At a Rotary Club dinner, Harry meets Joe Green, a local businessman. Joe is at the centre of a hate campaign: his car has been repeatedly sabotaged, he has received a newspaper cutting about himself with a red dagger drawn across it and someone pretending to be his secretary has cancelled the caterers at a Chamber of Commerce dinner that he was organising. He suspects that someone is trying to prevent him going ahead with a business deal to buy a restaurant, ""Maximillians"" in Derby. He asks Harry to investigate. He also wants Harry to invest in the restaurant deal, along with another businessman, Charles Hastings, and promises him a seat in the Star Chamber if this deal goes ahead. Harry persuades Ken to act as Joe's bodyguard. At Joe's house, Ken meets Joe's wife Sheila who seems unexpectedly worried that Joe has engaged a bodyguard. Joe is extremely arrogant and peremptory to Ken, treats him like dirt and can't even be bothered to get his first name right. Ken takes an instant dislik
Laura has left CBS: according to Rocky this is because she felt that Harry was taking her for granted. Charlie Hardiman is having to answer the phone and act as secretary. Harry is desperate to find a permanent replacement but all the girls that he has interviewed so far are proving to be singularly useless. Robert MacGuffin, a hardware designer who works for a computer company, Pictel, believes that his former secretary, Alexandra Wilton, is stealing the design for the company's latest transputer. He wants Ken and Harry to watch her. He suspects her of industrial espionage because she has just resigned for no apparent reason (or so he says) and she already has a prison record for cheque fraud. Ken and Rocky set up their cameras and binoculars in a disused warehouse opposite the studio flat where she lives. Rocky follows Alex to the ice rink where she meets her boyfriend, Jim Parham. When Ken sees a middle-aged man arrive at Alex's flat and offer her a cheque which she refuses, he trie