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Dave made only one phone call.

‘Brigadier, it's Dave. Um, Ken, Angus MacFergus.'

‘Ah, yes.'

‘I couldn't get Inspector Colley.'

‘No. Bit of a demotion there.' Van Shooten's voice dripped with prideful satisfaction.

‘Or Bruce.'

‘Has decided to stay in Britain. Love apparently.'

‘Is grand, I hear.'

‘Malcolm is back in Australia. I have his number. Soon to be Senior Sergeant, I believe. Where are you?'

‘Um, well, if you recall things were very free flowing and I had to run. To save my own life.'

‘Yes. Rather a debacle from the Scottish end. But your tip concerning the Australian woman proved partly correct. An insurance investigator.'

‘Fancy that. Not the criminal mastermind at all?'

‘Nothing to do with the Pink Panther jewel thieves, but she blew the entire operation.'

‘She's very beautiful.'

‘Well, yes. That is rather beside the point isn't it?'

‘You didn't say that, Dave.'

‘I did. I've said it to many people, each time I tried to explain you.'

‘Hmm. Okay, but what did you say after that?'

Dave said to the phone, ‘So, Brigadier, am I in the clear?'

‘The gems have been returned. A storm in a teacup, as the English say. Don't come back to the Netherlands, Mr Kelly.'

Click.

Dave watched cricket, a game designed to be watched by someone hiding in a garage for many days. Australia weren't any good anymore, but it was much more fun now that they were no longer invincible. Although Dave did miss Warnie. He emptied Terry's old beer fridge. He fixed Judy's old vacuum cleaner and tidied up Terry's tool wall and repaired a number of very large plastic water-shooting mega-pistols for Terry's kids.

Finally, Terry brought a briefcase full of Australian dollars. Dave counted out eight thousand and pushed it across the workbench at Terry.

‘What's this?'

‘Consultancy fee, mate. Um, and for the beer. Look, hasn't even made a dent in the pile. Hey, I can buy back my half of the office furniture.'

‘I thought you knew. That job's not there anymore.'

‘Oh. Well, never liked it anyway.' Before Terry could say no to the money, not that he necessarily would have, given the considerable grief Dave had given him over the years, Dave walked out of the garage and down the drive to look for a taxi.

Daryl and Tiny were in the outer office playing games on their iPhones when Dave walked in.

‘You,' said Daryl, jumping up.

‘Whoa boys. I'm cashed up. Mungo!'

Tiny patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good on yer, Dave.'

Mungo looked angry until Dave opened the briefcase. He looked even less angry as Dave counted out twenty thousand dollars. ‘Here's the vig,' he said.

Dave counted out more, watching Mungo watch the pile. ‘I'm stopping at thirty thousand,' said Dave.

Mungo nodded. ‘Your line of credit is back open, Dave.'

‘We'll see, Mungo. It seems I've lost the passion.'

Dave went around to his ex-wife's house and met Kevin, her jockey husband, out on the median strip. Sally and a variety of court orders forbade Dave to come within thirty metres of the house.

‘When your horse comes in, Dave, it comes in,' he said in his thin jockey voice, watching Dave count out fifty thousand dollars.

‘These are all the back payments and a few future ones, Kev.'

‘I can see that, Dave.'

‘I'd like to start seeing the kids, Kevin.'

Kevin studied Dave before he nodded a promise. ‘I'll talk to her.'

Dave closed the briefcase.

And carried it into the Cash Converters.

Trish Fong left a couple eyeing diamond rings and came to him. ‘Dave, where have you been? I've missed you.'

‘All over the world, Trish.'

‘Yeah, right. You haven't been in jail have you?'

‘I have.'

‘Ha, yeah right. Please tell me you haven't got more diamonds in that briefcase.'

‘I'm not selling, Trish. I'm buying. How much for all my stuff back?'

Dave shouted goodbye for the tenth time to Trish's favourite removalists as they both headed off with an extra beer each.

He turned and looked at his flat, full of stuff, electronic, electrical, white and furnishing. He'd even picked up a new flat screen and a lava lamp and a neon light that could flash:
OPEN.

He opened his fridge and surveyed the food and beer he owned. He took a Heineken and upended the briefcase. It was empty. He went through his pockets and counted out sixty-four dollars and silver.

There was a knock on the door. Dave took a knee-jerk reaction step towards the bedroom window before relaxing. He laughed. ‘I don't owe anyone anything.'

‘It was me.'

‘Yes.'

Margaret stood outside the door. She seemed as surprised as Dave felt.

‘So, you really do work for Telstra.'

‘Ah, not anymore apparently.'

‘Aren't you going to ask me in?'

‘Sure Julie, Margaret, Cheryl.' Dave stepped back.

She came in. ‘Thankyou Angus, Ken, Dave.'

‘I've got beer,' he said.

She went into the kitchen, straight to the fridge and got herself a Stella. She said something in excited Spanish as she opened the beer. Then, in English, ‘You put me in a spot in Amsterdam.'

‘I can explain that.'

‘I look forward to it.'

‘I needed a little time.'

She shrugged and took the best chair in the room, rocking back so her skirt rose up rather nicely to her knees. ‘The clients got most of their diamonds back. That was the job.'

‘Everyone is happy. How did you find me?'

‘I actually wasn't looking for you. Well, not international amazing super spy, you. I have another case. It appears that one of our clients
lost a diamond bracelet. Last seen near a cheeky Telstra worker. He was in her apartment, placing bets and proposing rough sex.'

‘Oh. I'm sure he wasn't proposing it be rough. He's very gentle.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Actually, there's a bit of a story about that.'

‘I'm so looking forward to hearing it. And getting the bracelet back.'

‘You see, Dave was in the middle of nowhere, only it wasn't nowhere. It was the outback. Dave Kelly was in the outback because of the lady. Your lady.'

‘Are you going to tell me this story talking about yourself in the third person?'

‘Yes. It seems more objective that way. Don't you think?'

Julie sipped her beer.

Hoping to survive another night, Dave told the story, from somewhere in the middle.

The roulette wheel is spinning. The ball rolls fast against the wheel.

Amis watches Teddy.

Teddy watches the ball. Teddy sweats. His ruddy face glistens. He looks down at his large pile of chips, all on black. Teddy licks his lips. Not anticipation. Amis knows. It is fear. Everything is on black. Everything he doesn't own. And the ball keeps running round the edge of the large wheel making that endless pillatiky rolling sound. Teddy closes his eyes. Bows his head.

Amis coughs to disguise his laugh. Teddy is praying. Amis looks at the ball. It's starting to slow, tired, ready to drop. Amis hears a whimper. Across the room. Amidst all those people. Teddy is begging the ball.

Pop, the ball drops. Clicketty click, it hops and jumps and stops dead. Red. Teddy stares at the ball. Standing in a time-stopped blank buzz as the chips are raked and the winning bets are paid.

Amis is tempted ... Amis is always tempted ... to pass behind Teddy and to say, ‘Bad luck' and be gone before Teddy can turn. But he might see him. Might recognise. It's too soon for that.

Teddy gets into his BMW in the underground car park. The BMW is leased. About to be repossessed. On the back seat are bits and pieces from Teddy's office. A framed business certificate. Boxes of papers. A calculator. A briefcase. A stack of business papers on the front passenger seat has spilt to the floor. Amis's favourite object, of the flotsam of Teddy's washed up life, is a plastic Charlie Brown toy with
Best Boss
on the little plaque.

A passing brakelight makes things glow red. Teddy rests his forehead on the steering wheel. He's crying.

It occurs to him to show himself now. ‘Happening by. Are you okay?' He steps out from the concrete pillar.

Teddy turns. Grabs something from beside him. A gun barrel. Amis stops. Should he dive? But Teddy puts the barrel under his own chin. Boom. The roof of the BMW erupts with a spray of goop. The car fills with red mist. A car alarm starts wailing. Teddy's brain matter drips down from the low concrete roof.

Amis grinds his teeth, tasting the metal of an old filling. Where did the gun come from?

Daniel woke, a hand clamped over his mouth.

‘Don't move,' said Helen.

The clock radio showed 5.28.

‘Don't move,' said Helen again. ‘Until I tell you. Then move a lot.'

She took her hand away and Daniel turned. She looked stern. She ordered, ‘Take off your pants.'

Daniel was about to say, ‘What's gotten into you,' but Helen said, ‘If you talk – you'll die.'

Daniel took off his boxers. The radio came on with the 5.30 news.

‘If you touch that clock, I'll kill you.'

He kissed her. She was naked already. She pushed him onto his back. She grabbed him in the way that made him instantly hard. She climbed onto him, around him. She was already wet. He reached up and gently squeezed her nipples. She purred. She moved. He moved.

She lay in bed watching him as he came out of the walk-in robe and took his watch from the bedside table. She smiled, still getting a thrill out of seeing him in a suit. Very dashing. Very successful.

He saw her watching and came around the bed and bent to kiss her. A quick peck.

‘Love 'em and leave me, huh?' she said.

He grinned, still smug from getting lucky. ‘I'm that kind of man. And late!' He pointed an accusing finger, but didn't mean it. Much. ‘Although the wake-up call did have a lot going for it.'

He headed downstairs.

Helen called, ‘Don't forget the wedding rehearsal!'

No reply. He would forget. She'd phone him later. She lay in the warm musky smell of their lovemaking, allowing herself to inventory the parts of her body that were still warm, still tingling. Another news started on the radio. Six-thirty. Time to get the kids up. Christmas soon! ‘My god,' she said to the ceiling.

Bradley was standing by his car looking at the river when Daniel drove up in his ute.

A Hearth & Home truck was already by the fence. It was a good time for the river and a good time to look at the outside of the hotel, the sun catching it low, making a feature of the upstairs verandas.

‘Mr Bradley,' called Daniel. He noticed the bank man didn't have his tie on and he pulled at his own, rolling it and shoving it into his shirt pocket. ‘You should see the river from the second floor. Beautiful.'

‘Mr Longo.'

They shook hands.

‘Come on in. Looks like some of the lads from the workshop are here.'

Daniel led him through the gate in the building site fence and up towards the old hotel. The yard was strewn with piles of bricks and stacks of white-ant-chewed wood.

‘We've redone all the foundations. Re-concreted under and new limestone.'

Bradley took care where he put his shiny shoes.

‘Built in 1897, it was offered to the governor of the time. He declined the gift. Now there's a story. Anyway it became a hotel in the 1920s. And it was used as the
Australia II
training camp in the '80s.'

‘Yes, yes. And your father acquired it after that and began to restore it.'

‘Yes,' said Daniel, losing his smile. He led Bradley into the huge room at the front which had once been the main bar.

A new rosette quivered in the air as it was winched up towards the centre of the ceiling five metres above.

Daniel yelled to the ceiling. ‘How ya going you blokes? Heavy enough?'

‘Gidday boss,' came a strained voice. It was Hua, one of the more experienced men from the factory.

Daniel said, more quietly, ‘That's a Hearth & Home reproduction. Special cast for this one.'

Bradley looked to the dusty windows overlooking the river. The walls had plaster missing in great chunks.

Daniel said, ‘We've sorted the structural problems. Now it's onto the more obvious signs of the restoration. The sexy stuff.' Daniel went over to where a long dropsheet hung on a wall and lifted it to expose an ornate jarrah fireplace surround. He stroked the wood, watching Bradley in one of the inset mirrors.

Bradley looked up at the rosette warily as it gave another big hop and clunked to the ceiling.

‘They'll bolt it in now. Also tie it off. We've replastered all the ceilings. Do the walls before we get onto the floorboards.'

Bradley looked at Daniel like he had dust in his eye. He folded his arms. ‘You realise, Mr Longo, the bank doesn't buy real estate. Well, not individual lots.'

‘I'm not selling it.'

Nadif, one of the apprentices, came through an upstairs door and hurried down the stairs. He saw Daniel and blurted, ‘I forgot the bolt.'

‘Well, hurry mate,' called Daniel.

Bradley said, ‘Ahh, while I am the Loans Officer, we use valuers – professionals – to ascertain collateral. It's really nothing to do with me.'

Daniel said, ‘I don't want another loan, Mr Bradley. I am not my father.' Daniel closed the distance between them. ‘I wanted you to see.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Nadif!' called Hua from in the ceiling.

Daniel repeated the call. ‘Nadif! Hua wants you.' He said to Bradley, ‘I don't want it to just be a file number.' Daniel opened his arms to the fireplace, windows, soon to be replastered walls. ‘I want you to see what we're building here. Get a feel for it. See what it is going to be.'

‘Watch out,' called Hua, agonised.

Bradley looked up.

Daniel too. It was coming at him, the whine of wire playing out getting faster. Daniel dived, his arms out in front of him. There was a crash of splintering wood and shattering plaster.

He heard Hua yell, ‘Is everyone all right?'

He heard Nadif say, ‘Oh fuck,' with no trace of Somalian accent at all.

Rosemarie's mother attacked the keys of the organ with concentrated anger. Helen thought it sounded most like ‘Candle in the Wind'.

Russell, a kind of trendy young minister in jeans and a t-shirt, stood up the front with Brian and Rosemarie. He read quickly. ‘For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health.'

Frances squirmed on Helen's lap in a front pew, her eyes fixed on the full-sized nativity scene that had been created near the pulpit. Helen had promised she could touch the baby Jesus when the grownups had finished practising.

Russell said, ‘To love, cherish and obey, until death us do part.'

Rosemarie nudged Brian and Brian said, ‘Ah, Russell?'

He looked at the couple with a dopey smile.

Rosemarie said, ‘That's the wrong one, Russell.'

‘Oh, yes. Quite right, Rosemarie. The new one.'

‘Yeah,' said Brian. ‘No obeying apparently.' He looked around at Helen, raising his eyebrows. Rosemarie elbowed him again.

Russell seemed flustered. ‘Well, looks like I need these rehearsals as much as anyone. Let me see. To love and to cherish, until death us do part. According to God's holy law.'

They were a good couple. Brian, Daniel's business partner, had been going out with Rosemarie since high school. They fitted. Like Brian and Daniel. Good team. Helen checked up the aisle. Rosemarie's father sat in a pew. Her girlfriends milled. But no best man. His mobile was switched off.

Rosemarie's mother finally found a particularly cruel combination of false notes and slammed her hands down on the keyboards in defeat. ‘You'll have to get someone else. I can't do it.' She was near tears.

Rosemarie went over to reassure her, her father joining the pep talk.

‘Now?' said Frances, very patient for a four year old.

‘Yes. But don't pull anything off.'

Brian came over.

‘Sorry Brian.'

‘You don't have to be sorry, Helen. Say the word and I'll call the whole thing off for you. There's still time.'

Brian always pretended to flirt with Helen, but she sometimes wondered about the pretend.

‘I don't know why he missed the rehearsal. He's usually so...'

‘Reliable? Yeah, well he had a meeting at the old ruin this morning.'

‘Perhaps if you held your wedding there or at the factory ... you might be able to get him.'

Brian gave her a raised eyebrow and Helen felt embarrassed, the nagging wife.

He smiled. ‘If you want, I'll send him home early. Tell him he can't play with me today.'

‘He'd just sulk. And Hearth & Home and maybe half of Europe would come crashing to a halt.'

‘That's not a joke.' Brian looked towards the organ, where everyone including the minister now consoled the distraught organist. ‘Maybe she can do “Jingle Bells”.' He headed over.

Helen looked to Frances. She was standing before the stable scene, bending to look at the baby in the manger, nearly but not quite touching. They needed to be off, to get something for dinner and pick Samuel up from school.

Daniel turned the ute into his street, driving one-handed. The Christmas light decoration thing was definitely getting competitive. The twenty-house cul-de-sac was starting to look like Las Vegas. The old guy at the top had his whole house festooned in pinks and greens with a neon Santa coming out of his false chimney. It animated up and out, only to disappear and repeat the process. It was the only chimney in the street of air-conditioned double-storey brick and tiles.

Daniel turned into his driveway and coasted towards the garage. His house was modern too. As Brian admonished, it was not a good advertisement for Hearth & Home Restorations, rather advertising the ‘bulldoze and concrete pour'. But Helen wanted ‘things that just worked' and they'd signed the mortgage when Frances was crawling, and watched interest rates climb steadily and house prices fall.

Daniel felt his shoulder again. They'd eventually strapped his arm at the hospital, once the car accidents and day drunks had been
patched. He'd dodged the masonry but twisted his shoulder in the fall. Bradley had been particularly concerned about the dust stains on his own trousers.

The dining room table was set for two. He heard bath noises upstairs and was on his way up when he glanced into the lounge. In a wooden tub in the front bay window was a leafless twig and taped to it, in Samuel's best seven-year-old handwriting:
Xmas Tree.
He smiled, wondering if he should close the curtains and hide his shame from the neighbours. Another thing on his not done to-do list.

Helen was in the spare room upstairs. The bed was made and she was clearing out one side of the built-in robe.

‘Hi.'

She kept her back to him. ‘You missed the rehearsal.'

‘So, I'm sleeping in here?'

She turned, ready to be mad, but saw his arm.

‘A house fell on me.'

‘Why didn't you call?'

‘The phone copped the brunt. And I didn't want to lose my place in line. I was the first non-bleeding conscious person they saw.' He looked at the bed wondering if he really was sleeping in the spare room.

‘Rosemarie's staying over after the wedding shower. It's here. Or have you forgotten that too?'

It was going to be one of those nights. He said, ‘My shoulder came out of the socket. Doctor shoved it back in.' It had hurt like hell. ‘Might be ligament damage.'

He went to the bathroom and found Samuel in his pyjamas playing with Frances who was in the bath. A complicated line of dolls, tea sets and plastic soldiers was set up around the edge of the bath.

‘Hey team!'

‘Dad!' they said together in an incandescent blaze of love that wiped out everything else in his head.

‘You're home!' said Frances.

‘What happened to your arm?' asked Sam.

‘Accident. I wasn't careful.'

‘Wow.'

Frances said, ‘Did you fall over?' She seemed to like the idea that he could fall over too.

‘Uhuh.'

Sam said, ‘Are we still going shopping tomorrow?'