I glared at him before sitting down at my desk.

“Very good,” said Duffy with obvious approval of my stance. “Shall I send Mrs. Fairweather in straightaway or wait a couple of minutes?”

“Straightaway.”

Bunty Fairweather was a tall woman, for whom the words “willowy” and “pale” might have been invented. Although we hadn’t spoken for over a decade, I knew her quite well, when she was on the SpecOps Complaints Committee. It was a job in which she could have been difficult and vindictive, but she always played fair.

“Hello, Thursday,” she said brightly as we shook hands and I offered her a seat. “Congratulations on your appointment. Fed up with the carpet business?”

“I was attracted back to the literary world by the bright lights and good pay. You’ve done well for yourself. Last time we met, you were adjudicating complaints against the department.”

“I’ve been at the council for almost eight years,” replied Bunty jovially. “After my SpecOps liaison work, they thought I’d be best placed to deal with the mildly odder aspects of council work. At present I’m negotiating with the Swindon Meridian Society to try to stop them from insisting on implementing a citywide Swindon Time Zone.”

“I heard about that.”

This particularly fatuous idea had been in the news a lot recently and would require people to set their watches seven minutes back when going into Swindon, then seven minutes forward when they came out. Luckily, the chief sponsors of the bill all lived in Liddington just outside Swindon, so they were given their own time zone in order to shut them up.

“It would cause chaos at Clary-Lamarr,” said Bunty, “and set a dangerous precedent around the nation. So what can I do for you? There’s a limit to what we can discuss ahead of the budget meeting tomorrow. You do know I’m on the Swindon City Council’s Fiscal Planning Committee?”

“Yes— but I wanted to talk about Smite Solutions.”

She nodded her head approvingly. “Good,” she replied, “for there is much to discuss. I am also head of the city’s Smite Avoidance Team. It is my responsibility to ensure that people and property are safe from the mysterious yet destructive ways of our Creator.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“No thanks. The nation had been hoping the Anti-Smite Defense Shield would offer some kind of defense by now, but I understand there have been a few overruns.”

“She said it would take eight,” I replied defensively. “It’s only been three so far.”

“No one’s blaming your daughter, Thursday. We have to work with what we’ve got.”

“It’s possible she may crack the software issue in time,” I said. “The only stumbling block is finding a value for the Madeupion Unentanglement Constant.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something about acorns in Hertfordshire,” I said, thinking hard.