LOST A SMALL ITEM OF PERSONAL VALUE?

I CAN HELP YOU FIND IT FOR A REASONABLE FEE.

NO DRUGS. NO WEAPONS. NO MISSING PERSONS.

I've resisted going mass market and posting it online. This way it's kismet, like the ads find the people they're supposed to. Like Mrs Luditsky, who summoned me to her Killarney apartment Saturday morning.

To the old lady's credit, she didn't flinch when she saw Sloth draped across my shoulders.

"You can only be the girl from the ad. Well, come in. Have a cup of tea." She pressed a cup of greasy-looking Earl Grey into my hands without waiting for a response and bustled away through her dingy hallway to an equally dingy lounge.

The apartment had been Art Deco in a former lifetime, but it had been subjected to one ill-conceived refurbishment too many. But then, so had Mrs Luditsky. Her skin had the transparent shine of glycerine soap, and her eyes bulged ever so slightly, possibly from the effort of trying to emote when every associated muscle had been pumped full of botulinum or lasered into submission. Her thinning orange hair was gelled into a hard pompadour, like the crust on crème brûlée.

The tea tasted like stale horse piss drained through a homeless guy's sock, but I drank it anyway, if only because Sloth hissed at me when I tried to turf it surreptitiously into the exotic plastic orchid next to the couch.

Mrs Luditsky launched straight in. "It's my ring. There was an armed robbery at the mall yesterday and-"

I cut in: "If your ring was stolen, that's out of my jurisdiction. It's a whole different genre of magic."

"If you would be so kind as to let me finish?" the old lady snapped. "I hid in the bathroom and took all my jewellery off because I know how you people are – criminals, that is," she added hurriedly, "No offence to the animalled."