CHAPTER A 'So, what's with the Pommy new chum, over in Ward 2? Is he as bent as blokes say he is?' Adrian’s question drifted on the chilly air of a 1970s June weekend. A question asked as Adrian leant back against a table in the centre of a Staff Room. A room where an icy wind rattled the roof tiles above that room while grey clouds rolled across a sombre sky. Chris Carter, standing beside Adrian, blew cigarette smoke towards the dusty cobwebs sweeping between the room's crumbling ceiling...

CHAPTER B But before narrating the incident of that fire and a murder, there is another incident I will get off my chest. This incident is about an encounter with a guy in a tyre workshop decades after that first named incident. I reached the tyre workshop, where crumpled food wrappers sprawled along the edge of the broken concrete footpath to either side of the entrance doorway. Greasy detritus, pockmarked with sprouting weeds, that rustled under the cold, poking stabs of a morning breeze. I...

CHAPTER C A warm afternoon breeze lashed greasy food wrappers, swirling them around my ankles, as I arrived at the glass door entrance to the tyre workshop. I held the backpack in one hand and pushed the door with the other. I stepped through the doorway and wended my way, past coils of electrical wiring and men on ladders, towards the back of the building. But it wasn't the pasty-faced slimeball at the back of the shop. Instead, a woman greeted me as I drew close to the counter. 'Hi! I'm...