The stacks, where the Laundry keeps its dead files, occupy two hundred-meter stretches of disused deep-dug tube tunnel not far from Whitehall. They're thirty meters down, beneath the hole in the ground where Service House is currently being rebuilt by a private finance initiative (just in time for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN). How do you think we get files in and out? Or librarians in and out, for that matter?

Angleton has a job for me to do, down in the stacks. And so it is that at one thirty I'm sitting in my office, nursing a lukewarm mug of coffee and waiting for the little man with the handcart to call, when the NecronomiPod begins to vibrate and make a noise like a distressed U-boat.

"'Lo?"

It's Mo. "Bob?" She doesn't sound too happy.

"Yeah? You at home?"

"Right now, yes . . . not feeling too well."

I hunch over instinctively. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes." Oh, right. "Listen, about last night—thanks. And thanks for letting me lie in. I'm just wrung-out today, so I've begged off my weekly and I was thinking about taking the afternoon to do what we talked about earlier, to go visit Research and Development. But there's a little job I needed to do in the office and I was wondering if you could . . ."

I glance at the clock on my desktop. "Maybe; depends what, I'm off to the stacks in half an hour."

"The stacks? In person?" She cheers up audibly. "That's great! I was hoping you could pull a file for me, and if you're going there—"

"Not so fast." I pause. "What kind of file?"

"A new one, a report I asked for. I can give you a reference code; it should be fresh in today."

"Oh, right." Well, that shouldn't be a problem—I can probably fit it in with my primary mission. "What's the number?"

"Let me . . ." She reads out a string of digits and I read it back to her. "Yes, that's it. If you could just bring it home with you this evening?"

"Remind me again, who was it who didn't want work brought home?"

"That's different. This is me being lazy, not you overdoing it!"

I smile. "If you say so."

"Love you."

"You too. Bye."

AT SEVEN MINUTES PAST TWO, I HEAR FOOTSTEPS AND A squeak of wheels that stops outside my door. I pick up a pair of brown manila files I'm through with and stand. "Archive service?" I ask.

The man with the handcart is old and worn before his time. He wears a blue-gray boiler suit and a cloth cap that has seen better days; his skin is as parched as time-stained newsprint. He looks at me with the dumb, vacant eyes of a residual human resource. "Archive service," he mumbles.