Phryne Fisher had promised to help Commissioner Fuller with his scheme for three days. In the evening of the first day, she arrived home far too late for her liking – too late for a daytime stint, at any rate. It had taken her an hour to understand what she was supposed to do at the end of the workday, and she wouldn't have managed if Hugh hadn't been there and helped her. And the cells! What did that even mean, 'check the status of the cells'? Phryne was exhausted, and this reminded her why she had never taken up an office job.

She watched herself in the mirror, and nodded slightly. Two more days of this. She could do it.

The next day was busy, and it turned out Jack wasn't there. Phryne hadn't even realised he might be on a different schedule than her. Of course, it made sense that he wouldn't be there always, but it felt odd to be there without him. To her, she realised, Jack Robinson was the spirit of City South.

Phryne's constables got back to her after having carried out her orders from the day before. Two suspects were taken in for questioning, one for each of the cases she had solved by reading the files. At lunchtime, both the suspects had confessed. And as they came back from the interrogation room, she had just managed to make Constable Perkins promise to write up the reports for her – the dullness of that work! It was like someone was pouring lead into her bones – when she met a frantic-looking Hugh Collins.

"Honorary Inspector Fisher!" he bellowed. "There has been a murder!

Phryne wasn't sure if the Commissioner had really meant the joke to be taken this far, that she would command a real case, but there was no way she wasn't going to fill her duties as Inspector. She swiftly ordered the others to take care of the station while taking Hugh and another constable, young Brown, with her to the crime scene. Hugh even got to drive the car.

The crime scene was in the Botanical Gardens. A man lay sprawled across the public walkway close to the entrance, with several people standing around him.

"Police. Please clear off!" Constable Brown said and ushered people away. Phryne took in the scene, not caring about whether some of the bystanders looked surprised by her womanly appearance. She bent down to assess the victim – around 30, well-dressed, and obviously bludgeoned to death by a blunt object not to be found in the vicinity – when she sensed someone standing close to her.

"Inspector," a well-known voice said and she looked to her side, seeing legs covered in a well-cut grey suit that she immediately recognised. Slowly, she stood up and faced him.

"Jack! What are you doing here?"

"Having a relaxing lunch in the gardens," he said. "Unless you want some assistance?"

"Do I have a choice?" she asked, and was rewarded with one of his almost invisible shakes of the head.

"How is it you always seem to turn up on my crime scenes, Jack?" she challenged him.

"Your crime scenes? It's my crime scene too now, isn't it?" he said with a small smile. "I suspect he was struck by a large branch, and he's obviously holding some sort of incriminating evidence in his right hand. Although I confess I'm not hired on the victim's behalf, and I don't already know who he is."

"Alfred Jenkins," Phryne said, and he looked surprised for a moment until he saw she had already managed to pick the man's pockets for his wallet.

After having called an ambulance to bring the late Mr Jenkins to the morgue, Phryne and her three policemen spent an hour making sure they didn't miss any clues around the area. The note in the victim's right hand proved to be an important clue, and Phryne sent off Brown and Collins to the address on its letterhead. She and Jack drove to the morgue.

When they entered the room, Mac looked up from the body and eyed them suspiciously.

"Is it true?" she asked.

"Please meet the Honorary Inspector Phryne Fisher," Jack said and made a gallant gesture with his hand in Phryne's direction.

"About bloody time!" Mac said and let a smile slowly take over her face. "And what are you doing here?" she continued, addressing Jack.

"I… uh..." Jack stammered, and Phryne intervened:

"Why, he is my most trusted co-worker, of course."

"Of course," Mac said. She turned away, starting to detail the findings from the autopsy. A less careful observer might have thought she disapproved, but Jack could see the gaze she directed away from them spoke of utter delight.

The case was not a difficult one; it would never have caught Phryne's attention if she hadn't been inspector on duty when it was reported. The autopsy together with Collins' and Brown's work solved it in an hour. So these are the things Jack does when I don't see him for a while, Phryne thought as they drove back to the station. She didn't even drive too fast. This responsibility is clearly not good for me.

She eyed him in the car, how he sat gazing thoughtfully out the window, his face resting and beautifully angled, perhaps surprised she drove slowly enough for him to properly see what they passed.

At the station again, Perkins proudly presented her with the finished reports from the earlier cases, blushing when she praised his swiftness.

"I never manage to make the constables blush," Jack said as the two of them entered her office. "At least not happily."

Phryne rolled her eyes at him while sitting down in her chair – yes, by now it definitely was her chair.

"I don't know how you manage, Jack. The paperwork, the simple cases, the organising of the whole station. It's tedious."

"Already tired by your promotion?" Jack teased her.

"I didn't say that," she said sternly, but immediately relinquished. "Perhaps a little bit."

He looked at her, rather softly considering the circumstances, and seemed to consider her state of tiredness. "I think I know what you need."

"You do?"

"A proper nightcap. Offered to you by someone else. And I happen to have some decent whisky at home."

"Do you now?" she asked.

"Eight o'clock?" he countered. "That way, you can come right after work, since that report will need to be written first."

For the rest of the afternoon, while struggling through the report, in the back of her head Phryne was thinking of the odd development that Jack Robinson had invited her home for a nightcap, and wondering if her eyes had been deceiving her when it had looked like he gave her a wink.