I leave the Hawks House behind in the Hills and drive. Just drive. After a while all the scenery starts to look the same, and I come to terms with the fact that there don't seem to be any other cars on the road. Switch off. Just sit back and turn the wheel when the road turns.

And try and figure out what in hell just happened, why a woman I'd known for less than an hour had suddenly thrown herself at me, and not just any woman but her. And what about the whole thing had felt right and familiar. It's not right and it couldn't have been familiar. But it felt right, and familiar.

No. To hell with it. I know what the facts are and the facts are it was wrong and it's never happened before. To hell with it. Anyhow, I've got a case now.

A sane and sensible man with his head in a good place would go home and sleep first. Me, I can't face it. I'm going back to the office. Look at the details I got from Ms Pond, try and figure out what this guy wanted, where he's gone. The one thing I noticed in that room, aside from the white, was that there were plenty of other jewels to steal. Bigger and fancier and tonnes of them. So that rules out personal gain.

Ms Pond couldn't think of a person in the world who'd want her wedding ring for any other reason. So that's my first job, is to come up with a suspect. I didn't want to tell her at the time that her not having any enemies puts all the people she's ever called friend in the frame, but that's about where we stand. I should get online, check out who's working on her new movie with her. Who knew Mr Hawks was shooting-on-location tonight. Find out what shooting-on-location is so I know if anybody says it to me again.

There's no computer in the office.

I'm thinking that like it's a new fact, but of course it's not. It's my office. I go there every day. There's never been a computer.

This quiet little voice, not my own, in the back of my mind says, "Roman, mate, you're too smart for your own good."

Most of my mind says louder, "You're losing it."

I get out of the car at the kerb and go in. The doorman looks up at me in just the same way he always does and gives the same grunt of acknowledgement, and goes back to today's paper. Always today's paper. Makes it last all day. Always turns the page as I walk up the stairs.

What's wrong with this picture? No, nothing, everything's exactly the way it's always been, the way it is every day. Why do I feel like something's wrong with the picture?

It's a bad feeling I've got, sitting on top of my stomach like a poison bullfrog.

Got to get a hold of myself. I've got a bad feeling because there's nothing wrong? Says more about the state of my life than I like to think about. I'm more than a touch bitter as I put the key in the door. Through the frosted glass, the shadow of the desk, with no computer, the way it's always been. The right way.

"Mr Williams!"

This voice cries my name out from the stairwell. I don't turn to see. I know who it is. Before he can reach me, I knock my head once against the door and can't help but mutter, "Not tonight, oh God, not by all that's good and true, not tonight, not this guy." But it is, and I wasted good time muttering when I should have been sneaking inside and crouching behind the door until he went away.

He'll want something, you know. He always wants something. And you never see it again. Anything he gets off you, you never see the damn thing again.

This guy, I don't know his name, he lives upstairs. Which is kind of ironic, considering the lift does not go to the top floor, if you get my meaning. He's a doctor of some kind, and you have to address him as such or he just hits the roof. I've never much known what to make of him.

I mean, he looks harmless. In the tweed jacket with the elbow patches and the salmon pink shirt, with all the stupid hats, with the hair, that goddamn dickey-bow, he looks harmless. But it's about fifty-fifty, when you meet people who know him. You've got the fifty who think he's a hoot, life and soul of the party, best guy they ever done met. And you've got the fifty where you say his name and they don't want to talk anymore.

You've got a little crossover in the middle where all you have to do is say his name and they can't wait to tell you everything you want to know and more.

Like I say, I don't know what kind of doctor he is.

"Doctor!" I say, like I'm glad to see him, "Love to talk, but I've got a case to work on and-"
"Suspend it!" He gets fervent, all bulging eyes and hand gestures, bobbing up on the balls of his feet. "Shelve it, back-burner it, put it away at once, you have a much more important task ahead of you!"

Last night I couldn't have got a paying job for all the diamonds in Siam. That, maybe, might-could go some way towards explaining why I throw this particular rope around my neck and kick the chair away. "What's the matter, Doctor?"

"It's gone! Stolen, spirited away, purloined, ooh, that's a good word, purloined, haven't heard that one in a while, I should use it more often, bring it back, as it were-"

It's round about this point I realize I've committed myself to hear the rest and curse my charitable heart. "What's gone?"

And for this, he lowers his voice to a bass of great dignity, and strength drawn up out of the depth of his soul. Bottom lip trembling, "My bow tie."

I shut my eyes. Start turning the key in the office door again. I point without looking. "It's round your neck."

"Not this one. Great Scott, man, I'm a doctor! I'm hardly an imbecile." I decline comment on that one and tell him there's a reasonable menswear place around the corner. "No, no, no, Mr Williams, I don't think you understand. This tie was of a certain… significance, if you will. It had… sentimental value."

"All due respect, Mr… Doctor, but it's a tie, how much-"

"Bowties are cool." The voice is his, yeah. But the words sound wrong coming from him. Too controlled, or poised, convincing, something like that. I'm not looking at him when he speaks, so I can't be sure, but the reflection behind me in the window, it doesn't look like his lips move. And his face looks blank, gone. I glance back and he doesn't look like that anymore, he looks animated and stupidly fierce again, like he did before.

And the words 'sentimental value' chime with something else I've heard tonight. A wedding band's got sentimental value.

So slow, behind me, I open the door. "Why don't you come in, Doctor, tell me all about it."

I'm thinking how I'm likely going to regret this, how this can't be for the good and there's no way in hell these two thefts can be connected, unless there's a hell of a lot more I don't know about the madman upstairs than I thought. Which is possible, I guess, but there's still no way in hell these two cases could be connected. And yet here I stand, letting this lunatic into my space, getting that bad déjà vu feeling again. Like letting him in against my better judgement is something I do on a regular basis. That's not true. That's not true and I shouldn't be thinking that.

The door clicks open. The Doctor points so suddenly over my shoulder that finger would knock me out if I didn't duck sideways. "Look out! Thief!" he cries. "Stop! Thief!"

But they don't look like much of a thief. The window's been forced, yeah, and there's a person there. But they're just sitting on the window-ledge. And under their arm, they've got this giant, green plastic crocodile, that squeals when they lift their hand to wave.

They're dressed so I can't say male or female. Wearing this weird, blank white mask with big black eyes.

I don't need this. Tonight, I just do not need this.

When this person, this maybe-or-not thief, is done waving, they roll themselves over the window-ledge and out onto the fire-escape.

"Where'd they get the crocodile?" I wonder out loud.

The Doctor grabs me by the suit lapels and tries to shake me. He hasn't the strength in his arms, but bless his heart, he tries. I look down at his white knuckled hands and he shouts in my face, "Have you lost your mind, man? That's yours! It sits in the corner behind the hat-stand."

Hat-stand. That triggers something; the stupidest thought I ever had – 'There's a hat-stand back home'.

Anyway, the Doctor is still shaking me, and apparently the person with the mask is the person who stole his bowtie, so I have to go after them. Apparently. He's telling me this and I'm not in the mood to give him an argument, so I go. I follow that person's trail down the fire escape to the street. But in the pounding rain, I can't hear footsteps, and with the shadows everywhere I can't pick one out.

I stand, and look about me.

On up the street, bouncing around the mouth of an alley, the giant crocodile finds the rush of gutters and tries to sail past me. I get him by the tail and turn him over. Big cartoon eyes, big smile. Looks like a decent kind of fella.