I will remember this night too. Connie lying beside the Saturn, slightly on her side, as though turning in her sleep. One cheek scuffed like a boy’s shoe, limbs brown, elbows sharply pointed. Car door open, cab light casting a yellow glow on her face. Cracked and buckled asphalt with cigarette butts in the grooves. Blue shift dress with some kind of sparkly material, sequins or metallic thread, I don’t know. Hip curved. Hair frizzed on the wet road.

And a hole in the head.

I stumbled back inside, gasping for air.

Did I have something to do with this? Is it connected?

The cops assemble us in the bar and announce that we are shut down for the foreseeable. Vic goes ape.

‘What the hell?’ he rants, going nose to nose with a detective, who’s got that look in her eyes that should tell Vic that there’s a shit-limit and he’s fast approaching it. ‘Shooting didn’t even happen on the premises. This is victimisation, fucking police brutality. Something.’

Vic never could see the line between saving face and talking stupid.

‘There’s a bakery on the other side of the lot. You pricks better shut that place down too or I’m suing somebody.’

‘I’m a cop, sir,’ says the detective, black, thirties, strong features like you’d get on a wood carving. ‘We don’t shut down bakeries.’

Vic almost has an aneurysm. ‘Fucking funny, lady. If I wanted to take shit from a bitch, I coulda stayed at home.’

The cop has a comeback for that too. ‘Yeah? Well maybe if you click the heels of those ruby slippers together, you could do us all a favour and magic yourself off to whatever dream world manufactures culture-raping assholes like yourself . . . sir.’

These are strong words, but Vic started in with the B word, so the cop is probably on safe ground complaints wise. I decide not to get on her bad side.

The blue puts up with five more minutes of Vic’s obstruction, then gets tired of making the effort and sends him up to the plaza for a night in the cells.

Brandi objects loudly until the door closes behind her boss, then she sparks a cigarette and says, ‘Thank heaven. That boy was about to feel the sting of my boot on his behind.’

I am surprised. Behind is a delicate word to be coming out of Brandi’s mouth.

So for two hours we sit around in the bar, waiting for a crime lab crew that has to come all the way from Hamilton in their paper suits. Then another ninety minutes while they scrutinise the area for trace. Good luck to them. That back lot has seen more pot deals and blow jobs than the Amsterdam red-light district. I bet they get semen samples going back to the nineteen fifties.