The dandy walks out of the coffee shop. He's not as crisp as yesterday. He looks like he hasn't slept all night. An oddly mismatching worn out satchel hangs from his shoulder. He promptly drops it in a garbage container, and hurries across the road to Neumann & Roscht. He trots up the stairs and rings the bell.

"Is Andy Roscht Esquire available, please?"

"I'm afraid he's out for lunch."

"Excellent, I would like an interview with Gabriel Neumann then. It's about some... Hem, computer problems you might be having."

The door opens very quickly on the partner. He hurries the dandy in.

***

The dandy is sitting across the partner, in his office. The partner seems tense. The dandy looks quite content.

"So, who are you?"

"Ralph Gehausen." The dandy slips a business card his way. "From Zimmerman & Gehausen. You might have heard?"

"Absolutely. You're in Mitte, aren't you?"

"Quite."

"Can I get you a coffee?" The partner stands up and walks to the little espresso appliance. "You look like you need one, no offense."

"None taken. And yes, please. Not much sleep for me these days."

"Sorry to hear that." The partner loads a cartridge in the device and presses a button. The machine starts buzzing. "How did you know, about the computers?"

"Ah. What brings me to you today. Let me guess: You have a virus? You can't access your files? Some rascal wants ransom for them?"

"Absolutely." Coffee drips in the cup. "How did you know?"

"Well, if you would believe it, the same thing happened to us last week."

The partner jumps a little while handing the cup to the dandy. Spilled coffee. "Oh, my... How much did they ask?"

"That's quite irrelevant." The dandy takes the cup from the partner. "Thank you very much." He blows on the hot liquid.

"Irrelevant how?"

"We decided not to pay them." The dandy takes a tentative sip. "None of us even knew what a bitcoin was."

"Me neither! Thank God I've got Andy for all this tech stuff!"

"Is that so..." The dandy blows some more on his espresso. "In any case, we decided to hire an investigator instead."

"A private?"

"Not exactly." The dandy takes his first real sip. "We hired a hacker instead. It turns out you can hire hackers for a lot less than a private investigator."

"Wow! Did your guy find them?"

"Indeed, very quickly. It turns out our extortionist hadn't covered his tracks very well." The dandy quickly drains his cup, and lets out a relieved sigh. "Unfortunately, the evidence we found would not be admissible in court, since it was obtained quite illegally. We know the identity of the perpetrator, but we still had to pay the ransom."

"Ouch!"

"You can double that: He just ran with the money. He never sent us the decryption program."

"Oh, my... Your files?"

"Maybe lost forever, I'm afraid. But maybe not. We decided to confront him this time."

"Who is he? Is he in the country."

"Quite." The dandy pauses for a second. "Did you say your partner was quite capable with computers?"

"Andy? Yeah! He's a wizz! You should see how he set up the... Son of a bitch!"