“Management,” I say firmly. Andy looks as if he’s about to contradict me, then gets the message and shuts up. “So-called because back in Dansey House—which is currently a hole in the ground, thanks to the public-private partnership that’s years behind schedule on the refurbishment—the floor the executive offices were on had plush carpet and mahogany-paneled walls. Very old-school, high-end civil service.”

This is actually only about 25 percent falsehood: Mahogany Row (the office floor) did have tropical hardwood paneling, and if the bastards from Ove Arup or Foster Associates or Wimpey or whoever have vandalized it some of us will be very annoyed. But describing Mahogany Row (the people) as “management” is a bit like calling a B-52 bomber an “air freight delivery vehicle.” They manage problems, yes. The rest of the organization exists to support them, certainly. But the way they manage problems resembles normal management practice the way a B-52’s cargo of free-fall thousand-pound bombs resembles a Post Office sorting room.

Pete points a questioning index finger at the ceiling and makes a circling motion while raising an eyebrow.

“What?” asks Andy.

“You make it sound like the House of Bishops. Somewhat political and hands-off.”

“They are, usually,” I explain. If they weren’t, there’d be glowing craters all over the landscape. “But in this case it really looks like a case of hands-on management, with some deliberate meddling.”

“This Mary—”

“Mhari.”

“Mhari. What’s wrong with her? Apart from . . .”

I shrug. “Apart from her being my long-ago psycho ex? She’s one of them, Pete. A PHANG, a Person of Hemophagic Autocombusting Nocturnal Glamour, or whatever the fuck the politically correct acronym stands for this morning. She’s a stakeholder in the whole process and she’s been given carte blanche to control the outcome of a committee process tasked with defining policy for Human Resources with specific reference to Workplace Health and Safety, employee special needs subject to the Equalities Act (2010), and other relevant legislation. What DRESDEN RICE comes up with has the potential to be set in stone—”

“Stop!” I stop, startled by Pete’s interruption. He raises a hand. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with that? Because what I’m hearing is, if you had an equivalent committee looking into the needs of, say, an Orthodox Jew or a paraplegic in a wheelchair, you’d object to the group in question being represented on the committee—”

Andy shakes his head, for which I’m profoundly grateful, because I seem to have stepped on a landmine in the fraught field of discrimination awareness, and it’s only a matter of time before someone unmasks me as a running dog of the oligoheteropatriarchy. (Which I will cop to, but it’s a hell of a handicap to play under when you’re participating in a game of privilege bingo.) “There’s a fundamental difference between a vampire and a regular human minority, Pete: normal people don’t have super-strength, mind control powers, and a thirst for blood.”