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in Queensland called Everton. Someone went through my wallet and got word to Andrew Greer. He pulled strings with a relative, a Cabinet Minister in the Queensland government, to get me off a variety of charges without a conviction. My car had vanished. We flew home together. I’d been in the cells for six days, hadn’t had a drink, was over the worst. I stayed at home for weeks, going out only to buy food, and then I began slowly to resume some sort of normal life.
    Sitting in my office, elbows on the tailor’s table, thinking about Danny McKillop brought the darkness of those times back to me. I wasn’t over Isabel. I would never be over Isabel. She had made things complete, and they would never be complete again without her. I felt the pang of her absence every day, and at those moments I sometimes uttered an involuntary groan and shook my head like a dog.
    21

    Danny McKillop had been shot dead outside the pub where he was hoping I would come to meet him. I couldn’t just leave the matter there. I knew I should leave it there, but I couldn’t. At the worst time in his life, Danny had needed a sober lawyer. He had got me. Years later, he had turned to me again. And I didn’t show up. I must have got home around 6.45 p.m. Would I have gone to the Hero of Trafalgar if I’d listened to the messages on the answering machine instead of going to bed? Probably. I’d have cursed a lot, but I’d have got there by 7 p.m. Sydney Road was only minutes away at that time on a Saturday night.
    The phone rang. It was Drew.
    ‘Seen the Herald?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Daniel McKillop’s on page three.’
    I got the paper at the corner shop. A small item on page three said: Police have identified the man shot dead by police in the carpark of the Hero of Trafalgar hotel in Brunswick on Saturday night as Daniel Patrick McKillop, 34, of Northcote.
    Assistant commissioner Martin Doyle said the fatal shots were fired after Mr McKillop pointed a pistol at policemen who saw him behaving suspiciously in the hotel carpark shortly after 7 p.m.
    ‘A full inquiry into the circumstances of Mr McKillop’s death is in progress, but we have no reason to believe that the officers acted improperly, Assistant Commissioner Doyle said. ‘They feared for their safety.’
    Mr McKillop was released from prison several years ago after serving eight years for killing a woman in a hit-and-run accident.
    There wasn’t anything to do except see Danny’s widow.
    Sue McKillop was on the plump side, with short dark hair and an open face made to smile. Her eyes were red. She was wearing a green tracksuit.
    ‘You mind coming in the kitchen?’ she said. ‘I’m in the middle of Kirsty’s tea.’
    We went down the passage into a large, warm room that had a kitchen on one side and lounge chairs and a television on the other. The girl was in pyjamas with small roses on them in front of the television, watching a game show.
    22

    ‘Kirsty, this is Mr Irish. Say how do you do.’
    Kirsty said it.
    I sat at a pine kitchen table and watched Sue McKillop cut toast into squares and pile on scrambled eggs from a pan.
    She found a small fork in a drawer.
    ‘You can eat in front of the TV tonight, darling,’ she said, taking the plate over to the girl and kissing her quickly on the forehead.
    When she came back, she sat down opposite me. ‘My dad’s coming from Queensland tonight,’ she said. ‘He’s nearly eighty. I told him not to. We’ll be all right.’
    I said, ‘What about Danny’s family?’
    She smiled, a wan lip movement. ‘We’re it. He was brought up by his nanna. She died while he was inside. There’s just a cousin.’
    ‘Danny left a message for me to meet him at the Trafalgar on Saturday night,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get it until Sunday. Why did he want to see me?’
    She moistened her lips. ‘He was scared. They waited for him outside here on Thursday night, but he parked around the corner and when he was walking towards the house he saw