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shirt had a design like a test pattern and looked like Duncan had bought it at one of those menswear shops with a rack outside on the footpath. Any two shirts for $49.95 plus a free pair of pants. He was probably under the impression that he’d got a bargain. Not for the first time, I thought that maybe the Australian Labor Party should consider instituting a dress code.
    Close on Keogh’s heels came a man who didn’t need any fashion advice. His lightweight summer suit was so well tailored it made Keogh’s clothes look like he was wearing them for a bet. He could have been anywhere between his late forties and his early sixties, depending on the mileage, and he had the self-assured air of a man who didn’t muck around. What he didn’t muck around doing wasn’t immediately apparent, but he’d made a success of it, whatever it was. His tie was red silk and so was his pocket handkerchief. He was fit, well-lunched and towered over Keogh like a gentleman farmer walking a Jack Russell terrier on a short leash.
    He was laughing at something Keogh was saying, but only with his mouth. His eyes, up there where Duncan couldn’t see them, were saying dickhead. Whoever he was, I liked him. He looked like he’d be a handy man to have on a lifeboat. While the others were singing ‘Abide With Me’, he’d slip you his hip flask of Black Label. He and Dunc went into the lift, doing the doings.
    â€˜Who was that?’
    Trish, standing at the shredder, pretended she couldn’t hear me, giving nothing away until she knew whether I was in or I was out. Jerking her head in the direction of Agnelli’s door, she gave me leave to enter.
    The great panjandrum’s inner sanctum was as dark as a hibernating bear’s cave. The air conditioning was on high and the heavy drapes were drawn against the glare of the day and the wandering gaze of the clerical staff in the Ministry for Industry and Technology next door. Through the cool gloom I could just make out the shape of Agnelli himself, a ghostly presence in shirt sleeves etched against the cluster of framed awards and diplomas on the wall behind his desk. Seeing him there like that—surrounded by his Order of the Pan Pontian Brotherhood, his Honorary Master of Arts from the University of Valetta, the little model donkey cart presented with gratitude by the Reggio di Calabria Social Club—made my heart go out to him. Three years at the epicentre of political power and his office looked like a proctologist’s consulting rooms.
    His back was turned and he was reaching up to unhook one of the framed certificates. His University of Melbourne law degree. He studied it for a moment, then laid it carefully in an empty grocery carton sitting on his desk. Across the room I could read the box’s yellow lettering. Golden Circle Pineapple, it said. This Way Up.
    Shivering at the sudden drop in temperature, I stepped forward. Agnelli turned to face me. ‘You heard?’
    I nodded. ‘Water Supply and the Arts.’ I showed him my palms. Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.
    Angelo indicated I should sit at the conference table, then crossed to the drapes and tugged them half-open. Harsh daylight swept away the conspiratorial shade. He got a couple of cans of beer out of his bar fridge, kicked his shoes off and sat down opposite me. So, he seemed to be saying. Here we are. Two men who know what’s what. He slid me one of the cans—my poison chalice, I took it. And so it was, as it turned out. But not in the way I thought at the time.
    He shrugged. ‘I won’t say I’m not disappointed.’
    Power had improved Ange, the way a couple of drinks do to some people. It had smoothed down his more abrasive anxieties, made him more mellow, less in need of having constantly to assert himself. But his forties were well upon him, and he could no longer pass for a child wonder. His smooth black hair still