I wanted a drink like hell when I got home, but thought I could distract it off just a little while longer. So I did what I usually did back when I had a badge and a better reason to undertake an investigation: I took inventory.

At that moment, I didn't have much. I had a twenty-year-old ex-convict and youthful-offender named Kit who'd stolen nine thousand dollars from his brother. I had a girl named Maddie, a couple of years older than him, who stripped covertly and came from an angry louse of a father. And I had the fact that they had both made a big run-off—most probably together, if I had to take a fair guess of kids and their romantic ideas of what constitutes good crime.

But I wasn't a kid anymore; I was a useless old policeman with a suspension under me and an Internal Affairs-mandated therapy appointment looming over my head like a sword hanging on a piece of dental floss that would decide whether I'd go back on the job at all.

The day was bearing on with a white warmth spread over the stillness that passed for air. There was no liquor in the house, so I went to my bedroom and laid down.

I didn't sleep, but shut my eyes hard enough that it felt like I'd drift somewhere, at least. My throat was dry. My brain itched. Sooner or later I'd be out of the house again, at a bottle shop, at a pub that wasn't run by Wayne Markwell; somewhere anonymous, to become an anonymous person again.

Then the phone rang. I didn't know how late I'd dazed, but the light was golden.

It was Wayne. I spoke over him as I pulled myself into a waking state again. 'Wayne, listen, I'm sorry mate, but I can't keep going with this thing you wanted—'

'Max—Max, are you there?—Listen, you've got to get over here right now.'

His voice was breathless.

'Over there?' I said, rubbing my eyes and trying to clear my ears.

'To the pub. Kit, he...—Someone's dead.'

'Kit's dead?'

'No, he shot someone. Right here, in the pub. Get over here right now.'

I didn't want a drink anymore. I scrambled out of bed and into the car, down the motorway, any way I could get to Wayne Markwell's pub in Darlinghurst.

There were the twisting lights of police cruisers already stationed outside when I arrived, along with the wide-open bay of an ambulance close beside. Uniformed officers were moving inside like ants—from the back of the crowd spread by the front door, I couldn't see much of anything. Just an empty barroom and the glimpses of what could have been anyone's prone body on the floor.

There was no way I'd be getting inside, not without my badge, not while on a suspension. I hung back, until Wayne noticed me from inside and came quickly out of the door.

I moved him away from the attention of the officers inside, down the footpath.

'Listen,' I said as soon as I had the chance, 'there are cops in there. I can't be involved in this.'

'But...I have to tell you. I...They can't know about it.'

'If your brother killed someone, that's murder. There can't be any curtains in front of it. Tell them everything. Now.'

'They can know the unimportant stuff now. There was a shooting, that's all, I didn't see the face of the guy who did it, it was crowded in there, all that shit.'

I put my hand across my face; my head was starting a slow throb. I calmed myself as best I could.

But Wayne went on. 'Look, I have to tell you right now. If I tell you, maybe I'll tell the cops later. But Kit—he showed up today. About a half hour ago, he just walked through the door and wanted to see me.'

I looked Wayne in the eyes; they were as fragile as rice paper, and about to break. I said nothing.

So he went on. 'He was bloody scared, Max. He was shaking. He said he came back to me cause he didn't know what to do. I put him in the back room and tried to get him to talk, but he couldn't.'

'Did he have the money?'

'No, and he wouldn't tell me where it was, either. Or about where he'd been, or what he'd done, anything. I kept telling him I wouldn't call the cops, but he wouldn't snap out of it. That's when the guy showed up.'

'The dead man?'

Wayne nodded. 'I'd never seen him before, but somehow he knew about this place. He just came through the door and started yelling, "Markwell! Get out here, you bloody cunt! What've you done with her!" '

'He was yelling for your brother?'

'Yeah, I guess—I told Kit to stay in the back room and went out to the bar to handle him. He was a big guy, ranting and raving up and down the room, trying to look everywhere. I couldn't call the cops, cause Kit was still in the back and I didn't want to lose him. But then the guy started for the back room.

'I barely even know what happened—all of a sudden I turn and Kit's in the doorway. The guy stops. Kit brings out a gun I didn't know he had and...the guy's just on the ground. People are screaming, running—I manage to get to the back room, but Kit's gone again. The cops come five minutes later. As far as they know, the guy's just a fuckin' drunken loon; they think it was one of the patrons who shot him and ran.'

I blew a rough breath that grated from my throat like sandpaper. 'You can't impede this, Wayne,' I said. 'You have to tell them the truth.'

'Why? Far as I care, it was a customer that shot him. Why the fuck not? I'm not putting my brother on the chopping block any more than he already is. There's something else going on here, and the cops can't have it. Why don't you?'

I was about to go into all the reasons I couldn't when we turned and saw the body being wheeled out of the pub. From the footpath, as much as I didn't want to, I could see his lifeless face as clear as day, as still as plastic, before it was quickly covered with a fold of the sheet.

As much as I didn't want to recognise him, I could see suddenly that it was Frank, the manager of the Shooting Star.