A long shadow fell across the corridor outside my office. The shadow obscured the scuffed lino tiles on the floor and almost touched the card thumb-tacked to the door. The card reads ‘Cliff Hardy- Investigations’. It’s not the original card, not the one I pinned up almost fifteen years ago, but it’s very like it. I’ve always felt that a nameplate or stencilled letters might bring bad luck, so I’ve stuck with the card.

I walked towards the door and a man stepped from the shadow. He was tall and thin and I instantly felt that there was something wrong with him. Not something to make me reach for a gun, if I’d been wearing one, but something to be sorry for. It was there in the way he moved-slowly and tentatively-and in the way he stood as I came closer. He looked as if he might suddenly flinch away, retreat and dive down the fire stairs.

‘Mr Cliff Hardy?’ he said. He swung the small zippered bag he was carrying awkwardly.

‘That’s right.’

‘You… investigate things?’

I pointed to the card. ‘That’s what it says. You want to come inside?’

The question seemed to cause a struggle within him. He wasn’t a bad looking man-under thirty, full head of dark hair, good teeth, regular features, but there was something missing. His face was immobile and was like a painting which the artist hadn’t quite finished off. But he nodded and moved closer as I unlocked the door.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

I got him settled in the client’s chair. He put his bag on the floor beside him. For some reason that I couldn’t account for, I pulled my chair out from behind my desk and sat more or less across from him with nothing in between. He wore a grey suit, white shirt, no tie. I smiled at him. ‘I usually start by asking my client for a name. I don’t always get the real one.’