I was intrigued and I had another idea about what to do with the package, which only goes to show how intelligent I am. I told Mrs Lamberte that I’d accept her case and charge her five hundred dollars as a retainer. She wrote out a cheque without blinking. I got her address and that of her husband and the name of the lawyer who was acting for her. That about concluded our business. I gave her a receipt, locked the package and her money in a drawer of my desk and offered to escort her to her car. She refused and I was relieved. Gave me a chance to finish my drink.

‘So, how did it go?’ Glen said.

We were sitting in a Thai restaurant in Glebe Point Road. I don’t care for Thai food much but Glen does and we went Italian the last time we ate out. I was thinking about the Lamberte bullets. ‘How did what go?’

‘The talk at the college, what d’you think?’

‘Oh, it was fun. I enjoyed it. Dan was happy.’

‘I thought you were going to be nervous.’

‘I was OK as soon as I got my first laugh.’

‘How soon was that?’

‘Right off.’

I told Glen how the lecture had gone while we waited for our food. She rubbed the arm she’d taken a bullet in the previous year. That was in Newcastle soon after we met. The wound was one of the reasons she’d swapped policing for teaching. Rubbing it had become a habit. Sometimes I rubbed it for her in bed, along with other parts. We enjoyed touching and talking, and what else is there, really? She spent part of her time at the academy and part in police stations and offices showing the trainees the ropes. She liked it and didn’t seem to miss the operational work. She kept very fit in a gym and drank more mineral water than wine. I drank more wine than mineral water but less than I used to, and the long weekend walks we took kept me reasonably springy.