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don’t see any broken glass. What happened?’
    The desk man thumped his meaty fist down on the papers in front of him. ‘They’ve cleaned up the blood. One of our blokes flattened him,but good. The prick. You’ll find Detective Pascoe one floor up and along to the right. Room 6.’
    Down led to the interrogation rooms, up to better things. I knocked on a glass-panelled door and opened it when I heard someone say, ‘It isn’t locked.’
    The speaker was Pascoe—shirt-sleeved, bulging with a combination of fat and muscle, perched on a desk and abusing someone on the telephone. His assistant of the night before was head down and arse up at a desk, working his way through a stack of files. Pascoe waved me to a chair and with his free hand mimed the action of rolling a cigarette. I took out my tobacco, made two and handed him one. He dipped his head towards the light. He sucked hard on his first drag and the rollie was nearly half-consumed. I sat and waited for him to finish his call. The young plain-clothes man was expressionless but taking everything in.
    Pascoe banged the phone down. ‘So, the private dick. The tough guy who rolls his own and chucks things at hitmen. What can I do for you?’
    I shrugged. ‘I dunno. Just staying in touch. Thought you might have mug shots for me to look at, might want to talk about an identification parade.’
    â€˜Bullshit,’ Pascoe said.
    â€˜Menzies wants to know if his client’s a suspect.’
    â€˜That’s more like it. Yeah, why not? Tell him there’s a lot of self-made widows around. We catch a few of them. Not many. Our inquiries are proceeding. Anything else?’
    â€˜I was wondering about my camera. When can I get it back?’
    â€˜Got some more snooping to do, Hardy? Why don’t you earn an honest living? You look like a capable bloke. Evans speaks well of you.’
    â€˜I’m hoping for better things. The camera?’
    Pascoe turned to the younger man. ‘Why don’t you go out and get a cuppa tea, Ian?’
    Ian moved with alacrity. ‘D’you want something, Colin?’
    â€˜No, son. Just to be alone with my friend here.’
    The door closed. ‘I should’ve asked him to get cigarettes,’ Pascoe said.
    I started rolling.
    â€˜The way things work,’ Pascoe said, ‘is that I pass this over to Homicide. But I still have an interest. If I come up with anything and hand it on and if it’s useful in some way ...’
    I gave him a cigarette and lit him up.
    â€˜Thanks. And if it’s useful, I can still score points. You follow me?’
    I nodded and lit my own smoke.
    â€˜You’re in my bailiwick, Hardy. St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst. I can be useful to you or I can be a fuckin’ awful nuisance.’
    â€˜Sure,’ I said.
    â€˜So, have you got anything to tell me?’
    The plain fact was, I didn’t like his style and I trusted him even less. Ernie Glass would have called me a fool or something worse, but I stood up and squashed out my cigarette. ‘No. Nothing. How about my camera?’
    â€˜Piss off.’
    I went out quickly and took the stairs going down three at a time. I waved to the man on the desk and left the station. As I stepped ontothe footpath I collided with someone coming the other way. We both lost balance and apologised. It was Pascoe’s offsider. I said I was sorry again and moved away.
    â€˜Mr Hardy.’
    I turned back. He was extending his hand. I shook it.
    â€˜Ian Gallagher. I just wanted to say I thought you handled yourself pretty well the other night.’
    â€˜I don’t think your boss agrees with you.’
    â€˜Colin hasn’t got … ah, a lot of imagination. Now me, for example, I don’t think you came in just to ask about your camera.’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜I think you might have been looking for a little reciprocity, some give and take. That’s not