The Sudoku Inheritance

Part I - Foreplay

Yes the view was utterly seductive. And it worked on everyone who came here. It broke down all resistance and after that... I relished the thought of its effect on Jasmine but first I had to locate her and find the right bait. 

I zapped the remote control and the window blinds closed obediently and quietly behind me as I made for the music system. I ejected my recent selection of "Beautiful Liar", from the sexy duo of Beyonce and Shakira, because I feared I'd already lasered a hole right through it. It wasn't exactly Top of the Pops any more but I tend to prefer the old stuff, especially by hot babes like them. Besides, its lyrics were way too ominous for present circumstances: 

Let's not kill the karma 

Let's not start a fight 

It's not worth the drama 

For a beautiful liar. 

I couldn't be bothered to search through my entire forty gigabytes of MP3s so I turned to my precious vinyl collection - the only true media for music. I settled on a Phil Collins and Genesis anthology, the perfect mix of mellow brain-chill and thought-provoking power drumming. 

I dusted the record carefully and placed it on my Clearaudio Bluemotion Turntable - over a grand's worth of superlative German engineering; cued the Ortofon stylus - as faithful as an English sheepdog, even though it's Danish; and set the volume on the Bang and Olufsen BeoSound system - also Danish - to loud. And I mean loud. 

Music deserves respect even if it means I have to shop abroad. 

Taking a bottle of toffee vodka from my well-stocked cabinet - fresh from my last ski trip to Meribel - I poured a generous slug into a brandy balloon that was almost big enough to hold a floor mop. In Meribel, they drank it as shots but I liked to sip the muddy brown nectar. Some say that dissolving Werthers Originals in vodka is a waste of good Smirnoff but it fired your belly on an arctic ski-lift and would postpone the need for dinner tonight.  

I needed time to contemplate, time to plot, time to imagine.  

I kicked off my shoes and shuffled barefoot across the exquisite silk rug, revelling in the luxurious ecstasy between my toes. It had cost me a few zillion Turkish lira even after haggling with the toothless little geezer in Istanbul's labyrinthine Grand Bazaar but it was worth it. Unbeknown to the vendor, his daughter later demonstrated how sumptuous it felt on all naked skin - not only toes. You don't get after-sales service like that in Carpet Right on my High Street.  

I settled down in my leather lazy-boy, adjusted the footrest, swirled the vodka for luck and focussed on the document folder on my lap. 

It was bright pink with a few dark patches where the rain had kissed it. There was a hint of perfume and I inhaled its promised intimacy - Jean-Paul Gaultier, if I wasn't mistaken. I pulled tentatively at the red ribbon that secured the folder, teasing it gently like a hesitant bow on a nightdress, until it yielded to reveal all. My feeble conscience meekly hoped the bow would defy me and prevent this violation but it yielded without a struggle. I rifled through the contents quickly but found nothing very interesting: a few glossy leaflets about charity donations, some bound business reports, and miscellaneous loose pages. I carefully maintained their order and arrangement, including the dog-eared and scrunched-up pages, for I didn't want her to know I had plundered her secrets. I sipped some more vodka and set about examining the contents more thoroughly. There had to be clues to her identity - and more - within, surely? 

I soon found an email printout addressed to jasmine.turner@C-C-C.org.uk. Progress. I considered sending her an email right now but I wasn't one for waiting - the evening was still young and I wasn't ready for bed yet - not alone anyway. Besides, I suspected she would simply ask me to drop her stuff off somewhere and rebuff any follow up attempt. A few pages deeper into her folder - bingo! - a business letterhead giving a local Poole address and landline and declaring that C-C-C stood for Corporate Charity Conscience. Progress indeed. But the remaining folder contents revealed no home address, no mobile number, no Facebook or Twitter details - no way to contact her right now. So much for twenty-four by seven instant communications.