Brenda Flann woke to find herself at home, on her sofa, with a thirst on. In some lizard corner of her brain the notion stirred that she should have been at the pub—had been there, in fact, so why was she back home? Looked out the window: there was her car. Meanwhile, a stronger notion was taking hold, that she still had plenty of drinking to do, so she searched for her keys. Couldn’t find them, but instinct took her to the kitchen drawer, repository of the world’s lost and spare crap, and she tottered out to the car with her spare key aimed vaguely at the ignition. Blinked to see the front banged up, the bumper caved in and the off-red bonnet corrugated with dents. She couldn’t recall any accident. One of the boys? What the hell, it was a shit car anyway.

She steered down the empty back roads to Tiverton and was about to turn onto the highway towards the pub, when a third instinct asserted itself—the need to right the wrongs done to her. For there, fifty metres away, was the police station and Martin Gwynne and that prick of a cop out the front, yacking away. Arseholes, both of them. The cop had busted her more times than she could count, and Martin Gwynne seemed to keep a permanent sneer on, just for her. There was a dim memory of something more, quite recently: Gwynne’s hands on her? Brenda was fuzzy on the detail but she was certain the bastard had taken liberties of some kind. She planted her foot and yanked on the wheel as she shot onto the highway. Oops, too wide. She yanked again, overcorrected, and found herself fishtailing towards Hirsch and Gwynne, screaming obscenities at them.

Anyway, that was how Hirsch later reconstructed the workings of Brenda Flann’s sozzled brain. Right now, Brenda was intent on his annihilation, her crazed face nose-up to the windscreen, the crumpled front end of the Falcon looming, motor howling, bald tyres smoking, radiator steaming.

Good sense evaporated in him. He gaped, motionless in a half-crouch, his heart knocking behind the paltry defence of his skinny ribs. He might have died.

Martin Gwynne reacted first and shot out his arm. He clamped his pale, spidery fingers on Hirsch’s forearm and tugged hard, meeting no resistance from Hirsch. Their feet tangled; both men toppled into the gap between their cars as Brenda blew past, sideswiping the roo bar mounted on Hirsch’s police 4WD. A percussive thump, the shriek of metal peeling open. The old Ford paused briefly, as if to shake off a hindrance, then ricocheted across the highway and through the primary school boundary fence, wires twanging.