We’re talking inconsequentialities, waiting for the letter to arrive. “A weekend would be good,” she agrees.

“If I can find a bed and breakfast-”

“In Harrogate? It won’t be cheap but it’ll be quiet and there are places to walk, and it’s not far off the East Coast Main Line.”

“Maybe York, instead?”

“ York, in summer? It’ll be sunny, but the river smells-”

Ding-dong.

“That’ll be the letter,” I say, rising. “Back in a minute.” I’m through the door and taking the stairs two at a time. That was fast, I think, eagerly reaching for the door handle.

My head hurts. Then the next thing I think is, That’s funny. Why am I on the floor?

I’m looking up and my vision is blurred, like a migraine. Uncle Fester leans over me, pointing a gun with a fat barrel at my face.

“Где же она?” he says.

“Uh?”

Actually, my face feels like it’s split open. The bastard shoved the door in my face, hard.

Uncle Fester pokes my forehead with the gun, provoking a bright metallic flash of pain. “Скажи мне сейчас, или я буду убивать вас.”

He looks like Niko Bellic’s mad uncle, the bad one with the child abuse convictions and the questionable personal hygiene, not to mention a bright red-glowing zit in the middle of his forehead. And I am utterly fucked, because I don’t understand a word he’s saying: but I’ll swear I saw him or his twin brother at the bus stop yesterday-

He’s pulling back the gun. I can see its barrel looking huge and dark, and if I knew where my hands were there’s this neat trick you can do when some idiot points an automatic at you at short range, you grab the slide by laying your hand on top of the barrel and pushing back to stop the breech closing, which is a great secret agent stunt if you’re not lying on the floor of your own front hall with one arm trapped under you and blood trickling down your face.

“Do you speak English?” I ask.

Uncle Fester looks annoyed. “Waar is ze?”

I look him in the eyes and feel my guts freeze. I’ve been here before, staring at the luminous green worms swirling behind the glazed surface of his eyes, writhing in the muddy waters of a mind that’s been sucked into a place where human consciousness melts like grease on a hot frying pan-

There is a noise behind me like a cat the size of a bus yowling rage and defiance at a rival who has dared to enter his territory.

Uncle Fester (or whatever it is that wears the mortal skin of a dead man walking) raises his gun to bear on the staircase. My left arm twists almost without me willing it and I push at his right leg just above the ankle, shoving as hard as I can at his trousers don’t think about what happens if you touch his flesh because that would be as bad as not forcing him off balance while he’s aiming at Mo-

And he topples across me.

These things are never terribly good at coordinating a tensegrity structure like a mammalian musculoskeletal system: even when they’re in the driving seat they’re trying to work a manual transmission with automatic-only training. His gun bangs, a curiously muffled thudding sound as the feedback howl from the top of the staircase rises to a pitch that makes my teeth ache and overflows into an ear-numbingly harsh chord, music to snap necks to.

Uncle Fester goes abruptly limp as he falls on my legs. There’s a horrid sigh and a smell I don’t want to think about as unlife and animation departs.

“Bob?” Her voice is small and terrified.

“I’m okay!” I call. “Are you?”

Pause. “Check.” She advances down the stairs, instrument raised and bow poised, wearing an intent, emotionless expression utterly at odds with her voice. As she comes closer I see a trickle of blood emerging from her fingertips where she grips the neck of the bone-colored violin. There’s always a cost to being entrusted with such instruments, and she’s half-past overdrawn at the bank of life, her hands spidering twitchily as she stalks the house room by room, confirming that Uncle Fester was alone.

My forehead’s damp and I feel sick. I reach out to push myself up so I can shut the front door in case a curious neighbor sees something that might damage their house valuation, and my vision blurs again. I try to wipe my face and my hand comes away red and sticky. That’s odd, I tell myself, I’ve never been shot before. Then everything gets very hazy and far away for a while.

HOSPITALS ARE BORING PLACES: MY ADVICE IS TO AVOID THEM wherever possible, unless you happen to work there. Unfortunately I’m not always good at taking my own advice, which is why I spend three hours in the A &E unit, having my head bolted back together.

Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s just a bash and a scrape to my scalp: but head wounds bleed like crazy and they wanted to make sure I wasn’t concussed and didn’t have a fractured skull or a subdural hematoma or something. Then it was time for about a million butterfly sutures and I’m told I may never be able to take the paper bag off in public again, but that’s okay because they let me go home with Mo and the nice folks from Plumbing who look like extras from The Matrix.

Being attacked by a demonically possessed Russian with a silenced pistol is unusual but not exceptional in my line of work; sloppy of me not to have replaced my ward, though, or to have checked the spy lens in the door before opening up. Inexcusable not to have noticed that Andy’s messenger was at least half an hour early, too… but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be attacked by a demonically possessed Russian with a silenced pistol. (At least, I assume he was Russian. He was speaking Russian, wasn’t he? I have some broken schoolboy French: therefore I’m from Quebec. Such are the perils of inductive logic. It was certainly demonic possession: probably class two, one of the minor feeders in the night. Otherwise I’d be worse than dead.)

Anyway. The point is, that sort of thing is just not done, at least not without some degree of warning, especially to someone who’s signed off sick for the rest of the week-I’m feeling distinctly peeved. It’s unprofessional. I’m just lucky Mo realized something was wrong and grabbed her violin in time to switch him off. She may be pale and shaking in the aftermath of-something very bad, I guess-but she’s a trouper, or trooper, or something, and her reflexes are everything that mine are not.

When we get home, our house has been invaded by spooks. An entire team of Plumbers are at work, rewiring the perimeter defenses and daubing exclusion sigils on the window frames. Andy is sitting at the kitchen table, tapping his fingers, briefcase open, which makes it official: it’s serious enough to drag management off-site. “ Bob, Mo, good to see you!” He sounds relieved, which is worrying.

“Letter of Release.” I cross my arms.

“You don’t need it.” Andy glances at Mo. “Whether we like it or not, Bob is now involved in CLUB ZERO. At least, I’m assuming that’s what followed you home…”

“Oh dear,” she says heavily, and pulls out a chair. “Bob, I really didn’t want-”

“Too late, whatever it is.” I grimace. I still feel a little sick, but it’s mostly overspill from the music-not concussion, just a little totenlied-and I’m heartsick for her, too. “Andy, what’s going on?”

“Angleton’s missing,” he says, with a curious little half smile, as if he’s just cracked a really filthy joke and is wondering if you’ve even heard of the perversion he’s alluding to.

“Angleton’s what?” says Mo, just as I open my mouth to say exactly the same thing.

“He’s missing. Do you have any information… no, I guess not.” His cheek twitches.

Mo reaches across the table and takes my hand. I barely notice.

Angleton is just about the bedrock of the department. Yes, his position is shrouded in rumor and misinformation-to some, he’s simply a DSS, a Detached Special Secretary doing boring and esoteric work in Arcana Analysis; to others he’s involved in the occult equivalent of counterespionage: but the truth is a lot weirder. Angleton actually gets to talk to the Board, who nobody has actually seen in the flesh in forty years. He’s the whetstone that sharpens the cutting edge of the blade our political masters fancy they wield when they tell us what to do: the dog’s bollocks, in other words. He’s not the heart of the Laundry-no one person is ever indispensable to any well-run agency-but he’s probably important enough that if he is indeed missing, things are going to get unpleasantly exciting.