It is notorious that not a week passes without the Natives hereabouts displaying, in their greedy desires and untutored propensities, a characteristic cunning and base ingratitude.

Hirsch drained his coffee, closed Mrs Keir’s journal and set out to walk the town.

The highway was empty; so was Kitchener Street. The barricade could come down today. The town was probably forgotten already. Too far from anywhere; nothing to see; the locals refusing to cooperate; some other atrocity awaiting.

He slipped past the barricade and walked up Nan’s street, past her slumbering neighbours. Stood at her gateway awhile, deciding not to go in.

A voice said, ‘The early bird…’

Craig Washburn was sitting on a veranda deckchair, difficult to see in the long, striping shadows of the rising sun. Hirsch took the greeting as an invitation and threaded through shrubs and over garden borders to join him. ‘All right?’

‘Me—or Nan?’

‘Both.’

‘She’s knocked for a six, mate.’

‘You?’

Washburn shrugged. ‘I’ll know I’m all right when I know it’s time I went home to the creek.’

They chatted for a while, but Hirsch had things to do before driving to his pre-Christmas lunch and briefing at the Redruth police station. By seven-thirty he was showered, shaved, freshly ironed into his uniform and chomping on his second breakfast—a chalky muesli, the only kind stocked in the shop across the road.

‘You do know there are other brands, Ed,’ he’d told the shopkeeper one day.

‘Uh huh. And this is the brand I stock,’ Tennant said.

At seven-thirty-five, hearing air brakes and the beep-beep-beep of a vehicle reversing just outside the police station, Hirsch remembered the Bagshaw twins. He flung down his spoon and raced through the building to the front yard. He was grateful to have his potholes filled, but he was betting the brothers were asphalt dumpers, not artists.

The moment he appeared, Carl Bagshaw said, ‘Some blokes sit around all morning.’

‘While the rest of us slog our guts out,’ his brother said.

They’d dropped a small, steaming pile of asphalt just inside the footpath gate and were walking shovelfuls to each pothole, filling, shaping, tamping down, melding the edges with the old, undamaged layer, their movements rhythmic, an effortless dance around each other on the narrow driveway. In five minutes, the potholes were patched over. No spillage, waste, lumps or rough edges. ‘You guys are artists,’ Hirsch said.

‘Just don’t drive that shitheap over it for a day or two,’ Ivan said, indicating Hirsch’s tired Nissan.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘It’s council tar, mate, and you’re a council employee—kind of. We’re always dumping leftovers at the end of the day, so don’t sweat it. A beer next time you’re in the pub.’

‘Your council rates at work,’ Carl said.