‘I don’t know where Michael is going. There’s nothing left for him in Bluebird.’

Gordon closes his eyes and tries to remember the last time he saw Frontal, at the cricket final, driven mad by paranoia. That unexpected development was only a foretaste of the bizarre business to come. Having left the cricket match threatening Gordon, and disappearing from view just before the fire broke out at The Lodge, Frontal was repeatedly questioned by police. When the police phoned Frontal to tell him they were forming a theory that Carl and Daniel had left the cricket match, gone to Bluebird and lit the fire, he presented himself at the Capri station and confessed to the arson attack.

Frontal’s confession set the city talking: a council deputy general manager, a second-generation stalwart of local government, set fire to one of the historic homes of his area because—why? Because he harboured a lifelong hatred for the family who lived there? Because it was an unsafe building, violating zoning regulations? Because they hadn’t paid their rates? It seemed bizarre, but people agreed that the Abottemeys had a vindictive side.

Sure enough, Frontal had fucked up again. When the police pieced together his movements on the afternoon of the fire, he could not evade his own alibi. He went from the cricket match to his council chambers, where he was caught on CCTV removing documents. Cameras on the streets of Capri showed him dumping a file in a skip outside the ferry wharf. There was no getting out of it. Cameras were everywhere. Frontal wasn’t the arsonist.

By the time the police released him without charge—though he was now being investigated for public nuisance—Frontal had sabotaged his career. His erratic behaviour, his false confession and the publicity it attracted rendered his position untenable. His mental health leave period was extended to a course of assessment and treatment, where he admitted to making his false confession as a means of protecting Daniel, who, he was convinced, had lit the fire while under the malign influence of Carl Chidgey. Frontal believed Carl was ‘hypnotising’ Daniel with the use of ‘mind-bending drugs’ to commit crimes. He claimed he had warned Gordon Grimes about this, but Gordon had ignored him.

Conveniently for council, the long-touted mega-maxi-merger, amalgamating the entire beaches region under one authority, was announced soon after Frontal was cleared of arson. The old roles of general and deputy general manager were vacated. He had been restructured out of his job.

‘I feel sorry for him,’ Gordon says.

‘He hated us and wanted to bring us down. He got what he deserved.’

‘Harsh.’

‘But fair.’

‘He was only trying to protect his boy.’

‘He made his own kid live a lie, all so that he could, what, be the big swinging dick in the cricket team and the surfboat crew? I can’t believe you feel sorry for him.’

‘Carl messed with his head.’