By 8 p.m. he was patrolling, south to Mount Bryan, north to Terowie, calling in at the pub in each town, taking a swing in and out of their side streets. Then a fast trip back to Tiverton: apparently a guy was swinging a machete around in the pub.

Machete, pub, New Year’s Eve—a recipe for disaster. But when Hirsch had parked nose-up to the wonky veranda post and hurried into the main bar, he found only cheery noise and heightened amusement.

‘All over, mate,’ Carl Bagshaw said.

‘Dealt with it,’ his brother said.

Hirsch glanced at the patrons: a couple of station jillaroos, a handful of farmers and farmhands, a driver for the lucerne seed business, the primary school headmaster, the town’s beautician. The publican was pouring beer. Behind him, on the other side of the U-shaped bar, was the lounge, the tables taken by a faintly more genteel crowd: mums, dads, kids and grandparents. Like a Saturday night, except with the electric charge that lingers after a bit of drama.

Kevin Henry was the least amused. No one had been hurt; hiring the Bagshaw twins for crowd control had paid off. But there had been an incident, hard on the heels of Brenda Flann’s parking trick. ‘Could’ve been nasty.’

He gestured at the sodden towel running the length of the bar. ‘Machete’ was stretching it: Hirsch recognised the weapon as a World War II bayonet, rust-pitted and blunt-looking. His grandfather had brought one back from Borneo in 1945.

‘What happened?’

One Bagshaw twin glanced at the other. ‘This bloke came in.’

‘Pissed as a fart.’

‘Trolleyed.’

‘Waving that around.’

‘Said, “Where is she?” We said, “Who?”’

‘He didn’t say. Wife? Girlfriend?’

‘Never seen him before.’

Hirsch cut in, lifting his voice above the noise: ‘Anyone recognise him?’

A lull, then a murmur of denials and headshakes.

‘Okay, did anyone see where he went?’

More headshaking, but one scrap of information: the maniac had driven away in an old Subaru wagon.

‘When I took the blade off him,’ Ivan said, ‘he just burst into tears and scarpered.’

‘Anyone other than you touch the bayonet?’

‘No, only me.’

Hirsch lifted it off the bar with a handkerchief around his fingers, placed it in the Toyota and returned to make the rounds of the patrons. Did you see what happened? Did you know him? Had you ever seen him before? Film him, by any chance?

One blurry photograph: a short, barrelly guy, about forty, shorts and a wifebeater singlet. None of the women knew him.

No damage, no bloodshed, but a lethal weapon had been brandished. Hirsch would have it tested for fingerprints, see if the guy was in the system.

The rest of his night was uneventful. Hirsch patrolled his domain, and, as far as he could tell, no crimes were committed, or regulations infringed. May that be a harbinger for the new year, he thought.

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