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complete stranger would not, I surmised, be a very good idea. “I’m supposed to be working.”
    “Am I in your way?”
    “Well, no, but I shouldn’t really be drinking…”
    “Tell you what, I’ll drink and you can watch.” He added some Coke and then started shovelling junk food into a basket, proper Homer Simpson junk food that we just don’t get. Lay’s potato chips and Hershey bars featured in large quantity. I spotted some Jolly Ranchers and lobbed them in for good measure. I love Jolly Ranchers, but no one seems to sell them in England anymore.
    We got to the till and Xander looked at me hopefully.
    “Nope,” I said, “you picked it out.”
    Scowling, he dug out some cash and paid for it. Then he followed me back to my hotel. I know I could have protested, could probably have got one of those scary guys by the elevator lobby to have kicked Xander out for me, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to attack me. I had a hunch. Well, okay, more than a hunch, but that sounds cooler.
    I stopped off at a drugstore (which always sounds shady to me, because I’m a good girl who Says No To Drugs) and bought some fat sticking plasters and waterproof tape for my feet. I chucked in a bottle of water, feeling very virtuous, and off we went again, Xander slouching moodily ahead, me hobbling behind.
    We got back to my room and Xander looked around. “Jesus,” he said, “did something explode in here?”
    I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t feel at home unless I’ve made some mess.”
    “Then you must be planning to live here.” He got out another cigarette, and I took it off him. “Hey!”
    “This is a no smoking floor,” I told him. “There are smoke detectors all over the place.” I wasn’t sure if this was true, but I didn’t want my room stinking of smoke.
    Xander scowled at me and stalked into the bathroom for one of the plastic cups by the sink. He threw himself down on the double bed and tore open the bag of Lay’s crisps—sorry, chips—and sloshed out a strong measure of vodka. No Coke.
    “So,” he looked up at me, “how do you know my brother?”
    “We sort of work together.”
    “Uh-huh. What do you have to do with Shapiro?”
    “It’s business.”
    “Business my brother’s involved in?”
    “Well, kind of,” I hedged. “What do you have to do with Shapiro?”
    “Asshole owes me five grand.”
    I blinked. “What for?” I asked, praying it wouldn’t be drugs.
    “I’m an artist,” Xander began earnestly, and at my disbelieving look, sighed. “He commissioned a portrait. I did the portrait. He took the portrait. Now I want my money.”
    “Shouldn’t you have got your money before he took it?”
    “Didn’t know he had. Came home one day and it was gone.”
    “So he stole it?”
    Xander shrugged and opened up the Pringles, his eyes averted from mine. “Could have.”
    “But…”
    “But nothing. What’s your business with him?”
    “I work for a bank,” I said. “We have a few deals with him.”
    “Deals that involve you wearing Anna Sui and Beverley Feldmans?”
    That sealed it. I knew I was safe.
    I flumped down on the opposite side of the bed and began unstrapping the glorious foot-torturers. There was a patch on one side of my left foot that had been rubbed raw and was bleeding slightly and I hobbled into the bathroom, ran some water in the sink and stuck my foot in.
    “Very impressive,” said Xander.
    “I used to do yoga.” When I was five.
    “Bet your boyfriend loves that.”
    “Oddly enough, he’s not turned on by me washing my feet.”
    “Got the shoe size wrong?”
    “…Maybe.”
    I bathed my poor feet, dried them off, then sat down on the bed to parcel them up. By the time I was done my feet looked vaguely mummified. Xander poured me a shot of vodka and I took it. For the pain.
    “So what do you really do?” he asked, and I sighed.
    “I work for a totally secret British government agency and I’ve been sent here to investigate Don Shapiro.”
    I