Jules felt a pulse beating slowly and powerfully in her temple. If he explained too much about his connection to the Rhino, her own role in bringing them together might be exposed. Still, the detective seemed satisfied that Shah had admitted to being at the marina and knowing the victim. She had to admire her Nepalese friend for having the sense to play a straight bat. Her natural inclination when dealing with the authorities was to bury them in bullshit. But Palmer would undoubtedly have been making enquiries over the last couple of hours.

‘Do you believe there might be some connection between the attempted bombing at my house and the attack on Mr Ross today?’ Shah asked.

Palmer pressed his lips together as though forcing himself to remain quiet. ‘Investigations continue. But if you know of anything that might explain why two refugees should be targeted like this, I’m all ears.’

‘I object to the term “refugee”,’ Downing interjected. ‘Mr Shah is a respected and highly valued member of this community.’

‘We respect all the members of our community, Mr Downing,’ said Palmer. ‘Whether they’re black fellas who’ve been here for ten thousand years or reffos who blew in last week, we treat them all the same.’

Jules wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that. Was it sarcasm or sincerity? He had an excellent poker face.

‘My point exactly,’ countered the lawyer, choosing to bet on sarcasm. ‘Is there some reason you dragged my client and myself down here? I’m not sure why we couldn’t have had this conversation by telephone.’

‘Bringing people together, Mr Downing, that’s what I’m all about.’ Palmer leaned back again and crossed his legs. He looked like he might be settling in for the duration. ‘And what brought you and Mr Ross together, Mr Shah? Did you have some reason for visiting him at lunchtime, just before he was blown up? Or was it more of a pop-in visit – a friendly call? You know, just before the fucking bomb exploded.’

Julianne was doing her best to paraphrase the questions in note form, but she’d never learned shorthand and most of her note-taking at college consisted of jotting down phone numbers and the addresses of parties. Part of her, the last remnants of childhood’s trusting naïveté she supposed, wanted to be done with the façade and tell Palmer all about New York, the attack in Texas, the Romanian who tried to knife her in Sydney, about Cesky, and Acapulco, and how the two bomb blasts that had gone off in this city over the last week were probably tied in with them. But Shah, who knew all this, revealed nothing to the police officer. And Jules trusted him far more than she did Detective Palmer, in his beautiful hand-stitched suit. So she scratched out her notes, and kept her mouth shut.