He emerged on the eighth floor, where the offices were already diminishing in size, and walked up the stairway to the top floor, which had been added at some time like icing to a cake. Here the flooring was linoleum, not marble or cork or tile, and the windows fronting the corridor had the smeared look of glass cleaned once a week by a charwoman with little enthusiasm. Deaken’s office was the fourth along to the right but he stopped at the second because it was the one that Elian Fochet occupied. When he entered she was bent over a newspaper crossword.

“Anything?” he said.

“An offer for an out-of-hours answering service, without which no successful business is supposed to be able to operate, and a handout from American Express on the benefit of taking cards against the firm for employees’ use,” recited the woman. She hesitated and added, “Everyone got the same.”

“Thanks,” said Deaken.

“You’ve an appointment at eleven,” she said. Elian Fochet was mousy-haired, absolutely flat-chested, and wore butterfly spectacles that had gone out of fashion years before. Deaken thought she looked exactly what she was, the shared secretary/receptionist for a group of people hanging on by their fingertips to some pretension of business. He wondered if she was a virgin.

“I know,” he said.

“Do you want me to serve coffee?”

“No, thank you,” said Deaken. Her coffee was appalling.

“It won’t be any trouble.”

“No, really.”

She offered him the circulars but he shook his head. She threw them in the waste basket.

He continued on to his own office, unlocked the door and stood at the entrance. The cheap carpet still looked presentable. So did the couch along one wall and the matching chair in front of the desk. He could have got away with the imitation black leather chair, high-backed and padded-armed, behind it, but the desk was ply and looked it, despite the attempt to disguise it with varnish.