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waiting for medicine to be issued over a dispensary counter, he was momentarily disturbed.
    –Could this have something to do with the VC Morris gave me? I mean, I don’t usually think like this, don’t usually pay so much attention to everybody I see … Still, if the main result of taking VC is to increase your empathy, that can definitely not be bad. The world’s terribly short of it. Morris and I were agreeing on that last night.
    Then his puzzlement was chased away by something else as he drew level with the main entrance foyer of the building. On arriving with Billy he had spotted a separate casualty entrance, so he had not come in this way. Here now was a fat cheerful woman handing to a nurse seated at a table a little blue chit bearing the symbol of the National Blood Transfusion Service, and saying as she did so, “Haven’t done this for years, you know! If I’d realised, I’d have come along sooner. Makes a bit extra for Christmas like, don’t it?”
    And the girl was exchanging the blue voucher for a five-pound note.
    He had known there was a blood-donation session in progress; a sign at the casualty entrance informed would-be donors that they had come to the wrong door. But …
    Catching sight of him, the seated nurse looked a question.
    “Since when have they been paying for blood in this country?” he demanded.
    “Oh, it’s a new idea,” the nurse answered. “Seems not enough people will give blood if they don’t. We were having to buy plasma from abroad. So they said to start paying.” She pulled a face. “Can’t say I fancy the look of some of the people it pulls in, I must admit!”
    “Good grief,” Malcolm said inadequately. “Ah … how much?”
    “Oh, five pounds a pint. I mean half-litre.”

    The idea haunted him all the time he was in the toilet, and finally he gave in.
    After all, there was something so horribly appropriate about it.

    “Fry, Malcolm Colin … Do you happen to know your group, Mr Fry? No? You should, you know. Everybody should. But testing for that will only take a moment … Ah, you’re O positive, the commonest group. So that will probably go straight to the plasma centrifuge. But don’t worry, we’ll pay you anyhow! There’s always a great demand for plasma over Christmas: road accidents, kids cutting themselves on knives they’ve just been given, drunken housewives getting burned as they take the turkey out of the oven … Sit over there, please, and wait until the nurse says she’s ready.”

V

    –So what was all that about Maurice Post?
    By dint of skimping (he admitted it to himself) on his least urgent patients, Hector Campbell had caught up on the day’s list by his regular quitting-time. Being so harried, though, he was already driving out of the clinic’s car-park before he recollected the mysterious phone-call from Kneller.
    –But he works at Gull-Grant. Why in the world should the director be “anxious to get in touch with him”?
    He hesitated. Then, with sudden decision, he turned right instead of left as usual towards his home. Maurice lived on the edge of Hampstead, barely a mile north of here. It would take only ten minutes to go ring his bell and ask if he would like a pre-Christmas drink, and if he were not in little time would have been wasted.
    –But it’s all very strange!
    Though he and Maurice had been at school together, Mrurice was the older by three years, so only membership of the school’s Science Hobby Club had brought them into regular contact. There had been a lapse of a decade when they completely drifted apart. Coincidentally, however, Maurice’s former doctor had retired at the time he moved to Hampstead, and on learning that his new address was in the catchment area of the clinic where Hector worked, he had opted to continue with National Health treatment rather than the private care the government would have preferred someone in his position to choose. Since then, he and Hector had met a dozen times a year, at