'Christian Porphyry? You're working for Christian Porphyry?'

Here we go, thought Joe, recalling Beryl's reaction to the Young Fair G.o.d. 'That's right.'

'I met him couple of days back,' she said, dreamy eyed. 'First time I went out with Chip. He took me back to his flat out at the Hoo. He was showing me round, shouldn't have been, really, but it was a dead quiet time, then we b.u.mped into Mr Porphyry. He was just so nice! Anyone else and Chip might have been in bother. He says some of the members there act around him like he was invisible, like a footman in one of those big old houses you see on the telly. But not Mr Porphyry. What are you doing for him, Joe?'

'Sorry, can't tell you that, El,' said Joe. 'Mr Porphyry wants it kept confidential. You'll make sure Chip understands that, won't you?'

This got through.

'Sure, Joe. Chip thinks he's great. If that's what Mr Porphyry wants, you can rely on Chip.'

Whereas if it's just what I want ...

Joe pushed the unhelpful thought away and looked for upsides.

Some of them act around him like he was invisible ...

He said, 'Yeah, Mr Porphyry's having a spot of trouble at the club. Chip knows all about it and, from what he said, he's very much on Mr Porphyry's side. In fact, it might help Mr Porphyry a lot if I could have a quiet word with Chip away from the club ...'

Eloise knew a hint when she heard one.

'I'm meeting him down the Hole tonight, half seven, if you want to catch him before we go clubbing.'

'Might just do that,' said Joe. 'Sorry.'

His mobile was ringing. He didn't recognize the number in the display nor the voice that said, 'May I speak to Mr Sixsmith?' in response to his noncommittal, 'Yo?'

The voice was a woman's, young, confident, educated but not posh, and above all friendly rather than menacing.

'That's me,' he admitted.

'Oh good. Tried your office number but just got your answer service. My name's Mimi, Mr Sixsmith. I'm Mr Ratcliffe King's PA. He would like to see you with a view to employing the services of your agency. Would it be possible to make an appointment?'

Sam Spade might have growled, 'Why not? I'll be in my office about four if he wants to drop round.'

But Joe was a pragmatist.

He said, 'Sure. What time would be convenient for Mr King to see me?'

'Three o'clock this afternoon?'

He liked the question mark. It could have come out as a statement or even a command.

He said, 'That's fine.'

'You know where we are?' Mimi asked.

Which, considering how ProtoVision House dominated the north end of the High Street, was like asking if he knew where the Queen lived in London.

'I can always ask a policeman if I get lost,' he replied, risking a joke.

Mimi laughed a bubbly genuine kind of laugh.

'See you at three then,' she said. 'Bye.'

'Bye,' said Joe.

He looked at Eloise, who was busy scrolling incomprehensible spreadsheets down her computer screen.

He said, 'You know someone called Mimi, PA to Ratcliffe King?'

'Maggie Hardacre? Yeah, we went to school together. That her you were talking to?'

'Yeah. Her boss wants to hire me.'

'King Rat? Get yourself a watertight contract then, Joe, and a couple of good witnesses to his signature.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I've seen the kind of discount he gets from Ram.'

Her boss, Ram Ray, was rated one of Luton's sharpest in a commercial deal.

'So this Mimi ...'

'Maggie's OK,' said Eloise. 'Went off to secretarial college in London, turned herself into Mimi and a top-flight PA, but she hasn't lost herself, know what I mean? Never wanted to come back here, but King made her an offer she couldn't refuse, so they say, and every time she gets restless, he makes her a better one. That's one thing about King Rat; he's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but if he really wants you, he doesn't count the pennies.'

'I'll remember that,' said Joe.

The door opened and the head mechanic said, 'Tyre's done and back on your car, Mr Sixsmith.'

'Thanks,' said Joe.

'I'll come out with you and make sure the job's been done up to Ram Ray standards,' said Eloise.

They walked out to the car together. Across the road from the garage Joe noticed a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Leaning against its bonnet with a mobile in his hand was a skinny guy who either had a nervous twitch of the head or was being bothered by flies. Joe was sure he'd been there when he got out of the Morris. Maybe his car had broken down and he was trying to contact the AA rather than stroll over the road and pay Ram Ray's charges.

Not only was the repaired tyre back on the Morris and the spare locked back in position, but the layer of dust and dead insects had been sc.r.a.ped off the windscreen.

'Nice one, Eddie,' said Eloise, smiling at the mechanic. 'Ram will be pleased you looked after Mr Sixsmith so well.'

She knows how to pour the oil after stirring up the water, thought Joe. Those women who went around moaning they didn't get a fair shake at power should spend more time in Luton.

He started pulling his billfold out of his back pocket.

'That's OK, Joe,' said Eloise. 'This one's on Ram.'

'Tell him I'm grateful.'

'You are? Well, this one's on me.'

She leaned forward and gave him a kiss. It was deep and delicious and lingering and he might have encouraged it to linger even longer if he hadn't been so surprised.

'See you tonight then,' she murmured.

'Look forward to it,' said Joe rather hoa.r.s.ely.

As he drove away he put the lid on the fantasies bubbling up in the wake of Eloise's kiss by pondering on the royal summons from King Ratcliffe. Could there possibly be a connection with his employment in the Porphyry affair? OK, the links were at best tenuous. He'd told Merv about it at the Supporters' Club last night. He'd seen Merv engaged in deep conversation with Monty Wright before he left. Monty Wright had been turned down by the Royal Hoo. And Sir Monty and Ratcliffe King were closely allied ...

Not much there, certainly nothing worth getting your thoughts in a tangle over. Maybe Merv and Sir Monty had been discussing City's prospects for next season. Or haggling over the taxi fare from the club to the millionaire's mansion at Whipsnade. The lucky discoveries that often moved his investigations along their meandering road to conclusion he took in his stride, but attempting to find shortcuts by studying some kind of mental map got the mist rising from the fields in about two minutes flat.

Anyway, a PI's place was out there where the action was. Deep thought was for professors, and master criminals, and lawyers.

He was on speaking terms with only one person in any of these categories. He drove to Bullpat Square, parked on a double yellow in the confident belief that no traffic warden who had any sense would be pounding the pavement in this heat, and went into Butcher's Law Centre.

The outer office which doubled as reception and waiting room was usually packed with Luton's indigent, eager to have their wounds healed, their enemies destroyed and their rights protected, but the weather seemed to have taken its toll here too and there was only one seat occupied.

'Hi, Joe,' said the youth on reception, one of a whole bunch of law students who helped out at the Centre, usually, Butcher had once said to Joe in a bout of alcohol induced cynicism, so that in later life whenever the moral burden of charging a thousand quid an hour for their services got a little too heavy, they could ease it by remembering that time in their salad days when they worked for free.

Joe distinguished them only by gender, and he didn't always get that right, but they all seemed to know him. He sometimes fantasized turning up at the Court of Appeal and the judicial trio all giving him high fives and saying, 'Hi Joe!' but he hadn't yet put it to the test.

He said, 'Hi. Like a word with Butcher, if she can fit me in.'

'Take a seat, you're next but one,' said the young man, whose voice was deep enough and chin shadowy enough for Joe to be fairly confident he was a man.

He took a chair opposite the solitary client, a woman of middle age who sat with head bowed and eyes closed. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but what really bothered Joe was she was sitting so still, he began to worry she might just have come in here to die.

He was about to share his anxiety with the receptionist when Butcher's door opened to let out a young woman with a tiny infant suspended round her neck in a sling, another two crowded before her in a push-chair, and a trio of older kids, from four to seven perhaps, bringing up the rear. If they were all hers, Joe's heart ached to think of the age she must have been when she first gave birth.

But the mother seemed happy enough, calling a cheerful 'Thank you' to Butcher, who appeared in the doorway behind her, and flashing Joe a brilliant smile as he leapt to the outer door and opened it.

The lawyer's gaze registered Joe without any sign of enthusiasm then moved on to the still figure in the chair.

'OK, Betty, you can come through now,' said Butcher, and to Joe's relief the woman rose instantly and vanished into the office.

Joe sat down again, took out his mobile and speed-dialled Merv.

'Hi there. Merv's taxis. If you want to go fast, Golightly.'

'It's me, Joe.'

'Joe, my main man! That antique heap of yours broken down again and you want picking up?'

'No thanks. That vintage vehicle I drive will be cruising round Luton long after that paddy wagon you call a taxi is taking up valuable s.p.a.ce in Pinkie's Sc.r.a.pyard. Listen, Merv, something I need to know, no bull now; when I left the club last night you were sitting beating Sir Monty's ear like you were trying to sell him some of that dodgy booze of yours.'

'Dodgy? Hey, Joe, I told you: bankrupt stock.'

'Yeah yeah. Anyway, what I want to know is, what were you talking about?'

'With Monty, you mean?'

'Of course with Monty! Come on, Merv. Don't play for time 'cos there ain't enough time for you to think up a lie would fool me.'

'That must mean you know what we were talking about already, so why're you asking?'

'You were talking about me, right? Come on, Merv, I'm not p.i.s.sed, this is business.'

'OK, if it's business, yeah, he'd heard some of the guys joking about you being put up for membership at the Royal Hoo and he wondered what that was all about, so I told him the tale. Hey, it wasn't a secret, was it? Everybody in the club knew.'

'Only because you told them,' grumbled Joe. 'But never mind that. So you told him the story, and ...?'

'Well, he wanted to know all the whys and whens and whatfors.'

'Which you supplied, right? Even though what you really knew you could write on the point of a pin, which is about the size of your brain!'

'Hang about, Joe. You said this was business,' said Merv indignantly. 'Last time I try telling you the truth if all I'm going to get is abused for my openness.'

'Only thing open about you is your mouth,' declared Joe. 'So what exactly did you say?'

'Nothing you could deny wasn't true.'

'Try me,' said Joe.

'I said this guy Porphyry had put you on a big retainer for the duration 'cos there was something dodgy going off down the Hoo and being the guy who pretty well owns the place he's determined to get to the bottom of it, no expenses spared. I said you'd been cagey about the details because of client confidentiality, all that s.h.i.t, but it was definitely something that could really drop some big-name people in it.'

'Yeah? And what part of what I told you gets within freekick distance of making that true?' demanded Joe.

'Well, I may have done a bit of tweaking here and there, Joe. That's a fault of yours, ruining a good story by dwelling on the dull bits. And I thought that Sir Monty, after him getting the elbow there, would be b.u.m-chuffed to hear something bad might be happening to the Hoo, 'specially as the word is it was your main man, Porphyry, who put the black spot on him.'

'Blackball,' said Joe. 'And was Sir Monty chuffed?'

'Not so's you'd notice. In fact, all he did was ask questions about you. Whether you were any kop, that sort of stuff.'

'So what did you do? Rubbish me?'

'Joe! How long we been friends? People ask you to recommend a taxi driver, do you say, "Stay away from that Merv Golightly, he's death on wheels and will rip you off into the bargain"? Of course you don't! No, I said what I always say. That Joe Sixsmith may not be much to look at and I don't know how he does it, but when he gets his teeth into a case, the bad guy may as well put his hand up straightaway because Joe won't let go till he's got him by the short and curlies. That's what I said and that's the G.o.d's honest truth, Joe.'

'Yeah. Well, thanks Merv,' said Joe, touched.

'Think nothing of it. We OK now, Joe?'

'Buy me a pint at the club and we're fine.'

'You got it. Now I'm on my way to pick up a wealthy widow who likes a drive out into the country now and then so she can exercise her dog, only she don't have no dog, know what I mean? See you, Joe!'

He switched off. With perfect timing, the door opened and the moribund woman emerged. She looked more lively now and the increase in animation was matched by an increase in familiarity, but not to the point of recognition.

The lawyer shook hands with her client in the doorway then turned and disappeared back into her office without a glance at Joe. But she left the door wide open.