Not so long ago, I was informed that the house I was staying in was a brothel. Pulling up in a taxi outside the busy Vulture Street driveway, the driver had cocked his head towards the house and remarked: ‘I know this place. Used to be a brothel.’ In fact, he continued, swinging around to hand me my change, it was the brothel that had sparked the Fitzgerald Inquiry. He told me with no uncertain authority that sex and fake IDs were sold from within our very rooms, that police officers frequented the premises for pay-offs and pro bono appointments, and that when the structures of corruption had come crashing down in the late 1980s this was the establishment to blame.

‘D’ya know about Fitzgerald?’ he asked me and I nodded, less as confirmation than as an invitation for him to tell me more of what could only be unofficial (and unverifiable) information about the watershed judicial inquiry into Queensland Police misconduct.