The traffic is so bad that it takes me a ridiculous ten minutes to drive round the block as I search for a parking space, but it does give me a chance to get my head together. Earlier today, Callie Hadley proclaimed in court that she was Tobias Durbridge’s defence counsel. That decision is going to bite her on the arse and then keep chomping.

I resign myself to yet another circuit in the hunt for a parking space when luckily someone pulls out of a spot almost in front of the nightclub where I imagine Eva sits like a queen spider in her web filled with silk-wrapped victims. Dinner for days. Before me, some stationary driver in an SUV has their reversing lights on, waiting for the car that’s about to vacate the parking spot I’ve got my eye on. The moment the car pulls away from the kerb, I nip into the space before the SUV driver has a chance to reverse. They beep their horn. Ignoring it, I get out of my car.

‘Didn’t you see that I was waiting for that parking space?’ A beautiful Cross woman with locs and hooped earrings winds down her window to shout at me.

Ignoring her, I head towards the nightclub.

‘You! I’m talking to you. Didn’t you see that I wanted that space?’

I call back. ‘Like my mother repeatedly told me – I want doesn’t always get.’

‘Arse. Hole!’ the woman screams at me to a backdrop of other drivers beeping at her to move and stop blocking the road.

I’ve been called worse. Besides, if you snooze, you lose. The woman driver should have learned that life lesson by now.

Looking at the nightclub, I decide that a more discreet approach might serve me better. I could just try walking in the front door, but if I did that the chances of being carried out in a rubbish bag were fair to middling. I don’t fancy those odds. The alley at the side of the club it is then. It’s lined with industrial bins, filled to overflowing with black bags. The smell alone is enough to knock anyone of a weak disposition off their feet. As I approach the back door of Ava’s, I hear an unmistakable sound which pins my feet to the ground.

Pop! Pop!

Pause.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The sound is like hands being clapped with cupped palms. I’d know it anywhere. The pitch of the second set of pops was slightly lower than the first, indicating at least two different guns had been fired. Guns with suppressors to silence the blasts.