I could see the cartoon slot machine flicker behind his eyes. Nightingale was offering what the ridiculously… — Ben Aaronovitch

“Anything else to report?” he asked.

“A creeping sense of existential dread,” I said. “Apart from that I’m good.”

“A romantic,” said Nightingale. “The most dangerous people on earth.”

Upstairs, MOLA’s offices had the same open-plan cubicle based workspace that has been the delight of code monkeys and low-level paper pushers since one time and motion consultant said to another, “Hey, you know, I don’t think we’ve really dehumanized these white collar drones enough.”