He must have thought I was being ironical. ‘You bastard, Jacobson,’ he said.

A warm glow instantly suffused my whole being. I felt as though a dozen little lights had been turned on inside me all at once. ‘You bastard, Jacobson’ – that was it, the very thing, the reason above all others I kept coming back. They were so damned complimentary, Australians. They made you feel you possessed such reserves of badness. ‘You bastard, Jacobson.’ Who else but an eastern states Australian was ever going to say that to me? Certainly no New Yorker ever would.

At the other end of the room I saw Ros looking anxious. She’d heard the word bastard and heard the word Jacobson and feared the worst. I threw her a mute signal that everything was all right, that I was getting what I always came for and could never get enough of: the ultimate male compliment, the asseveration of one’s dangerousness, bloke to bloke.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Anyway, who else is there to see in Brisbane?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Surprise me.’

He did surprise me too. Any number of people I hadn’t heard of for years – personalities, public figures, show folk, many I’d assumed had quietly passed away – were all the while living the good life in Brisbane, sitting on Germshield Disposable Seat Covers, and reading Pravda. But the most intriguing by far was the figure on whom Brando’s part in Apocalypse Now had been based. The Mr Kurtz of Vietnam.

‘What, here?’ I found it hard to believe. I don’t know why; I suppose it seemed a bit of a let-down. After the Horror! the Horror! – the cannibalism and all the rest of it – you expected somewhere rather more metaphysically testing than the Gold Coast. ‘Here in Brisbane?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘I’m not saying.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Why not? What do you think I’m going to do with it?’

He smiled and sat further forward, occupying even less seat. There was intense sardonic activity in his eyes. As if to imply, ‘I know you, Jacobson you bastard. I know what you’d do.’ Which was the very thing I wanted him to imply. There was absolutely nothing I would do with any information relating to Mr Kurtz. The last thing I’d have the courage for was a visit. I don’t interview men who’ve gone up the river. But I didn’t choose to let my old publisher mate know that. I wanted to hear him call me a bastard again – just one more time before I left.

‘Give me a little clue.’

He shook his head.

‘His initials.’

‘No. I’m not telling you.’

‘Just the suburb, then. St Lucia? Fortitude Valley?’

‘No. Absolutely no.’