He scowled. “These are the rejections.” He fumbled in the pile for a minute and pulled one out, his face brightening. “Here’s one I haven’t heard from yet,” he said.

“Maybe your application got lost in the post.”

Tim opened the letter and spread it out in front of him. “Head of Security at the Canadian Bank in Pall Mall,” he read out. “Forty thousand quid a year plus luncheon vouchers and car. In other words, meals and wheels.”

“When will you hear?” I asked.

“Don’t worry. The phone’ll ring…”

“We don’t have a phone,” I reminded him. “We got cut off.”

Tim’s face fell. He folded the letter and put it back in the drawer.

“Things aren’t so bad,” he muttered. “I’ll get a case sooner or later. I bet you any day now somebody’s going to knock on the door.”

Somebody knocked on the door.

Tim gulped like he’d just swallowed a chicken bone. He looked around him. What with the lunch tray on the desk, the paper boats and everything else, the office hardly looked like the headquarters of a successful private eye. And here was a potential client knocking at the door! For a moment he froze. Then we both went into action.

The paper boats went into the bin. Tim opened another drawer and threw the knives, forks and napkins inside. At the same time, I grabbed the milk carton and slipped it into a vase on a shelf. That just left the tray. Tim handed it to me. I looked for somewhere to put it. I couldn’t see anywhere so I put it on a chair and sat on it.

“Come in!” Tim called out. He was bent over the desk, scribbling away at a blank sheet of paper. It would have looked more impressive if he’d been using the right end of the pen.

The door opened.

Our visitor was carrying a gun — and it was the gun that I looked at first. It was small, snubnosed, a dull, metallic grey. So was the visitor. He was only a little taller than me and he was so pale he could have just stepped out of one of those old black and white films they show on TV. He had a square chin, close-cropped hair and small eyes that seemed to be hiding behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. Either he was extremely short-sighted or his optician was. Or maybe it was just that he felt safer behind bulletproof glasses.