We chased. Up over the bridge over the M4, through the lights and down again. We kept nudging the bike, but somehow Crombie kept it upright. He was wearing his double-R club jacket, but he had no leather on the bottom half - just blue nurse slacks that would melt nicely in a fall.

Cars were pulling over left and right, and Gacy was weaving around above 90.

The next thrust forced Crombie to the wrong side of the road, with a set of lights looming. He straightened and gunned it through a gap in the cross-traffic just as the lights went red. We saw him turn off into the entrance to Australia’s Wonderland.

“Time for some rollercoasters!” Gacy spun the wheel, fighting to stop the Camira’s arse-end taking the lead as we slid sideways into the intersection, wheels squealing, trailing blue smoke. Drifting past the red lights, frozen redder by a burst from our roof, we were eyeballing oncoming headlights.

I’d experience some slow-motion moments in the past, but this was right up there. Flash - me, staring at the wide eyes and red-white knuckles of a truck driver and the couple in the sedan next to them. Flash - Gacy, fighting the wheel. The thump of compression brakes.

I’d been unconsciously clenching my buttocks, and maybe the car had too. It can only be a tucked-in rear-end that prevented it being cleaved off, leaving our little legs to run along at the back, Fred Flintstone-style.

Then Gacy got the fishtail straightened, bypassed the clearly marked entrance where Crombie went and gunned it along to the next road - the exit.

He nearly cleaned up Crombie coming the other way.

We stopped inches from impact and I was out the door in seconds, dragging the nurse off his bike and dumping him on the asphalt. He nearly got squashed by the falling bike.

He wouldn’t stop screaming. “What the fuck are you doing? You trying to fucking kill me? You can’t hit me!”

Gacy was alongside me in a flash. “Shut the fuck up, Thomas. That’s your name isn’t it? Crombie?”

He looked up again. “Wait a minute. Who the fuck are you two?”

“We’re the cops. So shut the fuck up. Who did you think we were?” Gacy killed the car and the light and joined me standing over nurse-boy.

“Cops in a Camira? Like fuck you are. And I know you. You used to be a cricket player.”

I buried my foot in his ribs, then picked him up and threw him against the bonnet. “Your facts are way off, Tiger.” I was finished playing.

Gacy nodded his approval and was about to take over when Dumigan kicked out backwards, catching him in the shin. Odd-on this wasn’t the guy with the missing toe of foot. In a flash Gacy had a scratched black pistol centred on the double-R patch on Crombie’s jacket.

I looked around. A couple of cars - must have been staff at this time of night - pulled up short of us and soon disappeared out the other way.

Gacy’s adrenaline was in full flow, by the colour of his face. “We’re investigating a little break and enter and attempted murder in Randwick North on Saturday night,” he growled in the nurse’s ear. “Ring any bells, dickhead?” After the other night, I felt better being on the blunt end of the gun.

“Fuck off.”

Gacy pecked the gunbarrel down onto the back of his skull. Hard. He yelped and buckled, but we held him.

“Remember now?”

“Fuck… off.”

Another peck. Another. Faster, cracking now. “Break and enter?!” Now Crombie was crying and trying to protect his balding pate.

He was blubbing in earnest. “I can’t tell you. I didn’t go. I’d be fuckin’ crucified.”

I didn’t know whether he meant he’d be crucified if he went along, or if he told us about it now. “Mate, turn the gun around and use the butt this time.”

“Fuck! Come on. They never let me go on those jobs and I’m not interested.”

Gacy leaned close. “Tom, mate, I know you’re not one of the bad guys. You’re a male nurse, for Christ’s sake. The bad guys were in North Randwick, and you were probably working at the time.”

Another peck. Almost gentle.

“Please. I’ll haven’t got anything you want.”

“Yeah, we’ll see, shall we? Mate, go and check his saddlebags. Then go and get my silencer so we can shoot this fuckwit and go home.”

He shot me a wink, and I resumed breathing.

After I worked out how to open them, the left saddlebag was empty apart from smelly socks and shoes, the right held a sports bag. I rummaged through it, holding it up to catch light from the headlights. More yelps from the car in the middle of the exit ramp to a closed amusement park.

Dumigan was crying harder when I dumped the bag on the bonnet next to him.

“What’s this about? Why did your mates go to Randwick the other night, fucker?”

Crombie was barely coherent through the sobbing. “Why don’t you ask… him? It was that cricketer… they were after.”

“Honen? Yeah, we thought so, but why?” I said.

“Please. I wasn’t s’posed to know that much.”

“Any bang-bangs?” Gacy nodding at the bag.

I ripped open a cardboard box. “No. But - what - about 16 vials of what-is-it … pethidine. But that’s not the weirdest bit.”

“Stealing drugs, Thomas. Tut tut.” Gacy gave the nurse another crack over the ear for good measure. “What else?”

“They look like death certificates.”