As Joe drove the Morris through Bullpat Square, he saw a familiar figure coming out of the wide-open door of the Law Centre. Tiny enough for even a vertically challenged PI to loom over, from behind she could have been taken for a twelve-year-old, but that wasn't an error anyone persisted in once they'd looked into those steely eyes and even less after they'd listened to the words issuing out of that wide, determined mouth, usually borne on a jet of noxious smoke from a thin cheroot. This was Cheryl Butcher, founder and leading lawyer of the Centre, which offered a pay-what-you-can-afford legal service to the disadvantaged of the city. Joe slowed to walking pace and pulled into the kerb. "Hey, Butcher," he called. "You looking for action?" She didn't even glance his way. "What the hell would you know about action, Six- smith?"

"Enough to know you walk too far in this heat, you're going to melt away. Like a lift?"

Wise-cracking was an area of traditional gumshoe activity Joe didn't usually bother with. It required from-the-hip rapid-fire responses and he was honest enough to recognize himself as an old-fashioned muzzle-loader. But his relationship with Butcher somehow seemed to stimulate him to make the effort. Maybe it was the certainty that in their mutual mockery there was a lot of respect.

"You heading to Rasselas?"

The Rasselas Estate was a collection of sixties high-rise blocks that would probably have been demolished years ago if a determined Residents' Committee, led by Major Sholto Tweedie, ably assisted by such powerful personalities as Joe's Aunt Mirabelle, hadn't succeeded in making it a place fit for humans to live in.