Peace, when it gathered itself, saw Brenda’s car stalled in a cloud of steam and dust halfway between the footpath and the nearest classroom. Small heads filled the windows. Birds resettled on the powerline, muffled talkback radio buzzed in a nearby house, a breeze filled the lungs of a supermarket bag and set it dancing. Then mundane reality as a semi-trailer load of hay rolled through the town, the driver craning to get a good look.

Hirsch extracted his arms and legs from Martin, brushed himself down. Glanced at Martin and said, ‘You okay?’

Gwynne used his please-take-note voice. ‘I think we can safely say it’s a good thing my reaction times are above average or you’d have been a goner.’

Hirsch breathed in and out. His thoughts leapfrogged to the ramifications: there was no way he could avoid a dinner invitation now.

‘I’ll just check on Brenda,’ he said.

Hirsch was surprised, and also relieved, to find that Brenda had been wearing her seatbelt.

‘Her injuries would have been a lot worse otherwise,’ the ambulance driver said, thirty minutes later. Broken nose, gashed forehead, whiplash, possible cracked ribs. Still unconscious.

‘And just as well you didn’t try to shift her,’ the other ambo said.

Hirsch said his thanks, waved them off, had a word with the primary school headmaster, retrieved Brenda’s shoulder bag from the footwell of the Falcon and crossed to the police station, where Martin was hovering. Didn’t the guy have anything at all to do?

As if replying to Hirsch’s inner grumbling, Martin said, in his managerial voice, ‘I think you’d better take my statement about both this and the pub incident while the details are still fresh.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Hirsch amiably.

He ushered Gwynne inside, ducked around the counter to his cramped bit of office space, tumbled Brenda’s bag into the bottom drawer of his desk, hunted out the relevant paperwork.

Martin watched, frowning, a man who required order and rarely found it. ‘Since we’re both involved in the most recent Brenda incident, let’s get that out of the way first.’

‘Good thinking,’ Hirsch said again.

Settling on a working ballpoint, Hirsch began to write, half-talking to himself: ‘Date, time, location. Who, what, where, when and why…’

Martin Gwynne, reading upside down, said, ‘It was more like two-twenty, not two-fifteen.’

‘Well spotted.’

‘Conditions calm,’ Gwynne said, ‘visibility clear despite a slight haze.’

‘Right.’

Martin gave Hirsch time to catch up, then dictated a first-person account: sequence of events, locations, distances. Possible witnesses. Three cars parked in the vicinity—one next door to the police station, two outside the shop. Their numberplates.

Hirsch blinked. He looked up. Martin was reading from a small spiral notebook.

‘You’re a thorough man, Martin.’

Gwynne nodded: it was his due. ‘Finally, owing to my quick reactions, a possible fatality or serious injury to Constable Hirschhausen was averted.’