Pop was saying, Curtis wouldn’ta done it unless he had to. He’s a good boy, smart, thinks about things, gets good marks. Whereas that other one …

They’d said they knew about him, how he had a file a mile long. I’d said, Curtis has been my mate for years, never raised his voice, never got angry. And I’d told them how shocked I was. They’d seemed happy, and drank some of the wine Peter had given Pop, and said, Shouldn’t be much of a fuss. He was threatening his mum’s life.

‘I gave him a good whack,’ Curtis said. ‘I really felt it: muscle, but bone too. Like when you break a length of timber. Just my luck, he’ll get better and they’ll lock me away.’

‘That’s not what the cops were saying.’

‘Doesn’t matter what they said. Matters if someone’s dead, and who did it.’

‘Your parents’ll say—’

‘I don’t give a shit what they say … long as he’s dead.’

I wanted to ask who’d called the ambulance, because I guessed it wasn’t him. What they’d done, said, as they waited, because I guessed he didn’t attempt first-aid. How long it felt, sitting beside the body, the blood on the floor. What they said to the ambos when they arrived, and the first coppers. How long it’d been before Gary had come around. All of this interested me, but it could wait until we were sitting on his porch, and he was telling me his top ten.

The constable entered and said, ‘I gave yers longer.’

‘Ta,’ I replied. I said, ‘Try get back tomorrow.’

‘Na, leave it.’ But he was still watching the softball game.

‘Pop wants to come, and Mum.’

He half-smiled. ‘Tell them not to, eh? Not now, anyway.’

‘Right … keep cool. Coupla days, eh?’

But again, he was lost in the small figures, running.

The handwritten sign on the door said ‘Finished’. The freezer had gone, and the fridge, the table with its pile of Posts and ashtrays that had never been emptied. I could see the outlines on the floor; the indentations, the decades of dust. The till, too, had gone, but the menu remained: potato and pineapple fritters, fishcakes and flake. It would be there for years to come, a reminder of all the shit I’d ordered, the chips we’d shared around the television, the Cokes John had flogged, the mixed lollies me and Jen had climbed the back fence for. Years, until someone turned it into an adult book shop, with Don’s ghost floating between the fluoros.

‘He shut up,’ the man from the next shop (a home-brew place where Peter bought his oak chips and yeast) said.

‘When?’

‘Sunday. Fella arrived with a truck and they loaded everything. That was it. Without so much as a goodbye. Maybe he’s in trouble with the law?’