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Juliette stoked an invisible beard. 'Well, it'll surely be the first detective agency we've set up with a business loan. What are your qualifications?'

'I used to write books about how to write mystery novels. I'm a huge fan of Golden Age mysteries Agatha Christie, Ronald Knox and all that. The foundation of our business will be that by applying the rules of the classic fictional detectives, we can solve real-life cases.'

'Zero experience,' Juliette muttered under her breath. 'So how much do you charge to solve a murder, then?'

I bristled. 'He's not going to ask that.'

'He might and I am.' She broke character, then passed a flat hand over her face as an actor does to reset. Her voice dropped a register. 'It's a business, and a business has to make enough money to be trusted to reliably repay its loan. I might like to think about how that money's going to come in. Do you give a discount for serial killers? A loyalty card?'

I slipped back into my role. 'Actually, I'm hoping to get away from murders. There're lots of people in need of a professional detective's services without being tied up in anything quite so grisly.'

'How much did you get paid for your first three cases?'

I eyeballed Juliette. She was having too much fun with this. 'Huh?'

'How much?'

'Well, nothing. You know that.'

'Who does? We've never met. My name's Winston. You expect to make money off this when you're out here solving murders for free?'

'I stumbled into those murders, more than anything.'

'Stumbled?' Juliette thumbed through an official-looking document on the table between us, for which I'd even paid an extra dollar for premium spiral binding. She frowned. 'I don't see that in your marketing plan.'

'It's a word-of-mouth business.'

'But your clients are dead.'

I fiddled with my tie. Juliette evidently found it delicious to hold back a lifeline for another few seconds, but eventually she let me off the hook. 'What are you working on now?'

'Nothing.' I tried a laugh. 'Unless Laurence Birch was murdered.'

He was. Of course he was. But we'll get to that.

'What about your previous case?' Juliette continued.

'They'll have to recast.' I was still focused on Laurence. I didn't realise I'd said it aloud until Juliette responded.

'Touching. I think that's quite far down the list of priorities.'

 'They'll have to have a funeral, then they'll have to recast.'

 'Can we keep focus please? Your last case?'

'Eight months ago. Christmas. I was shot. I had to take some time to recover— Can we... can we just be ourselves for a bit?'

'I'm perfectly myself.' She threaded her fingers through her belt loops, as if her imagined banker had a jeans-strainer of a torso, leaned back and sniffed theatrically. 'Tell you what I'm seeing? I'm seeing a disorganised, low-return business proposal. Drowning in insurance and, let's be honest, occupational health and safety risks. I'm sorry, but three murders isn't a business. I don't think anyone's going to want to hire you—'

If a baker's generosity improves by the metric of distance from an airport, so too does the ricketiness of a loan application. That much I'm sure was obvious from the jump: no one drives seven hours when their business idea is a good one.

Juliette wasn't doing an impression of Winston Huxley, she was doing an impression of everyone who'd turned us down from every glass-doored corner office to every felt-cubicle basement-desk across Sydney. We'd gone up and down the ladder and I mean down. Having a diamond-toothed loan shark, assumedly taking a break from knee-capping to squeeze in our meeting (I did not wear a tie), describe your business venture as high risk is a real confidence killer.

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