Tuesday morning, an office building in the Docklands

Vincent is in his early thirties, has his kids every other week, and enjoys eating out alone to watch the other people at the restaurant. His eldest child is showing a worrisome interest in BMX sports, but that aside Vincent is quite pleased with life in general. He's not an angel, but he is particular about numbers. And he knows exactly what he's doing.

He's currently wondering if the people in head office know what they are doing. They have issued a tax inspection of Mr Fell's bookshop in Soho, on the grounds of Mr Fell doing his taxes correctly. This is something of a regular occurrence. His colleague, Paul, calls it their very own Eurovision Song Contest: always a spectacle, and most often an embarrassment.

They had repeated this no fewer than five times, an effort that some would call insanity while others would look at it, nod sagely, and proclaim it state-of-the-art scientific research. Most things are a matter of perspective, anyway, so either the people in head office were nuts, or they were investigating some ineffable aspect of accounting statistics.

The first inspection had turned up nothing. Fell's accounts were flawless, in that way taxes never were because to err is to be human. There was absolutely no need to investigate someone who knew how to keep their accounts, but Fell's impeccably organised papers seemed to have offended head office into thinking he must be getting away with murder, or at the very least cigarette smuggling. The second inspection, only a year later, had also turned up nothing. At least not in terms of accounting errors.

There had been a lone visitor at the second inspection, a man smeared against the bookshelves like a menacing dark stain on the wall of a crime scene. He wore form-fitting black from head to toe, did not seem the least interested in books, and had quietly glared holes in the backs of the inspectors from behind his sunglasses, like some lanky incarnation of Poe's raven. "A business acquaintance," Mr Fell had explained when asked about it, and smiled.

The office was in solemn agreement that said business had nothing to do with the selling and purchasing of books.

Vincent had been there for the three inspections since; Paul had been part of the last two, and both had experienced firsthand the unseen, burning stare of the business acquaintance in black. Neither of those inspections had found anything incriminating, unless you counted the car parked outside the bookshop. Vincent could have sworn that was a no-parking zone, yet the yellow lines ran all the way down the street except for that one spot outside Mr Fell's.

The car looked like it would commit crime on its own if you took your eyes off it. It was a vintage Bentley straight out of the garage of a film noir mafioso: spotlessly black, with the kind of curved design that, as Paul put it, "should be R-rated and pixelated".

It was Paul who had snapped a picture of the Bentley, run the number plate against RegArchive, and determined that the man with the sunglasses must be Anthony J Crowley. Mr Crowley, he reported, after applying his facebook-stalker search methods with fervor bordering on the religious, did not have a criminal record officially, but didn't seem to have any debt, job, education, friends, or registered family either. As far as the internet was concerned, he might as well have materialised out of thin air.

Paul and the rest of the office firmly believe that Anthony J Crowley is either a secret agent, an assassin, a gangster, or possibly all three.

Paul is the only one who doesn't seem to think this is a problem.

"Do you think he'll be there again?"

"Who?"

"Mr Anthony J." Paul pronounces it as if it were the name of a new club in Soho, one that has a certain reputation about its VIP rooms already at the opening day, and a tongue-in-cheek guarantee about good customer service that make people blush and break eye contact.

"Paul, as your colleague and friend, and self-appointed preserver of your stupid arse – though I don't know why I took that job or when I even applied: leave it. You have crap taste in guys, you know you have – don't gimme that look, you know it's true. You could've worked with the police force, 'cause you, never, fail to find the bad apple in the bunch." And from what he has seen of Anthony Crowley, that apple is carrying a visible past expiration date tag in every angle of his extravagant slouch.

"Ah but you're missing the most important part: this one's a ginger. That's called fate, Vin. Double the ginger, twice the spice."

"I am five seconds away from breaking into your flat and burning all books I find on pick up lines."

People have opinions. This has caused a great deal of trouble throughout history, which has resulted in people having more opinions than ever. Paul's opinion on cringe-worthy pick up lines was that they were very useful. They were a way to test people's aptitude for wit, their aim with a cocktail glass, and if Paul's attractiveness was enough to overcome his personality. Vincent just considered them cringe-worthy. These particular debates usually ended with Paul threatening to take back custody of the coleus plant that lived on Vincent's desk.

"If we try being realistic for a moment. Can we do that?" Vincent is using what Paul calls his 'dad voice', because age is the only number tax inspectors don't care about. "How do you even know he's gay? You're gonna walk up to some bloke who can probably kill with a pair of nail clippers and go 'did it hurt when you fell from heaven?' just seeing how that turns out?"

"Have you seen his trousers?" It's a rhetorical question, though it is actually a rather good one. They have both seen Mr Crowley walk, and the way he walks has a tendency to make people forget he's wearing trousers at all. "Have you seen him? He's bi. I know it – I sense it." He flutters his fingers about like a children's show magician. The rumoured gaydar is another thing they have different opinions about, although the argument boils down to Paul saying Vincent doesn't have one and Vincent agreeing that he can't have something that doesn't exist. "I'll have a witness there with me, so what's he gonna do? Worst case scenario is he tells me to sod off and that's the end of that."

Very few people know what Vincent actually does at work. They assume it has to do with numbers and records, which is true. But whenever he's about to go into detail they get that look in their eyes, like people who are being asked out on a date they're not interested in but haven't got the decency to decline, and suddenly they remember they left the stovetop on back home and have to rush off quite hurriedly.

What Vincent does at work, aside from going through numbers and records, is to act as the voice of common sense on Paul's shoulder. He knows exactly why he took that job, no matter what he might claim: work, the experts say, should be "stimulating" and "challenging". Paul is both.

"Okay, suppose he's bi: is he available? Have you thought about that? Maybe he's shagging Mr Fell."

"Oh be real, Fell's not his type!"

It's hard to find any good argument around that. Mr Fell certainly gave off the impression that he was gay, but he also seemed to give off an impression that had the same effect on people as Vincent talking about his job.

"You know that game when you describe yourself with a film or book title?" Vincent nudges the coleus into the relative safety behind his paper storage. "Have you considered Pride and Prejudice? "

Paul peers around his computer screen with a look that, like a shot of tequila, is one part acid, two parts dry alcohol, and a bucketful of salt.

"Vin, he runs an antique bookshop."

Vincent's response is more along the lines of a strawberry daiquiri: sweet, and full of self-inflicted misery.

"You're a tax inspector, Paul."

Humans are often wrong about Crowley, because Crowley has made an art of giving the wrong impression. He has never been part of organised crime. He has never been employed as an agent by any intelligence unit, either, and he has never committed murder – unless you count Ligur, but then you might also need to count other things that are sentient but not strictly speaking alive the way beings on Earth understand it. Like CEO's. Or YouTube influencers.

Crowley does, however, have a long history of conning tax workers.