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answered.
    “You had at least twenty minutes to warn me.”
    “We were brainstorming.”
    “Brainstorming be buggered. I could have ended up in hospital. Someone give me a hand.”
    With Halliwell’s assistance, he hauled himself upright, making a sound like wind chimes as bits of the smashed screen hit the floor. Glass was distributed widely in all directions.
    “I’m bruised all over.”
    Instead of offering sympathy, Leaman said, “You need an immediate shower and a change of clothes.”
    “Why? I’m not incontinent.”
    “The VDU.”
    Abbreviations had always been Diamond’s blind spot. His features twitched. “WHAT are you trying to tell me now?”
    “You need hosing down. Most of the parts in that visual display unit are highly toxic. Mercury in the circuit boards, lead in the cathode ray tube and chromium protecting thehard surfaces. If any of that gets into your system, I can’t answer for the consequences.”
    “It’s too bloody late to answer for the consequences. That’s what I’m hopping mad about.”
    Leaman refused to be silenced. His authority in this emergency overrode rank, discipline, everything. At any rate, that’s what they’d told him on the training course. “And you’re not to use your office again until it’s been completely decontaminated.”
    “Get lost.”
    “That’s an order.”
    “ What did you say?”
    “If you happen to remember,” Leaman said through clenched teeth, “you appointed me the health and safety rep as well as the first aid man. What I say goes.”
    The only shower was in the custody suite and the only change of clothes was the cornflower blue paper suit normally used for suspects and victims whose clothes were taken for forensic examination. Diamond emerged some time later looking like a visitor from another planet, but free of contamination. At this low point in his life he had nowhere to hide. The Wife of Bath was now in sole occupation of his office. A block of weathered stone had reduced him to this.
    Leaman was a credit to health and safety. He had locked the door to Diamond’s office and pinned crime scene tape across it. The top and bottom were sealed with wet tissues. He’d contacted the fire service. Their decontamination squad would go in overnight and remove all traces of the toxins.
    From the CID room Diamond phoned his friend and sometime lover, Paloma Kean. Everyone could hear his end of the conversation. He couldn’t ask them to empty the room and he wasn’t going to step outside where other people would see him in the paper suit.
    “Me,” he said to Paloma. “Got a big favour to ask. Any chance you could call at my house in the next hour and collect a set of clothes for me?”
    Fortunately Paloma worked from her home in Lyncombe, running her business supplying antique artwork for costume designers. From what was said next she must have asked what had happened. A reasonable question.
    He said, “I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
    Pause, for another question.
    “Everything,” he said. “Shoes, socks, pants. Picture me naked and you won’t go wrong.”
    The team was enjoying this. They all had their heads down, but some of them were shaking uncontrollably.
    “In the bedroom, most of it. I’d better warn you. It’s not all that tidy.”
    He glanced over his shoulder.
    “If you can’t find the underwear, don’t worry. I could manage without on this occasion, until I get home, that is.”
    Behind him, Ingeborg was in tears of mirth. Paul Gilbert had covered his face and was emitting a muffled cooing sound like a pigeon.
    “In a black plastic sack would be best,” Diamond said, “preferably knotted at the top and labelled personal, with my name. You could hand it in at the front desk and tell them it’s urgent. I’ll call you tonight and give you the whole sorry story.”
    The paper suit wasn’t made for warmth. Temporarily positioned close to a radiator, he had time to reflect while waiting for his clothes