He’d written a moderately successful series of what he called historical romances and the critics bodice-rippers, set against the background of revolutionary Europe in the decades leading up to 1848, with a hero loosely based on the German poet Heine. These had been made into a popular TV series where the ripping of bodices was certainly rated higher than either history or even romance. His regular attendance in the reference library had nothing to do with the pursuit of verisimilitude in his fictions. In his cups he had been heard to say of his readers, “You can tell the buggers owt. What do they know?” though in fact he had acquired a wide knowledge of the period in question through the “real” work he’d been researching now for many years, which was a critical edition with metrical translation of Heine’s poems. Rye had been surprised to learn that he was a school contemporary of Dick Dee. The ten years which Dee’s equanimity of temperament erased from his forty-something seemed to have been dumped on Penn, whose hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes and unkempt beard gave him the look of an old Viking who’d ravished and pillaged a raid too far.

“Probably not,” said Dee. “Be glad of your professional opinion though, Charley.”

Penn moved round the table so that he was looking down at Rye and showed uneven teeth in what she called his smarl, assuming he intended it as a smile and couldn’t help that it came out like a snarl. “Not unless you’ve got a sudden budget surplus.”

When it came to professional opinions, or indeed any activity connected with his profession, Charley Penn’s insistence that time equalled money made lawyers seem open-handed.

“So how can I help you?” said Dee.

“Those articles you were tracking down for me, any sign yet?”

Penn had no difficulty squaring his assertion that the labourer was worthy his hire with using Dee as his unpaid research assistant, but the librarian never complained.