Around 1989 various denizens of the sidebar at Bowen's GrandView Hotel were regaled with episodic details of an entirely fictional scenario.
A recognisably Hughesy-like character and the late Lester had won a considerable fortune in the Lotto, and their subsequent exploits produced a certain amount of amusement.
The bar-room stories were, inevitably replaced by subsequent scuttlebutt, but the notion behind them lingered.
Over the next fifteen years or so, the various strands managed to weave themselves together into the narrative that appears hereabouts as Dirty Work at The Crossroads.