Chapter 2

As she settled herself into her first-class train seat, Penny Lyle reprised the dream she had had that night. The details were fading, as is the way with dreams, however vivid they might have been at the time. She recalled being forced to fight naked in a kickboxing match against an opponent whose body had been well padded for protection and whose hands and feet had been encased in some kind of metal covering, so that every kick and blow had done terrible damage to her and caused awful pain. What rubbish! As if she ever would do a stupid suicidal thing like that!

Penny had been forced to rely on her superior speed and light-footedness - That’s a laugh for a start! she thought, I can’t even run to catch a bus anymore! - to evade the deadly fists and feet of her opponent. She recalled vaguely that, for much of the one-sided contest, her bare hands and feet had beaten uselessly against her foe, who had laughed disdainfully and scornfully at her puny efforts as she continued to deal out terrible punishment.

Somehow, though, she had managed to wear her opponent down, finally getting through her guard and demolishing her with a series of lightning blows of great force to the head, finally and memorably sending her, in that immortal and well-worn phrase, crashing to the canvass. As she was taken towards her day’s work at the Bank, something of the excitement of the dream’s triumphant ending came back to her, although Penny Lyle had never lifted a finger against a fellow human or indeed any fellow creature at all, in her life. She had never wanted to hurt another and she still didn’t, did she?

The train arrived, on time for a change, at Cannon Street and she embarked on the last short stage of her daily journey to work. The security guard gave her his usual cheery greeting, spontaneous and one hundred per cent genuine in her case, unlike for some of the stuffed shirts who worked there! She went into the lift lobby, getting into Lift No 4 with a handful of others, including Madge.

Arriving at the eighth floor she made her way to her office, pausing on the way to chat with a few of her subordinates, who had arrived already. Smiling to herself at a silly joke one girl had just told her, she went into her room and sat down at her desk. She started going through her papers. One of them she had no doubt about, despite having spent half the weekend worrying about it. It wasn’t her job to deal with it! That wretched Tom Brewster had passed it over to her on Friday, since it was a tricky problem and he had wanted to get away early. She rang his office. He answered.

“Oh, Tom. Come and take the Fleming file away, there’s a good fellow, and please don’t even think about offloading your hard cases on to me again - you are paid to do your own job and I have enough on my plate without helping lame dogs over stiles!”

Tom Brewster put down his phone and stared across the desk at his colleague, Andy Turner.

“I don’t believe it, Andy! Penny won’t take over the Fleming case, after all. That’s not like her - she’s usually so obliging and helpful”

“Too obliging and far too helpful, if you ask me! Thank God the girl’s growing a bit of backbone at last! It’s about time she told parasites like you to f*ck off!”