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Americans say. Lots of Yanks, lots of girls. It’s almost impossible to find an unoccupied doorway after closing time.’
    ‘Sex in a doorway doesn’t sound very edifying.’
    ‘You’re not a Puritan, are you? Or a moralist?’
    ‘No, of course not. I was thinking about comfort.’
    ‘I think you’d be pleasantly surprised at the amenity offered by a narrow doorway. And the thrill of discovery doubles the pleasure and doubles the fun.’
    ‘No wonder our blokes can’t stand Yanks.’
    ‘Let me tell you something about our boys, Will. Their uniform is ugly, they don’t know how to shave properly, they smell, and most of them have their teeth ripped out for free when they join up. Dentures are no match for a good, clean set of American teeth. Do you have your own teeth?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And my mother’s still got all hers, and she’s in her sixties.’
    ‘Ah, you must have had money.’
    He ran his tongue over his front teeth.
    ‘I’ve got all mine, too. No girl would believe I was a Yank if I had dentures. A few sweeps of the tongue and I’d be found out.’
    He seemed so pleased with this vulgarity that he laughed.
    ‘Now,’ he said. ‘To business. Are you able to do something for me this afternoon?’
    I nodded, and was filled with trepidation.
    ‘I want you to find out who my ex-wife is fucking.’
    I didn’t betray any emotion. I impassively took this direction in, but it did seem extraordinary, given his own priapic tendencies, that he should be concerned about the sexual gymnastics of a woman from whom he was now permanently disengaged. Knowing that discretion is a private inquiry agent’s most important characteristic, I forbore to ask him ‘Why?’, settling for the more professional and detached ‘Where?’ and ‘When?’. The address he gave me wasn’t a private house, but a bookshop in Little Collins Street, in the centre of town, called ‘Leonardo.’ He said that his ex-wife would be in the bookshop at 2.00 p.m. He didn’t tell me how he knew this.
    ‘Her name,’ he said, ‘is Anna Capshaw, formerly Clutterbuck, of course. She’ll be meeting a man there. I want you to find out where they go.’
    ‘But how will I know her?’
    ‘She’ll be the most beautiful woman in the shop. You’ll know her. You won’t be able to take your eyes off her. Are you up to this job?’
    ‘Of course,’ I said, thereby committing myself to a series of events that were to make my recent troubles in Maryborough look like a mild comedy of manners.

Chapter Four
    poor decisions

    HAVING UNPACKED MY MEAGRE WARDROBE of clothes — most of them with the dust of Maryborough still on them, and all of them smelling faintly of the kitchen of the George Hotel where we’d been staying — I stretched out on the bed and considered the last few crowded hours. Darlene’s kidnapping began to assume the strange dimensions of a dream.
    A madwoman rising out of the darkness and snatching a pregnant woman from the safety of her own house: this was bizarre. Even more bizarre was the notion that this madwoman had become so besotted with my brother that she had followed him all the way from Maryborough to Melbourne. What kind of woman was this? Knocking Darlene to the ground would be like felling a bullock. Sarah Goodenough would have to be of Amazonian proportions to overpower Darlene and drag her from the house. It occurred to me that Brian had not described her, and it was suddenly obvious that heft was of some importance.
    With a few hours to spare before my 2.00 p.m. stalk, I decided to return to Mother’s house. I wanted to ask Brian a few questions. He was on the front porch and he saw me coming across Princes Park. He hurried over and met me beneath a large Canary Island palm. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, he was unshaven, and his breath smelled of tea and fruitcake. He leaned in close to me and almost whispered, ‘The coppers think I had something to do with it.’
    ‘They think that