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. Well, yes, she sighed. That s exactlythe problem.It s the safe-disposal issue.I re-member one time, when there was a fire-drake summoned in Peckham, and the of-ficers handling the case thought they couldjust dispose of its bile gland down the sewerand I am telling you, we were scraping offcrispy parts for a month, such a mess! So I636/1048think we want to avoid that this time.Unless,of course, Mr Mayor, you have an idea?From anyone else, it would have been aput-down.Kelly s face glowed withoptimism.Avoidance seemed only proper. Whereare the Minority Council? Mr Caughey and Mr Fadhil have ex-cused themselves&  Cheeky buggers! Ms Holta and Ms Rathnayake are es-corting the heart back to the office to assistwith the clean-up&  Are they supervised? I snapped. Well, there are other Aldermen there,replied Kelly, a little taken aback. And be-sides, I m sure that everyone understandsthe necessity of tonight s situation, the needto deal with this culicidae problem before itgot out of hand; everyone s completely onboard with the message, Mr Mayor. And Templeman?637/1048 Is waiting for you by his car. Good.Do I have a schedule thing?She sat back on her heels, wearing anenormous grin, a woman who couldn t quitebelieve her ears. A schedule? Why yes, MrMayor, of course you have a schedule, and,in fact, you ve even got an app to monitoryour schedule remotely if you ll just&  Tomorrow afternoon, me, the MinorityCouncil, a sit-down chat, sandwiches, coffee,no guns, no offensive sorcery, several reas-onably impartial witnesses give Dudley Sin-clair a call, tell him it ll be dead miserableand right up his street maybe a few bis-cuits no, maybe a lot of biscuits soundgood? Of course! She was looking around nowfor tissues to wipe the gunk off her hands,folding each one into an immaculate trianglewhen done. I ll have it put into your diaryand a room booked right away.Any particu-lar kind of biscuits? I mean, I usually get the638/1048family selection, something for everyone, butMr Nair liked butter shortbreads and I knowthat some people think the family selectionhas too many artificial flavourings&  It sounds fine, I groaned, dragging my-self to my feet.How could pain still feel sonovel?  No, wait, actually& Can you do cus-tard creams? And those chocolate things; theones with layers? The ones you break in twoand lick the bit in the middle off, you knowthem? Of course, we can do any biscuit youwant&  We want those, we said. And maybe&  Yes? & those kind of cheese twist things& ?She walked with us, up towards thestreet, getting out a pen to take notes with aswe went on our way.Templeman was, as promised, by his car.As I approached, with Kelly taking downthe last of tomorrow s menu, he waited, until639/1048she d scurried off to find a taxi and a cateringcompany still trading at two a.m.The Alder-men began to leave, for whatever dutiescalled them in the cold hours of the night.Noone paid us much attention; the assumptionseemed to be that if Templeman thoughtsomething was okay, it was.Questions wereput to me, but answers were looked to fromhim.The fact that they pretended to ask meanything was an improvement of sorts.When, finally, we were alone, I said, Thanks. What for? Making all this happen.Getting them tostick with it and deal with the culicidae.Iknow they wouldn t have, if you hadn t madethem. The culicidae was a failure, he replied. They would have seen that in time Imerely helped convince them a little faster.Besides, in all good relationships there mustbe some give and take.640/1048 I know, I know.I just don t like commit-tee meetings.Christ, there ll be minutes,won t there? And that thing you get wheresome guy keeps saying  can we stick to theagenda please and someone else saying  ifwe can just discuss the issues here and&God it ll be crap.Do you think anyone wouldmind if I ran away? Many people are surprised you haven trun already, he said, and added,  I mean, inregard to your other problems, rather thanas a personal reflection on your character.I groaned. Oh Christ, yes, the fairy god-mother.Hold on before the good feelinggoes&  I felt in my pocket for my phone,flicked it on, dialled Nabeela.Templeman watched me, and as Ilistened to it ring he asked,  Someone at thishour? Oh, this social worker who put me on tothe culicidae in the first place [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]