It wasn’t long before we were bombarded with so many alerts from our ghost spotters we had to abandon Bec’s list. We crisscrossed the city to deal with sightings that our ghost spotters were frantically sending our way – North Melbourne, Coburg, Albert Park, Canterbury, Tarneit. It was too late for Bec to organise them into an efficient order – she’d gone to bed, I hoped – so we had to backtrack more than once.

We’d take care of one and I’d barely finish logging the GPS details before another one would ping in, plastered with ‘Urgent!’ tags. We were as busy as a pair of busy beavers who’d come back from a holiday and found a huge backlog of stuff had built up while they were away.

And, yes, that backlog pun was deliberate because beavers and logs and you can figure out the rest.

Not all of the reports produced ghosts despite the assurances of the ghost spotters. A couple of times the ghosts had wandered off or vanished. Other times, I had suspicions about the sighting. Some of our informants weren’t exactly what you’d call reliable. Flaky would be a better way to put it, but that would probably upset certain sorts of chocolate bars.

And I was on edge all the time, half-expecting a Ragged Sisters hit-squad to jump out with their chains.

A smidgen before dawn we’d eased nearly thirty ghosts, the last one a sleazy little Cold Hand who we trapped on the sixth hole of the Oakleigh Public Golf Course, of all places. Cold Hands are ghosts that drape their icy fingers on the back of your neck to make you jump and whirl around to find no one there. Unsettling, in a grubby sort of way. I chased it into one of those bunker sand trap things and Rani nailed it.

Her mouth was a firm line when I asked what memories she was left with. All she’d say was, ‘Vile.’

We trudged back to the car park, the grass wet with dew. ‘You okay?’ I asked her.

‘It takes more than a Cold Hand to upset me.’

‘Granted, but my enquiry was more general than that.’

‘Am I coping with my non-existent PTSD?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Do I look like I’m coping?’

Prickly Rani was prickly? ‘Mostly. Doesn’t stop me checking in, though.’

That got me a smile. ‘And how about you? I’ve done my best with the training, but we’re really in uncharted waters.’

‘Right. I can handle the ghost fear thing, but dealing with real, solid, human foes …’ I shook my head. ‘It’s a different kind of danger, and a different kind of scared.’