‘How did she die?’

‘Would you like a police car to pick you up, sir?’

‘Listen, Constable, I was in the army and I’ve been a private investigator for longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve been around death. How did she fucking die?’

Maybe Farrow was twenty-five. Her tone hardened. ‘Detective Colin Williams will meet you at the mortuary in half an hour. Thank you, Mr Hardy.’

It was just down the road. I didn’t know the morgue was in Glebe when I moved there. It’s an odd fact, but not many Sydney people know where it is-probably don’t want to know. I was there in fifteen minutes with grief and anger raging. I parked in a no-standing zone and walked across to where a man in a suit stood near the entrance to the building. He was youngish and fit-looking with a face arranged for compassion. Maybe. He put out his hand.

‘Mr Hardy?’

I ignored the hand. ‘You Williams?’

He was young but he’d been in the job long enough not to take any shit. The hand dropped and the body straightened. ‘DS Williams, yes.’

‘How was she killed?’

I was older, greyer, unshaven, dressed sloppily, driving a beat-up car, but he was bright or experienced enough to know an angry and potentially violent man when he saw one. And he wasn’t going to give any more ground than he had to. He turned away and took a step towards the entrance.

Almost over his shoulder he said, ‘She was murdered. Come with me, please.’

I followed him through the heavy street doors, past a desk where he flashed his credentials and down corridors with vinyl flooring and fluorescent lights. Lets go artificial when we’re dealing with the essential reality of death. I’d been here before and knew it wasn’t anything like on TV, where they slot the dead into freezers and people stand around in green scrubs and white hats waiting to perform autopsies and mutter into microphones in hushed, concerned tones. Sydney doesn’t have enough suspicious deaths to justify the dramatics.