She began with the desk. First she took note of which folders were open, as opposed to merely teetering in piles, then she sorted through the lot, listing the subject and client names in the same order they were stacked, assuming it to be indicative that the most recently accessed would be on top. Next, she booted up the PC and cross-referenced her list with another search hierarchy prioritising recently amended files. The information Jim kept on the computer largely duplicated his cardboard folders, as he preferred to keep hard copies of everything as backup. These printouts were supplemented by letters, receipts and any other documentation not rendered in electronic form.

Her cross-check threw up two anomalies. She found several recently accessed computer documents pertaining to the same case, but no hard-copy folder on Jim’s desk. The invoicing information stated that the client’s name was Anne Ramsay.

As though to balance this up, she also found a hard-copy folder whose electronic counterpart did not appear on the list on her monitor. The subject was listed on the folder in Jim’s all-upper-case register as ‘GLEN FALLAN’. Rather oddly, the invoice tag stated simply ‘CLIENT: YES’. She scrolled down and down, past last week and into last month, still not seeing a record of it. Just to make sure such a file existed, she ran a search for the subject name. To her satisfaction, there was a relevant folder, in the Missing Persons section, but it hadn’t been accessed in ten months.

Jasmine got a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out the list of cases again, this time grouping them by type. She was familiar with most of them on a first-hand basis, either having had a limited role in the field, or at least having processed some of the paperwork, and even the ones she’d never heard of slotted into the same bread-and-butter categories: insurance follows, missing persons/absconders, and serving writs; plenty of writs. She couldn’t see anything potentially perilous in that lot, otherwise why would Jim have thrown a novice into dealing with them? It was always possible that somebody could get nasty when you were serving court papers, or bear a grudge over your role in exposing a fraudulent injury claim, but surely Jim wouldn’t have to go to ground to avoid the likes of Peter Harper and Robert Croft. If lowlife chancers like that made a threat, he could just go to the police.

Her next task was to sit down with the telephone and make a note of the numbers. Jim’s office handset had a little colour LCD screen that allowed you to list the last ten calls, incoming and outgoing. She started with the former, but had only written down half the list when her endeavours were interrupted by the phone trilling into life.