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did and that it was a lie, except maybe if you were standing on the roof.
    I took this in from outside the front gate while I waited to be let in. The cyclone fence around the place was perhaps three metres high with no razor wire, but I’d have bet on there being some kind of laser beam security. That’s where the money was being spent. The entrance was a formidably electronic post and the guy inside the booth took his time looking at my credentials and communicatingwith what I’d come to think of as the Big House. It was a two-storey stucco affair, painted off-white and getting more that way. It had the look of a 1930s guesthouse that had been added to over the years. One of the additions was bars on some of the upstairs windows. A cyclone fence ran from both sides of the building to the wall. I could see figures moving around in the grounds behind it.
    The guard returned my bits and pieces and the gate swung open. He stopped me as I drove through. ‘Please keep all doors on the vehicle locked at all times and park in the marked spaces.’
    I cruised the hundred or so metres along the thin-surfaced driveway and parked on a patch of cracked bitumen flanked by plane trees. From long habit I reversed into the space. Anyone who has ever done process serving knows to make arrangements for a quick getaway. It wasn’t necessary here, but as I looked Rutherford House over from closer up it still seemed like a good idea. This was somewhere I’d want to get away from as quickly as possible.
    Wide double doors led into a tiled lobby, converted by partitions into a reception area and a waiting room. A rather narrow and darkish corridor ran off into the bowels of the building. A staircase was roped off at the first landing. A receptionist in a uniform resembling a nurse’s, but a bit more stylish, inspected my documents touching them as lightly as possible.
    â€˜Mr Harkness is being processed upstairs,’ she said. ‘Dr Whitfield will see you shortly in the waiting room.’
    I took my time getting there. There were certificates and diplomas on the walls testifying to the expertise of the medical staff and the official standing of the institution. The only homey touch was a black-and-white photograph showing the place as it was fifty years back—the date had been written in the bottom left-hand corner in white ink. The building had one less wing and the bush pushed in closer at the back and sides. It looked a lot more friendly then than it did now. No bars, no cyclone fence.
    After I’d sat for ten minutes or more in a less than comfortable chair a small, portly man in a white coat and dark trousers carrying a clipboard entered the waiting room. I shook his hand and, because he introduced himself as ‘Dr Whitfield’ and his white coat was buttoned all the way up I began to develop a dislike for him. His high, piping voice didn’t help.
    â€˜Have you had any experience in dealing with people with psychosis, Mr Hardy?’
    â€˜I’ve had dealings with junkies, drunks, would-be suicides and actual murderers. Would that help?’
    He looked at me sharply through his horn-rims and it was clear that the dislike was going to be mutual. ‘Not quite what I meant. I take it you have no psychological training?’
    â€˜I did Psych I at UNSW a long time ago. It was all statistics so I dropped out.’
    â€˜Statistics are very important, very. But perhaps not to the point now. Mr Harkness suffers from a number of mental illnesses—manic depression,mild bi-polar disorder among them—all severely exacerbated by alcoholism.’
    â€˜But now he’s cured, right?’
    He ignored the question and signed a document on his clipboard. He detached it along with an envelope. He enclosed the document in the envelope and sealed it. ‘Mr Harkness should present this to his therapist.’
    â€˜Who is?’
    Ignoring questions was one of his little tricks.