‘She hasn’t confided in me, of course.’

‘Of course. Nor would you allow her to.’

‘Here’s the number.’ He offered a card.

I put it in my top pocket. ‘This enjoyable excursion,’ I said, ‘would it be billable?’

Drew looked at me, down his nose, shook his head. ‘I think the sawdust’s getting to you,’ he said. ‘The man’s worth millions.’

I tried the door handle, it resisted. ‘A little thing before we part. Any tips on where to go with this?’

Drew was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘I’m just a solicitor. As you once were.’

‘And still am,’ I said. ‘Keep your expectations low.’

I fought the door handle, useless. I shouldered the door, it gave. I fell into the wet bluestone gutter.

‘Great exit,’ said Drew, looking down at me. ‘You leave well.’

I rose and went into my office and made the call to Simone Bendsten, comber of the public record.

3

‘Nice car, Jack,’ said the man behind the counter at the corner shop. He’d seen me park outside, he didn’t miss much.

‘Very nice, George,’ I said, ‘but not mine.’

He nodded, a man who first opened his shop door in the mid-1950s when almost everyone in the suburb caught the tram to work and having a motorbike was a big deal. Now the place was gridlocked with Saabs and BMWs and what people paid for a worker’s house could have bought the whole block in 1950.

‘Where’s that girl?’ he said.

I thought about the long-ago day I’d come in with a Claire Irish shoulder-high to a medium-size brown dog and held up my daughter for inspection.

I’d said, ‘Claire, this is my friend George.’

‘Gorb,’ she’d said.

‘George,’ I said.

‘Gorb,’ she said, and gripped the finger held out to her by George.

Gorb he would always be.