‘Well, even if it was them they don’t know it was me took the car.’

‘Of course they know it was you. They will have talked to Ernie. Where’s their car now?’

‘You don’t know they talked to Ernie.’

‘Where’s the car?’

He ate his toast. She could be right about Ernie. The truth of it sat like mustard on his tongue. He said, ‘I stashed it down at the river.’

‘Where you put the boat in sometimes?’

He nodded.

‘How’d you get back here, then?’

‘I walked.’

She sighed, and said, ‘You’re an idiot sometimes.’

This hurt him worse than his pained calves.

Then he said, ‘The drugs are in that car.’

‘Well, that means they’re going to want it!’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

‘So? We should go and get it and give it back.’

‘I’m not sure we should. Let’s just see how they react first. Make sure they’re leaving Caleb alone.’

‘These Melbourne guys came and thought nothing of beating up a policeman. They’d think nothing of . . . and me in the process? Don’t you care?’

‘Of course I bloody care.’

‘Then get the car.’

He sat there impassive. She glared at him, all the resentment in the world on her face. Him just taking it.

Soon, without another word, she stomped from the kitchen and slammed the front door. He put more bread in the toaster. Heard her car start and peel down the driveway. Once, she would have gone to her folks, but they were dead now, been gone two decades. She was probably going to Margie’s, the old bag, the gossip. Where she normally ran off to after a fight. He went to Snake Island, she went to her friend’s. They’d be talking about him the moment her foot left the car and met Margie’s pavement.

He was sitting on his chair out the back with a cup of tea, staring at the pelican’s grave, when he heard a car pull into the driveway. He creaked up, knees and calves and back aching, and walked through the house to the front door. As his hand went to the doorknob there came a pounding that rattled the wood.

‘Vernon Moore? You in there?’ a female voice shouted.

He took a moment.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s Sharon Wornkin. The police.’

‘I know who you bloody are,’ he said as he opened the door. She stood ready at the bottom of his doorstep. Hands on her hips, eyeing him carefully.

‘What do you want?’

‘I need to have a word,’ she said.

Vernon hated the way she was looking at him. Hated her ill-fitting uniform. It bulged at every button.

‘Have it then,’ Vernon said.

‘We need to take a drive.’

‘Why?’

‘We need to have a word.’

‘You arresting me?’

‘I suppose I am.’

Absurd, the way she was looking up at him with her hands on her hips. He breathed slowly out, looked at the clouds on the horizon.