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be stirred in . . . I’m sorry, Kathy, I’m just thinking aloud. I daresay a hundred years ago my predecessors would have known all the tricks with arsenic. I’m going to have to do some research on this, try some experiments.’
    ‘We haven’t been able to find any recent comparable cases, Sundeep. What about you? Have your medical friends got back to you?’
    ‘No, nothing yet, thank God.’
    •
    Brock sat halfway down the long table, irritably scratching his cropped white beard, trying to make sense of the point at issue. He was sitting in for Commander Sharpe, away at a conference in Strasbourg, and had a hundred other things to do. As far as he could see, the last two graphs in the PowerPoint presentation they’d all been subjected to had blatantly contradicted each other. But then, his mind on other things, he may have missed something. Across the other side of the table Superintendent Dick ‘Cheery’ Chivers was sitting with his habitual glum expression. His copy of the management report was impressively embellished with slashes of coloured marker pens, but so far he’d said even less than Brock.
    Brock’s phone trembled silently against his thigh. He slipped it out and checked the screen, then put it to his ear, turning away from the table. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Brock? It’s Kathy. Are you busy?’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I can ring back.’
    ‘No, tell me.’
    He listened in silence for a minute, then murmured, ‘Brief me at the office.’ He rang off and got to his feet. The droning voice of the senior manager at the head of the table paused and they all looked at Brock. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Emergency. I think you know Commander Sharpe’s position on the proposal. Dick will fill me in.’ He glanced at Cheery, who stared back with a look of profound envy on his face.
    He made his way down to the ground floor and out into the sunshine, breathing a sigh of relief. Hesitating under the rotating New Scotland Yard sign, he watched a cluster of under-dressed office girls dodge between the cars and thought with a shiver,
It’s not that bloody warm
. But even as one part of his mind started working out his priorities, another was responding to a breath of pollen in the air, and his eye caught a flash of bright green foliage on a plane tree further down the street. He took a few deep breaths and turned towards Queen Anne’s Gate, feeling the sun on his head, and his frustration easing away.
    •
    When Kathy arrived at the office she found it almost deserted, the few occupants looking harassed. All except Pip Gallagher, who sat alone in the room she shared with Kathy and three other detectives, staring disconsolately at the screen in front of her, face cupped in her hands.
    ‘Anything?’ Kathy asked.
    Pip shook her head. ‘Everyone’s got her address down as Stamford Street. She probably moved in with some bloke, don’t you reckon? How did you go?’
    ‘Dr Mehta got back to me. She was definitely murdered—big slug of arsenic in her lunch.’
    ‘Wow.’ Pip sat up, instantly revived.
    ‘We’ve got to find out how it got there. I’m going upstairs to brief Brock. Want to come?’
    In the outer office Brock’s secretary Dot rolled her eyes as they came in. They could hear Brock’s voice barking impatiently through his open door. Dot said, ‘Go on in.’
    He waved them to seats when he saw them, phone held to his ear, talking to Bren Gurney, one of the other DIs in Brock’s team. ‘Well tell them, Bren. Make sure they understand that.’
    They sat. Brock’s office was more of a mess than usual, files everywhere, resistant to Dot’s attempts to keep things tidy.
    Brock rammed down the phone. ‘I turn my back for ten minutes . . . All right, tell me about Sundeep’s little mystery.’
    Kathy quickly summarised the ground they had covered, then went on to the next steps, which would involve much more manpower. All of the offices around St James’s Square and the surrounding streets would have to be