I headed over to the coffin-size filing cabinet propped against one wall, but the smell was getting to me. It was coming from the desk. I walked over and inspected its surface. It was a mess with piles of folders and unsteady heaps of paperwork jumbled together, but my torch picked out in the middle of the pale blotter a lacy item of female underwear. It was stained dark red. Whether from wine or blood, I couldn’t tell, but flies had dipped their feet in the stain and trailed it across the blotter. I bundled the underwear inside a sheet of paper from one of the piles, wrapped it up and dropped it into my satchel.

My torch beam flared off the murky tumbler and wine bottle that stood within easy reach of the chair but I moved over to the filing cabinet. The lock on it was child’s play. I heard the pick’s telltale click and slid open each drawer in turn. Where was the heavy-duty security that a photographer – even a shoddy one like this – was meant to have in place?

I heard a noise. A soft tapping. I froze. Listened hard. But it was no more than a sudden squall of rain brushing against the shutters. My fingers skimmed rapidly over the contents of the filing cabinet, and the brown envelope I sought was hiding in the third drawer. I lifted out the whole folder, dropped it into the satchel on my shoulder and quietly closed the drawers once more. I was ready to leave, but first I walked back over to the bottle on the desk. I clipped it smartly with the metal casing of my torch. Glass and wine exploded over his shit-heap of papers.

Why am I here, rifling through an office?

Because this is what I do for a living.

*

I let the large brown envelope drop on the desk of Clarisse Favre and she looked at me with a bright scarlet smile. The desk was as immaculately groomed as its owner, polished and sleek, the kind of desk you only see in magazines. However early I came into the office of ‘The Favre Detective Agency, Private Investigator & Associate’ – the Associate was me – she was always in ahead of me and stayed long after I crawled home at midnight. She could be sharp as a razor or soft as her Dior powder puff, I never knew which Clarisse I would get.

‘Ma chère Eloïse,’ Clarisse beamed at me, ‘you are the Favre Agency’s secret weapon.’