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It was raining. The neon light outside Ideas Central flickered fitfully. Big Red was snoring soundly in the office next to mine. I walked to the window and pulled down the blind, shutting out the windswept world outside.

I sat back at my desk and pulled out the Sam Cruise file. Poor old Sam. Once a top Ideas man - now reduced to scratching a living as a private-eye in some sleazy downtown area. I'd been thinking about Sam because his name had featured in headlines about the infamous case of the Blue Budgie.

That woman he tangled with. Lana, her name was. What a nasty piece of work she turned out to be. And after he solved the case. Sam vanished into thin air. Some say he's writing his memoirs with the help of a case of the best bourbon. Others reckon he's been kidnapped by the Spectrum gang and put to work inside their computer network.

Something else made me think about Sam. It was the tape that arrived on my desk a few hours earlier. A computer tape that seemed to tell Sam's story up to the end of the Blue Budgie case. Perhaps this held some clues.

The first thing I picked up was that Sam seemed to have developed some strange personal habits. Like doing somersaults onto dollar bills that were blowing along the city streets! I was surprised that the cops on the beat didn't pick him up for this odd behaviour.

It must have just been Sam's way of picking up cash he really needed without making it too obvious what he was doing! Never very subtle was our Sam...

Hit-men were after him. They hid down alleys and in stairwells to get in a shot at him. Most of the time he was quick enough to jump out of the way. But sometimes even Sam wasn't fast enough to dodge a stream of lead from a Chicago piano! Luckily, he always carried first aid kits with him.

He often seemed to get on the wrong side of gangsters and the cops. Ending up in the slammer if the boys in blue got their hot little hands on his collar. Which was a lot better than being thrown from the top storey of a tenement block by some heavy hood!

Luckily he never got hurt badly - but his friends got fed up playing to get him out of jail. Cost a lot of dough to do that. Dough that Sam just didn't have. Maybe he's still behind bars somewhere. Hadn't thought of that...

The tape shows that Sam was a master of disguise - he chopped and changed, sometimes even getting himself up as a nun!

His disguise often fooled people. But then again it often let him down at crucial moments. He forgot the cops had sussed some of them!

He spent a lot of time answering the phone and switching lights on and off in the buildings he explored on his quest for clues to the Blue Budgie case.

People on the other end of phones often give him useful info. Turning lights off covered his getaway from places where he hasn't wanted. Blowing fuses was another of his favourite tricks.

The tape shows that Sam had some ideas about the case - but he really started having to think on his feet after he discovered the body in the hotel where Lana had asked him to meet her. Some crooked dame, that one.

He was also having real money problems and Daisy his long-suffering assistant was threatening to run off with the violin case maker if she didn't see any cash soon. Even the rats were getting bored with Sam's attempts to teach them to ice-skate.

Something very crooked was going on in the district where Sam had his office. Odd people on the streets, mysterious shadows behind blinds in to floor windows, suspicious cops patrolling the streets.

Sam was onto something. That's probably why he disappeared. Someone wanted him out the way. But why?

One thing was sure, this would make a brilliant computer game. Maybe I should talk to the guys down at Microsphere about it...