Way it started was this.
Monday afternoon, day before yesterday, though it seemed a lot longer ago, heâd been sitting in his office, minding his own business, which didnât take much minding this time of year. Summer had parked its anticyclone firmly over Luton and fused the days and nights of July together with a heat too enervating to start a race riot in, let alone perpetrate any of the crimes that might send the distressed citizenry in search of a PI. Ice creams melted before they could reach your mouth, birds huddled beneath cats for shade, and flies buzzed with relief into spidersâ webs whose owners felt the tremor along the line and thought that maybe next Friday theyâd stroll down there to take a look.
The plus side was that Joe too felt as energetic as a poached egg and couldnât whip up much concern at the lack of client incentive to head off down the mean streets.
So clad in an off-white singlet and Bermuda shorts patterned with scarlet parrots sinking their beaks into rainbow-striped pumpkins, Joe sat at his desk and relaxed with his favourite book, Not So Private Eye, the reminiscences of Endo Venera, the famous Mafia soldier turned gumshoe. This was Joeâs bible. Everything you needed to know about being a PI was here, except maybe how to stay awake.
His head nodded, and he slipped into a dream in which he and Beryl Boddington were sliding naked down an iceberg, and he wasnât at all pleased to have his descent interrupted by a voice saying, âMr Sixsmith? Would you be Mr Sixsmith?â
He opened his eyes and found he was being addressed by a Young Fair God.
He was thirty at most, tall, boyishly handsome, with hair that shone pale gold against the darker gold of skin glowing with a proper expensive Mediterranean yacht kind of tan, not the russet-and-red skin-peeling version which made any large gathering of Lutonians look like Vermont in the Fall. His lean athletic frame was clad in a linen jacket, cream slacks and an open-necked shirt white enough to signal surrender at half a mile. He looked, thought Joe, just like one of those hunks you see in up-market mail-order catalogues where, despite the alleged cutting out of the middle man, the gear still costs three times what youâd expect to pay down Luton market.