‘Time to get up, Paul,’ Cardilini said and knocked on his son’s bedroom door. In the kitchen he put a cereal box on the table. ‘Breakfast is ready!’ he called, as he walked past the door again to his own bedroom.

*

Cardilini pulled into the car park of the East Perth Police department. At 8 a.m. the air was warming, he was warming. He decided he would spend the day at his desk. The double brick, deep windows and high ceilings of the detectives’ office provided protection from the day’s heat. He would redo the paperwork on his only case, a robbery. He knew one of the culprits, or thought he did, and he felt it was quite reasonable to believe the man guilty. Anyway, he would make out a new report. The suspect wouldn’t mind spending the day in a cell, hell, Cardilini wouldn’t mind spending the day in a cell; at least he’d be cool. He’d spend the day pushing the papers around on his desk and get to the pub early. He figured he could do it again tomorrow before Detective Inspector Bishop, his senior, would complain. Not that Bishop wanted him for anything else. Bishop knew Cardilini was ‘a waste of space’. Cardilini liked the idea of ‘a waste of space’. Yeah, he would get two days out of it.

He pushed through the front doors of the building and stepped into the cool. A 12-foot wide corridor of apple-green linoleum ran to a central grand staircase of dark jarrah. On either side of the staircase the linoleum continued into offices and to the rear of the building, the uniformed officers’ domain. Cardilini was a detective, a Detective Sergeant, so he hauled himself up the lino steps to the second floor and snuck past his boss’s open door.

‘Cardilini, is that you?’ Bishop called.

Bugger.

‘Cardilini, a teacher’s been shot and I immediately thought of you.’

Cardilini paused in the corridor, stepped back and looked into Detective Inspector Bishop’s office.

‘That’s nice of you,’ he said. ‘But I’m busy.’

‘It’s at St Nicholas College. You were looking for a new school for your boy, weren’t you?’

‘Very funny. That was six months ago, he’s now left school.’

‘Oh well, bad luck. I assigned you. They think it must be a stray bullet from someone shooting across the river.’

‘What?’ Cardilini asked, incredulous.

‘Roo-shooters.’

Cardilini shook his head heavily. ‘Bishop, that’ll be a needle in a haystack job.’

‘I know. So, you’ll be able to put it to bed real quick and get back to your desk.’

‘I see, it’s like that is it?’

‘No physical evidence came in. No bullet.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘They think someone souvenired it.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Yeah, I’m making it up. That’s what I do all day, I sit here and make stuff up.’

‘Always thought you did.’ Cardilini turned from his boss’s office, disappointed.

‘Oh, Cardilini, you might want to know that the superintendent and the deputy commissioner attended St Nicholas College.’