It was true. As always, the reality of being mean to someone was proving less enjoyable than the idea of doing so. “Fair enough,” Charlie said. “Look, what’s this about? Why are you hovering? Spit it out. Are you leaving Debbie? Is Liv leaving Dom?” I’m at work, for fuck’s sake. I don’t want to be talking about my sister. Charlie doubted she’d ever get over her profound regret that her family had found its way into her professional life without her permission, and vice versa.

“Nothing like that.” Gibbs was smiling weirdly again, a nervous-about-meeting-the-Queen kind of smile.

“Then what? Tell me!”

“Nothing. I just thought you’d be interested in the latest on the Blundy case. But you’re busy, so . . . forget it.” Gibbs turned and started to walk away.

“I’ve got about a quarter of an hour.” Charlie looked at her watch to check that it was true.

Sort of. Not really. It wouldn’t matter if she missed the first ten minutes of cultural awareness—not to her, anyway. “Show me some grainy black-and-white film,” she said. “I’ll pretend I’m watching a tedious art-house picture with no plot or mass-market appeal—the kind Liv used to love before she fell for you and decided she preferred Mission Impossible II to Eric Rohmer.”

“If you’re sure?”

“I’m sure, polite boy.”

Charlie followed Gibbs to the viewing room on the first floor. DC Colin Sellers was already in there—had been for some time, by the look of it. His tie was draped over the back of his chair, and he’d undone the top two buttons of his shirt. The lower buttons looked as if they might be next to give way, under pressure from Sellers’s sizeable beer-and-kebab belly. “What are you doing here?” he asked Charlie.

“Charming. Lovely to see you too, Colin.”