So this is the scene, this is where we are -- the office with the threadbare sofa and the green lampshade, outside the light fading from the sky leaving us to face the coming hours of night alone. Always alone. There's a woman sitting on my desk who isn't a stranger, her presence providing little comfort all the same, but this is fine, this is the way it is. It's not her I'm looking to comfort me.

My pouring hand is steadier than it ought to be. I fill the glass, raise it up. I always feel better with a drink in my hand. And if that's a lie, it's one I wish I could be telling myself right about now.

Opening my mouth, the words come out. "Tell me."

This time there's no beating around the bush. "She didn't make it home from the club last night after her performance. Strange when you consider she only lives two floors up. Then Jerry -- I'm sure you remember Jerry -- he brought me one of the kids who sneak in sometimes to make a few dimes cutting cigars, running errands. The boy saw Maggie being hustled into a car out in the back lane. It was a nice car, he said, and one of the guys he saw had a pistol. She was --"

"No," I jump in, hand tightening on the glass, "You know someone took her, and you know it was Blackpoole behind it. Now tell me the rest."

Her eyes sharpen, her next words meant to cut. "Fallen behind the game, haven't you? You should know this -- everybody knows what's been happening."

I search my memory. I'm a lousy drunk and a bum, yeah, there's no question of that, but I still have a few friends on the streets, along with more than a few enemies. But the last time I stopped down at old Al's news stand on the corner, there was something, wasn't there? Then it comes to me.

"He wants the nightclub."

"Of course he wants the bloody nightclub!" the first cracks in her flawless visage appear. She's done so well so far, but this is Maggie we're talking about, she might've cracked sooner, although I might not have believed it. The cigarette case appears again, she lights a fresh one, steadies herself. "I won't sell, and he can't have me evicted, I own the building."

"And you've got just as many commissioners, regulators and politicians in your pocket as he does," I fill in the gaps. "You're at a stalemate, no one wants to get involved."

She fixes sad eyes on mine, bleak and dry as the ashes that fall carelessly from the end of her cigarette. "He found some leverage."

"And have you been contacted yet?"

"I waited all day, till I just couldn't any more, and nothing."

"Then you came here."

She nods her confirmation while alarm bells are going off in my head. Blackpoole will have eyes on her -- the man's got eyes all over this town, it wouldn't be hard, and she's hardly the kind to slip through the cracks. Unless she wants to. And they'll know she's here, right now, with me. Probably the plan all along.

"Who else was I going to turn to?" she says, like a challenge. On the offensive, she must already have come to the same conclusion I've just reached.

I don't blame her. My ex-wife, my former lover, they're partners now, allies where once they wouldn't have shared the same air if they could help it. But what once set them up as rivals, drew them together in the end like a pair of matching headstones in my own personal emotional graveyard. And now the two of them being targeted by the one man I despise above all others -- there's no way I wouldn't have ended up neck deep in this, whether or not Sophie came running straight to me or not.

Yeah, I'm in it, all right.

I set the glass of whiskey down, and push myself out of my chair. Around the desk, halfway out the door before I realise I forgot to drink the booze. Stopping in my tracks, I look back longingly, two fingers of liquid gold -- which Sophie plucks out of my gaze and lifts to her lips. A long, graceful swallows, and it's gone.

Damn it to hell. I wish I didn't find that so damned attractive.

"Let's go for a walk," I tell her, and she slides off the desk and comes over to join me. I turn to go. I don't make it two steps.

Her hand on my arm stops me, turns me back to face her. It does not fail to catch my attention that she is suddenly really close.

"Are you up for this?" she says. "I don't have to tell to you..."

Maggie's life depends on it. Got that, thanks. I'm trying to think about anything else. "You doubt me?"

"You didn't ask me why I won't sell."

"Guy's a bully, why should you?"

She sighs, her eyes dropping away then coming back up to search my face. I know what she sees, unshaven, run down, haunted bloodshot eyes, it's what I see in the mirror whenever I can force myself to look. Something else must show through, I guess, or else maybe I'm just that pathetic, because next thing I know, she breaches my personal space, the scent of her surrounding me in a heady cloud, muting my senses to all else. She reaches up and plants one on me, and god help me, I let her.

Been so long, it's funny the things you can make yourself forget, these lips for instance, luscious like an oasis in the desert of my self-imposed, solitary existence. The things she can do with them, the things she's done, it all comes flooding back in a flash. Then I'm not so stunned any more, I'm wrapping her waist and pulling her in tight where she should be if this is to be anything like a decent kiss. And she agrees, she moans a little, sweet mouth parting under mine as I drink her down like she did her two fingers of stolen liquor. After a while she wriggles in my arms and it just gets better and better, I'm starting to think -- just as she goes ahead and wriggles right out of them.

She looks pleased with herself, hair mussed and lipstick smudged. To be honest, I don't blame her. Whatever game she's playing, there's only one clear winner here.

All I can manage to say is a lousy, "Boy, used to take a lot more than one drink."

She smiles without shame. "Well if you're going to be working for me, there should be a few benefits. For you, I mean," she adds, as she saunters out, past Parker's desk, to the door with my name on it.

Nathan Ford, Private Detective. Yeah, that's me all right.

Shaking off the daze -- it's the perfume, no lie, I think she laces it with opium -- I take my hat and coat from the stand by the door. Only then does my brain catch up to the here and now, and I find myself hurrying after her out into the hallway. "Now wait a minute, who says I'm working for you?"

to be continued...

Next up: We meet Mr Eliot Spencer, and the plot thickens.