The woman who’d hired Buttmeal had been extremely reticent in providing personal details. He’d spoken to her only over the phone and she’d refused to reveal her name or the nature of her relationship to the subject. This kind of thing wasn’t that unusual in his line of work. However, from the nature of the assignment, he guessed she was the man’s wife as she’d instructed him to focus on capturing evidence of any liaisons with women, particularly anyone going by the name of Kaia. Cases involving marital infidelity constituted much of Buttmeal’s daily bread and butter as a private detective.

So far, though, Molloy appeared to have been blameless in that respect as Buttmeal hadn’t yet managed to observe any evidence of meetings with any women. If Molloy was being unfaithful to his wife, he was doing a good job at keeping it below the radar. But it was early days yet, thought Buttmeal, as he started the engine of his Toyota, ready to commence following the Range Rover as it pulled away from the kerb.

Driving slowly through the afternoon traffic, Buttmeal carefully kept a distance of a few cars between himself and the Range Rover, wondering where Molloy was headed off to next.

After about fifteen minutes of wending their way through town, Molloy pulled into a large multi-storey car park. Buttmeal followed the Range Rover into the car park, closer to it now, as it ascended the various floors, each one a little emptier than the last, until it reached the almost deserted eighth storey, where it pulled into a bay and stopped.

Buttmeal continued past and parked up a few spaces down and across from it. He switched off his engine and, sinking down a little lower into his seat, watched in the rear-view mirror as Molloy emerged by himself from the Range Rover and made his way to the lift area.

Could this be it? thought Buttmeal. Perhaps Molloy had left the other two men in the car in order to say a quick hello to his girlfriend. But if Buttmeal was to find out, he was going to have to follow Molloy on foot and possibly even accompany him down in the lift. Deciding that he didn’t want to lose out on the opportunity, he grabbed his digital camera and thrust it in his bag, got out of his car and hurried through the dim area, a chilly breeze blowing in through the open sides of the building.

He reached the lift area a few moments later, praying that Molloy hadn’t taken the lift yet. But to his surprise the lift area was empty. There was no sign of Molloy anywhere. Then Buttmeal noticed a sign taped to the lifts saying that both of them were out of order. He realised Molloy must have taken the stairs and saw that on the other side of the lift area was a door leading to the stairwell.

Buttmeal pushed open the door and entered the stairwell, whereupon somebody slammed into him hard. He crashed up against the wall, stunned, and found himself looking into the dense black eyes of Richard Molloy.