“What do you want?” he finally asks.
“I want the contents of that report.” She lowers her card. “I suspect the killer doesn’t want me to have it. So if you find it, call me.” She produces a business card and he takes it. Then her roving gaze settles on the desk. “Oh, and one other thing. Are there any paper clips or staples in there? Because if so, I want them all.”
“Paper clips?”
“Yes, I want all the paper clips and staples in that desk.” Her cheek quirks. “Mr. Dower was the type to fasten a report together before folding it and putting it in an envelope. And where there’s a link, there’s a chain of evidence.”
THE AUDIT BOARD CHEWS ME UP AND SPITS ME OUT IN LESS than an hour. Light as thistledown and dry as a dead man’s tongue I walk through the door, past the seated witnesses-the blue-suiters are collecting Choudhury now, ushering him into the Presence-and drift on stumbling feet towards my office. Except I don’t get very far: instead I bump up against a blue translucent bubble that seems to have swallowed the corridor, and everything in it, just before Iris’s office door. The bubble is warm and rubbery and I have a feeling that it would be a very bad idea indeed to try and bull my way through it, so I turn round and go back the other way, towards the coffee station.
I’m just scooping brown powder into a filter cone (the jug was empty right when I most needed it, as usual) when Iris clears her throat behind me.
“I’ve been Audited,” I say, in answer to her silent question. “I don’t think it went badly, but I gather I’m not allowed back in my office just yet.”
“No one is,” she says, surprisingly calmly. “Are you making a fresh pot?”
“Sure.” I slide the basket back into the coffee maker and hit the brew button. Iris watches me silently.
“Um, as a matter of fact, you won’t be going back to work for a bit,” she says.
“I-what?” The coffee machine clears its throat behind me as I stare at her.
“The civilian FATACC incident when you were out at Cosford has been upgraded.” Her expression is apologetic. “Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it, I know, but the Incident Committee has escalated it to Internal Affairs and they actioned me to notify you that you’re being suspended on full pay pending a full hearing.”
“They’re what?” I hear my voice rise uncontrollably, cracked. But what about Angleton’s plan? “But it’s not a FATACC anymore-”
“Bob! Bob? Calm down. This isn’t the end of the world. I’m sure the hearing will exonerate you; they don’t want you in the office until it’s over. It’s just a routine precaution-Bob?”
She’s talking to my back-I’m halfway down the corridor by the time she says my name, then round the bend and halfway down the twist that takes me to the stairwell to Angleton’s office. Because (fuck Helen Langhorn and her KGB sleeper medals, part of me is swearing furiously) I know damn well that I’m going to be exonerated, because the victim wasn’t a victim: she was a hostile agent who poked her nose into an off-limits area at the wrong time. So the question is: Why now? And there’s only one species of answer that fits-
I take the stairs two at a time, thudding down them hard enough to raise dust from the elderly carpet, bouncing off the bannister rail and caroming up against the door. I raise my phone and squint through its magic-mirror eye, seeing that the wards are merely the usual ones, and then I twist the doorknob and push.
“Boss?” I glance around the empty room. The Memex sits in its corner, hulking like a sleeping baby elephant; the filing cabinets are all neatly shut and sealed. “Boss?”
He’s not here. My spine crawls. Need to leave him a message. I head for the Memex and slide into the operator’s seat.
WRITE CLEARANCE.
I foot-type TEAPOT and wait for the soul-mangling symbol to disappear.
WRITE.
The menu prompt is empty. MESSAGE, I type. The prompt changes, and I keep going.
BOSS, THEY TOOK THE BAIT. PROBLEM: IA ARE SUSPENDING ME OVER COSFORD. AUDITORS MORE INTERESTED IN PAPER CLIPS. MY MOBILE NUMBER IS:…
Angleton isn’t a total technophobe. As long as he has my phone number he can get in touch. But now I’ve got another problem: I’m not supposed to be here. So I switch off the Memex carefully and stand up, and I’m just on the point of tiptoeing out of the room when two blue-suiters appear out of nowhere and grab my wrists.
“Careful now, sir. We wouldn’t want to make a fuss, would we?”
I look past his shoulder at Iris. She looks concerned. “Bob, what are you doing? Didn’t I tell you you were being suspended?”
I pant for breath. My heart’s hammering and my palms are slippery. “I was hoping-Angleton-”
She shakes her head sympathetically, then tuts to herself. “I think you’re overwrought. He’s been having a bad time lately,” she explains to the blue-suiters. “You need to go home and relax badly, don’t you, Bob?”
I can take a hint. I nod.
Blue-suit #2 clears his throat apologetically. “If he’s not cleared for this room, ma’am-” he begins.
“No, that’s all right,” Iris says, casting me a quelling look. “He’s-he was-personal secretary to DSS Angleton. He’s cleared for this room, and he’s not required to be off the premises until noon, and he obviously hasn’t touched anything”-I blink at that, but keep my mouth shut-“so you may feel free to report it, but he hasn’t actually violated the security articles. Yet.” She taps her wristwatch. “Not for another nine minutes. So I suggest you might want to take a deep breath and let these gentlemen escort you to the front door, Bob?”
She’s right. I really don’t want to still be in the building when my permission is suspended-the consequences would be drastic and painful, I imagine. “I’ll go quietly,” I hear myself saying. “If you’d like to lead the way…”
AT TWELVE THIRTY EXACTLY I FIND MYSELF STANDING ALONE in the middle of a concrete emptiness, the blurred ghosts of shoppers darting around me like shadows beneath a pitiless sun. I can’t remember how I came to this place. My hands are shaking and I can’t see the future. All I can see is gray. The sun is beating down but I’m cold inside. I keep seeing a purple flash, the old woman’s face rotting and flaking and shrinking around her skull before me; the thing on the bike path, growling deep in its throat.
(They took my pistol. “Don’t want you to go carrying that around when you’re all depressed, sir,” the blue-suiter told me.) I’d phone Mo and ask her to pick up another ward if I wasn’t feeling so frustrated and ineffectual.
Everything’s fallen apart at the very worst time, and it’s all my fault.
Item: There is a security breach. The Free Church of the Universal Kingdom-hereafter and forevermore to be known as the Goatfuckers, because that’s the least of what they get up to and I don’t want to think about them eating the blonde teacher’s face-have got an informer inside the Laundry.
I walk past a bus stop and an overflowing litter bin, the ashtray on its lid smoking and fulminating. There’s a disgusting stench of cheap tobacco and smoldering filter wadding. A convoy of buses rumbles past slowly, like a troupe of implausibly red elephants walking trunk-to-tail.
Item: They followed Mo home and they’re following me, and unless I’m very much mistaken they want the key that binds the Eater of Souls, which is probably one of our most powerful weapons. (Disguised as a public school master indeed!)
There’s a rundown concrete suburban shopping mall here, a brutalist plaza surrounded by walkways overlooking cheap supermarkets, an off-license, and a shuttered chemist’s. Abandoned disposable carrier bags clog the gutters. I walk beneath a bridge between two piers, and up an arcade walled by the display windows of empty shop units, as grimy as my sense of self-worth.