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repossessing unpaid-for goods, she also made a great store detective, especially when dressed as she was that day in light summer frock and cardigan, with sensible brogues for walking. Six-foot one, big-boned and broad of girth (more than fifteen but less than seventeen stone was her last admission regarding weight), Ida could play the heavy - in trousers, neck scarf and reefer jacket you could be forgiven for taking her for a man - or the sweetheart (useful for debt counselling and collecting). In the latter guise she could be pleasantly persuasive, in the former she was goddamn intimidating.
    I’d first clapped eye on Ida in a Brighton gay club called the Greased Zipper (no subtlety there, then), where she was serving behind the well-packed bar and I was searching for a runaway youth who was known to frequent such haunts, despite his tender age. His parents, my clients, were frantic and only too willing to accept his burgeoning lifestyle if only he would return to the nest, and I was showing his photograph around to either uninterested or excitable, mock-eager male clubbers, some of whom snatched the picture to show their giggling clique. As in any other city or big town club, straight or gay, there are many variations in type among members - the quiet, the flamboyant, the drunks, the troublemakers, the hard men and women - and in this particular one (I’d done the rounds that night) a combination of the last two types, all leathers and glory moustaches and naked arms (and that was just the women - joke), had decided I was an affront to their delicate (despite their muscles and blue jaws) sensitivities. If they’d stuck to verbals everything would have been okay - I could always handle that - but they’d become physical, shoving me around, giving me no chance to back off either with wit or reason before things turned any nastier.
    Now I’m no pushover, despite my problems, but before I could retaliate, aware I’d come off worse and not giving a damn anyway, lovely big Ida stepped in. Five minutes before she’d given the photo I carried time and attention, even though she was mobbed at the bar, genuinely sorry she wasn’t able to provide me with a lead on the missing kid (she was only too aware of the predators that stalked the streets here for fresh, inexperienced meat), and now she’d noticed the trouble I was in. A swift knee into one bully-boy’s leathered crotch and a sharp big-boned elbow into another’s powdered nose settled the matter quickly enough (I learned later that Ida was also engaged as club bouncer as well as barmaid). One of the boy-bitches had screamed blue hell and Ida grabbed my arm to steer me towards the door. Outside I’d jabbered my gratitude and given her my card in case she happened to see the youth I was searching for. Two days later she’d called in with a sighting of the runaway selling copies of the Big Issue outside a Virgin record store, which led to my taking his parents directly to him (the record store had become his regular pitch). After contact he was their problem, but I had become interested in Ida herself. That she could take care of herself there was no doubt; that she had many contacts all over town soon became evident. I offered her a job with the firm and, after she’d consulted her live-in partner of twenty years, a sweet, gentle woman who taught pre-school infants in a small village eight miles outside Brighton and to whom I was soon introduced over a Little Harvester Sunday lunch, Ida agreed to give it a try. That was six years ago and she’d been with me ever since.
    Young Philo Churchill was the newcomer to the agency, the sometimes hopeless but ever-enthusiastic novice. It’s usually a mistake to take on young apprentices in this game - in fact, most agencies won’t touch them - because once they’ve learned everything from you, every trick in the book, every procedure to be followed, often making themselves a pain-in-the-butt in the process by asking too