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the chart at all really. I’ve put myself there at the Permanent Secretary’s right hand to clarify things. I’m two ranks below Parkinson at the moment, more or less. If I’m a good boy I’ll be made a Principal soon and then I’ll be only one below him.’
    Milton looked confused. ‘A Principal sounds much more important than an Assistant Secretary.’
    ‘Not when you know that the title is short for Principal Clerk – though of course it has nothing nowadays to do with clerical work. All these titles go back at least to the last century. Don’t try to understand why we use them – it’s easier just to accept.’
    Milton ran his eye over the sketch and nodded his comprehension. ‘Thanks. I can see that Parkinson hasn’t done too well. Why didn’t he get out?’
    ‘He left it too late. He had got out of touch with scientific advances of all but the most general sort in his anxiety to learn about his new job.’
    ‘Dear God. Yours seems to be a very cruel world.’
    ‘No, not really. It’s often stuffy, often silly, it can be absurdly bureaucratic and it frequently wastes talent by attaching far too much importance to style rather than content. Still, it’s got a lot of intelligent, industrious and amusing people who would not be consciously unkind – just thoughtless. And thoughtlessly they left poor old Parkinson to his fate. More and more people got promoted over his head and Sir Nicholas rose to be Permanent Secretary. With his increase in power he was better placed than ever to shake his head when anyone suggested promoting Parkinson. I’ve heard him referring to Parkinson as a third-rate mind with a second-rate veneer.’
    ‘Did Parkinson know it was Sir Nicholas who was responsible for his condition?’
    ‘He can’t have known specifically, but he must have guessed a lot of it. He certainly must have smarted under some of the deft criticisms Sir Nicholas used to make of his work whenever he got the chance – often in memoranda circulated to half a dozen people. He never mentioned him by name, of course. Just made snide references – expressing concern that nothing had been done in this area or that, or surprise at the misjudgement displayed in a draft policy document. Sir Nicholas was very clever,’ Amiss sighed. ‘I bet The Times obituary says he had a first-rate mind.’
    ‘Well, time to draw stumps. I’m taking my third-rate mind home to bed before you tell me that Sir Nicholas was about to have the entire leadership of the TUC arraigned for treason. I don’t suppose even you can have a lot more to tell me tomorrow, but in line with our bargain, I’ll be here about the same time tomorrow night to fill you in on my day’s doings. Here, I’ll pay that. Least I can do.’
    ‘If you see me in the department tomorrow, don’t for God’s sake call me Robert.’
    ‘I’ll call you “sir”. Nobody ever called me a high flyer.’

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    Tuesday Morning
    « ^ »
    6
    Milton’s wife was still asleep when he left at 7.30 the following morning, after five hours’ fitful sleep. He doubted if he was to have much conversation with her during the rest of the investigation. Stupid of policemen to marry women they like, he thought dejectedly. The ideal policeman (like the ideal Cabinet Minister, apparently) should be married to a wife so repellent that he would never feel the yearning for some private life. Ann wasn’t repellent. Worse, she had a job which took her abroad frequently – she was even now sleeping off jet-lag – and they could go for whole weeks without exchanging much more than written messages of household instructions. He found himself immersed in an increasingly frequent reverie, in which, surrounded by happy, healthy children, he pruned roses, raised exotic vegetables, savoured the smell of baking from the rambling Tudor homestead. There were several routes out of this daydream: his hatred of gardening was exceeded only by Ann’s abomination of housekeeping and the terror