All he had to do was drink too much and let it be known that he worked at Collingwood’s. He had no fear of the girl’s recognising him. In fact he was so confident of his changed appearance that he was seriously thinking of deserting the police service secure in the knowledge that nobody would be able to recognise him to charge him with desertion or to claim the money he so unjustly owed. But then that might cause undue complication when he wanted to leave the Colony. Riley heard the sounds of dancing long before the shanty itself came into sight. There were a couple of fiddles, being played incredibly quickly, laughter and loud voices, snatches of song, and across the lot like a blanket of sound the regular crash of boots on a wooden floor. Two light crashes and one heavy, as though the dancers were taking two preparatory hops before leaping high in the air and dashing their feet to the boards in unison. Which was more or less what they were doing, Riley found, when he arrived at the shanty.
