Her office door is ajar as I turn the corner between the reception area and the coffee station: she's the kind of manager who's happy to sacrifice an outside office with a window in return for an interior one that lets her keep an eye on everyone entering and leaving her little fiefdom, which should tell you something. Her attitude is one of those irregular verbs peculiar to bureaucracies: if you like her she's attentive, and if you don't, she's paranoid.

"You wanted to see me, boss."

Iris waves me at the seat opposite her desk. She's leaning back with feet up and phone clamped between ear and shoulder, nodding along unconsciously to the beat of her unseen caller's narrative.

"Yes, I understand. You can use his office, I think. When? . . . Half an hour? Excellent, thanks. Yes, and you too. Bye." She puts the receiver down, then hits the divert to voice mail button on her handset. "How are you feeling, Bob?" She looks concerned.

"Like shit." I don't see any need—or room—to dissemble. "I came in because I've got a report to file."

"Are you sure that's wise?" She raises a penciled-in eyebrow. "I've given you my presenteeism lecture, haven't I?"

Bless her, she has: she's the first manager I've ever had who explained to me in words of one syllable that she'd be really pissed off if she caught me skulking around the office while I'm feeling ill. (This is the Laundry; they don't fire you for calling in sick, in fact, they can't fire you: all they can do is give you scut work. Back in my first year I took two weeks off, once, just to try it on—I ended up going back to work when I got bored with counting the cracked tiles on the bathroom wall. We still maintain this endless pretense that we're the same as any other government department, clock-punching time misers all, but it's not true: we do things differently in the Laundry. And so does Iris, and for a blessing, she admits it.)

I nod.

"Good," she says briskly, her accent so clear she could get a job as a BBC news anchor. "So." She pauses. "Something went wrong yesterday, and you've got a report to file. Want to fill me in on it? So I know what to expect?"

So I know what to expect is Iris-speak for so I can cover your ass.

"Yeah . . . I fucked up a routine out-of-the-office job for Angleton." I take a deep breath. "One dead bystander, in front of witnesses—luckily the only direct eyewitness is already sworn to Section Three." (Section Three of the Official Secrets Act, which covers our activities, is itself classified Top Secret under the terms of Section Two, making knowledge of it by unauthorized persons an offense—and we enforce it ferociously.)