‘Wednesday night,’ he said, ‘was a wash-out. He went into Harpoon and had tea at the pub. You call it “dinnah.” The pub keeper’s a cobber of his. Bert Smith was in town and he says Questing was there all right. He gave Bert a lift home. Bert was half-shickered or he’d have been too windy to take it. He’s on the booze again after that show at the crossing. It was then Questing put it up to him he could stay on after we’d got the boot. Yes, Wednesday night’s out of it. But last night’s different. I suppose he got his tea in town, all right, but he went over to the Peak. About seven o’clock I biked down to the level crossing—and, by the way, that light’s working OK. I hid up in the scrub. Three hours later, along comes Mr Questing in his bus. Where he gets the juice is just nobody’s business. He steams off up the Peak road. I lit off to a possie I’d taped out beforehand. It’s a bit of a bluff that sticks out on the other side of the inlet. Opposite the Peak, sort of. At the end of a rocky spit. I had to wade the last bit. The Peak’s at the end of a long neck, you know. The seaward side’s all cliff, but you can climb up a fence line. But the near face is easy going. There’s still a trace of track the Maori people used when they buried their dead in the crater. About halfway up it twists and you could strike out from there to the seaward face. There’s a bit of a shelf above the cliff. You can’t see it from most places, but you can from where I was. I picked that was where he’d go. From my possie you look across the harbour to it, see? It was a pretty solid bike ride, but I reckoned I’d make it quicker than Questing’d climb the Peak track. He’s flabby. I had to crawl up the rock to get where I wanted. Wet to the middle, I was. Did I get cold! I’ll say. And soon after I’d got there she blew up wet from the sea. It was lovely.’

‘You don’t mean to say you bicycled to that headland beyond Harpoon? It must be seven miles.’