I sat up straight in my chair and took a new look at Horrie Jacobs. An ex-miner with a weatherbeaten face. What did that mean? Nothing. He was a fisherman as well as a miner. What sort of a miner forms a friendship with a German pest controller? I brushed that one aside immediately. One of the few Australian historians I’d ever read was Manning Clark and his remark that ‘life was immense’ had always struck me as true. Friendships could be as various as anything else. Horrie Jacobs’ old, pale eyes bored steadily into me. ‘That’s the problem, Mr Hardy. My mate Oscar didn’t die in the earthquake. Someone killed him and put him down in all that busted up brick and mortar under the church. But no-one’ll listen to me.’

‘Let’s tackle it from the official angle first,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying this is the right angle. Just that it’s best to see how the system’s dealt with it.’

‘The system’s shoved it under the bloody carpet,’ Horrie muttered.

‘What did the inquest find?’

He opened the wallet again and took out another clipping. He looked at it and shook his head. ‘Death by misadventure. Want to see?’

‘Not now. Did you give evidence, Mr Jacobs?’

‘No. That’s the snag. I rushed off to see that May was all right. Some silly bugger ran into me and I finished up in hospital with cuts and concussion. I was out of it for a few days. When I came around I was worried about May more than myself. But she was okay. I’m not as young as I used to be and I’ve got plenty of money. They cotton-woolled me for a while. It was a week or more before I heard that Oscar had been killed in the quake. I tried to tell them that was bullshit, but they wouldn’t listen. Not even May believed me. They reckoned the car accident had scrambled my brains. Do I sound confused to you?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’