Peter Popescu would be good at interviews. Probably he’d conducted many of them, even hundreds, with victims and perpetrators, with high stakes. He might be better at interviews than Emily. Maybe he would be a prick about it. She saw, again, how the world could turn hostile all of a sudden: one moment she was looking at a beautiful beach—the spectacle of all those people there in the experience—and the next minute she might be asking for information from someone who hated her tone, her accent, her questions, someone who thought she’d come all this way to make a mess of things.

He had suggested they meet in a park behind Coogee Beach; since it was a weekend, he said, and a shame to be anywhere else. He would be wearing a green sort of fishing hat, and Emily, who’d arrived early, spotted him almost as soon as she turned her gaze away from the water. He sat sedately on a bench, a folded magazine in one hand (the New Yorker). There was a large black circle on the cover, like a portal to someplace. He stood up and then sat down when she did the same.

‘I’m a subscriber,’ Popescu explained. ‘I always bring a copy down to the beach with me. It’s not for show. I sit right here. So I reckon you’ve been reading about the Third of April?’

‘The coronial findings, the psychiatric report. Everything I could find from old newspapers. The major dailies, anyway. What I’m looking for today is your perspective. How you see things almost eight years later.’

‘My ex-boss won’t like it, but too bad—I work private sector now. He thinks ex-police should stay quiet, out of sight; I think we should have a voice.’

This comment made Emily wary. People who believed themselves silenced could cause a scene when given the chance to speak. ‘Tell me about Lucky’s restaurants,’ she suggested. ‘The last one in particular.’

‘There was a time when the Lucky’s restaurants were associated with migrant culture, mostly Greeks emigrating after the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. The occupation damaged that country. The civil war wrecked it again. I knew some cafe Greeks and they’d often talk about the famine during the occupation. Then they came out here to cook enormous meals for Australians. I think of the franchise as an offshoot of the Greek-Australian cafe, which were diner-style restaurants. Mostly gone now. By the time Henry came along with his gun in ’94, Lucky’s was reduced to one cafe. The country was more diverse, racially and ethnically. At the final restaurant a couple of the staff had Greek heritage. One of the chefs was Chinese-Aussie, another Tongan. We’re not talking about an exotic setting. It’s modern Australia. The food they served was Anglo-American stuff.’