Problems, Problems

Keast's confession still hung in the hall when Albert Quayle stood in the third row, cap in his hand, one button done up wrong.

"I'm told I'm confused," he said, to a room that had spent a morning agreeing it was not. "I'm eighty-one, and I put the kettle on at twenty past eleven, and I know what I saw. A man took his glasses off to be patient and then he wasn't." He looked at Strand. "I've a form says I hear lamps humming. I do. They've stopped."

One by one, the panel stood: Bernie, Darek, Mrs Sandhu, Halvorsen, Joss at the back with her hand on the arm of an empty seat, and read Marian's five chapters aloud in the hall where she was meant to. Nobody told them to sit.

Strand moved the motion herself, white to the lips. The Priority Problem Register was withdrawn. The Strategy would be redrafted, conditions first, lighting, rails, the hour of a consultation, with the panel's chairs on the committee. Harborline's two flagship buildings, the cafe and the almshouses, came off the plan before the lunch break. Halloran ran five faces across the front page with the headline FIVE VOICES.

Within the year the quay had a railing and eight working lamps, and a small brass plate at the corner by the third one: TEAGUE QUAY.

Rook rang you from the station steps. The board had heard about the sergeant who reopened an accident verdict; they had, it seemed, looked kindly.

That evening you stood on a stool in the office with a pot of white paint and a fine brush, and under VOSS SOCIAL INVESTIGATIONS, on the lower pane, you painted a line: Everybody is playing a part. I find out who wrote the script.

"Is that the business plan?" said Jonah.

"It's the only one I've got."

The post had come while you were out. A cream envelope: the Fairweather Foundation, black tie, the Grand Lantern, an address by Sir Edwin Fairweather, "The Real Me". Jonah read it, said he didn't own a tie, and propped it against the kettle, which promptly refused to boil.