1. SUSPICIOUS MINDS

Katy raised her head from the computer screen when she heard tapping on the front window.

It was Sergeant Stretch! Why was he here at this time of the morning?

Katy hadn’t even had time to clear away yesterday afternoon’s six empty cups, let alone open up the museum.

She went to the door, and let the policeman in.

He just grunted and walked past her to the counter, where he laid down his cap. He turned around, folded his arms, and leaned back so he could pan the foyer with squinty eyes as if he was going to stride over to one of the dirty cups and issue it with a defect notice. 

He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “I hope you know what you are taking on, little lady?” Then he breathed out loudly. “I’m actually here on official business.”

Katy rolled her eyes. “What’s Moose supposed to have done now?” She had cut Stretch’s hair for twenty years, so she was well aware of the bad blood between him and Moose. Moose was a man mountain who quite literally was the state’s biggest expert on the Tasmanian Tiger, but he had also done some time in jail where his size had been both an asset and a curse. He had been so happy yesterday to finally get his plaster cast off and walk without the aid of crutches. This was going to turn his mood south again.

“Not him, this time!” Stretch ran a hand through his hair, which was longer than usual. “I was hoping to get some background information on the old couple who moved into Messerschmitt’s old place in Hill Street. Mr and Mrs le Blanc? Know them?” 

“Should I?”

“I thought you might have cut their hair.”

“No, I haven’t. Have you asked Vicki or Velda?”

Stretch gave the smallest of head shakes as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of peppermints. “Messerschmitt never actually owned the house. It was rented out to him by you know who. When he did a runner, she had the place cleared out so it could go back on the rental market.”

“What has the old couple done?” Katy asked.

Stretch unwrapped the mints and offered her one. The strong smell, mingled with the scent of his cheap aftershave, made her gag and she waved the offer away.

He kept holding out the roll. “Sure? Are you feeling all right? You look a bit pale.”

He popped a mint into his mouth and started aggressively sucking it before locking eyes with Katy again. “This is just between you and I, right? It’s not what the old couple have done. Quite the reverse. Someone has kidnapped one of the concrete dwarfs from their garden.” 

“Kids playing a prank?”

“That was my first thought,” he said in a stream of minty breath. “But would kids go to the trouble of leaving a handwritten ransom note? Do children even get taught Cord Cursive any more?”

“Perhaps the kidnapper thinks Messerschmitt still lives there?” Katy said.

Stretch started crunching the mint as he considered this. “Unlikely,” he said when he had swallowed. “Messerschmitt’s dog kept a nicer garden than him. At least Adolf dug some holes.”

Stretch’s voice became more relaxed — less formal. “Heard from the old blokes?” 

Katy pointed to the computer on the other side of the grey, laminated counter. “The email I just got from them said they were about to pick up a hire car to drive from Dublin to Donegal.”

Stretch clicked his tongue again. “I don’t envy the Irish traffic police. I presume Oodles is driving?”

Katy looked up at him. “Wish-Wash has never had a licence, and no one around here can remember the Mayor driving.”

“Oh, I bet Moose can. Sergeant Smith was dead-set certain it was him who slashed the Mayor’s tyres all those years ago. He just couldn’t prove it.”

James Northan, a.k.a. the Mayor, hadn’t actually been the Mayor for some time but he was descended from Colonel Richard Northan, whose forebears had dominated the office since he founded the town in 1841. The mayoral chains now hung around the neck of James’s daughter Maddie. She also headed the family trust that owned half the real estate in town, including the hairdressing salon she had just bought from Katy for her adopted daughters.

Stretch turned his head when he heard vehicles pulling up outside. The pitch of his voice rose as he slipped back into officious mode. “Are those tradies from the building site next door parking their utes in your car park? Want me to go tell them to move?”

“They’re not harming anyone,” Katy said. “They make the museum look busier than it is.”

“Someonehas to tell them they’re trespassing.” He was halfway to the door when the rungs on the staircase at the back of the room began reverberating.

Stretch looked around to see Moose limping down the final steps, scratching the hairy belly behind his unbuttoned shirt.

The bearded man locked eyes with Stretch. 

“Nice bald spot you’ve got going there, Sergeant,” Moose said.

Stretch looked like a tomato in a stiff blue uniform as he returned to collect his cap, which he slammed on his head before turning. “Some of us have proper work to do.” He banged the glass door behind him. 

* * *

Katy watched through the window as Stretch went straight past the building site and marched up the High Street. 

“Did you have to tease him like that, Moose? He’s sensitive about his bald spot.”

“Is he, Kazza?” Moose laughed, then his face grew serious. “When we heard his voice at the top of the stairs we wondered what he was doing here.”

“We?”

Moose turned around and shouted. “You can come down now, Awesome Sauce.”

The Texan teenager came tiptoeing down. “Has he gone?” he said as he made it to the bottom and looked around nervously. The patchy growth on his face helped make him look like a scared little animal.

Katy put her hands on her hips. “Why were you hiding up there, Tim?”  

“You don’t know what it’s like!” His voice went up and down. “OfficerStretch has inspected my visa, like, five or six times already but it hasn’t stopped him demanding to see it again.”

Moose glared at him. “You’d better hope Stretch doesn’t get to hear about what you did to the mirror. He’d throw you in a detention centre for sure.”

Tim looked wounded. “I said I was sorry.”

“That mirror was legendary around here. Now it’s in a million little pieces, and I’m not certain you’ve found them all.”

“You were the one who asked me to remove it.”

“Ever hear of a screwdriver? You only had to fucking ask.”

“Moose! Language!” Katy looked from face to face. “Well, you both can breathe easy. Stretch says he only came here to gather information on the old couple who have moved into Messerschmitt’s house. The le Blancs? Someone’s kidnapped one of the ornamental dwarfs in their garden.”

Moose pulled a face. “Stretch thinks I stole it?”

“You didn’t listen to me. He was trying to put together a jigsaw. Did you know the property is owned by the Northans?”

Moose grunted. “Figures! I don’t know what got into Oodles and Wish-Wash deciding to take the Mayor with them? Neither of them have the strength to push him out of a little window 35,000 feet above the Atlantic.”

Katy rolled her eyes. “For your information, the Mayor got off the plane through the door with all the other passengers. I got an email from the old blokes earlier saying they had arrived safely in Dublin.”

“They sent anemail on their own?” Tim’s eyes widened.

“I have been giving Wish-Wash some lessons. But now I think about it I’m guessing the Mayor must have sent this one. It was all in capitals. Even 11,000 miles away, he’s still shouting at us.”

“How long is the drive to Donegal?” Moose said.

Katy stared into space. “Three hours, I think. Joffa would know better.”

Moose looked left and right. “Where is the Irish git?”

Katy sighed again. “Around the back.”

“I’d better get out there before he catches another Native Cat.”

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re never going to let us forget that!”

“Nonsense! Now I’m fit for real work again …”

“Whoa,” Katy said. “Have you even got the medical all-clear?”

Moose kicked up his leg and rotated his foot. “They’ve removed the plaster. What more proof do you need?”

“A doctor’s certificate maybe?”

“Who from? Every time I go up to the hospital I see a different Indian doctor. I think they’ve got an exchange program going with a takeaway.”

Katy rolled her eyes again. “Go see Doc Jenkins. That’s who I go to.”

Moose prodded a finger on Tim’s chest. “I don’t need a poxy doctor to tell me I’m feeling fine. My return to health just means you’re back in your proper place making tea and coffee for the customers on your fucking own.”

He headed for the door.

Tim look relieved to see it close behind him, and watched him disappear around the side.

“What time is it?” he said.

Katy looked at her watch. “Goodness, the first tour bus will be here soon.” 

2. ALL SHOOK UP

Tim disappeared into the washroom to fill the urn, and Katy picked up the phone.

“I’m just feeling a bit under the weather,” Katy told Yvonne, the doctor’s receptionist. “I was hoping you could fit me in later today. Four o’clock? Okey dokey. See you then.”

When she hung up, she looked around the room and realised she didn’t even have the energy to help Tim straighten the chairs and collect the cups.

Perhaps Stretch was right? Perhaps she had bitten off more than she could chew? 

What were Oodles and Wish-Wash even thinking when they handed over the ownership of the Windy Mountain Tasmanian Tiger Museum to her, Joffa and Moose? The only thing she knew about this carnivorous marsupial was that its extinct status was questionable.

She had never expected to do anything else but cut hair, style hair, perm hair and dye hair. And cut beards on the side. But no matter how drained she felt right now, there was no going back. She had sold the salon to Maddie Northan, who wanted to set up Vicki and Velda as hairdressers and didn’t seem to care what the more conservative section of the community felt about the adopted Korean twins with their orange hair and nose rings. Stretch obviously hadn’t built up the courage to entrust his head to them, so it was obvious why they hadn’t been his first point of call to garner info about the le Blancs.

Katy still owned the flat above the business but instead of going downstairs to work each day, she now strolled to the museum on the outskirts of town. The 10-minute walk gave her and hubby Joffa an extra chance to chat. This morning he had gone straight to the shed and hadn’t reappeared.

The museum was still getting three coaches each day, but the buses had fewer and fewer people on them. 

That was probably a result of the bad publicity that came after the museum’s latest public relations disaster.

No one was really to blame. It wasn’t Moose’s fault he had tripped over a branch and broken his ankle. And to their credit, Joffa and Tim had readily agreed to step up despite, in Moose’s words, neither knowing their arses from their elbows.

The media had been enraged when Wish-Wash yanked off the covering on a cage, revealing something other than the promised Tasmanian Tiger. 

No matter that the Irishman and American made the actual mistake, it was Oodles and Wish-Wash who copped it in the neck for weeks.

Who could blame them for wanting to just sell up? But who could blame people for not wanting to buy a tarnished business?

Oodles and Wish-Wash were between a rock and a hard place. Trying to tough it out wasn’t even an option because they already had their trip to Ireland planned and paid for, and sensed if they put up a ‘temporarily closed’ sign, it would be seen as the first indication of surrender.

Instead, they signed the museum over to Katy, Joffa and Moose, and took the Mayor to Ireland with them.

How on earth would she manage on her own now Moose was fit for active duty again and intern Tim was due to go home soon? 

Katy’s thoughts were broken when Tim re-emerged from the washroom and he saw the look on her face.

He was puffing as he wrestled the urn across the room, and looked relieved to put it down. “Are you all right, Miss Kate? You don’t look well.”

Katy took some deep breaths. “I’ll be fine in a minute.” He didn’t need to know that was a lie.

* * *

Moose heard the loud music as soon as he started walking down the side of the museum. He looked over the fence and could see had a dozen workmen wearing brightly coloured hard-hats. They were all wearing hearing-protection gear, too, which explained why they had the radio turned up so loud. How could anyone be expected to concentrate with the noise of power drills and saws, nail guns, and what passed as music these days?

He found the Irishman around the back. Joffa was a younger version of himself. Both men were 6 foot 6, and 18 stone, with a bit of jail time in their pasts, but differentiated by a few grey hairs in Moose’s beard and their differing accents. 

“There you are?” Moose growled when he saw Joffa was not working but bending down and patting the dog Oodles and Wish-Wash had left in their care. “You just missed Sergeant Stretch.”

“You think I didn’t see him?” Joffa smiled as he looked up. “That’s why I stayed out here.” Gough rolled on to his back, and Joffa gave the dog a tummy rub. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know if anyone knew about the old couple who have moved into Messerschmitt’s old digs.”

Joffa stood up. “What’s Stretch think they’ve done?”

”It’s what someone has done to them. They’ve stolen one of the concrete dwarfs from their garden.”

“Which one?” Joffa said.

“How would I know?”

“He must have said.”

“I didn’t hear it,” Moose said. “Does it matter?”

“If I knew which one, I could look out for it.”

“Right! You know them all by sight do you?”

“I had to learn someting all those years locked up. Didn’t you?”

Moose prodded his own chest. “I came out as a fully qualified brickie’s labourer, mate.”

“Last I heard, they don’t ask a lot of questions at trivia nights about bricks. Not like, say, a question about which of the seven dwarfs doesn’t have a beard.” 

Moose glared at him. “If you know so much about the dwarfs, go ahead and name them.”

“Which ones? The originals penned by the Brothers Grimm didn’t even have names. What are you even doing out here anyway? I thought you were still on light duties?”

“Not you, too?” Moose screwed up his face and kicked up his left leg again. “See, full movement. I’m almost ready to go bush again.”

A vehicle crackling the gravel at the front of the building made Moose turn, then he laughed. “Time for Awesome Sauce to juggle 30 cups and saucers. If I wasn’t so busy, I’d go give him a hand.”

He went to investigate the new arrival. Even with a slight hobble, he had a spring in his step.

But he felt pale when he returned just seconds later. “You’re not going to believe this. It’s a fucking mini-bus!”

* * *

Joffa slumped into one of the plastic chairs outside the shed.  “It’s all my fault.” 

“I can’t argue with that.” Moose pointed to the museum wall. “But I do think that American twerp deserves at least half of the blame.”

“We honestly thought that was a Tasmanian Tiger we had caught.”

Moose sat down next to him. “Easy mistake to make. Stripes. Spots. They can be very confusing.”

“Don’t take the mickey out of me. I was behind that desk when the tour company offered to send three buses here every day. But they never promised how big those buses would be.”

“Christ! Why didn’t you sign a contract with them?”

“At the time, I was happy to get anyone to visit.”

Moose pointed towards the car park. “That little bus would be lucky to carry eight people. Even if we get three mini-buses a day the takings won’t pay everyone’s wages, the tea and coffee we serve and the upkeep of the museum. For fuck’s sake!”

Gough began whining.

Joffa stood back up and leant down to scratch the dog behind the ears.

“Maybe we both need a walk to clear our heads,” the Irishman said. “With any luck, we’ll find a cliff to walk off. I should never have let Katy sell the salon.”

Moose sighed as he rose. “C’mon, let’s go see Kazza before you go on your suicide walk.”

Joffa looked like he had chewed on a lemon. “Her name’s Katy. I don’t understand how you can mangle that to ‘Kazza’?”

“She answers to it, doesn’t she? It’s a good thing someone else around here understands Ockerisms. More importantly, she can tell us what the damage is with the mini-bus, so you can die more unhappily.”

* * *

They saw the back end of red-checked trousers as soon as they went through the door. Then a striped blue and white shirt, and a green baseball cap.

It looked like Wish-Wash was leaning on the counter talking to Katy.

How could that be?

It became clear when he turned around. This man was as tall as Wish-Wash and his nose sloped the same way. But he was slimmer and much, much younger.

Wish-Wash’s grandson! Moose had seen him a couple of days before when he had driven the three old blokes to the airport in his dual-cab ute, but he hadn’t expected to see him again until the return trip. What was he doing back here? Moose looked around but the only vehicles he saw in the car park were battered tradies’ utes and the lone mini-bus. “Where are your wheels, Rod?”

“You’re looking at them.”

“You’re driving the mini-bus!”

Rod Whish-Willson nodded. “I parted company with the travel agent in Slutz Plains. Now I’m driving for Sally Hopkins’s tour company.”

Moose’s eyes widened. “I thought the plan was for your grandfather to move in with you in Slutz Plains when he comes back.”

‘Yesssssss.” Rod said slowly. “But I’m afraid this job required me to move to Launceston.”

“Christ! You haven’t told him, have you?” 

“I haven’t had a chance.”

Moose felt the blood rising to his face. “Just how long have you known?”

“I didn’t want him to fret about it on the plane all the way to Ireland. He was nervous enough as it was.”

“When were you planning on telling him then?”

“When do you think the best time is? When he comes home?”

“Are you kidding me!”

“If you get to speak to him first, reassure him I have a spare room in my new digs.”

“You want me to tell him!” 

Rod scratched his head. “I can’t think what the alternative is.”

Moose looked at Joffa. What was going through his mind was the thought: do you want hit him or should I? But Joffa went off on a tangent. “Does Sally know what you are wearing, Rod?”

Rod looked downwards. “My uniform hasn’t arrived yet. You don’t think I’m overdressed?”

Moose rolled his eyes. “If the bus-driving doesn’t work out, you could always get a job as a fucking colour-chart in a paint shop?”

Katy glared at him.

“What? I’m sure Rod doesn’t mind a bit of feedback. I’m sure he’s already taken a barrage about his dress sense from his customers.”

“Actually no,” Rod said. “He didn’t speak a word to me on the whole trip.”

Now Joffa saw red. “You don’t mean to tell us you only had one person on the bus?”

Joffa looked searchingly at Katy sitting behind the desk, and she nodded, which made the bulging vein in his neck look like a matching pair for Moose’s.

“Fair go,” Rod said. “It’s not like they let us stop at bus stops and pick up customers. I had one passenger at the depot — and I got him here safely. I wrote Katy a cheque for $19 so he could go in, and I was about to follow him in myself when you two blokes turned up.”

Moose opened his mouth to speak but Katy got in first. “Haven’t you two got things to do out back? BECAUSE neither of you is helping.”

“We thought you might need a hand making the tea and coffees,” Joffa muttered.

Katy’s body language indicated she didn’t believe a word of that. “I think I can manage.”

Moose looked left and right. “I thought brew-making was Awesome Sauce’s job? What have you done with him? Please tell me he’s upstairs looking for more pieces of broken mirror.”

“Will you lay off that boy, Moose!” Katy said. “If you must know, Tim has gone up to Hill Street to have a look around.”

“Hill Street?” 

“He’s checking out the le Blancs’ garden.”

“Jesus, Kazza! Haven’t we got enough going on — or not going on?”

Rod looked from face to face. “I think this is a good time for me to check out the gallery. That OK?”

Katy exhaled from her nose, and pointed to the entrance. “Be our guest.”

Rod started walking across the foyer, but stopped and turned. “If it’s not too much trouble, I wouldn’t mind a biscuit with my tea when I come out.”

* * *

They watched Rod disappear through the door. When it had finished swinging, Moose said, “Wish-Wash will never be dead while his grandson is around.” 

“That’s a terrible thing to say.” Katy stood up from behind the computer and put her hands on her hips. “I really don’t think Wish-Wash will be leaving us any time soon.”

“If he comes back from Ireland and finds he now has nowhere to live and, worse, the culprit has eaten all his chocolate digestives, he might have a fatal heart attack sooner than you think,” Moose said.

“If that happens we’ll have a ready-made replacement. Wash-Wish!”

Katy waggled a finger in the space between them. “Don’t even joke about this, guys. We don’t even know what type of biscuits he likes.”

Moose turned to Joffa. “Care to make a bet? Loser has to carry all those books downstairs.”

Katy frowned. “What books?”

“The ones in the upstairs sitting room.”

“Wish-Wash’s books?”

“Fucked if I know,” Moose said. “They might have been here when he moved into the flat.”

Joffa raised his hand. “Um, you can’t throw out those books!”

“Why not? Wish-Wash left the museum to us. If he really wanted them, he would have made arrangements for them.”

“Like where? You heard Wash-Wish. Wish-Wash now doesn’t even have a home to go to.”

“He’ll thank us for doing him a favour then.”

“Shouldn’t you wait until he comes back?” Joffa said.

“Why do you even care?” Moose said.

Joffa folded his arms, looked to Katy for support, and sighed. “I suppose I’d better come clean. Those books never did belong to Wish-Wash.” He exhaled loudly again. “I think he’s been looking after them for someone else.”

“You think?” Moose looked him in the eye. “You know who really owns them, don’t you?” Then he turned his accusing eyes on Katy.

“Don’t look at me,” Katy said. “I didn’t even know there were books up there until just now.”

Joffa shielded his mouth with his fingers. “I’m sworn to secrecy,” he mumbled. 

“So you do know who owns them?” Moose looked daggers at him. “I thought we were supposed to be partners?”

Joffa looked Moose in the eye as he weighed the situation up. “You have to promise not to tell.”

“For fuck’s sake, we’re not all kids.”

“Swear!”

Moose spat into his palm and shook Joffa’s hand. “I swear, all right. Happy?”

“They’re Dave Jenkins’s.” Joffa looked from face to face.”

Moose glanced at Katy. “Not your friend the doctor again?”

“Not him,” Joffa said. “Dave is the undertaker. The doctor is his father.” He looked to Katy. “Do you know the doctor’s first name?”

“Jerry,” she said.

Moose looked even more startled. “Jerry Jenkins! Here?”

“I thought you didn’t know him?” Katy said.

Moose chewed on his bottom lip. “Who said I know him?”

“You sounded like you did.”

“I was just caught by surprise, that’s all. It’s a funny sounding name isn’t it? You’d call a mouse Jerry, not a doctor. And his son is the undertaker! Is that even legal?”

The three of them looked across the foyer when the front door crashed open.

* * *

“I’ve just seen a Tasmanian Tiger,” Tim gasped as he approached the desk. He was dripping with sweat.

Moose looked at Joffa. “Here we go again!” He looked back to Awesome Sauce. “Were there pixies at the bottom of the garden, too?”

Tim studied Moose’s face. “How did you know?” Then he started to sway.

Katy reached over the counter in an attempt to stop him falling over. “Grab him someone.”

Joffa grabbed him by the armpits, and Katy handed over her metal water bottle.

Tim took a long swig. “Thanks, Miss Kate, I needed that. It’s getting hotter than Hades out there.”

“In your own time,” Katy said. “Tell us what you saw?”

Tim took another swig and swallowed. “I saw it clear as day, I really did. It was standing in the le Blancs’ garden still as a statue.”

“Did it make any kind of noise?” Joffa asked.

“Not that I could hear. But it looked me right in the eye. When I finally unfroze, I hightailed it back here as fast as I could.”

Moose was grumbling when he hobbled towards the door. “I’m on it, but there’s going to be hell to pay if it’s a fucking joke.”

No sooner had he slammed the door behind him, they heard the gallery door swing open.

“Is the tea ready?” Rod asked as they crossed the room. “We’re parched, aren’t we Mr Sin?” 

The squat bald-headed man with him just nodded.

He was short and wide — not fat, just a roundish ball of muscle with a long black beard.

Katy headed to the gate in the counter. “I thought you’d be in there longer than two minutes, Rod.”

“I’m sure glad I didn’t fork out good money to see that.”

“You didn’t read all the articles?” Katy asked.

“People of my generation don’t want to be bogged down in written detail. We like more visual cues.”

Katy bit her bottom lip. “Sorry you feel that way. I’ll make the tea now. Tea bag all right? Or do want something more fancy smantzy. Ginger perhaps? Never can tell with you millennials.”

She nearly choked when he said, “No, normal tea’s fine — with a chocolate digestive if you’ve got one.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later they were standing around in the foyer sipping tea.

All Mr Sin did was smile, nod and shake his head, which led Katy to think he might be mute.

When she heard footsteps crunching in the gravel car park, she looked out the window and saw Moose dragging his left foot as he approached the door.

He pushed open the door so hard, it’s a wonder it didn’t fly off its hinges. 

He went straight to Tim and poked him on the chest. ”I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Awesome Sauce. Those pixies at the bottom of the garden are actually garden gnomes. Concrete dwarfs. And the reason that Tasmanian Tiger was as still as a statue is it is a fucking statue!”

* * *

“I don’t get it, Kazza.” Moose turned on her. “This museum is on life support and you’re sending this boy scout to case garden ornaments!”

“Now hang on.” Joffa glared at Moose. “Katy didn’t mean any harm to this museum.”

Moose glared back. “Are you still here? I thought you were going out to top yourself.”

Tim broke out of his stunned silence. “Are you trying to tell me that Tasmanian Tiger wasn’t real? We had a staring contest. It had beady little eyes and very realistic fur.”

Moose glared at him. “Weren’t you listening to me?” He prodded him on the chest again. “IT IS A STATUE! It’s even dumber than you are!”

“What’s it doing in a garden then?”

“How do I know?” 

“Aren’t you curious?”

Moose turned his head again when Katy spoke. “Tim has a point. This might be evidence that somehow ties into the kidnapping of the dwarf, don’t you think?”

Moose threw his head skywards. “For fuck’s sake, how? Anyway, since when did we join the police force?”

“What’s wrong with being good citizens?” Joffa said.

“I don’t believe it!” Moose’s eyes bore into Joffa’s. “Is this the same scaredy cat who was hiding from Stretch earlier? Now he wants to be a good citizen? Fuck me!”

Katy sighed. “Do you really have to swear in front of guests, Moose?”

He looked right back at her. “You wouldn’t believe how restrained I’m being.”

“You don’t mind if I look into it a bit deeper,” Katy said. “I get that you want me to concentrate on the well-being of the museum, but doesn’t this new information bring this into our sphere? I mean it is a Tasmanian Tiger statue and we do have the only Tasmanian Tiger museum in town.”

Moose folded his arms. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you, Kazza?” 

Moose turned to Rod. “No one else seems to get it. If your fucking tour company can only manage to send us three mini-buses each day we’re not going to get enough people through here to be able to stay afloat. And that’s even if the mini-buses are full. God help us if each one carries only one customer.” He turned back to Katy. “And God help us even more if Wash-Wish here eats and drinks all our slim profits each day.”

“What did you call me?” Rod said.

”Don’t you listen to him, Rod.” Katy said.

“Don’t molly-coddle the boy, Kazza. He’s getting off lightly. Remember what his father was like? Washed-up AND a Fuck-Up!”

“Don’t be so insensitive!”

“Insensitive? My arse!” Moose said. ”The kid didn’t even know Billy Gumboots.” He eyeballed him again. “Did you? You probably only went to his funeral to make sure your old man was really dead this time.”

“Can I ask something?”

All eyes turned towards Mr Sin, who was still holding his cup and saucer. “Is this a good time to ask if this museum is for sale?”

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