The office was freshly painted, with new glass in the big windows; all the equipment-phones, desks, filing cabinets-were those of a prosperous business. Jess nodded hello to a woman who was talking on one of the phones, smoking, making notes and drinking coffee. I wondered what she was doing with her feet. Jess ran out a long file-drawer, riffled through the contents and pulled out a spring-backed folder marked Satisfaction.

‘We’re computerising soon’, Jess said.

‘Everyone is’, I said. ‘Except me.’

She carried the folder across to a desk and starting going through it, muttering, ‘September, September’

‘Here it is!’ She snapped the folder open impatiently and spread the loose sheets. There was one for each day-morning, afternoon and all-day hirings were noted along with fuel costs, equipment hire and the name of the hirer. In the first week of September, the Satisfaction had had a scattering of morning and evening hirings, with one all-day job. There was no record of an afternoon session of the kind Jess had described. She looked at the spread sheets and then she thumped them with her fist.

‘That’s bloody strange.’

‘Describe the men’, I said.

‘I can’t. Suits. Ordinary.’

‘Big or small, young or old?’

‘One of each: one big, one small.’

‘Fair or dark?’

She shook her head. ‘Uh huh, don’t remember.’

‘Anything else.’

She frowned and looked again out over the water.

‘Shit, I don’t know. Nothing. No! I remember now, one of them had a sort of shine to his suit. Yech! And he wore white shoes. Does that help?’

The busy woman at the other desk hung up her phone noisily. We both looked at her.

‘I don’t mean to stickybeak, Jess, but…’

‘Don’t worry, Val. What?’

I was amazed that she could stickybeak as well as doing all those other things. I wished I could get a look at her feet.