Cy’s office is everything it should be- well-appointed but not opulent, suggesting competence rather than ostentation, effective service rather than massive fees, but with those professional touches that showed you why you needed him probably more than he needed you. His secretary hadn’t changed in twenty-plus years. Miss Mudlark, I called her to myself, because she always wore brown. She was a tall, rather angularly built woman, wearing a beige blouse and loose dark brown pants, high heels. Her hair and eyes were brown and I bet she took her coffee with a dash of milk. Her name was Janine. She knew how matters stood between me and Cy and she was tolerant. Our communications were almost entirely banter.

‘Mr Sackville is expecting you, Mr Hardy. Go right in.’

‘Thanks, Janine. Nice outfit.’

‘You always say that.’

‘It always is. Is she in there?’

‘Yes. Try to stay on your feet.’

I knocked and entered in what I hoped was a smooth, confident sweep. Cy was sitting behind his desk and stayed there. A woman was in a chair slightly to his side; not exactly where you’d expect a lawyer’s client to be but not in his lap either. She stayed seated too. That made me, at six feet and half an inch, the tallest thing in the room, but a long way from the most powerful.

Cy checked his watch. A reflex action. I’d done the same a few minutes earlier and ensured that I was on time.

‘Cliff Hardy, Mrs Fleischman,’ Cy said. ‘Claudia, this is the man I spoke to you about.’

She turned her head slightly to look up at me and I suddenly understood what Janine the Mudlark meant. This was a woman to melt your bones. She was nothing like beautiful and much, much more than that. Her dark hair was frizzy and her nose was big, like her mouth. Her eyes had a strange slant and she was slightly buck-toothed. The effect was devastating and utterly unlike the newspaper photographs-better.