Insomnia has never been a problem for me before. I mean, I've had it, yeah. But it's never been a problem. Nine times in ten I'd be awake thinking of something which had happened and gone very well, or something that was coming and was bound to go very well, how I could make it go well. And for the tenth night, God made alcohol.

You're starting to see, maybe, how it came to be a problem this time.

The last thing I remember seeing on the clock is five-thirty. I know nothing kicked off last night until midnight, but that's still not good. And I wake with the usual alarm at eight only to hear Danielle talking to the cat, that sweet, false voice people do when they're talking to something that can't talk back, whether animals or infants or a slowly crashing computer. She's giving MacLeod her reasons and justifications for feeding him bacon and treats for breakfast. "Got a bit of a scare last night, didn't you, love? You thought you were going to have to come and live with Aunty Danielle, didn't you?" Aunty… What is that? Why do people do that? So I shut off the alarm, pull the duvet over my head and roll over.

And the next time I wake the clock says twelve and the phone is ringing. Not my mobile, handily located by the bed where it would be alright, but the landline, out on the desk, where it's a major bloody issue. It's too cold. And the sun's too bright. Fecking sun, it's got no respect, y'know…

…Rational, objective analysis? The farther away we get from me actually having Sherlock Holmes within casual strangling distance, the worse my mood gets.

That's the rational, objective analysis. I'm aware of that. But my heart's not in it, frankly. I'm happy enough bitching about the sun, thanks. All the work, these last few weeks, I'm due a holiday. Should that holiday happen to be to the depths of despair, the darkest pit of hell, well, why not? It makes a change from that little taverna Moran keeps on Skopelos.

Phone's still ringing. Whoever it is, they're not giving up.

So I shuffle up to my feet, staying comfortably and cosily inside the duvet, and make my penguinish way out to the phone. It's alright; there's nobody here to see. Well, almost nobody.

Cats have this way of looking at you, reserved only for their owners, the meaning of which, plain and loud as any West Ham fan can sing it, is "You fucking wanker…"

"Fuck off," I tell him back. "You'd see well worse at Aunty Danielle's." Jesus, they've got me doing it now. That's not to be held against me; I haven't actually wakened yet. I'm holding off on that until I know it's important.

Fecking phone's fecking still fecking ringing, I wish phones would stop doing that, and they'd invent a phone that doesn't ring and I'd just sit and look at it all day and live in perfect peace and, "Hello?"

"Get up. Get the fuck up, you sad, lonely, mopingold bastard!"

Moran. I get by, don't you know, with a little help from my friends. "…Wait a minute, 'old'? But we talked about this; you got over your little death wish phase."

"And he's back in the room," he says, the way a hypnotist would. There's a pause, and if he's waiting for applause he can bloody well wait. We are not amused. "You're awake and making threats," he says. "That's how I know you're alive."

"Well, somebody woke up feeling better."

"You'll engineer it so I still get to shoot somebody, won't you? So I get to do more than just terrify people from a distance and drive the cab?"

And folk call me a psychopath… "It's too soon to make promises. But yes, if I possibly can, certainly I will give you that opportunity." Of course I will. Nobody would get it except him. This job, this opportunity in particular, I wouldn't use anybody else. I could call any of a hundred men down to hold the gun, but that's not what this is about.

"Then you are a gentleman and I ask no more of you. Morning reports?"

Yes. And quickly; computer clock says 11:58, and I hate afternoon reports. Anyway, there's not much to tell. He updates me from Reuters if anything of ours is making the news. Says nobody reported a break in at a local leisure centre. Doctor Watson is taking some time to lick his non-wounds, the child, hasn't said a word yet. "Stop, stop. Sebastian, you're telling me about a lot of things that haven't happened. What about the stuff that actually did? Where are we on Adler?"

"Dani's got a lock on her. She's working on it."

"That was quick."

"It wasn't difficult; the woman's got Twitter." That worries me, a little; that implies we're using Adler's own itinerary to arrange a meeting and didn't I say, explicitly, any terms but hers? Didn't I say that at a time when nobody could have doubted that I meant it, most heartily? Moran senses my hesitation. "Call Danielle if you're worried. But she seemed pretty sure of herself. She was the one told me to make sure you were up and about. I was on your side. I was the one saying, 'Jim, he'll have been up with the sun, that lad, like ever, little hitch isn't going to send him burrowing into bed' but…"

"Excuse me, but which of us was it hit the curb no less than four times driving back here last night? Which of us could do naught but stare and be distracting?"

"...She also said," and he's gone all terse and sulky with me now because I'm reminding him of a moment of vulnerability he once had and didn't cover up too well, "that she left you breakfast in the microwave if there's anything of it you can salvage at midday." Aw. I must say, it never fails to cheer me up, listening as the single hardest bastard I know, a man who's definition of gentility is getting him somebody to shoot, gradually turn into a stung, pissy queen. That warms my heart. Gives me a bit more enthusiasm for this day.

I know I've already come to this conclusion before, but this time I'm going to make it stick; I'm in this now. For better or worse, this is how things are. Accentuate the positive. Take it as it comes. Spilt milk. I'm doing the platitudes again. Watch yourself. The platitudes, of late, have been preludes to psychotic breaks…

That's the rational, objective analysis. As before, I am only dimly aware of that. Mostly I just keep thinking, go with the flow. Water off a duck's back. When life gives you lemons, rip the hearts out of your oldest enemy and your most worthy one in one go, and fill the bleeding gaps with lemons before they're dead so that it stings. That last one doesn't go like that, I know, but you have to work with what you're given.

For instance, the bacon is well salvageable. And between two slices of toast and with copious brown sauce, makes an unparalleled sandwich.

See? Good mood. Don't touch it; it's very delicate, like a cobweb, liable to blow away at the first breath of bad news, so don't touch it.

Danielle gave me an hour to get it together. Then sent me an address and said if I was quick we'd have time for a coffee. The street name was familiar, but I couldn't place it until I got here. This is a little café, much like any other quiet, unpretentious sort of place, but right across the street there's a bank-like building with white columns and a large greenhouse attached to the side. Or 'Covent Garden', as Londoners are fond of calling it. I don't think of it as Bow Street, it's just 'the opera'. I'm losing my working class roots, aren't I? And how can I be thinking of that when I'm supposed to be getting ready for a client meeting? And a really, really important client too.

Danielle's waiting with a hot black coffee for me. That ought to do something to steady me, shouldn't it?

Why am I having to ask? All these questions, all this self-doubt. A lesser man than me would be getting scared of himself by now. And for himself…

"How are we feeling?" is how she greets me.

Me, in a moment of unprecendent honesty, "Not… stable." Unprecedented and, if I'm honest, ill-considered.

"All back to normal, then."

"Dani, please…"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Then what's the problem?" There's no dwelling on it; she made a mistake and moves right on. "Anyway, you're going to be on the right side of the line when I tell you what I've gotten you."

"Promise?"

"Mm-hm. Not only have I located your mysterious Deep Throat-" She is referencing Watergate. Nonetheless, this is still a thing she says far too loudly and in far too public a place. "-But I've found you the means to take her entirely by surprise in a most psychologically penetrating way."

I could ask her if she thinks that sort of talk, all the innuendo and veiled gags, is helping, but she wouldn't have a clue what I'm on about; she just talks like that.

Is a veiled gag a thing with a dominatrix? It sounds right.

"Go on then. Impress me."

"She's across the road."

"What, in the opera house?"

Danielle nods. She's eating a muffin the size of my fist, and addresses most of what she has to say to the crater of oozing blueberry she is painstakingly excavating. This from a girl who, I can attest, can shin five floors of drainpipe in three minutes. Something's wrong; she's comfort-eating. But I say nothing straight away, allowing her to continue, "She takes singing lessons. Purely for pleasure, no career ambition, just a passionate opera fan with a beautiful voice. It is her refuge, and it is her secret. Nobody's supposed to know about it. You can ambush her in the corridor beyond the practice room, right when she feels like she's safe. Your terms, yes?"

"You got all this just this morning?"

Eating a fragment of blueberry out from under her fingernail, "Told you I could cheer you up."

"So where's this practice room? Take me over there."

"No," she says. That's the second time she's done that. Like I was giving her a choice in the matter. "I'll draw you a map from the door direct to where you need to be. We have time."

But this time will not be like last night; I'm not tired and stunned this time. I'm not standing for it this time. "When do you think we developed one of those relationships where you get to say 'no'?"

"…Round about the Suffrage movement?"

"Take me over there." And this time I say it in such a way she knows better than to argue. I don't know what's gotten into her lately. Between the backchat and the calories, woman needs to catch herself on. That's two ways she could do herself out of a job right there. Danielle Mies is a thief; the day she doesn't fit through the air conditioning ducts is the day her career ends. She stands, sighing like a teenager so I'll know she's not happy about this, putting her handbag straight on her shoulder so I'll know I'm leaving the tip, and she taps her foot while she's waiting so I'll know, again, that she's not happy about this. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. Let's go."

"I thought we had time?"

She pretends she didn't hear that and leads off. Doesn't say another word until we're at the top of an unassuming back stairwell. Even then, it's just, "Down there, on the left. You'll hear her." And then she turns, like that's it, job done, and she starts down the stairs again. And when I ask where she thinks she's going, she says I don't need her, like that's her call to make. And when I ask her again what's the matter she says, "Because I can hear her already."

So can I, now that I'm listening. The sound of Danielle's heels fading down the stairs makes it difficult to discern straight away, so I walk out off the landing and start following the corridor, chasing the voice. Like the voice on the phone, like the oblique photographs on her website, it matches. Elegant. Something to it that speaks of a natural, untempered pleasure.

Singing Desdemona's Ave from Otello. Danielle should have stayed. She likes a bit of Verdi, does Danielle. There's a whole long story behind it, but me and her saw the first act of it once. Then we got fired at by an American mercenary and had to miss the rest of the show. Never heard the Ave. Dani should have stayed.

I wait, undisturbed by any living creature, for the end of the lesson, happily just listening. In fact, I almost forget myself.

There's a moment. I'll try my best to describe it so that you'll understand. It occurs just as she opens the door and sees me standing there. Casual, leaning on the wall. It's probably clear from my expression that I've been standing contentedly for the last ten minutes or so. She is, undoubtedly, the woman from the pictures. A little different, though, today. The long black hair is only loosely tied, hanging straight down her back, and she's dressed for comfort rather than to make an impression. And in that moment, she looks so stunned, so caught. Exactly what I was after, if you take the rational, objective approach to it.

But in that moment there's a dim old friend of a feeling that flares bright for just that moment, and I think it's what I used to call shame, back when such a thing was possible.

Needless to say, a moment is just a moment. It disappears quick enough. I put that awful feeling away. And both of us shake off the silly excess of the moment and readjust ourselves, become what we want to be for what's to follow. "So," I begin, and the second I open my mouth she knows who I am (bloody accent's more trouble than it's worth), "I believe I'm here to be propositioned?"