I lick my lips. “And then?”

Jo shrugs uncomfortably. “If they find that the cause was negligence they throw it back at HR for an administrative reprimand. If they attribute it to malice they may action Internal Affairs to prosecute the case before the Black Assizes, but that requires evidence of actual criminal intent. Oh, and they copy Health and Safety on their findings, so H &S can issue guidelines to prevent a recurrence. Meanwhile the Auditors get a chance to muck in if anything catches their eldritch eye. But that’s basically it.”

She delivers this with her best poker face.

“And in practice…?” Iris nudges.

“Do you really want to…? Well, hmm.” Jo looks at me sidelong. “I’m not going to try to second-guess the Incident Committee, but it sounds to me like a straightforward mistake made by an overworked employee who hadn’t been fully briefed and was in a hurry to get back to his other duties. If it turns out that the victim wasn’t authorized to be in Hangar Six, the employee in question would be off the hook-up to a point. But Jesus, Bob!”

Her composure cracks; I hang my head before her dismay.

“I’ll not make that mistake next time,” I mutter, then try to swallow my tongue.

“There won’t be a next time,” Jo says vehemently. “What were you thinking, Bob?”

“I don’t know!”

Iris stands up. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Sullivan.” She angles herself towards the door, transparently urging Jo out.

“I’m out of here,” Jo says defensively as she stands up. “I’ll see you around, Bob. Hopefully under happier circumstances.”

I nod as she leaves. Iris sits down again and looks at me, frowning. “What are we going to do with you?” she asks.

“Um. I don’t understand?”

“To start with, you’re taking the rest of the week off work,” she says, and her expression tells me not to even think about arguing. “And when you come back in next Monday and not a day before, you’re off active duty for the rest of the month.”

“But Boris is shorthanded and Angleton needs-”

“They need you sane and fit for duty next month as well,” she says sharply. “And next year. You can pick up the cabling job you were speccing out, and the routine server upgrade, but you’re not to go tearing around banishing demons and shooting up cows until further notice. A couple of months of boredom won’t do you any harm, and more importantly, if it takes the stress off your shoulders so you’re less likely to make mistakes I’d call that a win. Wouldn’t you?”

I wince, but manage to nod.

“Good.” She unwinds a fraction. “You’re probably wondering why I’m giving you the velvet glove treatment. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re now the focus of a fatal incident enquiry. You may or may not come out of it with your honor intact, but it is going to place you under stress. When people are under stress they’re more likely than usual to make mistakes, and I don’t think you’re any exception. So I’m not going to let you take on any hazardous jobs until this is sorted out. If you screw up and get yourself killed then-speaking as your line manager-I will follow you all the way to hell and kick you around the brimstone pits. Because letting you make further screwups due to stress would not only be an avoidable, hence senseless waste-it would be a black mark on my record.” There’s a peculiar, dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Are we singing from the same hymnbook yet?”

I nod again, slightly less reluctantly.

“Good. Now piss off home and leave the damage control to me.” She pulls up a strained smile, and I could cry. “Go on, it’s what I’m here for. Scram!”

I can take a hint: I scram.

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A SANE employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.

Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen-it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry. The Laundry has a haphazard and inefficient approach to recruiting personnel: if you know too much you’re drafted. The quid pro quo is that we have to make do with whatever we get; consequently it should be no surprise to learn that our quality of management is famously random, governed only by the tiny shred of civil service protocol that sticks to the organization, and Human Resources’ spasmodic attempts to cover up the most egregious outrages.

As I already noted, I’ve had an unfortunate history with managers. I’m not a team player, I don’t suffer fools gladly, and I don’t like petty office politics. In a regular corporation they’d probably fire me, but the Laundry doesn’t work like that; so I get handed from manager to manager as soon as they figure out what I am, like the booby prize in a game of pass-the-parcel.

Iris showed up one morning and moved into the interior corner office that Boris had temporarily vacated-he was on assignment overseas, doing something secretive for MI5-with her bike helmet and a framed photograph of her husband on his Harley, and a bookshelf consisting of The Mythical Man-Month and a selection of mathematics texts. It was a whole week before she told me over coffee and a Danish that she was my new line manager, and was there anything she could do to make my job easier?

After she put the smelling salts away and I managed to sit up I confessed that yes, there were one or two things that needed minor adjustment. And-who knew?-the trivial annoyances fucked right off shortly thereafter.

Iris couldn’t do anything about my biggest headaches-as Angleton’s secretary, I get to carry his cans all the time-but she even managed to make him ease up a little in April, when I was overbooked for two simultaneous liaison committee meetings (one in London, one in Belgium) and he wanted me to go digging in the stacks for a file so vitally important that it had last been seen in the mid-1950s, slightly chewed on by mice.

I don’t know where in hell they found her, but as managers go she’s all I can ask for. I don’t know much about her home life-some Laundry staff socialize after work, others just don’t, and I guess she’s one of the compartmentalized kind-but she seems like the type of manager who learned her people skills in the process of steering a big, unruly family around, rather than in business school. The iron whim is tempered with patience, and she’s a better shoulder to cry on than any member of the clergy I’ve ever met. People who work for her actually want to make her happy.

Which goes some way towards explaining, I hope, what happened later-and why, when Iris ordered me to scram, I hurried to obey.

But not what I did on my way out of the office.

ANGLETON’S OFFICE IS DOWN A STAIRCASE AND ROUND A bend, in a windowless cul-de-sac that I’ll swear occupies the fitting rooms at the back of the M &S opposite C &A-I’ve never been able to make the geometry of this building line up. But that’s not surprising.

When the rest of us upped sticks and moved to the New Annexe two years ago (to make way for redevelopment of the old Service House site under some kind of public-private partnership deal), there was much headless-chicken emulation, and many committee meetings, and probably several stress-induced heart attacks due to the complexity of the relocation. Angleton didn’t show up to any of the planning meetings, ignored the memos and pre-uplift checklists and questionnaires, and cut the woman from Logistics and Relocation dead when she tried to shoulder-barge his office. But when we got to the end of it, what do you know? His office was at the bottom of the rear stairwell in the New Annexe, just as if it had always been there, green enameled metal door and all.

I could easily go home without passing his door, but I don’t. Now that the worst has come to pass, a gloomy curiosity has me in its grip. Why did he want me to go to Cosford? What was that guff about a white elephant? It’ll bug me for the rest of the week if I don’t ask the old coffin-dodger, and Iris told me to go home and relax. So I curve past the crypt on my way to the lich-gate, so to speak, and steel myself to beard the monster in his den.