‘Clever…’ murmured Nancy. She frowned as a thought occurred. ‘So I’m curious. Where did he come from? Surely he didn’t just pop up out of nowhere.’

‘Well, that’s the thing. No one really knows. He emerged from the shadows a few years back, but he’s just so secretive that it’s hard to find out anything about him beyond hearsay.’

‘Anonymity is a wise strategy in our business,’ said Nancy, ‘but it’s not going to save his skin when it comes to me. I will find him and I will kill him.’

‘There is one other thing, for what it’s worth.’

‘Yes?’

‘Apparently he has a penchant for poisonous snakes. According to what I heard, he keeps a load of pet cobras. Rumour has it that some poor bastard who crossed him got chucked in a pit of cobras.’

‘Cobras? You’re having me on! Sounds like a James Bond villain,’ she said with a laugh.

‘You don’t say,’ murmured Stephen drily, watching her sitting in the black high-backed leather swivel chair stroking the fluffy white dog on her lap.

‘Poisonous snakes! How ostentatious,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll stick to Pomeranians myself.’

Nancy knew all about villains and their predilections for dangerous pets. Usually it was lions or crocodiles or something similar that they kept in their mansions to impress and intimidate guests. The kinds of animals that ate other animals or presented some lethal threat to humans. So poisonous snakes weren’t such a stretch…

‘The problem,’ said Stephen, ‘is that we don’t know his real name. We don’t know what he looks like or how old he is, or even what race he is. We don’t know anything about him. And until we do, I don’t see how we can find him.’

‘There’s always a way to get to someone if you really want to,’ Nancy replied. ‘No one is completely invulnerable.’

They both lapsed into momentary silence. It seemed they’d hit an impasse. Nancy sat there stroking Ettie, looking down at the little Pomeranian as she meticulously analysed the situation in her mind.

After a minute or two she looked back up at Stephen, a sly enigmatic cast to her face.

‘You told me this Mister Snigiss keeps cobras,’ she began. ‘Well, I had to have Ettie’s ears syringed the other day.’ She looked down at Ettie. ‘Didn’t I?’ she said to the dog in a cooing tone, rubbing her ears. ‘And it wasn’t cheap either, was it? Oh, no it wasn’t.’

Stephen watched patiently, waiting for her to make her point.

Nancy looked up from Ettie. ‘Just because Mister Snigiss is this wannabe gangland kingpin, it doesn’t mean that his pet cobras don’t get ill from time to time. And if your pets get ill you have to take them to the vet. I mean, look at me. I have to take Ettie to the vet just like everyone else. She doesn’t go to a special underworld dog vet, she goes to a regular normal vet.’

Stephen looked a bit mystified. ‘So his cobras get ill sometimes? So what?’