It was a classic pea-souper, thick with the stink of the Tyne and as sticky as an athlete's armpit. I wanted to go home, relax, tune into Channel 69 and open a beer, but something caught my eye through the gloom. Ordinarily, I'd have told Pussy Hideaway to go and lose herself, but I was behind with the rent - if something didn't turn up soon, I'd be sleeping at the office like one of those sad fools you read about in cheap magazines.This story first appeared in my short story collection 'Girlfriend Interrupted and Other Fictions' and is a sort of faux-Raymond Chandler fable. I wrote it while looking for ideas for what eventually became the first book in my Terry Bell Mysteries series, 'Death on a Dirty Afternoon'.