Royce needs a paying client. Unfortunately, his latest client is dead and wants him to solver her murder.

  Chapter 1

  Like the Taylor Swift song said, I knew she was trouble when she walked in.

  The sun was starting to set, and I was sitting in my empty office. An office that had been empty the whole day, in fact, the whole week. Not a single client, not a single soul, had entered the office. The last person I had seen enter was the owner of the local Chinese takeaway, who had come to drop some leaflets.

  Like every day, I just came in and sat in an empty office staring at the dark grey walls until it was night and time to go home and sleep.

  Outside, the shops were starting to close and the takeaways were starting their busy evening shifts. The Chinese takeaway just below me had started to cook delicious rice noodles with soy sauce and deep fried spring rolls. My mouth was watering and my tummy grumbling; not that I could afford to eat any, seeing as I hadn't had a client in three weeks.

  I had been sitting without the lights on because just ten minutes ago it had been sunny; now, suddenly, it had gotten dark. Orange light from the sun streamed into my room but it was getting weaker and weaker by the second and only covered a quarter of the room. The corner I sat in was dark and empty, like my life.

  There was a bit of noise outside as the evening office rush was starting to ebb down. A few angry people honked when the cars in front of them did not move as fast as they wanted when the red light turned green. A few kids screaming as they ran down the street, back from late school activities and a few young men and women laughing boisterously as they started their night out of drinking and partying.

  Not that it mattered to me. I sat alone in my office staring at my dull grey walls. The same thing I did every day.

  I liked staring at dull grey walls; they did not bore me in the least. I love them because they were boring and free of any excitement whatsoever. More recently, the only thing my life had been missing was dullness.

  People complained about having to sit in a boring office and do boring work. I prayed to a god I was 110% sure didn't exist that I could have a boring and dull life, a life without adventure or insanity. Not that the non-existent god ever listened to me.

  And that's when she walked in. I knew she was trouble as soon as I saw her.

  What gave it away, you ask? Well, quite simply:

  The first thing: Her dull, lifeless eyes - as dull and grey as my walls.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  2nd, the fact that she was bleeding all over my torn and stained carpet (making more stains than the ones I had already added). I wasn't worried; the carpet couldn't get any worse than it was.

  The final thing was the knife in her throat, still butting out from where someone had stabbed her. Invisible blood flowing down her dress.

  “Help me,” she said. “Help me,” she whispered. She croaked, she screamed, all at the same time. Not that it mattered; no one could hear her. I'm sure she had been screaming and asking for help for the last few hours, but other than me, nobody could have seen her.

  That was my curse.

  And my gift.

  “Help me, help me,” she screamed over and over. “Why won't anyone help me?”

  I sighed deeply. “Listen, lady,” I said, “I'm really sorry, but I need paying clients. I need to eat. I need food. I need new shoes. I need more than two t-shirts and two pairs of trousers I cycle through every week. I can't do this.”

  She didn't hear me, of course she didn't. She kept screaming: “Help me, help me, help me, why won't anyone help me?”

  I took a deep breath and put my head in my hands.

  I could look away. I could walk away. I could lock my office and leave her here. Why should I care? It wasn't any of my business. The police didn't care. The police wouldn't care when they finally did find her body.

  How did I know? Because of how she looked. She was wearing really baggy trousers, too large for her, a musty brown coat that was torn in multiple places. Her hair dishevelled and matted, some baldness on her head, and carrying a large Tesco bag with small, assorted things. Her face full of dirt marks, I knew she wouldn’t have bathed for weeks. Her shoes were mismatched, like she had picked up two random pairs from a garbage bin in the dark, which she probably had.

  Clearly, she was homeless. Nobody would care that a homeless person had been stabbed and left to die on the street. There would be no investigation. There would be no outrage in the newspaper. There would be no 9 o'clock news bulletin about the increasing crime in the city, about the fact that honest people couldn't walk down the street without being stabbed.

  No, if she was lucky, she might get a slightly younger detective. Someone who hadn't lost their edge, or rather hadn't had their hopes crushed by cynicism and bureaucracy. And who might spend maybe a few hours investigating her case before closing it as unsolvable.

  More likely, she would get a cynical and angry detective in his forties or fifties who would take one look at her and say, “Nah, I'm not dealing with this.”

  And so why the hell should I? Who the hell was I? Some sort of homeless saviour? A knight in shining armour for those rejected by society?

  I looked out my window and saw my own reflection, but it immediately vanished as it usually did. I hadn't seen my face in six years now. No mirror would show me what I looked like. I had learnt to shave by touch and kept my hair really short so I wouldn’t have to comb it.

  It wasn't the mirrors' fault, though. It wasn't the mirrors that hated me. It was my own shadow, my own reflection. It hid from me like a scared animal hid from an abusive owner.

  Instead of my face, I saw the face of a young girl. She was crying. You promised, she reminded me.

  I remembered. I had promised her. And I kept my promises.

  I turned to the woman who was standing in the corner, murmuring to herself:

  “Fine Lady. I accept your case. Lead on.”

  She couldn’t hear me, of course. She was dead and stuck in her world. I waved my hands in front of her face to get her attention.

  “Let’s go. We have a murder to solve.”

  She finally smiled. Perhaps happy that finally someone could hear her, could see and feel her.

  We walked into the rapidly darkening night sky. As she started making her way out of the city, I knew exactly where she was going. And it had me worried.