A company man

"Right Sandy," said Ron, "I've called you in for this review because there's been some doubt expressed at higher levels that you're not really pulling your weight."

I gaped at him, clueless as to what he might mean.

"You see, it's been noted that you went home every night last week at 7:30," continued Ron, who was busy not looking at me. He was corpulent, florid and bald, sat behind a flatpack desk on a chair a little too small for his bulk. His pin-striped suit, stretched across his gut, made him look like an executive beach-ball. "There's concern expressed that you're not committed enough."

"Er, but our working day is 9 till 5:30," I said. "I haven't exactly been leaving early."

"But you're not staying all that late either, are you?" said Ron, wheezing slightly. "You should take a leaf out of Alex's book, he's got real commitment to the company."

"He's dead!" I said. "We found him dead at his desk in his cubicle, and only because the cleaners complained that he was starting to smell."

"For which we're all deeply grateful," said Ron, then paused, looking puzzled. "Deeply regretful," he corrected himself. "But he showed commitment, Sandy, even in death. It turns out that his life insurance policy named the company as his benefactor. Thanks to his death we have a once-off profit to add to the balance sheet this year; we're thinking that the return to the shareholders will be up a whole half-percent on last year. He had no dependents, so there's no-one to contest it.

"Is that the problem, Sandy? Is family getting in the way? At the last board meeting the directors approved us hiring a divorce lawyer full-time so as to be able to provide staff with the most competitive prices. We can get you out of any awkward marriage commitments."

"Well, I have a girlfriend--" I started, but Ron cut me off.

"That's fine Sandy, we'll have the corporate lawyers send her a cease-and-desist letter. We'll have you footloose and fancy-free in no time! A young buck like you should be proving your commitment to the company now, and earning the salary that'll allow you to buy the woman of your dreams when you retire!"

"Umm, I think I'd quite like--"

"We all would, Sandy, but we have to think about what's best for the company here. Look at the CEO for example. His racing yacht was written off last month when it ran over that sunken coral reef off the coast of Australia, and because it was secured against his wife and children he's all on his own until the insurance comes through and frees them up."

"What?" I said, feeling that I'd missed something Ron had said.

"They're collateral," said Ron patiently, shifting in his seat and making the chair groan. "They've been indentured so that if the insurance doesn't come through the bank gets its money back anyway. His wife is working as an exotic hostess in Swindon, and his children are being used for testing genetically modified crops by one of the big agrifirms."

"That's inhuman!" I said.

"Not at all," said Ron happily, grinning from ear to ear. "He spoke to them only last week, and said that they're as happy as pigs in genetically engineered mud up there."

"Mud doesn't have genes," I said.

"Their's does!" said Ron, and again he looked slightly puzzled for a moment, then his face brightened again. "But the point is, Sandy, that you need to show a little more commitment. The firm wants to get more from you in return for what we're giving you. We're going to put you on the incentive program."

"I've not heard of that," I said, wondering what they could offer me that they thought would encourage me to work myself to death.

"It's not something we talk about a lot," said Ron, "and only selected employees are eligible for it. Fortunately both of your parents were still alive, so you are."

"Were?" I said. My blood was suddenly roaring in my ears, my heart was pounding in my chest, and little black dots were eating away at my vision.

"Well," said Ron, sounding embarrassed for the first time, "like I said, it's an incentive program, so you have to know what the consequences of failing to take the incentive are..."

Trench cookery

I sighed and looked back at my desk. The book was still there, square on the leather blotter, gold embossed letters on a heavy-stock cover. Trench Cookery. 320 perfect-bound pages, due to cost £20 in the shops, and unlikely to sell a single copy. Not quite how I'd imagined my career here ending.

The book came about because of my tendancy to mumble, the author's mild ear-infection when we'd been talking on the telephone about the commission, and the sheer intransigence of my secretary, who refused to believe for an instant that anything I had said could be wrong. So much so, that when the title of the book was questioned, he insisted that it had to be right. Without ever checking with me.

My secretary was hired under slightly unusual circumstances. On the day of his interview I was running slightly late, and so as I got out of my car in the car-park, he was getting out of his. I glanced at his car, as it was just across from mine, thinking that it looked familiar, as he glanced at me and did a double-take.

"Are you ok?" I said politely, not interested in his answer.

"I slept with your mother last night," he said back.

And he had. He had recognised me from the pictures my mother has adorning the wall up the stairs and his car looked familiar because he'd been there when I'd called in for five minutes to give her a CD of piano recordings and ask her to stop placing ads in the lonely-hearts column on my behalf. I called my mother anyway, just to check, and she admitted that she had, as my father likes to put it, been tramping it around again.

I hired him. I felt I had to do something to try and protect the family name, though when it came out at Christmas that my brother had been working as an ideas man for the Khmer Rouge for ten years the family name was unsalvageable. He's still doing PR for the kind of people whose usual approach to dissent is torture and murder. He's been talking about organising package holidays to Guantanamo Bay next year.

But I now had a secretary whose loyalty to me was unswerving, and who was probably still sleeping with my mother on and off. I asked him once about the age difference and he started talking about the benefits of experience and I had to leave the room. I'd hate to think that my mother could teach me a trick or two in the bedroom.

And the net result of all this was a book entitled Trench Cookery instead of French Cookery. The first chapter was about actually digging a trench, lining it with charcoal and cooking the food in it, often covered over with leaves, herbs or soil first. The kind of cookery only university students have the time and drive to do, or people looking to make money for charity. Utterly unsuitable for home cooking.

The second chapter was about the kind of food you could eat in a trench, complete with photographs of burly workmen looking stunned and annoyed, probably by the photographer. The food is mostly burgers. And who would cook the food, unless they were planning on spending time in a trench in the near future?

The chapters continue like this, steadily stretching the premise thinner and thinner until the book reaches the piece de resistance: food that would have been eaten in the trenches in World War I. Most of it is rotten in some way, and it's definitely primitive, the food of privation. The suggestion of acquiring trench foot to go with the trench food ("visit a music festival of your choice in Britain in the summer -- the torrential rain and rivers of mud will produce trench foot in no time at all, and all while you're hearing the best new artists of today!") can only have got past the sub-editor because she was beyond believing that the book was serious.

I look again at my desk. The book is still there, and will go on sale to the general public tomorrow. And then I shall pray for grace.

McArthur's Quantifiers

It was a hot and steamy day in the office and I was sweating like a fat man in a sauna. We all were; the air-con had failed a couple of hours ago, and since there's six of us sharing one chair and one desk in the office (we stack), the woman at the bottom was getting the combined waterfall of our sweat. I was glad to be second from the top, where there was a tiny breeze from the window.

The door to the office creaked open, and a cloud of dust from the dry rot in the floorboards puffed upwards like a penny-theatre's special effect. When the dust subsided, a tall, thin man with more angles than a protractor was revealed. He was gray: his suit was gray and ill-fitting, his shoes were gray, his hair was gray, and his skin was gray. I dismissed him immediately as an accountant, probably here to talk to the ambulance-chaser of a lawyer who was fourth from the top in our little stack, and went back to daydreaming about Miss Sapphire.

The man coughed to attract attention, a hearty, chesty cough, that started and didn't stop, because the dust that had settled on his skin flew off and got sucked into his lungs. Slowly he doubled over and sank to his knees, his face turning purple and the coughing turning steadily into choking. Finally, unable to concentrate on Miss Sapphire for the noise, I pushed the guy on top of me off, and slid off the stack. I walked round the desk to our visitor and kicked him in the kidneys. My shoes have steel-toecaps, and the visitor stopped coughing and sprawled across the floor. I stood over him and asked him what he wanted.

"I'm looking for McArthur," he said wheezily. The coughing had shaken the dust off him, and though his suit and shoes were still gray, his face was now quite pink and his hair was ash-blonde. "I'm told you'll take any case that's offered you."

"No job's ever been too hard for me," I muttered, waiting for him to try getting up so I could kick him again. "And I've tackled some difficult cases in the past."

"I have a case for you then," said the man on the floor, refusing to move. I wondered how much he'd heard about me. "A set of quantifiers were stolen from my office last night, and they're unique. They're my ticket to academic freedom."

"And you want them back?" I snorted, inhaling the dry rot from the floor that was still hanging in the air. "That's a case for the police, Mister." I sneezed, three times in quick succession, and splattered the floor and the back of my visitor with black mucus, reminding me of my days as a snuff-addict.

"No," said the man on the floor in precise, clipped tones. "Just retrieval wouldn't get all the information back. I need to know that the only person who knows about the quantifiers is me. I need the quantifiers back, and the heads of whoever had read those papers."

I sneezed again, and felt the wrenching in my chest that had finally forced me to give up the snuff. "Murder's illegal," I said.

"Is there anything you do that isn't?" replied the prostrate man.

I sighed, he had a point. My doctor was of the firm opinion that breathing was a privilege I'd forgone after the snuff, the police force in this town put me on the list of suspects for anything that came in, and if it weren't for Mad Frankie's protection, I'd probably be my own exhibit in the Chamber of Horrors in the municipal museum.

"Where shall I start?" I asked.

Keeping Flowers in full bloom

When you approach the Temple of Concern the first thing you notice are the flowers. Whatever the time of year or day, whatever the weather, the flowers are in full bloom. The path that is barely there, handfuls of gravel scattered on thick mud that sucks at your shoes, is bordered by thick, luscious tulips of deep burgundy and purple hues. Heavy bulbous heads stand proudly erect on thick fleshy stems of vibrant green, and never wilt, never die. Beyond them, where the path reaches solid ground and becomes a lattice of wooden slats laid carefully irregularly, there are sprawls of creepers and ground-cover shrubs, all covered in tiny white and blue flowers like tiny jewels wherever you look. Even at night the air is heavy with pollen and scent, and bees buzz all around, their soft drone a gentle hypnosis.

The irregular wooden path, a metaphor that you must puzzle out and understand during your stay at the Temple, leads into the walled gardens that lie before the temple. Trees stand, branches laden with blossom that never falls, and never reveals ripening fruit, and the ground is laid out in checkerboard fashion. In one square bed grows vegetables for the Temple, in the one adjoining it grow yet more flowers. Against the wall jasmine climbs, and its scent is strong enough to be pervasive throughout the Temple. Even when I left the Temple the first time, I found myself wearing scents with a jasmine base, unable to concentrate on the outside world without the reassuring breath of jasmine close to hand.

Inside the temple, flowers that were cut over two hundred years ago and are still fresh and in full bloom today are arranged in vases, urns and sacred vessels. These have lost their fragrance now, but are still visually appealing.

I asked the Temple's custodian, a gaunt man with a black patch over one eye, waist-length brown hair, and a paleness of skin that suggested he never saw sunlight, how the flowers were preserved. He told me that they weren't exactly preserved, not in the sense I meant, and escorted me through the Temple.

The Temple is tall, though it sits on a small footprint. It towers impossibly when you see it for the first time, with turrets growing out of the middle of walls, and then themselves supporting further walls and further turrets, like a forest of incestuous mushrooms. We ascended first, and spiralled in towards the middle, and then descended a little again, and I think we must have reached the dead centre of the temple itself. There, sat in a small empty chamber at a plain wooden desk with nothing on it, was Brother Cantharides.

I started when the custodian told me his name, and the custodian half-smiled.
"It's more of a title than a name," he said. "Cantharides stimulates his mind."

"It's poisonous!" I said, and the custodian nodded.

"This is the five-hundred and thirteenth Brother Cantharides," he said. "Some last longer than others."

"And what is he doing?" I said, puzzled, and a little concerned.

"Keeping the flowers in full bloom."

I left the Temple again that afternoon, and as I reached the gate in the walled garden leading outside, I turned once more and looked at the Temple, the impossible chaos of towers and walls and chambers that somehow stretched upwards without falling and defied gravity and the scouring of the wind and the erosion of the rain, and then I looked at a small figure at the main doors to the Temple, the custodian, and I didn't ask my question, and he didn't answer it. But the answer was as clear in my mind as the ringing of the silver bell in the sanctum of persistent inner peace, and I wondered just how far this all went. And as I struggled across the sticky mud, I asked myself if I would be content, in that situation, with keeping the flowers in full bloom.

Travelogue II: Recycle Park

I'd just been sacked from my job with the Movers and I found myself drifting aimlessly around. I'd leave home early in the morning so that none of the neighbours would realise I'd lost my job and spend the day wandering around the neighbourhood, finding new places to visit and while away the hours while I tried to work out what to do next. Of course, I picked up a job as an insurance agent not long after that, but in those few weeks in the middle, I stumbled across Recycle Park.

From a distance the park looks like any other I've been too: the edges delimited with box-hedges and railings in places, gates at several entrance around the edges, and signs just inside the gates to tell you something of the history of the park. There are lots of trees at the main entrance to Recycle Park, mostly sycamores and beeches, with a couple of stands of Silver Birch a little way in. In summer it looks verdant and wonderful; in winter I bet it looks bleak and isolated.

I didn't bother to read the signs in the park at first, I just wandered around. Then I came across the children's play area, and paused for a moment. The play area was a roughly oval open space, with bushes and shrubs thickly lining most of it, and a single tarmac path winding through. It was clear that the intent was that anyone visiting the area or leaving it would have to use the path. The ground was covering in soft wood chips, favoured for play areas these days. Out of that rose a white climbing frame, but the frame was constructed out of large, curved beams that were shaped like bones. Where the bones weren't long enough, two were articulated together, with what could be mistaken for tendons of some kind.

The roundabout was similarly organic looking; the swings looked for all the world as though they were suspended from long strings of muscle, again from a bone supporting frame. Everywhere I looked, the play area looked surprisingly organic.

After the play area I started noticing other oddities. The park benches were all metal, but when I looked closer, they appeared to have been made by compressing beer cans. The bandstand appeared to be constructed from compressed stacks of cardboard, and the roof was insulated with what looked like shredded carrier bags. The name of the park started to take on a new resonance.

Back at the park entrance, I found my suspicions were correct. The signs informed me that the park had been built on top of a landfill site using mostly items found in the landfill, from bones from a previous era when a slaughterhouse had stood here, to non-obviously toxic non-biodegradable waste such as carrier bags.

I didn't go back to the park again, but I did go home and shower for nearly an hour until I felt I'd manage to wash the taint of the place off my skin.

Travelogue I: The Elder Kitchen

I was driving down the old coast road towards Dunwich late one afternoon when I realised that I was getting low on fuel. Not wanting to spend the night in Dunwich again, I pulled off at the first exit and drove another mile or so to a small village with a single petrol station. Just behind the petrol station was a restaurant, with the odd name of the Elder Kitchen. I was just starting to feel hungry, so I decided to give it a try, and see what it had to offer.

I walked in and was immediately greeted by the Maitre'D, a squat little man with warty skin, a squint, and a clammy handshake. I recognised this as the Dunwich taint, that set of slightly squamous characteristics that affect the inhabitants of Dunwich and a couple of the surrounding smaller villages, and pretended that I hadn't noticed any of it. He was smartly dressed in a white ruffled dress shirt and a tuxedo that looked strangely damp, and asked me if I had a reservation. I conceded that I hadn't, and he smiled and said he was sure he could find me a table anyway. Looking around me at the dining room, I was sure he could too, of about twenty tables, only two were seated.

My table was against a wall of the restaurant, well away from the other two seated tables, and afforded me a view of most of the dining room and the entrance. The door to the kitchen was behind me. The table was well-laid with a crisp white tablecloth and sparkling silver and glassware. In the centre of the table was an off-white ceramic vase filled with a fragrant oil that held a floating wick. The Maitre'D was quick to bring me both the menu and a separate wine menu, and lit the wick. Almost immediately a rich, spicy scent rose from the liquid candle, reminding me of my time in the Middle East as a temple inspector.

I opened the menu first, wondering if the quality of the food would live up to the expectations set by the restaurant decor, or those set by the Maitre'D and the Dunwich Taint. The menu was short, with only two starters, five mains and two desserts offered, which I felt boded well: this allowed the chef to concentrate on producing quality food. As I read through the choices though, I was surprised to find that I had never seen any of them offered anywhere else before.

For a starter then, I had a choice between Mi-go Salad and Zoog skewers. The menu described the former as delicate pieces of Mi-go lightly fried in lemon and olive oil served on a bed of conventional salad leaves and the latter as three individual zoog roasted alive and skewered with peppers and onions. The mains were no more helpfully described; I was offered Roast young of Shub-Niggurath in an Abhoth sauce with no further explanation, Leg of Leng Spider served with your choice of vegetables, Tindalos steak with Dijon mustard and sour cream, chunky chips and black pepper served on a perfectly circular plate, Shoggoth shoulder with wilted vegetables from Leng, and Shocked chicken a l'Hastur. I was certain I didn't want the spider's leg, and a little curious as to how big the spider was that the restaurant could offer just one leg as a main course. The roast young of Shub-Niggurath sounded interesting, but I thought I would probably go with the safe sounding option of the steak.

For dessert I had a choice of Color Essence and Chocolate Nemesis. I was fairly certain I'd had a chocolate nemesis while in London a few years back, and the Color Essence didn't sound all that filling -- very avant garde I thought.

A waiter now appeared carrying a bread-basket and asking if I was ready to order, so I asked him for more information about the starters. He told me that the Mi-Go were also known as the Fungi from Yuggoth, but that they were a lot more like lobster than any earthly fungus. The Zoog he said, were rodent-like creatures that they had to source especially. Deciding that lobster sounded better than rat, I opted for the Mi-go salad. When I asked for the Tindalos steak though, the waiter turned pale. I pressed him on this, and he finally admitted, with a lot of reluctance, that they obtained the steaks 'very fresh' and that this was 'a little dangerous.' I insisted on the steak, and decided to defer choosing a dessert until after I'd eaten these.

I opened the wine menu at this point, and found that there were only two items listed: Ulthar Riesling and Fischwasser. I asked the waiter if this was a misprint for Kirschwasser, a spirit I found a liking for when posted in Mannheim studying the sewers there, and the waiter shook his head. This, he suggested, was not really suitable for me, and that I should try the Riesling. I accepted, not quite graciously, and the waiter disappeared with the menus and my order. I tried the bread.

It was extremely good, a little malty, and had a flavour that was almost meaty. Little seeds crunched when I chewed it, and it was moist and light. I ate all of it ravenously, only realised when I'd finished it that I was probably making a pig of myself. I sat back and looked round, and was relieved to see that the other diners had paid me no attention. My attention turned back to the odd listing in the wine menu; my German was good enough to translate Fischwasser as Fish water, and I now wondered if perhaps this was reserved for the locals from Dunwich, and maybe this was why it wasn't suitable for me. I'd never heard of Ulthar, but a Riesling is a hard wine to spoil in my opinion.

I heard the door to the kitchen open behind me, and for a moment I heard hysterical shrieking and a deep growling that seemed to vibrate in my bones, and then my waiter was placing my salad in front of me. He looked a little shocked, and there were two deep wounds on his arm clearly visible through a torn sleeve, yet neither was bleeding; they seemed like something has punched cleanly in and out, pulling away a plug of flesh and sealing off the surrounding tissue in the process. I opened my mouth to ask him about this, but was distracted by the rattle of a trolley across the floor, and saw a silver-cloched platter being delivered to a table across the room. The platter was the size of an occasional table itself, and my question became asking what was.

Chocolate Nemesis said my waiter quietly, and quickly left. I watched as the cloche was lifted off to reveal a large, deep pool of chocolate above which small twists of steam seemed to writhe. Around the edge of the pool were designs in some rich red sauce that seemed almost runic, and from where I was it was hard to focus on them, they seemed almost to be squirming beneath the weight of my gaze. I had turned my attention back to my salad -- glistening green leaves with succulent lumps of something pink, not unlike lobster nestled in it, and a fragrant aroma mixed with something vinegary rising from it -- when the two waiters that had brought the trolley in started chanting. My fork, raised halfway to my lips, slowed and halted and my gaze was pulled to the table as strongly as though someone had seized my head and were turning it for me. My lips started to move of their own accord, and I found myself chanting strange words I'd never heard before in time with the waiters.

A strange somnolance seemed to come over me then, and though I still chanted I felt drowsy and my body felt heavy, too heavy to stand up or move. A slight chill came over me, and my fingers, toes and lips went numb, but this didn't stop me chanting. I could see across the way that the diners who had ordered the Chocolate Nemesis were also lolling back in the chairs, seemingly dazed. One of them spasmed for a moment, his eyelids fluttering, and a hand lifting, stretching out towards the platter, but then it fell back and he became still again.

Then the deep, dark pool of chocolate rippled, and rippled again though nothing was touching it. The ripples grew into small waves, which became choppy and splashed, growing taller and taller, until suddenly a tower of chocolate rose from the platter, formed itself into a tentacle, and seized one of the diners, wrapping around his neck and snaking down his body. It reached his waist, and then retracted, pulling him out of his chair and down into the pool, impossibly swallowing him inside the dessert on the dish. Something in the back of my mind screamed and howled, thumping mental fists on whatever it was that numbed and bedazed me, but I couldn't stop chanting or turn my gaze away, watching at that dreadful dessert formed another chocolate tentacle and ensnared the other diner.

Something broke in my mind, and my fork fell from my hand. It tinged brightly against the plate, and the numbing oppression lost its grip on me, and I could turn away from the abominable dessert at last. I found my waiter stood on the other side of me, looking at me appraisingly.
"Only one diner has ever survived to eat that dessert," he said quietly. "It's a bit too extreme for most people."
"Bill please!" I said brightly, suddenly desperate to get out of the restaurant.
"Just go," he said.

I left as fast as I could, and made no note of the roads I took to get back to something approaching civilisation. I had no wish to return to the Elder Kitchen again. Though to this day I still wonder about that Leng Spider. Perhaps if I see they're offering a take-away and delivery service I might order it out of curiousity.

Playfair continues

Interview Room A was on the ground floor, and Detective Inspector Playfair's office was up two flights of stairs, along an uncarpetted corridor, past the canteen and at the end of the short corridor that broke off to the right. Playfair, a tall, athletic man, stamped his way along the corridors back to his office. People in the rooms and offices nearby flinched at each heavy footfall and were relieved to hear them going past. Everyone, it seemed, had at some point or another been under fire from an enraged DI Playfair.

As Playfair flung the door to his office open wide it bounced off the doorstop and juddered on its hinges, twanging gently. Behind him, another door opened, and Miss Flava came out the office she shared with two secretaries and a Rottweiler. Playfair stamped across the threadbare carpet in his office to his desk and sat down heavily in the huge leather chair behind it. Miss Flava came in behind him, closed the door gently, turned to face him, and put both hands on her hips. She was quite angular, and this made her look like she was constructed out of triangles.

"Well?" she said, tapping her foot.

"It's the Usual Suspects," said Playfair, pulling the brass Newton's cradle across the desk.

"What? Maggie and Thora are behind this? That's ridiculous! I know they successfully hid their heroin smuggling ring behind the WI's jam competition for years, but mass murder? In a small flat near the town centre? Playfair, are you completely off your rocker?" Miss Flava flushed dusky rose, her chin jutted out towards Playfair, and her voice reached a contralto, as high as it ever got.

"No, Miss Flava, it's the Usual Suspects. The film," said Playfair, setting the cradle in motion. The little brass balls clicked rhythmically. "Nnnk-thss gave me a garbled version of the plot of the usual suspects, right down to a mastermind called Cesar Sausage, if you can believe it. I've put him in the cells and told him to have another go at it."

"Oh! Right, well that makes a little more sense," said Miss Flava, standing down slightly and letting her arms drop to her sides. "Wait, I thought we'd put the severed heads in the only spare cell?"

"We have," said Playfair, his eyes watching the cradle. "And now we've put Nnnk-thss in there as well, to have a think about things."

Miss Flava's eyes widened, but she said nothing. She knew what her boss was like, and how many times he'd been hauled in front of the police disciplinary committee. She also had a good idea that he was bribing people near the top of the police hierarchy in order to keep his job, but had decided that was something she didn't need to know any more about. She looked at him, his head bent, watching the cradle demonstrate physics, and knew that he was letting his instincts have their way.

"What else should I be worrying about today, Miss Flava?" said Playfair, not looking up.

"Well, you have an internal meeting in a few minutes to discuss the Christmas menu for the canteen," said Miss Flava. Playfair humphed, sounding dispeptic. "Your last memo to the committee for this," she continued serenely, "suggested that they roast anything they could find in the evidence locker and treat the result as a suppository. I amended that to something a little more constructive; your new suggestion is the menu on your..." she paused, her eyes scanning Playfair's desk, "... under your coffee-cup.
Other than that, you've been asked not to help with the interviews for the break-in on the Highbury estate as the arresting officer is scared of you; the community liaison officer wants a word with you, probably to ask you not to liaise with the community again; there's been a break-in at an antiques shop that no-one can be bothered with and has been pushed to you, and at some point you'll have to re-interview this man with the usual suspects story."

"Nnnk-thss," said Playfair. "That's what he's calling himself at the moment."

"Right," said Miss Flava. "I've got his description circulating already."

"When have I liaised with the community recently?" Playfair looked up, frowning.

"Technically," said Miss Flava, trying not to smile, "you were liaising with the community when you punched the paramedic who was trying to get Mr. Nnnk-thss into the ambulance to go to the hospital and knocked him into the traffic cones."

"Ah," said Playfair.