A Voss and Pike Casefile: The Early Days
Section 15: The Retainer
Strand slid a contract across the desk. SALTMARSH COUNCIL - COMMUNITY INSIGHT RETAINER: VOSS SOCIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Twelve months, four thousand pounds a month.
Three weeks of instant noodles. Jonah's first wage packet, paid out of the savings you didn't mention.
"The council would like a sociologist it doesn't have to share with a university," said Strand gently. "Someone to tell us which problems to solve first. And perhaps the first problem we'd solve together needn't be a tragic accident." She smiled. "That isn't a bribe, Dr Voss. It's an opportunity for useful work."
Mills had a warning about the point where a sociologist becomes a more efficient way of making people conform. You'd always pictured it as a grand thing. It turned out to be a contract on a nice desk.
A twelve-month council retainer offered to Ada the morning after Marian's death - the point at which sociology risks co-option into a tool of social control, bought with the first reliable money her new agency has seen.