Jacob. Did anyone understand Jacob? Nothing about him made sense to Jericho, from the past or from the present. He’d asked Milton about him, but all he got was a story about a school trip to Sydney during their last year at Martyrs. They hadn’t liked it, being in a white city. The host boys were snide, the teachers assumed they didn’t know how to use a fork. The night before they left, four of them walked from their hostel to Kings Cross. The streets were wet and there was a sharp wind, their first experience of cold. In the Cross, with its bustle of people, girls leaning in doorways smoking cigarettes, derelict men drinking on the pavement, the boys walked to the end of the strip and back. They listened to the pulse of music that was spilling out into the street. They read the signs. A strip club. Naked white women, that’d be something to see. Milton and the others wanted to go back to the hostel. They were cold and the doorman had told them he closed up at midnight sharp; if they weren’t in by then, they’d be sleeping on the pavement. But Jacob went up to the man at the top of the stairs and held out the money he’d collected from the boys before they left the hostel. The man wouldn’t take his money. Wasn’t it good enough? Jacob asked. Money in black hands? And the man had laughed at him. Nothing wrong with the money, he said. Just not enough of it. Your first time in the city, eh? You won’t get a girl that cheap.

Milton had laughed, remembering Jacob walking back down the street in the rain. That wouldn’t happen again. Next time he’d be in a car and there’d be a driver, and when the car stopped at the top of the stairs, the white-trash bouncer would come over and open the door. ‘Sir,’ he’d say.

‘Did he go back?’ Jericho asked.

Milton didn’t know. ‘Doubt it. He’d have gone back to the Cross. He’d have had a driver. But not to that joint. Wherever he goes now, it’ll be where the rich men go. The politicians, the lawyers, the brokers.’

And there he is in his smart suit, talking to Bili’s barrister, shaking his hand, touching her on the shoulder. Jericho sees her bridle, a smile that’s not a smile, and Jacob sweeps off down the concrete ramp towards the carpark. As he passes the landowners and sees Jericho, he comes over, hand outstretched again. The landowners turn their backs.

‘So you’ve come back, eh?’ Jacob says. ‘Welcome. Let me take you to lunch sometime. I hear you’re looking for clues to the past.’ He smiles, hands Jericho his card. The driver opens the door of the car, and Jericho is left standing there like an idiot, not having said a word.

The landowners have retreated to the shade of the avenue of trees that leads to the court. They are muttering, their heads in close together. The uncle is writing something on a sheet of paper. A statement of thanks to the barrister. They want to read it to him. They want to prepare food and thank him. He shakes their hands one by one, explaining again that the case collapsed because the other side knew they were strong, fighters yet, and the land was theirs. He’d like to stay, he says, he has much respect for this place, this beautiful place, and you people. But if he stays, it costs more money. Enough tapa cloth hats, he says, and they laugh with him, though their eyes are disappointed.