She dug out a pair of stiletto shoes she hadn’t worn for years and found a tight, low-cut top that fitted the look. She didn’t own anything like the pencil skirts Santino favoured, so she had gone out and purchased one in her lunchbreak.

With the outfit on and the long straight blonde hair loose around her shoulders, Paula resembled one of those lookalike mannequins police set up on street corners to jog the memories of passers-by, to help an investigation. Dr Kaczmarek was now a mannequin of Kendra Bartlett and Brooke Lester. But she wasn’t trying to solve a crime. She was contemplating committing a crime in order to prevent one.

She took an Uber to a busy corner in Surry Hills, and from there she walked the four blocks to Protozoa. It was too chilly a night for a short skirt and pantyhose, and she’d forgotten how uncomfortable very high heels could be, pitching her pelvis forward, pushing too much weight onto the balls of her feet and chafing the skin into blisters within minutes. There was an additional degree of difficulty walking in the pencil skirt, which only allowed for small, restricted steps.

According to the information Rohan had given Anita, Protozoa was where John Santino had been hanging out since his acquittal. Because it was unconnected to his own businesses, the place afforded him some anonymity.

As Paula walked down the stairs from the street and into the basement bar, she reminded herself that this was only a reccy, or possibly a practice run for something she might eventually decide not to do at all. She could pull out of this trajectory at any moment.

Protozoa was a dark rabbit warren, with a few tables near the bar and booths tucked along the walls. Business appeared slow at ten-thirty on a Friday night. It was one of those places that had so little trade, you could only assume it was a front for illegal transactions. The dim lighting went some way to concealing the disgusting interior, but the fuggy smell—a soup of beer, cheap cola syrup in the mixed drinks and body odour—was hard to disguise. Every surface was slightly sticky and Paula’s shoes made a wet thock sound with every step she took on the tacky floor.

The music coming through the sound system was an incongruous playlist of old rock anthems, poppy dance tracks and sentimental ballads. It covered over the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of sparkling conversation happening in the place. Once Paula’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she noticed there were several patrons drinking alone, scrolling through their phones. Even the half-dozen people sitting in pairs were sucking on their drinks in morose silence or engaged in sporadic, awkward dialogue.