The implication of Farrell’s words hit me like a locomotive. As my head swivelled to watch him go, my mouth dropped wide open. It was a wonder nobody stuck a ping-pong ball in it.

Tarquin, meanwhile, was pummelling me with his inflatable cudgel and Red was thrusting forth an imploring palm. ‘Donkey Kong ate all our money,’ he explained. I peeled off fresh cash, recommended the Whip and allowed gravity to draw me down the slope to St Kilda pier. My mouth was now closed but my brain was spinning faster than a fairyfloss machine.

The water beneath the pier deepened from shimmering transparency to impenetrable jade. I walked its length, out past the Victorian pavilion where the concrete pilings ended and the rock groyne threw its protective arm around the yacht marina. Roller-bladers zipped past, mobile phones clutched to their ears. Old Greek men sat on Eskys, jigging for squid with long rods and barbed lures. ‘Penguin Viewing Cruises’, said a sign on the railing. ‘Japanese Spoken’.

Clever penguins, I thought. A damned sight more intelligent than me. When I arrived at Luna Park, I was merely terrorised. Now I was catatonic. And this time, it was all my own fault.

Donny said he got the pistol from a crim who didn’t need it. I now realised that he’d been finessing the point. By Donny’s lights, Darren Stuhl was born into a criminal class. The fact that he was also a thug only confirmed the definition. And Darren didn’t need the gun because he was dead. So did getting it mean taking it? If so, when had that happened? And how? And why?

Whatever the answers to those questions, there was one thing I did know for sure. Nothing could have been better calculated to inflame Bob Stuhl’s belief that Donny Maitland killed his son than what I had just done. Not only had I blithely brandished a missing item of evidence which linked Donny directly to Darren at the time of his death, I’d found exactly the right messenger to convey that connection to Darren’s vengeful father.

I began to pick my way across the rocks of the breakwater, the hollow of my head echoing with the rattle of rigging against the masts of the yachts in the marina. Gulls swooped and bickered. A cluster of English backpackers had stripped off their tops and were sunning themselves in the lee of the wind, their skin ghostly white against the blueblack of the granite boulders.

Bob Stuhl’s minions had given me a week. Would Donny last that long? If Big Bob was willing to use terror tactics at the investigation stage, how far would he go as Director of Private Prosecutions? What penalty would he feel entitled to exact?

My hands were in my jacket pockets. One was closed around the butt of the automatic. The other fingered the bullets. I knew better than to walk around with a loaded gun. Test-firing the automatic was one thing, I’d concluded as I tossed and turned through the night, but using it was another. The state I was in, lunging for it nervously every time a shadow crossed my windowpane, I was more likely to shoot Red than to fend off a posse of professional toughs.

My objective in showing the automatic to Farrell was deterrence. After that my plan was to throw it into the sea. Near the end of the breakwater, I found a sheltered spot between two large boulders. Squatting at the water’s edge, I marked a suitable place in the deep green of the marina channel and slipped the pistol from my pocket.

Donny had sworn that he hadn’t killed Darren Stuhl. But real doubts now hung over that assertion. Could he have been lying? A version of the events at the market that morning swam before me. Darren waving his gun in Donny’s face. Donny somehow getting the better of him. Donny taking Darren’s gun, then pulverising his body to escape detection. But why bother? Why not just plead self-defence? Unless, in the heat of the moment, Donny’s low opinion of the law’s claims to impartiality had got the better of him.

The breeze was cool at the water’s edge and I hunched deeper into my hiking jacket, the gun pressed between my palms. The wind pushed a row of triangular sails over the horizon, then pushed them back again. The wake of a passing speedboat slapped the rocks by my feet. Still I squatted there, thinking.

Donny had promised to see me right. But how did he propose to deliver on that assurance? Was it possible that I was putting myself and Red at risk on the basis of a misplaced trust? Donny Maitland was a good man yet he was unpredictable. I needed to talk to him again. Soon. I put the pistol back in my pocket and walked back along the breakwater to the pavilion. There was a payphone inside.

Heather answered the Maitland Transport number. ‘Donny’s gone to collect the truck,’ she said. ‘The police have finished with it at last. And he’s decided to give up this union nonsense, so we can finally get back to business.’

‘Can you let him know that I need to speak with him urgently?’

‘It’s not about the money, is it? We’ll have a problem paying it back. Donny wasted most of it on office equipment and there’s been a fire at his campaign headquarters, whatever he calls it. I don’t think he’d got around to insuring it yet.’

Insurance. Even when you take it out, you’re never entirely sure you’re covered. There’s always some risk you haven’t considered, some caveat you’ve failed to read.

I told her I’d square the money with the ministry but I still needed to see Donny. Then I got off the line before she could ask me if I was alone. The answer this time was yes. Very much alone.

I walked back up the hill to the rictus mouth of Luna Park. The boys had long exhausted their funding and were waiting with bored impatience. ‘You said two o’clock,’ whined Tarquin. ‘It’s already ten past three.’

‘I was thinking,’ I said. ‘You should try it.’

‘I’m hungry,’ Red remarked.

We went down the road to the Hebrew bakeries on Acland Street and I fed them to bursting with pastries. By the time we’d finished eating, the sun was losing its lustre and the pleasures of St Kilda were exhausted. We drove back to Fitzroy and I checked the messages on the machine.

Donny hadn’t called but Angelo Agnelli had. The preselection process was now a week old and it was time for our first clandestine conference at the Gardenview Mews motel. The agreed place, as Angelo’s message gnomically described it. Six o’clock.

Angelo’s shadow play was the least of my immediate priorities. Until Donny got in touch, though, I decided I might as well go through the motions. I chased the boys off to Tarquin’s place, swathed the gun in clingwrap and buried it in a shallow hole at the base of the lemon tree in the backyard. Then, so that I’d have something to report to Ange, I called Jack Butler and mooted a strategic alliance with Save Our Trains.

Old Jack had no illusions that he would survive the first round of the exhaustive ballot. On the second round, his handful of votes would be up for grabs. I offered him an inducement to swing them my way. He agreed to think about it.

I checked the day’s papers in case some new crisis had set a cat among Angelo’s pigeons. Nothing jumped out at me. But beyond all the end-of-an-era stories about the demise of the Soviet Union, the Age ran a piece about women candidates for ALP preselection. Lyndal Luscombe was quoted as urging Labor to honour its commitment to greater gender equity. The party, she warned, was at risk of appearing hypocritical. As if that wasn’t a danger with which we had long learned to live.

At 5.45, I trudged through the Exhibition Gardens to my assignation. A damp chill was rising from the lawns and the tail-lights of the Friday rush-hour traffic blazed red to the horizon.

The Gardenview Mews was on Rathdowne Street, across the road from the park, set inconspicuously into a row of terrace houses. The name was spelled out in foot-high brass letters above an entrance archway. Nothing indicated that a place of public accommodation lay within. From Angelo’s point of view the place had two great advantages. Not only was it unlikely that he’d be noticed as he came and went, but Parliament House was a scant ten-minute walk away. He could meet me at the Gardenview Mews and be back in his office before anybody noticed he was gone.

I walked through the arch and found myself in a motor court overlooked by a double tier of balconies. These were trimmed with cast-iron lacework, as was the ground-floor walkway that ran around three sides of the quadrangle. Cars were parked nose-in against the walkway, recent model sedans mostly. At the open door of one of the rooms, a young couple with the look of the landed gentry were unpacking a designer-togged toddler from an upscale station wagon. A paunchy man in a business suit, his tie loosened, came down the stairs from the upper levels and began filling an ice-bucket from a machine on the walkway. We all nodded at each other amiably.

The have-a-nice-day clerk in the office at the end of the walkway confirmed that a phone reservation had been made in my name, took an impress of my credit card and handed me a brass-tagged key to a room on the ground floor. I let myself in, admired the three-and-a-half-star rating and turned on the television. Agnelli’s arrival coincided with the sting for the six o’clock news.

‘You haven’t got much to report yet, I imagine,’ he announced, shedding his jacket and sprawling on the settee. ‘But no harm in touching base.’

I killed the set and gave him the rundown on my approach to the Save Our Trains candidate, making my phone conversation with Jack Butler sound like a round of shuttle diplomacy.

‘What’ll he settle for?’ asked Angelo, rooting about in the minibar. ‘Bottom line.’

‘Public support for the issue while wearing my hat as a former transport adviser, personal solidarity and a five hundred dollar contribution to his campaign expenses.’

‘And what’s Lyndal Luscombe offering?’

I shrugged. ‘Jack’s not giving much away.’

Ange settled on a pack of peanuts and reclined on the bed, munching. ‘She’s the main game. Get close to her. Offer her a preference swap, then renege in the final round. If she wants to play with the big boys, she’d better learn how the game works. Your pay-out cheque’s in the mail, by the way.’

Angelo then spent twenty minutes giving me the benefit of his opinion on the key ethnic powerbrokers in the electorate. Venal idiots, one and all, he concluded. My mind, however, was elsewhere. ‘Any further aggravation from the Haulers?’ I asked. ‘Our decoy duck has gone under, I’m afraid.’

‘Good.’ Angelo dismissed the issue by lobbing the empty peanut package into the wastebasket. ‘Save you having to close him down. The Haulers are back on the reservation for now. They’ve agreed to suspend hostilities in the interest of the party’s overall electoral prospects.’

‘Our man will be glad to know his failure has not been in vain then,’ I said.

Angelo had moved on. He picked up the phone, dismissing me with an airy wave. ‘I’ll drop the key off on my way out,’ he said, ‘after I’ve made a few calls.’

‘Long as they’re not international,’ I said. ‘And leave the minibar alone.’ He was already dialling, a million miles away.

As I crossed back through the Exhibition Gardens, avoiding the deep shadows, sticking to well-lit paths, it occurred to me that the Gardenview Mews would make a useful bolthole if I got the heebie-jeebies at home later that night. The room was paid for, after all.

A soot-smudged white Commodore was parked in the street outside my house. Donny climbed out as I approached and eyed me anxiously. ‘You rang,’ he said. The statement contained an obvious question.

I shook my head. ‘They haven’t been back. But I need to talk to you.’

‘Good idea,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve got a proposal for you.’