A smarter man would've gone home, slept, packed ice against the quick stitches burning on his scalp, but then again I was doing a lot of pretty stupid things then. I checked my car from the adjoining impound lot and drove straight to Darlinghurst.

I called Wayne Markwell on the way—woke him—and asked that he meet me outside his pub. I parked outside, went around the corner for a coffee, came back, and waited another half hour by my car before Wayne arrived with bed-messed hair and sleep in his eyes.

Before he could mumble a greeting, I stepped up and said, 'I need you to tell me everything about the robbery.'

'Well—I dunno what it is I could tell you...' he yawned.

'Everything,' I said. 'You said that the money was taken from your safe?'

He nodded. 'I keep it in the back office.'

'Show me.'

He looked at me strangely, then shook his head and unlocked his pub.

The place was bare and shadowed; he switched on the bar lights and led me across the floor. 'What kind of money do you keep in the safe?' I asked, as he opened the door to the back room.

'All the cash earnings,' he said. 'I bank it at the end of every week. Kit robbed it on a Wednesday, so there wasn't as much as there could've been.'

'Nine thousand, you said?'

He nodded. 'Near that. A good chunk to run away with, but not a real score to pull, or anything. Which is one of the reasons I knew it was him that did it and not anyone else. Impulsive.'

'What are some of the other reasons?'

He turned back to me and shook his head. 'What else do you want me to say? He disappeared right after the robbery. He was the only one who knew where I kept my safe code at home, which is gone. Of course it was him.'

I didn't disagree with him; just made a small hum. 'So he took the code and opened it that way?'

'Yeah...' he trailed. A distant look came over his face. He bit his lip and pursed his brows, and looked at me again. 'Well, there was one other thing I didn't tell you yet.'

'Which is?'

'It's weird—the safe code was missing from my house, but there are drill marks on the safe itself. Look.'

He stepped through the office and signaled me inside. I followed him, and he kneeled beneath his desk to show me the small safe dug into the floor. He was right: there were deep marks, holes, and scrapes along the rim of the face.

I examined it, then stood again. 'Why didn't you tell me this before?' I said. 'And why would he drill it if he had the access code?'

'I don't know...I always just figured Kit had done it after to make it look like it was someone else.'

'Did he break into the place?'

Wayne nodded. 'There was a broken pane in the back door. I've got it replaced, but he probably got in through there that night.'

'What about your security cameras?'

'He must've logged in and shut them off, or erased that night's recordings.'

'I just can't add it all up...' I was muttering to myself, wandering out of the office and back into the empty barroom. 'He's smart enough to break in, shut off the cameras and forge the method of entry into the safe, but not smart enough to replace the code at your house or know that it wouldn't be a big haul. He could've gotten more if he waited.'

Wayne followed me into the room. 'Maybe...there was something that scared him. And he had to run away with some cash all of a sudden.'

'Then why go through the charade of staging some kind of heist? If he knew you'd suspect him, why not just punch in the code, grab everything and run?'

'I dunno, Max. Maybe he wasn't thinking straight...maybe he wanted to spare me, or something, let me know...God, I dunno.'

His head was hanging limp, and he took a seat on one of his barstools. The inquisition had started to pain him. I could see the stress of his brother's ordeal hanging on him like a weight at his shoulders; a weight that seemed to increase every day, and with every bungle I'd make of the whole thing as yet.

I went and joined him, and leant at the bar. I was thinking, and eventually, said, 'What if he didn't rob it? I mean, you don't know that he did it—you're just making the most informed guess.'

'The only guess that makes any bloody sense,' he said. 'There was no break-in at my house. No one knew I had a safe code there. Only Kit. And it was gone the night of the robbery, along with him. If that's not the most informed guess, I don't fucking know what is.'

'Okay,' I said. 'But what if there was someone else?'

'What, and they were making bad miscommunications? He didn't tell the other one he had the code until after his mate bore into the safe with his drill?'

'Or,' I said, 'there were two robberies. Your brother was planning one, only to find someone had beaten him to it. Or something to that effect. How long was he in prison?'

'Two years all up,' Wayne said.

'Maybe he told someone in prison about what a mark your place would be, and someone followed through.'

Wayne took up that thought, then brushed it away quickly. 'But how does that connect with any of this other shit? That bloke Sumner wasn't in prison.'

'But Sumner knew Reed, and Reed knew Maddie, and Maddie knew Kit. And Kit knew you. It's all connected in one way or another. We just have to work out the connections—and there's still someone else who knows Sumner and Reed, so maybe there's one more laying around somewhere, waiting to be unearthed. Where was your brother put, Long Bay?'

Wayne nodded.

'That's good,' I said. 'I know someone out there.'

'You're gonna check the jail?'

'I can try. You said your brother wasn't the same person when he got out—maybe I can get some light into what happened to him in there.'