in the pocket of my sports jacket which hung on the back of the chair I sat on. No doubt about it, I was neat and tidy today. I could drop in on my mate, Detective Inspector Frank Parker, and get a look at the missing persons file on Brian Madden and talk over the Hardy licence lifting case at the same time. Maybe I’d meet a nice, friendly woman at police headquarters and bump into someone at the bottle shop who was looking for a clean, light room in Glebe-$80 a week, share the bills and feed the cat.