Fergal Tillotson

Fergal Tillotson is 51 and for fourteen years has carried the treasurer's briefcase, since the days when his boss was a councilman in Geelong. Born in a small country town, the son of a notary's clerk, he inherited from his father a round handwriting and the conviction that almost everything in life can be settled with a well-drafted document. He never married and says the treasurer's schedule was always family enough.

He lives in a two-room apartment on the third floor of a brick building in Melbourne. He takes the 7:12 train, irons his shirt the night before and keeps the receipts for everything in a shoebox, by year and month. He drinks his tea without sugar, reads the newspaper from the first column to the last and learned never to be the subject of a conversation, which he considers a form of elegance.

He is thin and pale, with a long, clean-shaven face, gray hair with a side parting and brilliantine, and tortoiseshelltortoiseshell Brown mottled material, once real turtle shell, used for eyeglass frames. glasses. He wears a light gray summer suit and always carries his felt hat in his hands, turning the brim. He speaks in a low voice, with the right word in the right place, and cites his employer the way one reads minutes: without adjectives, with date and time.

About the eve of the commission, his account is that of a man who did his job: the treasurer was calm and he himself typed the statement, eleven pages. He says he knew of no bribe on the dam and that he repeated to the police exactly what he saw. When the subject is the neighbor, he recalls that she only called the police at 12:58 and leaves the math to the detective.

Fergal knows fourteen years of loyalty can be read two ways. It could be the grief of a secretary who lost the only boss he ever had. It could be the calm of someone who always knew what would happen. The detective will have to decide which.