You’re cold, Cliff!’ Cyn banged her fist on my desk. ‘That’s your bloody trouble, you’re cold!’ She was close to tears the way she always got when we argued. They weren’t tactical tears, but they were part of the reason that I nearly always lost the arguments.

‘I’m not cold’, I said. ‘I’m warm-hearted, a loving man. I’ll take you out tonight.’

‘I don’t want to go out.’

‘Okay, we’ll stay home. I’ll cook.’ The telephone rang. We were in my office where I answer the telephone, open the door and type the letters myself, because there’s no-one else to do it.

‘Hardy Investigations. Warm-hearted Hardy speaking.’

‘Your heart’s as warm as Bob Askin’s. Cut out the bullshit, Cliff, I’ve got a job for you.’ It was Athol Groom, who works in advertising and agenting; he sometimes drinks where I sometimes drink.

‘Terrific, Athol’, I said. Athol deals in people with soft jobs; Cyn calls him a pimp, and she made a face when I said his name. ‘What sort of job?’

‘Come down here and I’ll tell you.’ He gave me his address.

‘How long do you reckon this’ll take?’

‘How the hell do I know? All day, all night, all week. The longer the better as far as you’re concerned, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I guess so. But I’ve gone up to seventy-five a day and expenses.’

‘Shit. All right. Just hurry, she’ll be here soon.’

‘She?’

‘Selina Hope. Hurry.’

I put down the phone and stood up; Cyn moved away from me as if we were in a slow ballet.

‘A job’, I said.

‘It’s always a job, what we need is a talk- tonight.’

‘I don’t know, love,’

‘A minute ago you were going to cook some slop for me, drink two-thirds of the wine and that.’

She was looking very nice that morning, my wife. Nearly as tall as me, she was straight and slim with honey-blonde hair. She must have come directly from the architect’s office where she worked because she still had draughtsman’s ink on her fingers. She saw me looking, and her fine-boned, handsome face went hard.