TWO LEADS, ONE NAME

Cassie made us all relax, sit down and pour ourselves a large glass of wine before she continued.

'You're such a drama queen...' exclaimed Helen whilst doing as Cassie instructed, 'I think you're really editor material at heart'.

Cassie flinched at this, since they'd been cub reporters together Cassie and Helen had always bitched with each other about how their career paths had developed.

Cassie was proud of the fact that she still got her hands dirty out there in the field, nosing out a good story and quite often putting her personal safety at risk. Helen, on the other hand, was the editor in chief of the country's most pretigious fashion bible.

Once Cass had us all in place she perched herself on the table in front of us and began.

'The shoe, as I said at the time to Amanda, the shoe is a good place to start. I knew that it was a genuine Timmy Wang and there ain't too many of those around.'

'Aaah, this is where I come in ...' Helen interjected.

Cassie rolled her eyes before continuing .... 'yes', she replied, 'Helen you certainly did. Now we all know that Timmy Wang only supplies shoes to the incredibly rich, incredibly beautiful or incredibly famous, to get hold of their client list is harder than finding out how much the Nazi's managed to stash away in Swiss banks after the second world war.'

'So, with a little help from Helen', - 'I have some great frends at Timmy's' purred Helen - 'I was able to get an appointment to see one of his senior design team, I made out that I was doing a feature on Wang's for Rapping Royalty ... the way that lot, especially the Yanks, throw away their cash is guaranteed to have any designer, no matter how exclusive moistening their pants with excitement!'

'Lovely description', Helen looked away and sipped at her drink.

'Anyway, I met this gorgeous young guy, early twenties, tall, black and South African. I could see that he was a little wet behind the ears and by the way he couldn't keep his eyes off my chest, very horny!'

'Got his number ...?' I couldn't help myself ...

Cassie smiled, 'Sure! Well, after a little flirting I got him so heated that he had to pop off to the gents to get himself off ... I mean cool down! Whilst he was away I got to work and as luck would have it there at the top of a pile of orders was a photograph of the shoe and a request for a repeat order.'

'In fact, with lover boy still away I took the opportunity of slipping it into my bag.'

With that Cass delved into her bag and pulled out the order form.

There at the top was a photograph of an exact same shoe that I had last seen embedded in Tomas' chest.

Underneath typed in capitals, UNIQUE DESIGN FOR THIS CLIENT ONLY.

'Want to see who the client is ...?' Cassie toyed with us.

'Yes,' shouted Helen as she leant across and tried to grab the paper from Cass.

'Well, you'll have to wait a bit longer ...' Cassie grinned as she folded the paper and put in back into her bag.

'Let's talk about the red brooch first ....'