I pulled out the receipt the windscreen boys had left in the car. ‘Take a look at this. Your bloody student trashed my car yesterday. She followed me on a job. She’s making a bloody nuisance of herself and I have to put a stop to it.’

Dan handed the note over. It was a few scrawled lines asking him to post her essay to 74B St Marks Road, Randwick.

‘You did it? And she got it?’

‘Yep. What’re you going to do, Cliff?’

‘Convince her of the error of her ways. Thanks a lot, Dan. Sorry again about the lousy performance.’

He grunted, not happy.

The weather had improved and my mood had lifted. At least I had some line to follow other than trying to get an appointment with Dr Holmes. I knew from experience that that would be hard, and getting information from him even harder. It was warm in the car so I wound the windows down. The new window fitted fine and all seemed well with the windscreen. A few minute particles of glass glittered along the top of the dashboard. Inevitably, there would be other specks in the seats and on the floor but the specialists had done a good job. As I drove to Randwick the thought struck me that the well-heeled Ms Wilberforce might be persuaded to pay for the damage. I was feeling better by the minute.

The house was a three-storey sandstone mansion set in an elevated position on a big corner block. There was a high white wooden fence across the front and an even higher brick wall along the street side. The gate in the front fence had some sort of security lock. I wandered along the side to where the double garage stood open. A dusty, dark blue Land Rover was parked in one of the spaces, the other was empty. Through an open door at the back of the garage I could see into Number 74B’s yard-swimming pool enclosed in some kind of solarium, clippered lawn, flower beds, native trees. The area appeared to trap all the available sun and light.