THERE COMES A TIME IN EVERY COUNTERESPIONAGE INVESTIgation when you have to grit your teeth, admit that you're at your wits' end, admit defeat, and bugger off home for a Chinese takeaway and a night in front of the telly. Then you get a good night's sleep (except for the nocturnal eructations induced by too much black bean sauce) and awaken, refreshed and revived and in a mood to do battle once more with—

Bollocks.

I have gotten somewhere: I now know that the missing file is called the Fuller Memorandum (which by a huge leap of inductive logic—I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself here—I deduce is a memorandum, by or about F). It was filed in 1941, was absolutely mega-top-secret burn-before-reading stuff sixty-five years ago, and has some bearing on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. It's also missing. Those last three facts would be enough to give me industrial-grade stomach ulcers if it was my fault. Luckily, it's not my fault. All I have to do is find Angleton and I'm sure he can explain it all, and also explain what the flaming fuck it has got to do with BLOODY BARON.

This much is not time-critical. Getting that Chinese takeaway, with or without black bean sauce, is time-critical, lest I starve to death on the case. Going home and doing sweet, sappy, quality time things with Mo is time-critical too, lest she files for divorce on grounds of neglect. And so is not having a nervous breakdown while waiting for the board of enquiry findings, lest I find myself without a career, in which case they'll put me in charge of pushing that handcart full of dusty files around the department. So I stand up, stretch, push the off button on the Memex, and leave Angleton's lair.

I pause briefly in my own rabbit hutch of an office, scan my email, respond to a couple of trivial pestiferations (no, I am no longer in charge of the structured cabling specifications for D Block; yes, I am still attached to the international common insourcing and acquisition standards committee, for my sins in a previous life; no, I do not have a desktop license for Microsoft Office, because my desktop PC is a Microsoft-free zone for security reasons—and would you like fries with that?). The scanner has finished digesting all those dusty letters from Arthur to John; I squirt the PDFs across to the NecronomiPod and then I grab my backpack and umbrella and head for home. Iris isn't in her office as I pass the window, and Rita on the front desk has pissed off early—then I check my watch and do a double take. It's six forty. Shit. Mo will kill me, I think as I head down the main staircase at a fast clip and barrel through the staff exit.