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just got ourselves a nice murder, too.’
    Slider shook his head, bemused. ‘It was such a shock.’
    ‘The CID room windows are clean, too,’ Polish mentioned.
    ‘There goes our centre-spread in next month’s
Toilet and Garden,’
Atherton said sadly. ‘That man has no respect for tradition.’
    Slider crossed to his desk to look at the folder. It was new, crisp, and had a fresh white label on the cover with the circulation list for checking off. The list was very long. There was also a memo fixed to the cover by a paper-clip.
    ‘From Mr Barrington, sir,’ Polish said apologetically.
    ‘So I see,’ said Slider.
As of this date, circulation files will be read and passed on within 24 hours of receipt, unless there are exceptional circumstances which prevent this. Such exceptional circumstances must be advised in writing to IVNB.
    ‘Apparently we’re all to see all circulation files from now on,’ she explained. ‘Mr Barrington says we should be conversant with every new directive, whether it affects us directly or not. So the files have to go round more quickly, so that everyone gets a chance to read them.’
    ‘I see,’ Slider said with admirable restraint.
    ‘And the painters are coming in next week,’ she added, perhaps by way of providing a counter-irritant.
    ‘Oh good!’
    ‘There’s a colour-chart on its way to you. Mr Carver’s got it at the moment’
    ‘Splendid!’
    ‘Shall I get a cup of tea, sir?’ she enquired tenderly, like a nurse in casualty department.
    ‘Yes please. I need one. I think I’m getting a headache,’ said Slider.
    ‘The light’s shining right in your credulity,’ Atherton suggested.
    Atherton entered the CID room and sat down on the cold radiator, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles in a way that was somehow essentially English. Norma glanced across with interest. He had elegant ankles. She secretly suspected him of wearing silk socks.
    ‘Well, it looks cut and dried, doesn’t it?’ he enquired rhetorically of the air. Beevers at the far desk grunted without looking up, like a sleeping dog hearing its name spoken. ‘I don’t think this one’s going to be a sticker.’
    ‘What, our homicide?’ Norma encouraged him kindly. ‘We don’t even know it’s a murder yet.’
    ‘I suppose the victim may have undressed and slipped himself through the chip-cutter for thrills,’ Atherton acknowledged. ‘Anyway, there’s no sign of forcible entry, and Slaughter’s at suicidal pains to tell us that no-one but him has been in the back room and no-one else has a key.’
    ‘I suppose the cutting-up was done there?’
    ‘There were traces of blood on the table, the sink, the drainer, the floor and the floor drain. Also between the blade and the handle of two of the knives.’
    ‘We don’t know for certain yet it’s human blood,’ McLaren offered indistinctly through the Mars Bar he was sucking. ‘We had a case once in Lambeth—’
    McLaren had always had a case once that topped anyone else’s. Norma interrupted him witheringly. ‘I wish you’d make up your mind whether you want to eat that thing or mate with it,’ she said. You have the most disgusting eating habits of anyone I’ve ever worked with, and that’s saying something.’
    McLaren opened his mouth to retaliate and Atherton hastily averted his gaze. He felt his speech was losing its audience. ‘Well we know it isn’t fish blood,’ he said loudly, ‘and there’s so much of it that the inference is plain.’
    ‘Inference?’ McLaren hooted derisively. ‘What’s that, some kind of in-house conference?’
    A blob of half-melted chocolate slipped from his lips as he spoke and fell onto his powder blue sweater. McLaren was very proud of his sweaters. Atherton smiled tenderly and continued.
    ‘Especially as there were traces of blood and tissue in the chip-cutter. And fragments of finger-nail.’
    ‘I suppose that’s how the finger got into the chips,’ Norma said. ‘He shoved a hand