This Sociological Life

Desmond Hume's office occupied a corner of the Sociology building with a view of the docks he'd spent thirty years writing about - a man who'd built his entire academic reputation on a single, patient question: what holds a community together once the industry that built it disappears? Books on Durkheim lined one wall, dog-eared, heavily annotated; a half-marked stack of undergraduate essays sat exactly where he'd left them.

He'd been found slumped at his desk, a cold cup of tea beside him, utterly undramatic. A pill organiser sat open in the top drawer - Tuesday's compartment empty, which should have meant he'd taken his morning dose as prescribed.

"Heart medication," said Rook's crime-scene colleague. "Man his age, known condition, nobody's surprised." She shrugged. "Sad, not suspicious."

It was, you had to admit, a perfectly reasonable explanation for a man with a weak heart to simply stop having one. The question it didn't answer was why Tuesday's compartment was empty while Wednesday's, the day he died, still held its pills untouched.