"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Greg asked, and there was no need to force a tired tone into his voice, it came all too easily.

"The bastard's Party, Greg," someone called.

"No messing? Have you seen his card? Was it signed by President Armstrong himself?" He was aware of Eleanor coming to stand behind him. Her presence sparked off a ripple of severe agitation in the minds around him.

"He's guilty, Greg. The Inquisitors said he was an apparatchik over in Market Harborough."

"Ah…" he said. The Inquisitors (actually, the Inappropriate Appointee Investigation Bureau) had been set up by the New Conservative government to purge PSP appointees from Civil Service posts, where it was feared they would deliberately misuse their positions to stir up trouble in their own interest. Identifying them had turned out to be an almost impossible task, a lot of records had been lost or destroyed when the PSP fell. Nearly all the old Party's premier grades had been routed out, they were notorious enough in their own areas for the Inquisitor teams not to need official data-work; but the small fry, the invisible Party hacks who did the committees' groundwork, they were hard to pin down. A lot of suspect names had been leaking from the Inquisitors' office lately. Rough justice eradicated the tricky problem of no verifiable evidence.

"An official charge has been brought against him, has it?" Greg asked.

"No," Douglas Kellam said. "But we've heard. Bytes that came straight from the top." His voice changed to a slicker, more appealing tone. In his mind there was still the hope that he could win through, a refusal to admit defeat. And nervousness that was beginning to churn up through his subconscious, like all of them, all disquieted by Greg and the infamous gland.