Cork. The kind of city where you don't want to be stuck in a traffic jam as long a Flyers batting order when Betty gets generous, especially where your only companion is a Cork taxi driver. But that's the kind of case this was. And that's the kind of accent I was going to have to put up with if this case was going to be solved.

The case was a strange one - almost as strange as the Flyers winning 3 games in a row. A tall dame visited me at my office. I knew she was tall as soon as she walked past the window, because my office was on the 2nd floor.

She walked into my office and sat down. I don't have any chairs. She fell to the floor. "What's your name?" I asked. "You don't need to know my name, boy," she purred, her voice as smooth as a safe slide into home, "I want the Corkese Falcon. Its last whereabouts is reported as the centrepiece of the IBSF Away Blitz trophy. That trophy is up for grabs at a softball tournament in Cork this weekend. I want it, and you're going to get it for me."

I watched her leave, and like a batter checking out the outfielders positions before batting, glanced at the boxes on my office floor, which she simply called "a couple of things you might need to help you get the Corkese Falcon." I had a bad feeling about this, almost as bad as being a Diamond Dog, and knowing we were facing the Flyers in the next match.

I tore open the boxes. In one I found a bunch of green softball uniforms, in another a set of softball gloves, and in yet another, some softball bats - my keen sense of detection telling me that two of which had been recently purchased via the web in California and collected in New York by some Flyers. I could see what this dames plan was, and it was up to me to make it work.