“I went for a long morning walk through Glebe and Annandale and rewarded myself with a beer at the Toxteth. I flicked through the papers without reading anything of interest and did a couple of crosswords, trying to tell myself this was valuable down time, restorative. I wasn’t convinced; I wanted to be up and running.
Around 7 pm I took a glass of wine up to Lil and told her I was putting together one of my culinary specialities— a mixed grill.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll be down in a few minutes. Don’t burn the bangers.’ Over the meal she told me she’d contacted the man she called Nasty Norman and that he’d agreed to meet me.
‘For a consideration, I assume?’ ‘Right. I got him down to five hundred dollars for an hour, plus a bottle of brandy.’ ‘Thanks, Lil. When?’ ‘Tomorrow, eleven o’clock, at the Newport Workers Club. He’s a ratty little number with a bad comb-over. He’s got emphysema but he’ll be smoking. Sometimes it takes him five minutes to get enough breath for a sentence.’ ‘Sounds lovely.
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